if this is feminism, I’m not in

by Newnameelizabeth

*contains spoilers*

On the plane home last night they played The Intern. I did not purchase the headphones, so I just watched the body language and filled in the gaps with the plot on wikipedia. So they pick the most sympathetic actress to play a successful entrepreneur, a dumpy guy to play her husband who gave up his career to watch the kids, and a cool, prestigious old guy to play her fairy god-father intern. Her whole problem is that she’s got the success, but has lost touch with her family, and her husband had an affair, and so she is unhappy. DeNiro, and conveniently, her husband, convince her to keep control of the company so as to be fulfilled creatively. She decides to forgive her husband and deal with her losses with tai chi.

The worst thing was how everyone’s attention is only on Anne Hathaway. The writer must be a narcissist who thinks everything revolves around her. This is very obvious with the body language, even though Anne is interested in other people. She has to give them permission to have other interests. She is in control that way. This reminds me of the end of Gladiator when Maximus is dying and the queen, who is in love with him, gives him permission to go to his wife. But maybe this is the way of alpha people. They have so much gravity that they do have to give others permission not to be totally sucked into it.

The second is how DeNiro is self-serving in his servileness. He is too focused on her and her problems. She even texts someone early on that he is “too observant”. He systematically removes her defenses and wins her trust to make her a devoted follower converted to tai chi with him as the master. Mutual, platonic narcissism. They both want all the power and I do believe feminists want it to be a partnership whereas men seem more to want to be the only one. Sports couples surprise me where there is a male coach and a female star athlete. There apparently is a component of maleness to want to be the creator of a star woman. Like Phantom of the Opera. Like the doctor in another movie based on a true story of a female sex-addict narcissist over-comer who became her speaking engagement cheerleader. Maybe some dads are also like that.

A more positive review is here, called, “De Niro and Hathaway’s chemistry is a sheer delight, but Nancy Meyers’ distracted screenplay in the second hour undercuts an otherwise genuinely entertaining start”

But what about the feminists’ idea of self-actualization? Is it just my individual goal to be fulfilled as a mother first? Or is it innate? Women do have other potentials, but I think they are best gone after in early adult-hood and then sprinkle one’s life after having children like dessert. When there has to be a decision I have gone for maximalized motherhood, not that I’ve achieved it or been completely faithful to it.

Back to dads, if a daughter is not nurtured early on, or feels a lack of support from her parents, who are the ones to revolve around children, then she will probably look for it from other people later in life. I think she will be disappointed though in some ways forever, and will have to find a positive, healthy way to relax.

My ancestry dna results

by Newnameelizabeth

• Europe West 36%

  Great Britain 32%
• Ireland 22%
• Scandinavia 5%
  Trace Regions 4%:
• Finland/Northwest Russia 2%
• Italy/Greece 1%
• European Jewish< 1%

  Africa North< 1%

The trace regions are the most surprising. Orthodox, Jewish, and Catholic? Maybe even Muslim.

home sweet home

by Newnameelizabeth

Punchline with Tom Hanks and Sally Field is a blast from 1988. We believed in our heterosexual racist liberated narcissism. And there is a smart, if not as funny as they thought it was, way to do it. But Tom Hanks is still brilliant and Sally Field still gets you lost in the moment. White culture was brilliant if unnatural. And I guess that’s why I’m sad the Confederate flag has been hijacked to represent racism and not a culture that is home. I am at home in the south and not in the north. It is a different place. You don’t have to be racist to love it, but I think you have to be a self-hating person to want it desecrated. And since I don’t believe in total depravity, I think they’re wrong to hate where they come from. And I’m also a quarter German and don’t think I have to disavow that just because of one guy who hijacked a few nations.

The Seventh Seal

by Newnameelizabeth

Finally caught The Seventh Seal yesterday. *spoiler* So the absurdist jester representing idyllic family life wins, and the analytical, skeptical, materialist knight with his noble but bawdy squire, along with the lecherous actor and their women all die.

