I HATE TWILIGHT

Now I'm going to talk about Twilight. 

Okay so this may SEEM like its irrelevant to my job, but its NOT because Twilight is actually anathema to human rights, and I'M GONNA TELL YOU WHY!

I wish I had a copy of the book with me right now, so I could pull out specific passages but

a) i don't and

b) I don't hate it enough for this to be a book report, its a rag that isn't deserving of that level of effort and I want to finish writing this in under ten minutes.

Basically, it can be seen as a fun piece of junk reading, fair enough, and there is nothing wrong with that. But my problem with it is that plenty of girls are reading it and thinking that this "vampire" is the epitome of masculinity and that the relationship between the two main characters is something they should strive for. The entire piece of crap is a metaphor for sexual abstinence, and demonizes normal human sexuality on the whole. Furthermore, the main female character is constantly noting and apologizing for her inadequacies, inadequacies which are dealt with when her overbearing boyfriend quite literally flies in to the picture and saves her time and time again. She creates a world where the woman is incapable of fending for herself, and is the source of temptation and sin. 

Politically its a nightmare because Stephanie Meyer is a member of the Mormon church, which takes a portion of each congregation members' income. The Mormon Church was one of the biggest contributers to the Yes on Prop 8 campaign, which passed in 2008 and therefore facilitated retrograde motion for human rights. 

And lets be real here, its just a crappy piece of writing. I don't think a page actually goes by where this poor excuse for a writer doesn't describe the chiseled abs of her vampire leading man, or the intensity of the characters' contrived adolescent obsession with each other that is simultaneously devoid of any lust. She took the sex out of vampire lore, hell, she took the vampires out of vampire lore. Call me crazy for criticizing the fictitious traits she gives a fictitious creature, but COME ON, they cant SPARKLE IN THE DAYLIGHT. 

I really don't know why this makes me so angry, there is plenty of sexist crap out there that I am happy to ignore. I just hope that the vapid  religious nut who wrote it will take her millions and retire from the world of writing. Or at least take a writing class so that she can no longer inflict  work like this on the world. 

Lunch

A few weeks ago, I met a woman named Mia who used to work at the public defender's office. She took me to lunch yesterday so I could basically pick her brain and figure out if public interest law is really for me. Interestingly enough, we ended up talking about the issues that I mentioned in my first post... I've been wondering if feeling hatred towards the justice system was an inevitable by-product of working as a public interest lawyer. 

It was nice to talk to Mia because she has experienced injustice on several levels, but still believes that the system itself is based on admirable ideals. And its different because its not me, an idealistic student who hasn't experienced the kind of hardship that makes people jaded... these ideas are coming from a person who has plenty of reasons for feeling that the system doesn't, and can't work. The whole point for her though, is that it is a lawyer's obligation to fix the problems within the justice system so that it can actually become the institution it was meant to be, and that they are powerful because they can teach their communities about the rights that they have. She knows that there are problems, but still acknowledges the things about institutions like the courts and the police that are admirable. 

For example, she spoke with a transgendered woman who was harassed by a police officer. After he left, the officer's partner came back and handed her a complaint form, telling her that she didn't have to tolerate that kind of abuse. I can imagine that it must be difficult for someone to directly challenge a person that they work with, especially when it comes to a fellow officer, but I think actions like this have helped really redeem the police in my mind. I never harbored any hatred towards them before, but I never really thought of them independent of the context where they pull me over or beat the crap out of people. Now I guess I know that there are some out there that are not just likable, but are actually proactively supporting change.