I shame the matriarchy

2009-06-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

The Lemonade Award of Fatal Fucking Awesomeness!
Here's the deal: I have to list three things for which I'm grateful, and pass the award on to bloggers who inspire me.

I was tagged by Renegade Evolution, so here we go...

1) Lemonade. it's almost better than beer.
2) Microsoft Flight Simulator X. for reasons not even I understand yet.
3) the Mei Tai, Asia's gift to the world of motherhood.

Tag to-
Universal Plume
Daisy
Tiger Beatdown

2009-06-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

gimme a head with hair...

inspired, loosely, by ruminations on the Farrah-do, and the meaning of hair on women's heads, and the thread over at Nine Deuce's -

lots of noise about semen on the face, the assumed inherent misogyny thereof, so forth. and hilarity ensues, as usual. (my participation in the thread is towards the end.)

But I got to thinking about other stuff that is considered to be humiiiating by some people in some contexts, but not by others in other contexts. and I thought about women who cut their hair or shave their heads.

I thought about girls in the 1920s who "bobbed" their hair, and felt all liberated.

then I thought about an old picture I saw once showing a French woman whose head had been shaved because she was considered a Nazi collaborator.

then I thought about Sinead O'Connor and her rocking baldness.

then I thought about shaving my own head, or having a friend help me shave my head, because summer is hot and my hair is totally out-of-compliance anyway and it's not doing me any favors.

what's this all got to do with bukkake? semen on the face?

well, see, let me clumsily try to explain myself.

we got women who are on-purpose cutting their hair short, or off, in order to say "fuck you" to someone - fathers, boyfriends, The Patriarchy, whatever. We got women whose hair has been forcibly cut off as punishment. And we got women who just don't want hair anymore. the net visual effect is pretty much the same - women who are bald, or as close to bald as makes no real social difference. But Sinead O'Connor is not the same, in relation to her bald head, as the alleged Nazi collaborator, is not the same as a short-haired flapper, is not the same as me. (and, you know, there are a bajillion other reasons and situations for women to be bald, obviously, now that I think about it.)

Insofar as a bald head is a symbol of something, the meaning of that symbol changes with time, and situation, and with the people involved.

yeah yeah yeah semen on the face I'm getting there.

does a bald (or practically bald) head always mean shame and degradation and humiliation? obviously not. sometimes it can mean the EXACT OPPOSITE. sometimes it can mean pretty much nothing.

I think it's the same for semen on the face. haHA! see, I got there.

in some contexts, I think it's seen as evidence that nonconsensual sex has occurred. See, right there! on her FACE! Evidence! and in those cases where nonconsensual sex has occurred, well obviously there's a problem, for crying out loud! yes, yes, it's the misogyny, stupid - I get that.

but when such activity is, so to speak, woman-led, I can see where semen on the face, despite its similarity to evidence of nonconsensual sex, is uncoupled from shame and humiliation and degradation. and I think the shame and humiliation and degradation can be replaced with, well, just about anything - pride, amusement, satisfaction, indifference, whatever.

I mean, if resisting or reframing or rejecting social messages is impossible, then Sinead O'Connor could not have shaved her head as a protest against the tyranny of beauty, and made her rockin' baldness a thing of pride and striking beauty itself; and flappers of the '20s could not have hacked off their "crowning glory" with reckless aplomb; and I myself could not rid myself of the horrendously unattractive and unmanageable wild animal that lives on my head, without all being considered "the same as" a punished, humiliated, degraded traitor.

which is obviously bullshit.

2009-06-28T17:09:00.000-07:00

blah blah blah blah farrah blog blah blah...

so there's an epidemic of famous people keeling over dead. and whenever that happens people fall all over themselves to be the first to say something nice about the deceased. it seems to be a ritual that people need to do, maybe by way of making sure that people don't trash-talk you at your own funeral, on that fateful day? I don't know. insofar as I totally don't expect anyone to even notice I'm dead, I don't feel obliged to eulogize, so much.

but it's way cool to talk about Dead Farrah, and I'm nothing if not cool, um, right?