Grandpa Odin!

by Newnameelizabeth

It is taking me a very long time to get through my paternal grandmother’s ancestral lines. The last several post have been from one of her lines that now includes, and I hope this is true, Odin, the Scythian King of Asgard (215-306). His descendants include King Frodi the Valiant Friedleifsson; who married Hilda, Princess of the Vandals; Prince of Russia Danvers, King of the Danes; and Alfhild, Queen of Denmark and Norway Gandalfsdottir, who had Ragnar Hairy Britches Sigurdsson. Odin’s grandfather is Freothalaf of Troy. I haven’t even gotten to the end/beginning of this one yet.

My ancestor aided and abetted William the Conqueror’s hostile takeover

by Newnameelizabeth

Robert Comine (also Robert de Comines, Robert de Comyn) was very briefly earl of Northumbria.

His name suggests that he originally came from Comines, then in the County of Flanders, and entered the following of William the Conqueror. He was sent to the north as earl from 1068 to 1069 after the deposition of Gospatric. He got as far as Durham with his 700 men, where the bishop, Ethelwin, warned him that an army was mobilised against him. He ignored the advice and, on 28 January 1069, the rebels converged on Durham and killed many of his men in the streets, eventually setting fire to the bishop’s house where Robert was staying. He was consumed in the blaze. [1]

After this attack, Ethelwin turned against the Normans and gathered an army in Durham before marching on York, leading to the Harrying of the North in retaliation by King William’s army. [wikipedia]

there’s more to the story:

“from Comines in Flanders. Rodbert or Robert de Comines was named Earl of Northumberland, or, according to Ordericus, Earl of Durham in January, 1069, and at once set forth, with a following of less than one thousand men, to take possession of his new domain:—a perilous errand, for Durham had not as yet submitted to the Conqueror. He marched as through an enemy’s country, slaying some of the tenants or bondmen of St. Cuthbert’s church on the way; and though the city, by the good offices of its friendly Bishop, AEthelwine, opened its gates to him without resistance, “he allowed his men to deal with the town as with a place taken by storm. The spirit of the people was now aroused. The news spread during the night, and towards morning the gates of Durham were burst open by the assembled forces of Northumberland. A general massacre followed. In the houses, in the streets, the Normans were everywhere slaughtered. No serious resistance seems to have been offered except in defence of the Bishop’s house, where the Earl and his immediate companions withstood their assailants so manfully that they were driven to have recourse to fire. The palace was burned; the Earl and his comrades all died, either by the flames or by the sword. One man alone contrived to escape with his life, and he was wounded.”—Freeman.

http://www.1066.co.nz/library/battle_abbey_roll1/subchap128.htm

and the list goes on

by Newnameelizabeth

and the previously mentioned knight’s 2nd GGF (on his grandmother’s side) was “Andrew Moray (Norman French: Andreu de Moray; Latin: Andreas de Moravia), also known as Andrew de Moray, Andrew of Moray, or Andrew Murray, an esquire,^[1] was prominent in the Scottish Wars of Independence. He led the rising in north Scotland in the summer of 1297 against the occupation by King Edward I of England, successfully regaining control of the area for King John Balliol. He subsequently merged his forces with those led by William Wallace and jointly led the combined army to victory at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Moray was mortally wounded in the fighting…

While King Edward marched through the subdued realm, the Scots nobles captured at Dunbar were taken south in chains. The most important prisoners, such as Sir Andrew Moray of Petty, were taken to the Tower of London.^[25] Sir Andrew spent the remainder of his life in English imprisonment, dying in the Tower on 8 April 1298.^[26] Andrew Moray the younger, a prisoner of less significance, was imprisoned in Chester Castle,^[25] the northernmost stronghold to which the Dunbar captives were taken; he would not, however, long remain a captive..” (wikipedia)

Imagine how many rabbits there would be without predators

by Newnameelizabeth

“Of the 102 passengers of the Mayflower, 24 males produced children to carry on their surnames. And although approximately half of the Mayflower passengers died at the plantation during the harsh winter of 1620-21 (one passenger had died at sea while another was born before landing), today, a staggering 35 million people claim an ancestral lineage that runs all the way back – sometimes through fifteen generations – to the original 24 males. That number represents 12 percent of the American population.” http://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/

To see if my estimate yesterday works I’ll use yesterday’s table which says that a person has 32,768 potential 13th great grandparents (15 generations), though less given the ancestral repetition that occurs after going back 10 generations. Yesterday I gave a projection that if ancestors average 2 children each, which would give the original couple of that generation 4 children, each person would have the same number of descendants after 15 generations. So then multiply each of the 24 Mayflower males x 2 (because they had mates and it’s easier that way than figuring 4 children because the backwards projection is based on couples) then that by 32,758 (assuming non-repetition) and you get 1,572,864. That means each couple averaged way more than 4 children to get to the claimed 35 million descendants.

