To Be Poets

A new project is online: To Be Poets.
A website where the love for poetry is shared.

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Feminism versus Humanism

For years now I have been calling myself a feminist, believing that women should have the same rights as men, believing that women should be treated the same way men are treated in any form of interaction.

For years now, I have put the focus on women and not men, even developing some kind of hatred towards men, and even feeling some kind of frustration as soon as men behaved as men. It is the word feminist, who strongly focuses on females that made me feel the way I did. I even wrote a blogpost about it a while ago, almost being mean towards men. Was it fair? At that time, it was because I was standing for something. Probably not for feminism however.

See, if feminism is about equal rights both for men and women, then why does it have the word female in it? Does the word live up to its definition? I believe not.

What I truly believe in, is that everybody should be treated in a nice and kind way; in a democratic way, in a way where there is no distinction between race, age or gender. Each individual should be free to express his identity, and be respected for it, but at the same time this identity should include being respectful towards the human kind.

I have come to terms that equality does not exist. If I treat every single person the same way, then this means that individuality does not exist. It means that men, women, children and even plants and products have to be treated the same way. How is that possible when everything and everyone is 'born' differently? What makes someone unique if we treat everybody equally?

Society has forced us to put everybody in different boxes and objectified human beings. There is a guideline on how men and women should behave and should be treated. If this never happened, would feminism even exist?
The funny part of all of this is that the more I have been working on projects that emphasises on women and the female body, the less I believe in such thing called feminism. In the end it is about (self) respect and projecting how you want to be treated.

Today I can proudly say that I'm a humanist, not a feminist. I am a humanist who believes that each individual, despite race, gender or age should be treated in a humane way.

Why your body is a machine

"Your body is not a machine" is a phrase that I've been hearing over time and I just simply cannot agree with this statement. There have been many discussions about how society today treats its body as a machine and that it is not the right way to go as it is simply more than that.

YOU, as a person, are more than a machine. That is a fact that I am sure of. You are consisting of a body and a soul and the intertwined processes.
The body in itself however, consisting of all its elements is just matter. But matter always has to have a form, as Descartes described, so that it serves a certain function.

This is the same for a machine: matter that is put in a certain form so that it serves a certain purpose, a function. But for it to work, it needs soil.
For a body to work, we need soil too. Input and output. You give something, you get something back.
And sometime when it does not do what you want, then there should be some issue with the machine that does disturb certain processes. The only difference is that a machine can be de-montaged to find the issue. However, the body is more complex to be cut open to search for the issue.

If this is the only difference, why shouldn't I perceive the body as a machine, a carrier of a soul?

Imagine if this belief would be applied by everybody; it would mean that there would be more attention to the soul. Because as long as the machine works, it become part of the periphery meaning there is more space for other things.
If all the attention that now goes to the body -including the looks- shifts to the soul, it would mean that the search to who we are and what we want is much shorted than it is now.
And if we find out what our needs are, we will use the body as a medium to fulfil these needs. Just as the car is a medium to get from A to B.

In the end it goes back to one thing: 'your body is a machine!'

Judge a book by its cover

The idea to personalize my notebook came from the fact that it didn't matter what notebook I bought, the cover would never meet my expectation. There would always be something about it that would not be 'me'. 

Yet the content of notebooks -at least mine- have a certain value. Yes, they are work related, but its content that was part of my fascination or stream of thoughts; content that I wanted to inhale or exhale.

I started to crochet my first notebook cover, which was first just something to kill time with. But eventually I loved the texture that it had when I touched it. Besides that, it looks so much nicer than a flat, hard cover -despite the visuals on it.

 

Currently I'm busy with a blue A5 cover which is taking far too long to be finished. But if that means that I have a nice and fluffy cover for the next year, It's completely work it.