As for staring at my sister's ass

First, why do guys think I give a shit about how hot my sister* is?? Or that it isn't offensive...I feel some mature part of myself suppressing the inevitable rant so I can actually tell you something coherent, and I've been trying to think how to word it. It goes something like this:

Privilege has a history that the privileged are often blind to. It would be one thing, let's say, in a vacuum society with a blank slate, for a man to look at a woman's ass. It's biological, sexual, evolutionary. Completely guilt-free, and, well, natural. Same with the reverse (woman checking out a man)(EDIT: or a woman checking out a woman or a man checking out a man).

However, in our society, that is not the case. The case is that for the past few hundred years (maybe even thousand), women have been constructed as objects in mens' minds. We have been forced to act according to man's will. We are told how to dress, how to walk, how to please him. We are fed a history of lies - of how we are made from him (Eve from Adam), of how we are not as holy as He (no female Priests, Rabbis (until lately), few deities), of how we are not as powerful (no presidents, political leaders, few CEOs), we are told we are weak, we are not artistic or creative (no major female artists, poets, writers, inventors until the past 2 centuries). We are dehumanized, demoralized, and thus dominated by the male psyche. So, when you stare at a woman's ass in our society, that's what you're reinforcing.

When you tell me about staring at my sister's ass, you ask me to justify that, and I cannot.

(* I use this word in the broadest sense possible.)

Costa Rica!

Hey - I'm in Costa Rica working on a research project called Nuestra Voz ("our voice"). Check out the blog here: http://www.nvov.org/blog/

Another Rainbow Dessert

I can't help myself. This looks delicious. Well not really, but it's pretty. I'm going to try and make it...with a slightly different recipe than the original. I already have chocolate frosting and I'm fine with using the standard box cake recipe rather than the diet soda (kinda weirds me out).

Knitting Updates: Felting!

Since I had to scrap the awesome booties because of the Mobius strip (read last post), I'm going to go with something similar and more useful in a warmer climate. Here are some links I've used.

• Here you can learn to felt by hand. Many people choose to felt wool in a washing machine, but I think it'd be cool to do the first one by hand to see the process in action, rather than let the machine do the magic. So I'll try that way and see how it goes.
  
• I'm on to making this and this for a laptop and camera with matching yarn.

I'll let you know how they turn out!

Beginner's Knitting Lessons

So it's the middle of winter and I'm bored so I decided to re-learn knitting. The possibilities are really endless and, contrary to cultural belief, knitting is not just for old women. Young women, men, basically anyone can knit if they choose to set their minds and hands to it. So, here are my tips for beginners, problems that I've run into in the past week, problems I write also so I don't run into them again!

• First, here's an awesome, huge database of free knitting patterns (beginner-advanced): http://www.knittingpatterncentral.com/directory.php
• Second, when switching from knitting to purling, you must switch the feed yarn from (in this case) back to front. The reverse is true also. If you don't, you'll screw up and have to start over. Or if you're really smart you'll figure out how to fix it...
  
• Third, do not knit Mobius strips. If you knit on a circular needle, apparently this is a threat, and you must watch out for it. I did not know of this, figuring that that was a made up thing, but it happened and now I have to start over, half-way done with a project.

Good luck.