{"id":2048,"date":"2014-07-29T22:49:34","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T21:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/?p=2048"},"modified":"2015-07-30T11:41:50","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T10:41:50","slug":"prebicon-nerves-a-study-in-jerkbrain-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/2014\/07\/prebicon-nerves-a-study-in-jerkbrain-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"PreBiCon Nerves: A study in Jerkbrain communication"},"content":{"rendered":"

An anonymous guest post. We welcome one-off guest posts as well as regular contributors: see the join us page<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BiCon is a place for experimenting with how you present yourself and behave (within the terms of the Code of Conduct.)\u00a0<\/strong> BiCon is a place which explicitly rejects policing people\u2019s appearance whether for being too fat or too slutty or not feminine\/masculine enough or overly feminine\/masculine or any of the reasons people do that shit.<\/p>\n

I am a feminist and I do not believe my clothes or body are anyone else\u2019s business.<\/p>\n

And yet, I sometimes struggle to believe these things apply to *me*.<\/p>\n

I realised in the car this morning that my BiCon would be significantly improved if I gave up on high heels and wore trainers all week.\u00a0 I don\u2019t wear heels often and they hurt my feet a lot.\u00a0 In heels, I hobble around the site, I\u2019m unable to dance at the ball as much as I\u2019d like and generally feel grumpy.\u00a0 Normally, I wear heels in the office but I\u2019ve been getting lazier about that so I am out of the habit of wearing them at all and I know that means my feet will hurt more, sooner.\u00a0 I\u2019ve tried those cushion things but they don\u2019t help for long.<\/p>\n

As I realised how much better I\u2019d feel if I wore trainers all weekend, my Jerkbrain started up.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d look silly.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 – I don\u2019t care*.
\n\u201cYou\u2019d look like an idiot.\u201d \u2013 I don\u2019t care*.
\n\u201cYou\u2019d look ugly.\u201d – I don\u2019t care*.
\n\u201cYou\u2019ll be surrounded by all these pretty glam people and look like you don\u2019t know how to dress yourself.\u201d – I don\u2019t care*.
\n\u201cYou\u2019ve got nice clothes to wear but they\u2019ll be ruined by wearing them with trainers.\u201d\u00a0 – I don\u2019t care*.
\n\u201cYou\u2019ll look like you have some sort of gross foot disease.\u201d \u2013 I really don\u2019t care. And fuck off with the disablism, jerkbrain.<\/p>\n

*Spoiler alert \u2013 I do care but I want to feel free and comfortable at BiCon more.\u00a0 Also, some of these have a subtext of class snobbery which I can\u2019t quite articulate but it\u2019s definitely there.<\/p>\n

And then it starts with manipulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat about all the people you could be flirting with? They\u2019ll be put off by your stupid shoes.\u201d – If people care more about my shoes than my conversation, then they can fuck off \/ we can go to bed so I can wear sexy shoes without having to walk in them (delete as applicable.)<\/p>\n

And now some variations on old songs \u2013 these ones hit on specific fears\/insecurities.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re just lazy.\u00a0 If you started wearing heels more regularly, this wouldn\u2019t happen.\u00a0 Another thing you\u2019ve fucked up and failed at.\u201d \u2013 Causing myself pain in order to reduce future pain *for no good reason* is a stupid plan.\u00a0 And my life is a work-in-progress, not a failure.
\n\u201cEvery other woman manages it!\u00a0 Why are you so rubbish at this?\u201d –\u00a0 I\u2019m a feminist and I reject body policing.\u00a0 And gender essentialism for that matter.\u00a0 It\u2019s bullshit to insist people (not just women) undergo painful beauty rituals to be acceptable.
\n\u201cYou are always shit at these sort of femme things.\u00a0 That\u2019s why you are dull and uninteresting.\u201d \u2013 I identify as a lazy femme.\u00a0 I pick and choose which bits of femme presentation work for me and refuse to be shamed for not conforming.\u00a0 (This has a subtext of not queer enough.)
\n\u201cStop trying to make this into a big political issue, you humourless bitch.\u00a0 It\u2019s not about feminism or queer identity, it\u2019s shoes.\u00a0 How trivial.\u201d\u00a0 – If it was trivial, it wouldn\u2019t be a problem for me not to wear heels.\u00a0 (There\u2019s a subtext here of being a bad feminist for taking trivial things too seriously.)<\/p>\n

****<\/p>\n

When battling my jerkbrain, I find the key thing is to notice it, rather than just accept its sneering and accusations as reality.\u00a0 When I articulate its objections (bad woman, lazy woman, ugly woman, bad queer, bad feminist),\u00a0 I can reject them instead of being tricked into defending myself by proving I\u2019m not those things.<\/p>\n

I also notice that my jerkbrain subtly brings up disablist\/sexist\/classist ideas.\u00a0 \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be thought of as one of *those* people\u201d, it whispers.\u00a0 I wish I didn\u2019t have those ideas and I am working to challenge them internally and externally.\u00a0 As with a jerkbrain, noticing the framing helps to reject it, rather than implicitly agree by being defensive.<\/p>\n

Regarding actual shoes, I have remembered that my incredibly useful green bag has space for spare shoes so I will be wearing sexy shoes sometimes and changing into comfy shoes WHENEVER I WANT TO!<\/p>\n

ROLL ON BICON\u00a0 \ud83d\ude00<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An anonymous guest post. We welcome one-off guest posts as well as regular contributors: see the join us page.   BiCon is a place for experimenting with how you present…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}