Heart says this:

Your domestic violence work was just the beginning of all you gave and accomplished in your life. You were a voice for the voiceless, an inspiration to suffering women everywhere, in their homes, struggling in the criminal justice system or in prison. Thank you for the stand you took on behalf of battered, raped women. Thank you for believing us. Thank you for your amazing performance in which you shed your glamorous image in favor of identifying with those of us who have been beaten, battered, and raped by men who said they loved us. Thank you for all you have given to and for women.

which is all very nice. and apparently Dead Farrah did lots of charity work for domestic violence survivors, was on the Board of Directors for a big old non-profit helpful helping agency, and that's great. And The Burning Bed was indeed a compelling piece of TV melodrama, no question. I mean, holy cow, who didn't get all emotional and worked-up by the end, right? There's no better example of the genre, and it was way ahead of its time.

oh, and it was the very first television program to have that helpful "if you have a problem with blah blah meow, call one-eight-hundred-meow-meow-blah, and get help" thing. so also great.

but as I'm always wont to do, because I am the most hypersensitive self-centered narcissist EVER, I'm moved to wonder - hey Dead Farrah, what have you done for me lately?

Heart lists everything Dead Farrah gave to women - you know what you gave me, Dead Farrah?

you gave me a complex, lady. that's what you gave me!

so she hit it big in, like, 1976. I was about eight.

I knew that Farrah Fawcett was important, and it seemed to have something to do with boobies and hair and smiling and boys liking you. it made me uneasy.

that poster? with the red bathing suit? it was everywhere that year. I took one look at it, in all its glossy perfection, and knew I would never ever be that, get there, attain that. I was short, frizzy and speckled, she was tall, blonde and perfect. it was my first experience with unrealistic beauty standards, and I remember being really angry about it. I and my little friends mocked her viciously:

"hi! (fake smile) I'm Drippy Faucet-Minors! (fake smile, exaggerated hand gesture to imitate hair flip) Boys like me! (head tilt, fake smile, giggle)"

get it? "drippy faucet" 'cuz, Fawcett? Majors-minors? hardeharhar. yeah, we were the height of sophisticated witty mature comedy stylings. because we were eight.

but consider the whole poster thing: here is a picture of a woman advertising her sexual appeal, bent and folded and twisted into a strange contortion of availability - her legs say no no no, but her eyes say yes yes yes! she's the very definition of "sex symbol" - a woman who profited handsomely by showing off her body for the approval of patriarchy, yeah?

and she's Feminist Farrah Warrior Princess, now. 'cuz Burning Bed.

well, okay.

but I'm just thinking on this - is it still okay, now that we've named this new saint of feminism, to critique the high-heel-wearer, the hair-do-er, the lipstick-user, the man-pleaser-in-any-dimension, on the assumption that their behavior is not sufficiently feminist and encouraging of misogyny?

I mean, can you GET any more, er, "sparklepony" than Farrah Freaking Fawcett?

and yet somehow she managed to rise above her blatant toadying to The Man to become America's Next Top Feminist, Posthumous.

(good thing I'm not expecting anyone to say anything nice about me once I'm dead!)

2009-05-31T13:12:00.000-07:00

breaking news:
Dr. George Tiller was assassinated this morning.
in church.

2009-02-19T11:29:00.000-08:00

happy birthday, Little Boy!

(what, you were expecting some lengthy harangue about BDSM and feminism? maybe later. for the moment, I got more important things to do.)

at this time last year, I was in labor with you. that was quite a ride.

at about four in the morning, my water broke. I said to your father "honey, I feel kind of strange. do you think it's time?"

and your father threw up all over his shoes. that's how I knew it was time. so off we went. fourteen hours of screaming for my mama later, there you were.

you were really small. and really hungry.

and now you're bigger. and still pretty hungry.

so, now, you're some 15 pounds heavier (oy!) and, I don't know, like four or five inches longer, and you have three and a half teeth.

your fave raves:
nursing
sleeping
knocking down blocks
the color red
things that crinkle
things inside things
banging on the xylophone
crawling
mom
dad

turn-offs:
putting clothes on
taking clothes off
your snowsuit (we call it the NO-suit)

and that's about it. you don't walk yet, or do any fun tricks, but you do know three words: mama, dada, nurnurnur (nurse). and that gets you by.