Myles Standish and his wives had 7 children and 19 grandchildren. I quit counting at 500 when my scrollbar was in the middle of the page, so in the 5 generations listed, there are at least 1000 Standish descendants. The page links say some of the grandchildren are unknown. It’s all also complicated when you figure in the wives who not only bring in different surnames, but mess up the math because you can’t just divide or multiply by 1 or even 2 as couples make individuals who may or may not get married. Only 3 of Myles’ children got married and only 2 of those had kids, but all 7 count. So even with infant mortality and lack of mates for the Pilgrims, population boomed.

 

 

It’s not the premise I object to, as I am traditionalist, it’s the supports. They need a better argument.

by Newnameelizabeth

Take this article against gay marriage on the grounds of how it wounds the children: Not All Children Raised by Gay Parents Support Gay Marriage.

1st argument: “they described emotional hardships that came from lacking a mom or a dad. To give a few examples: they feel disconnected from the gender cues of people around them, feel intermittent anger at their “parents” for having deprived them of one biological parent (or, in some cases, both biological parents), wish they had had a role model of the opposite sex, and feel shame or guilt for resenting their loving parents for forcing them into a lifelong situation lacking a parent of one sex.”

1. Why were they in that household? Weren’t their bio parents incapable for some reason of raising them? Did the gay couple kidnap them? Come on. There was something disqualifying about their bio parents. Maybe that should be criticized more than the adopters’ hopefully private lifestyle. If’ it’s not private then that isn’t an exclusively gay problem either.

2. A lot of children are raised by same sex people such as mothers and aunts and grandmothers because of absent fathers. Don’t they feel the same loss and guilt through no fault of the caregivers?

2nd argument: “It’s disturbingly classist and elitist for gay men to think they can love their children unreservedly after treating their surrogate mother like an incubator, or for lesbians to think they can love their children unconditionally after treating their sperm-donor father like a tube of toothpaste.”

1. The “mother” volunteered to incubate the baby for money. The “father” submitted his donation for money as well. Biology is too simplistically lauded. Their hetero parents sold them and maybe the anger is displaced to the adoptive, buying, gay parents.

3rd argument: “The children thrown into the middle of these moral hazards are well aware of their parents’ role in creating a stressful and emotionally complicated life for kids, which alienates them from cultural traditions like Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, and places them in the unenviable position of being called “homophobes” if they simply suffer the natural stress that their parents foisted on them—and admit to it.”

1. Mothers’ and Fathers’ days aren’t the biggest holidays.

2. Being called a name isn’t the biggest deal either.

Based on presented evidence, I don’t see any difference between these children and those who have been adopted into hetero situations out of tragedies of divorce, death, abandonment, neglect or abuse. It makes me think gay people are discriminated against more than other dysfunctional people. It was mentioned to me that homosexuality is a bigger sin because it is “against nature”, but to me all sin is against nature, though it seems there is something more damaging about sexual sin in general. I’m not totally sure about that either because Proverbs says God’s most hated sin is lying.

The Goddess

by Newnameelizabeth

I caught a surprisingly good movie called, The Goddess which I found out partway through was loosely based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. Since then I’ve learned about the previously unknown to me acclaimed writer, director, and actress who played in it. The movie was made in 1958, 4 years before Marilyn died, but pretty much predicted her suicide. I was mesmerized by Kim Stanley’s performance, especially her mood swings. They did not seem put on or forced, even though they were extreme. Very humanizing. Actually mood swing is a dismissive phrase. The upsetness was more organic than that. The instability and mental illness surrounding her childhood accounts for a lot, and will have a result that can overpower a person if they are not given the right support and have the will to overcome it.