so-called distaste for my "sauna habits"
Aug. 19th, 2011 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyrasantae"I always wear my bathing suit in the sauna because of those men. They gossip about bad things. You don't know HOW bad [because you don't understand Finnish]. I have to be careful. And as you are so young, you especially so..."
Frame it however you like, but dirty gossip from dirty old men is the least of my worries.
I call it faith in humanity and being keenly sensitive to sexual overtones because I am so repulsed by them. My stoniness isn't because I don't know what's going on - I do; it's because I do not and refuse to respond to it. (If I do at all, it's avoidance.)
Edit to add: Doesn't it sound awfully much like the justification for making women wear burkas, that women should cover themselves so that men do not have indecent thoughts about them? Odd, because it's "faith in humanity" and lack of social paranoia that I noticed so saliently in Finland.
"[The Mongerer] told me about those rumours but she swears that she didn't start them."
"The trouble with gossip is that no one ever admits to starting it." (same person speaking as above.)
Well either The Mongerer just loves spreading gossip or has been starting gossip, because all of the rumours I discussed previously have been sourced to her, and I have no evidence that she is a second-hand source of any of these.
P.S. Who was it that said that language (as a concept) has the problem that, by using language to describe something, it becomes an object? I'm thinking of the notion that the very event of talking about why I love Finland in some way objectifies that love, making it vulnerable to accusations that it is not true love at all but an infatuation or obsession. The idea is familiar to me; I'm sure I've read about it before. But from where?
Frame it however you like, but dirty gossip from dirty old men is the least of my worries.
I call it faith in humanity and being keenly sensitive to sexual overtones because I am so repulsed by them. My stoniness isn't because I don't know what's going on - I do; it's because I do not and refuse to respond to it. (If I do at all, it's avoidance.)
Edit to add: Doesn't it sound awfully much like the justification for making women wear burkas, that women should cover themselves so that men do not have indecent thoughts about them? Odd, because it's "faith in humanity" and lack of social paranoia that I noticed so saliently in Finland.
"[The Mongerer] told me about those rumours but she swears that she didn't start them."
"The trouble with gossip is that no one ever admits to starting it." (same person speaking as above.)
Well either The Mongerer just loves spreading gossip or has been starting gossip, because all of the rumours I discussed previously have been sourced to her, and I have no evidence that she is a second-hand source of any of these.
P.S. Who was it that said that language (as a concept) has the problem that, by using language to describe something, it becomes an object? I'm thinking of the notion that the very event of talking about why I love Finland in some way objectifies that love, making it vulnerable to accusations that it is not true love at all but an infatuation or obsession. The idea is familiar to me; I'm sure I've read about it before. But from where?