you've turned me into a total duct-tape mom, though. I like carrying you around with me everywhere. You ride around on my back all the time. we ride the bus together, go to work together, walk to the market together in all kinds of weather - we even walked up and down the las vegas strip together in December. (You were not remarkably impressed. Mostly, you slept.)

before I get all sappy and disgusting, let me just say (of course) - your mom and dad love you VERY MUCH.

oh, and one other thing:
there's this little boy, his name is Phin, he's about two, his mom works at the same place I work and he comes to work with his mom all the time. about three months ago, Wolfie was crying for some reason (I think he smacked his head, or was lonely, or swallowed a bee or something...kidding, kidding...), and Phin had this great deep moment of empathy - you could totally see the compassion radiating from his adorable little head, it was crazy - and he patted Wolfie really gently on the head, and said

"it's okay, Wookie, don't cry."

so, now, all your little friends call you Wookie.

Wookie Parsons, ladies and gentlemen!

(and may I also include a big huge mooshy wet kiss to Rootie, who helped me get through the first few months without jumping off a bridge. I will always love you for that.)

2009-02-18T15:50:00.000-08:00

so this is totally cool:

I want to knit a skeleton!

2009-02-09T15:39:00.000-08:00

More, briefly, on this whole BDSM argument:

(you know, I used to take the time to explain myself, to link to my source material, to really fully explore all my ideas. no more. no time. wish I did. these days I'm lucky if I get five minutes to blog at all.)

here it is, for me: any thing (or thought or action) that challenges someone's idea of what a member of Class Woman should or ought to do or be - that thing (or thought or action) is a feminist thing (or thought or action).*

it may not be a virtuous thing, or a pure thought, or a particularly bold or righteous action, but why should feminism have a skewed view of womankind?

*I know - a grammar monstrosity. but there it is. maybe later I'll come back and pretty it up some so I don't appear so stone stupid. (but you know what they say about trying to polish a turd...)

2009-02-06T15:47:00.000-08:00

oh, hey, look - it's open season on bottoms again.

I don't have a whole lot of time to go into it point-by-point, but I will say this, borrowing from the right-wing gun nuts of my childhood:

sex acts don't kill people. people kill people.

really, I don't know how much more simply I can put it.

2009-01-30T17:39:00.000-08:00

more ruminations on the subject of being a mom for a whole year -

for these past twelve months, I haven't asked much of myself.

(not that I set myself any remarkably rigorous standards in the first place.)

but basically, my big task for any given day was to make sure the baby managed to survive the forthcoming 24 hours. just make sure Wolfie doesn't choke to death or smother to death or freeze to death or boil to death or bleed to death or come down with fatal diaper rash, and everything would be okay. anything else I managed to do, like cook dinner or pee or show loving affection to my partner - that was just sort of extra.

and now, apparently, the easy part is over.

I get the sense that as time goes on, it will get harder. The World will not be satisfied with merely producing a live child once a day for its inspection. I get the feeling that people will require some hard evidence of progress - percentiles, milestones, developmental achievements, other statistics that prove...something. but what?

I fear harsh judgment of my mothering "skills". I fear "solid" foods and their association in my mind with certain and immediate death by choking. I fear all sorts of things going into his second year of life.

whoever told me this gets easier? yeah, tell me again.

2009-01-29T15:25:00.000-08:00

ok, here you go, Daisy. in lieu of actual content, please enjoy this photograph of Wolfgang:

and here's another one:

in about two weeks he'll be one year old. it makes my head spin.

2009-01-26T14:43:00.000-08:00

Dear Ginmar,
I see you.
we're officially cool.

one could say we've given each other significant opportunities for growth, and, though painful, it was probably at the very least not fatal, and possibly even (at the end of the day) healthy in some respects.

and I can see that you mean what you say.

I apologize for not answering you sooner, but Wolfie's got me on the run lately. No sooner do I get used to one developmental stage but he's on to the next one and I'm left holding the onesie...

