Posts by Isabel Hitchings
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I had a remarkably weird experience at Uni orientation my first year when someone who had ignored me most of the way through high-school shook my hand and congratulated me on the fact I was drinking beer and snogging a boy (because obviously the parties she didn't invite me to had previously been the only place I could possibly have done those things so this must have been my first experience of both).
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I'd pick the brain surgery over the reunion too.
Several times I've been utterly bewildered by running into someone I knew at school and having them greet me with what seems like genuine enthusiasm when all I can think about is how thoroughly unpleasant they were to me at a time when it might have mattered to me.
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I always thought a huge chunk of the not-sprogging-with-close-rellies thing is about family structure rather than genetics. If you don't have anything funky in the gene pool it's not going to magically appear just because you get nasty with Uncle Jim but having a granddad who is also your father makes for confusion however you slice it.
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I have to assume Andre is shipping some humour I'm unable to parse right now
I haven't had anyone poking things into my brain and I'm still finding it a little too subtle.
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It's OK Craig - I was kind of forming ideas and reading ahead at the same time so when I got to typing I wasn't really replying to one particular post so much as a train of thought. There is definitely a huge lot of variation in what we can acceptably do or say depending on context and what we do to build a relationship with one person can destroy another and not knowing when to stop can rapidly turn flirtation into harassment.
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A wee ways upthread it looked like flirting and harassment were being discussed as different points on the same continuum of sexual behaviour but I really don't think they are because I think they often have very different intents.
To me flirting has the main aim (whether it ends in bed or not) of making recipient feel good about themselves (and therefore about the person flirting with them) whereas harassment is about one person demonstrating power over the other.
Flirting can be a beautiful thing and a fine art and there should probably be more of it
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The general area of fashion and image is always going to be a little fraught. I think most people male and female enjoy, on occasion, playing with how they look and most people do feel better when they like the way they look. It's not good, however, when people feel they have to appear a particular way in order to be accepted, or taken seriously, or be attractive. There's also a huge grey area in between.
I think (and I think I think this because Emma made me think about it) that the best policy is to totally and consciously leave off judging ANYONE about the choices they make about their appearance.
(though if anyone wants to psychoanalyse why, for me, feeling confident involves a low-cut top and combat boots feel free to have at it)
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It's like being trapped in a dinner party where the only two subjects discussed are houses and the person's daughter.
It's the fact that whilst these are her only two subjects she displays very little love for either that gets me.
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Actually I don't think there's a heck of a lot of difficulty determining what sort of attention is OK and which isn't (though some people will put up with idiots for longer than others). Generally remembering your manners and treating everyone you interact with as people with at least as much worth as yourself will see you right.
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It's a running joke in our household that every week one of us will ask "what's in the Listener this week?" and the other will reply "middle-class panic".