Just the other day, I was watching an episode of my favourite webseries, Jake and Amir. Currently, they are in the middle of a multi-part story called ‘Double Date’ and, in this story, there is a recurring joke which is really ridiculous. There is a character named Emily and several times they cut so that you can only see her legs and every time they use the unshaven legs of a man. This isn’t funny at all, in fact, it is just offensive and sexist, boiling down to them basically just saying “Gee guys, wouldn’t it be funny if a woman didn’t shave her legs? Just like a man!” It bothers me because something like this shouldn’t be a joke, it should be a perfectly normal and acceptable thing which some females happily do. It makes me sad that Jake and Amir, a series which I really like, should feature such ridiculousness. Plus, in reverse, a male who shaved his legs (or any other part of his body for that matter) would most likely have people rudely calling him ‘gay’. But I guess it’s just a product of our society.
    It seems to me that there are far too many objectionable things, such as this, that so many people in our society adhere to. I mean take, for example, a transsexual man; I can’t imagine a man, particularly one of a rather masculine build, being able to walk freely down the streets wearing a dress without receiving all kinds of strange comments and looks. In fact, even somebody whose outfit deviates too far from accepted fashion would likely recieve similar treatment.
    Furthermore, how about revealing outfits? A female would certainly be branded with unpleasant stereotypes if she were to wear a revealing set of clothes, and males seemingly never wear revealing outfits (probably feeling that they can’t). Now, I’ll admit, I personally don’t care all that much for revealing outfits, but I certainly wouldn’t want to take away people’s rights to wear them. It seems to me, that the only reason somebody would seriously object to revealing outfits is if they were unable to realise that the exposed human body is not simply an object of sexual desire, even nakedness can easily have no sexual connection. Anybody who fails to notice this, is much more deserving of those unpleasant labels than those who wear the revealing outfits (not that anybody deserves labels).
    But it isn’t just clothes. What about lots of people’s attitudes to sexual behaviour, the old “males can sleep with lots of people, and it makes them cool, but if a female does it, that makes her completely undesirable” why does it matter? Any person should be allowed to sleep with as many people as they like, without receiving any scrutiny. Sure, it WOULD be immoral if somebody took advantage of a drunken person, or lied to somebody to get them to sleep with them, but when it’s two truthful consenting adults, who cares? It doesn’t affect anybody but them. Not that I’m saying that everybody should be going out and having lots of sex, indeed, people should feel fine waiting until marriage or any other significant point with their partner, it is YOUR choice, and anybody who tries to tell people what to do when it comes to this should be ignored, it does not concern them.
    I’d like to follow that point by talking about virginity. I think, quite frakly, that the idea of viginity is something which should be done away with entirely, it only really leads to unhappiness. Either, people who have passed the age of consent and remained virgins will think “Oh, deary me, why am I still a virgin? I must be pathetic because nobody wants to sleep with me” or does who have lost it will thing “Oh no, I lost my virginity during a one night stand at a crazy house party, now I’ve lost my innocence! I must be a bad person” both of which will just bring them sadness (obviously). I want to say that loss of virginity does NOT mean loss of innocence! I mean, murdering somebody, raping somebody or doing very mean things to somebody could easily be called a loss of innocence, but simply sleeping with somebody? I don’t understand who it equates loss of innocence: all it is, is, two people agreeing to take part in a physical activity, it does not reflect on innocence or morality at all. Is a murderer virgin an innocent person?
    Deary me, I’ve turned this entry into a rather angry sounding rant, and I do apologise, but why should women have to shave their whole body? Why shouldn’t a man wear a dress? Why shouldn’t somebody wear a revealing outfit? Why shouldn’t people have lots of (safe) sex? Or none at all? I know of no credible arguments against any of these things. I had more points, but it was pretty long, so I left it at this. If this entry is popular, I might write them in future.

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A month or so ago, I got a message in my suggestion box from Mochammad Restu (do you remember him?) and it said that he would like me to write an entry about the ‘new plants in Indonesia’ which, I’ll admit, I didn’t know anything about. To be honest, I thought he was referring to some new kind of plant species that had been discovered, or had been engineered, but after doing a little bit of research, it seems that he was referring to power plants.
    Now, I’ve found it a little difficult to find much information on the subject, especially anything recent, but from what I can gather, it seems that three hundred coal based power plants have been/are being built all across Indonesia. I imagine this is something of a mixed blessing. In general, new coal based power plants aren’t really a good thing, I imagine hundreds of wind turbines (or other means of harnessing renewable resources) could have been built with the same money and that would have been a lot better for the environment, and the world generally, especially in regards to the current state of things. But, on the other hand, what with there being few jobs and lots of people being poor, these power plants will create a lot of work opportunities for the Indonesian people. I’d say it’s more bad than good though,renewable energy sources could have created the same jobs, but it’s not entirely bad.
    Read more about it here.