(really, if it's not covered in puke, poop or pee, I tend not to notice, whatever it is. and even if it is covered in puke, poop or pee, I tend not to notice that either.)

you know, he's coming up on his first birthday. I never ever expected to be here, man. seriously.

he's whatchacall an "easy" baby, still. "low needs", so to speak. he likes to play with blocks, chew on books (oy), fling stuff out of his playpen (or, as we call it in our house, the +2 Pen of Playing, full of Toys of Amusement). he was never colicky, or particularly screamy. he sleeps soundly, if not through the night, and he has a healthy appetite. he's appropriately appealing in every way.

and as I've been jacked up on oxytocin for the past year, I haven't noticed much else. (most of which I have noticed lately has been traumatic enough that I don't-wanna-talk-about-it.)

but I haven't been completely comatose. I discovered this site, Blue Milk, following a link offa some comment thread at Twisty's, some new skirmish in the Feminist Mom Wars. and she has a bunch of questions that look really delicious.

if I type really fast, maybe I can say everything I've learned about feminism and motherhood in the past year:

or maybe not.

what I can say, here:

when both you and the baby are covered in puke, clean yourself up first. you get to. you'll feel better. there's no extra credit for sacrificing yourself on the altar of motherhood.

of course, now that I have made that bold statement(haha), my freakishly low-needs baby decides he has a need of some kind. but I think I've said my piece for now.

and Ginmar, if I didn't make it clear before, let me make it clear now - I am honored to, internet-ly speaking, shake hands and part friends.

2008-10-09T05:03:00.000-07:00

Meet Wolfychan

she's quoting the famous Demonista and her Cuntspeak Carnival, and discussing further:

I would like this carnival to be about things such as:

-analysing the word "cunt", eg can it be reclaimed? does it offer a strong feminist analysis, eg in inventing new words, naming new ways of Be-ing, speaking, etc?

The word can be reclaimed to describe a body part. It's actually pretty useful there, because we're pretty short of body-part words that don't evoke either clinical detachment or uncontrollable giggles. But as a description of a woman's whole way of "Be-ing," it's fucking ridiculous. I have a cunt; so what? So does half the world, and anyway I was just born with it. It's not like I won it in a contest or something.

enjoy her contribution to the Cuntspeak Carnival. I thought it was funny, anyway.

hey, should we have a Cunt of the Week Contest? so we could win a cunt in a contest?

yeah, very motherly and appropriate of me. I get three minutes to blog in a week, these days, and this is how I spend it? oh the shame...

2008-09-08T04:24:00.000-07:00

okay, so there's lots and lots of stuff going on in the world. important stuff. Sarah Palin. The Economy. Oppression. The usual suspects. and I would have a lot to say about them all if I could only get a coupla minutes to sort out my thoughts and actually be able to use both hands to type with.

but today what I'm using my two-handed typing time to mention, what I'm really excited about, because I'm the world's biggest mommy-dork, is this -

last night we watched The Clone Wars. and I was not remarkably impressed with it as a piece of cinema - I found the style of animation to be hard on the eyes, the dialogue to be hard on the ears, and I have to say that Hayden Christensen's performance was NOT improved by being drawn in three dimensions. (you'd think having that extra dimension would help, but not really.)

However, I did notice this really cool thing. the story turns on the retrieval of Jabba the Hutt's little boy (or little slug-thing) Rutta. Our heroes, Anakin and his plucky apprentice, Ahsoka Tano, find the Huttlet, yay. But how are they going to do their usual space-hero business with a baby slug-thing to look after?

answer? they use a baby carrier. actually, two - a backpack-style carrier, and later, a wrap.

Anakin Skywalker, intergalactic bad-ass, carried the baby in a baby carrier. looked like an Ergo. a Space Ergo.

Was he afraid he would look "girly"? no. Was he afraid he'd drop the baby or some other stupid excuse? no. you'd think he'd have been nervous about plasma space bullets or flying space shrapnel or other hazards of space heroics. but not so much. he just kept on truckin', space-heroically speaking.

and Ahsoka's most excellent light-saber fight towards the end? all while carrying Rutta on her back, looking fabulous in their striped german wrap? yeah, I could identify. I have days like that. (I call them "weekdays".) of course, I don't pull off a wrap with quite the panache that Ahsoka did. alas. and I can't afford a german wrap anyway. but everything else about that scene? yeah, I totally identify.

my diaper bag even has a light-saber pocket.

