Want some bad advice? Ask U.S. News and World Report.http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/best-careers/2008/12/11/best-kept-secret-career-prospect-researcher.html
IT’S LIES, I TELL YOU. LIES!!!!
The best thing about Research? Your husband getting 85% off medical school tuition. Hey, that’s about it.
My office is moving slightly to the right in a few months, literally accross the street so it will be marginally shorter for me to walk here in the mornings, and if rumors be true, we will get a window. So, obviously, we are excited. I am also amazed that I have worked here for six months and it looks like I have lived in this cube FOR YEARS. Six pairs of shoes under the desk, Emergency blazer, pashmina, and blanket for when it gets freezing in here (every day). Emergency food for when the zombies attack and we barricade ourselves in. Christmas lights.
I also have all these scraps of paper, because this is a beauracracy and I get lots of random papers and I usually keep them to doodle on the back and sometimes I leave myself notes but I never remember what they mean. “Soluble Fiber FTW”. I believe that has to do with Soluble fiber being the sort that lowers your cholestrol, which I care about. I have a post it that just says “muffin tins”. I don’t know what that’s about. I don’t own any.
I also have a list of topics I am interested in for further research. Possibly books to write if I felt like it or if Dr. Boyfriend and I move to England for a year so he can do a fellowship. The heading (written on an Office Depot legal pad) is “THESE BOOKS NEED TO BE WRITTEN” and contains these items:
Joe Carstairs and Lord Tod
In the early 1900’s, Betty “Joe” Carstairs was pretty effing shocking because she dressed in dude’s clothes, had lots of tattoos, was a race car and ambulance driver, and an open lesbian who dated many notable women. Oh, she also had a doll named “Lod Tod Wadley” who she carried everywhere except on boats (for fear of him drowning). She seemed awesome.
William Moulton Marston
Popular psychologist and inventor, he and his wife came up with the systolic blood pressure test leading to the polygraph. He did a lot of work with sorority initiation rites, and was a vocal feminist. He had a polyamorous relationship with his wife Elizabeth and a former student, Olive. After his death, Elizabeth and Olive continued living together for forty more years, until Olive’s death.
And, he created Wonder Woman. Based on the idea that a superhero can use love instead of fists, can be everything that the male superheroes are but be an attractive woman too, Marston strived to create a new female archetype. He based WW on his two lady loves, had her come from an all female utopia, and played with themes of submission and bondage that later writers had to tone down. In a delightful bit of TMI, Marston vocally believed in submission to women, that a matriarchy was the perfect government, and “submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element”. He thought men would be chill with this, as Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they’ll be proud to become her willing slaves!”
Ellen Craft
In an amazing feat of “being so effing awesome I want to be her fo realz”, Ellen Craft may the most badass person I have read about. Craft was the daughter of a slave and her owner, born a slave but with skin so light as to pass for white. She was often mistaken for white, which pissed off the white family, and she went away with the daughter of the family when the daughter married. There, Craft met William Craft and got married, but since slave marriage wasn’t recognized was going to be split up from her husband. Being ballsy and possibly too awesome for words, she disguised herself as a white dude and escaped to Philly with her husband. She faked some injuries to cover her body and speaking voice and just faught her way up north, like any arrogant white man.
Later, people recognized that what she did was “too cool for school” but society was so crazycakes that when she and her husband wrote their story, he had to take a lot of credit, and do all the talking in person. Being a lady caught up with her, wtf.
Albanian Sworn Virgins
Ok, the long and short of it is that in Albania, women used to be treated poorly. Like, TOTES poorly. Men were supposed to beat their wives. The only loophole out of this crap life was for a lady to swear off sex, dress like a man, and live like a man as a “sworn virgin”. Seperately, it was dangerous to be a man in Albania due to blood feuds similar to Sicilian feuds. If someone’s nephew was shot, he had to kill the shooter, or the shooter’s nephew, and so it goes, escalating until the whole of both families are wiped out. It got so bad that many men could not leave the house. Enter the sworn virgins, who take the jobs, go to the marketplace, act as the male heads of households because they cannot be used in these blood feuds. Pretty spiffy loophole, huh?
So basically, I have a thesis topic on either cross dressing or the concept of “the third sex” (several Mexican and Native American groups have this idea where people born male become the third sex) that would work pretty well under some sort of bodylore, sociology, or gender studies program.
Will it ever happen? I don’t know. I don’t want to do any more school. But the idea of getting a PhD is pretty sweet, if only for spite reasons.
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