So as the title suggests, today I've got a couple of things to talk about. Neither of them are enough for one whole blogpost I don't think, and they are not connected directly, but I feel with both of them that if I don't put them down right now, I may never do.
Today I was binge eating. As I am writing, I have on my table a mug (I've had about 3 cups of coacoa), an empty 2-pint bottle of milk, sugar, cheese and a bowl for some gherkins I was eating before. I've also had potato stew. This may not sound like much, except when you consider that all I've done today has been sleep, eat and watch shows. Combined with the fact that the food I consumed yesterday consisted on a bar of chocolate, some cod with courgettes tomato and mozzarella, a whole box (yes, that's 375g) of Krave cereal, and litre of milk, I would say that I've had a "bad" couple of days when it comes to food. Especially considering that I've been hiding my eating, a telltale sign of "disordered" eating.
I sort of know why I'm binge eating: it's the end of term, I need to start revising for exams and I'm procrastinating. I procrastinate by eating and watching TV and not getting out of bed. All of these things also make me feel like shit, but it's a vicious cycle: the more time I spend in bed with shitty TV and food, the more guilty I feel about it, the more I do it to make myself feel better. The most ironic thing about it is that I am perfectly capable of rationally describing my behaviour while actively engaging in it. More than that: I know exactly how to stop it. Take a shower, get dressed, and go out. It doesn't matter where. If some friends will have me, that's usually best, but if they won't, just getting out of the house will make me feel a million times better. And yet... I don't do it. Most of the time, I don't do it.
The reason I'm writing this down on a public blog is because it helps me to make the problem known. As I've said before, hiding that you're eating, or hiding what you're eating, is a common sign of disordered eating. Telling people what I'm eating (in this case, what I've been eating) forces me to accept it, makes it more real. Yes, I've eaten all that food. No, it wasn't a very healthy behaviour. Yes, I'll probably do it again. No, probably I won't do it in the next few days.
Binge eating led me (as it usually does) to find some advice on the Internet on how to stop. Which led me to my stickies. I was never a huge fan of real sticky notes, but I'm in love with the Mac app. I really like having the reminders on my desktop. I'd completely forgotten about them, until I had my binge and decided to write one reminding me what sort of things I should do when I am having a binge (or when I'm about to). So I open the stickies, and what's the first thing I find? A sticky commenting on a Felix article from over a year ago. A Felix article about sexism.
I know exactly when I wrote that sticky, and it was close to when I started writing this blog. I haven't checked, but there's a possibility that one of my early posts is about that article. There's also a possibility that I never published it because the article made me so angry. It was condescending, paternalistic and all around offensive, while trying to be a feminist article. I find that this happens so much that there are feminist media outlets that I won't visit, or that I will only visit compulsively, to find the flaws.
I was reading through my post-it note, my sticky, and it came to me. What really bothers me about this type of feminism. It's not the ideas behind it (most of the time), or the tone (even though it does bother me). It's the fact that I get the horrible feeling that the people who write these articles have chosen feminism as their pet activism the same way they could have chosen anything else. They are feminists because feminism gives them an outlet to be angry at society, or at the world, and I guess it's a good thing they found feminism: I sometimes feel they could have found racism just as easily.
I have said before in this blog that I value freedom. And yet, I don't think I'm free. I'm constrained by my circumstances (some might call it my privilege) and by my compulsions (binge eating, for example, does not make me feel like I'm free). Everyone is constrained. This doesn't mean we don't deserve a world in which we can be as free as possible. Part of freedom is knowing that your rights end where other people's rights begin. That just because someone is wrong it doesn't make it right to hurt them. That freedom is a responsibility of course, but that it is also a right (not only yours, but everyone else's).
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