2008-08-17T04:41:00.000-07:00

so I finally caved in and watched some olympics yesterday, inspired by Ren's extensive coverage.

I decided I probably ought to watch Michael Phelps, atomic superman, win that eighth gold medal. you know, for baltimore. and I'm glad I did, because that was completely awesome. I gotta wonder, though, who among us will remember Jason Lezak? or Brendan Hansen or Aaron Piersol? poor guys.

now, here's a question - if you want to win NINE gold medals in a single olympics, do you have to enter two different sports? is that even allowed?

nifty as the swimming was, I found that I was even more intrigued by the ladies' marathon. once upon a time, in a former life, I ran a half-marathon. it took me as long to run thirteen miles as it did for these women to run twenty-six. (I'm a slug, that's why.)

this totally bad-ass Romanian Constantina Tomescu-Dita won:

by some crazy-ass margin, ahead of the pack by almost an entire minute, which in marathon-math equals nearly a quarter mile (correct me if I'm wrong, which surely I am).

She was, like, Secretariat-escu. and she looked all relaxed about it, just one foot in front of the other (at light-speed, of course).

and then there was this Chinese runner, Zhou Chunxiu, who just a few years ago had a cyst scraped out of her hipbone and now is a freaking marathon runner. (makes me ashamed that I don't run anymore 'cuz my crunchy old knees).

of course, all this means is that instead of digging out a pair of good sneakers and getting some exercise, I will be watching the olympics inside, on this beautiful day.

or maybe not. probably a brisk walk at least won't kill me.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=oly&id=3534493

2008-08-10T04:31:00.000-07:00

now, the only thing I know about South Ossetia is that I once read about it in a book titled "Ten Places To Never Go", or something. the author thought it was too violent and dangerous. that was back in 2005, I think.

so I don't know anything about what's going on in Russia right now. but Natalia does. go get educated!

2008-08-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

Wanna see Wolfie?

"Teh Patriarchy? I iz Teh Patriarchy!"

here goes another one:

in the second photo, you can clearly see how closely I conform to patriarchal standards of beauty and acceptability...or something...

and I know that white boy babies are a dime a dozen, and ooze privilege from every orifice (whoo boy, lemme tell ya, I change a lot more privilege-y diapers than I ever thought possible), and are really no great shakes, globally speaking, and are nothing to celebrate. but I like this one, my Nigel here.

I don't think I'll be letting him loose on the world until he can cook, clean up after himself, wash his own socks and accept rejection without falling to pieces. I'd like to think we can teach him that being a bully does not equal being a man, and that chromosomes do not indicate superiority.

but for now, I'll be happy when he gets some teeth. learns to crawl forward. says "hello!"

baby steps, man.

2008-08-08T03:23:00.000-07:00

Happy World Breastfeeding Week!

courtesy our good pals at La Leche League, for those of you who like to keep abreast of these things. (snerk)

Say what you will about the boob nazis (and you will, I'm sure), I respect their work. and I think that most of the time, under most circumstances, breastfeeding is the best choice for a mom and her baby and that all reasonable effort should be expended to ensure that breastfeeding continues for as long as both parties desire.

I say this because so far, nursing has been really rewarding for me. It's kept me sane and relaxed and healthy (more or less) - and my goodness! what a racket nursing is!

"Hey hon, can you iron my shirt?"
oh, sorry darlin'. I'm feeding the baby.

"Can you fix dinner?"
eeeeeeeeeeyeah, no - I'm nursing.

"clean the bathroom?"
nope, nursing.

"dishes?"
nursing.

"laundry?"
see "nursing", above.

"Hello, this is Bill Billcollector, is Antiprincess at home?"
sorry, can't come to the phone. I'm nursing.

"dingdong! landlord calling!"
haHA! nursing!

so, yeah, it's been great for me the past five months. heh heh heh...pretty crafty of me, I think. nursing does give me a chance to slow down a minute, take a deep breath, relax a little - there's no way that's not healthy. And I think it's cool that no matter where I am, no matter what I'm doing, I can make that annoying whine stop instantly just by jamming a boob in the baby's mouth. at home, at work, in the grocery store, on the city bus - absolutely free and instantly effective. the transformation from screaming trainwreck to merry little cherub is nothing short of miraculous.

(sigh...'scuse me while I renew my commitment to breastfeeding...)

And we're back!

seriously, if all my milk dried up tomorrow and we had to switch to formula, Wolfie would be fine, just fine. ('course, paradoxically, we'd have to sell the baby to FormulaCo, or whoever. that shit's expensive!) but I'm not overly worried that formula is made of pure poisonium killyounate, at least not while our privileged white american asses have a reliable source of clean water.

you all know where this is going, I'm sure.

in honor of World Breastfeeding Week, let's revisit our esteemed blog colleague Justicewalks, to wit:

We could do this by refusing to be mothers to males. Even in places where abortions or other adequate birth control are lacking, women could refuse to nurse male neonates. You may wonder what horrible tragedies would befall the poor women who didn't give men the sons they demanded. Might they be beaten? Might they be raped? Might they be killed?

I remember back in the summer I went a little nuts about that, when I read it. maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the hormones, who knows. but I came fairly completely unhinged about it.

JW later explains herself here, saying:

A good keyboard-chum of mine reminded me the other day about all of the overwrought histrionics surrounding my supposed advocacy of male infanticide. I’ve found it all so amusing, really, the way the slightest anti-male thing gets purposefully misconstrued as violent, irrational, and haphazard, that I haven’t felt the need to counter it with any sort of dignified response. For me, the raving attacks on me have only served to show my opponents in all their saturated male-identification. But, for clarity, I thought I’d revisit that situation.

This is all I said:

We could do this [free ourselves from men] by refusing to be mothers to males. Even in places where abortions or other adequate birth control are lacking, women could refuse to nurse male neonates.

Then, Bird, whoever she is, in the very next comment, equated this, refusal of reproductive (and sexual) services to males, with killing them. Apparently, If you’re not offering up your wombs and extended nipples to the bastards, you’re KILLING THEM, I tell you!

well, yeah, overwrought histrionics, guilty as charged.

nonetheless, I struggle to find a common ground on this subject. even now, five months after those crazy pregnancy hormone spikes, it's still really sensitive and overwrought-histrionic-inducing for me. but I'll try to remain rational for a change.

maybe back then I should have asked exactly what she meant by "refusing to nurse". because there are plenty of other options to sustain the lives of newborn babies. I mean, was she thinking that baby boys should be given formula? baby boys should be given formula by their fathers?

unlikely, given this paragraph here:

In any event, and just to be perfectly precise about my perspective, I know that we must drastically reduce (if not eliminate) the male population in order to assure girls’ and women’s safety from prostitution, marriage, rape, sexual indebtedness, and reproductive slavery. And, yes, I see birth control, abortion, and abandonment as being the route toward that reduced (or eliminated) male population.

so, yeah, the way I read it, a drastic reduction (or elimination) of the male population would require making live male babies (not fetuses, not embryos) dead.

later she says:

"Abandonment is not murder."

but see, someone's gotta stick around and feed them something. otherwise they'll die. any baby (boy or girl) will die. at this stage in the game? the "neonate" stage, prior to a year, maybe two? yeah, leaving a baby to fend for itself is pretty much a death sentence. abandonment IS murder.

maybe at the time I missed her overarching point that men commit infanticide of girl babies all the time, and where were the condemnations of that? why does just a simple, innocent, harmless little suggestion of turning the tables cause such an explosion of rage?

well, for me, it was because I was pregnant, and touchy, and really trying to keep a lid on things IRL, and so probably lashed out inappropriately.

HOWEVER.

this whole "refuse to nurse male neonate" thing only works if you think that there is some innate characteristic of males that makes them Not Worth Saving, some inborn flaw in their character that is borne on their bodies, indelible, un-correctable, some Mark of Cain that predestines all men to devote their lives to harming women just by their very presence, and so worth abandoning.

but myself, I don't think that misogyny is innate. I think it's learned. or, hopefully, if I'm careful and cautious and responsible and paying attention, NOT learned.

and is there anyone, really, that can carry some innate characteristic of chromosome that is Not Worth Saving? is there any way to justify the abandonment of babies-of-color, on the grounds that they'll just grow up to (do whatever horrible thing people of color are assumed to do)? or the abandonment of babies with disabilities?

so, JW and I may respectfully disagree (now that I'm significantly less hysterical), if such is even possible for her, knowing that I'm a fairly white, privileged, "male-identified" and therefore irrelevant voice in a much larger blogosphere.

2008-07-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

so we all talk about "feminism" an awful lot.

feminism is, feminism thinks, feminism will, etc blah blah blah.

or better - real feminism is/thinks/will, etc.

Like we know. As though Feminism lives next door to us and we are over her house just every other day, having coffee or margaritas or soy-chai-green-tea-pomegranate-lattes or whatever. and since we're such close friends who share simply every waking thought, we know exactly who Feminism really is, what Feminism thinks at any given time, and what Feminism wants for her birthday.

but I wonder if our universal secret is that we all think Feminism's house is nicer (greener, cleaner, more hip) than ours, and Feminism's car is nicer (greener, more efficient, better bumper stickers) than ours, and Feminism's clothes are nicer (more organic, more awesome, more carelessly-stylish), and Feminism's life is just a thousand times better than ours in every way, and although we know Feminism doesn't want us to, we can't help comparing ourselves to Feminism.

god I hate Feminism. she's so perfect.

(meh - thought this was going somewhere. maybe not.)

but here - this whole question of equality vs. liberation is intriguing to me.

consider:

if you think men are shit, then who wants to be equal to shit, right?

no sense working for equality when it would be a big ol' stoop-to-conquer-fest.

alternately, if you think men are shit because you believe that men think women are shit, then yay hooray equality achieved, we're all shit, and we can all put down our signs and go home. what's for supper?

I can see where the idea of working for equality with something you hold beneath contempt would be laughable.

so, then liberation, right? de-coupling women from men and The Patriarchy, so that women can make un-coerced choices and exercise free will in the absence of domination by men?

except what will we do with all the men littering the landscape?

If you think that penises = Patriarchy, whether by nature or nurture, then men's minds will never allow liberation of women. not now, not ever, no matter what women do.

but you know, maybe feminism is more about changing men's minds, and men's behavior, than we're all willing to admit.

huh. baby's crying. better go see what's up. I'm going to let this half-formed thought out into the world and see what happens. maybe I'll decide I'm full of it midway through comments. (wouldn't be the first time.)

2008-07-10T07:29:00.000-07:00

y'all heard about this, yeah?

short version - Total douchenozzle Kyle Payne enjoys his double life - anti-porn radical feminist activist by day, pervy little female-classmate-feeler-upper by night - (who does he think he is -- Batman?), until his bitch ass gets caught last february, resulting in a trial at which he plead guilty just the other day, sentencing to take place in August.

here's his blog, where he discusses nothing about the case. it's almost like it's happening to someone else, which is weird because it clearly ain't.

you know, Kyle, you'll never impress John Stoltenberg with this kind of behavior...

it is interesting to note, in the strange-ass bedfellows department, that the feminist, antiporn radical feminist, and oh-please-you-can't-possibly-call-yourself -feminist blogospheres are all coming together in sisterhood for a little well-deserved group humiliation of this complete waste of flesh. warms the cockles of my heart, that does.

(it doesn't appear, at least at the moment, that anyone's blaming Mama for raising a rapist/sexual-assault-committing-guy. just sayin'.)

and I'm not saying anything new here, clearly. just adding my flaming torch and pitchfork to the mob, really.

I'm not even outraged, or surprised, or even a teeny bit disappointed. It's kind of business as usual, isn't it?

but where's 4chan (and their good pal Anonymous) when you need them, huh? this fuck really deserves it!

2008-07-08T11:19:00.000-07:00

so I got this comment a while ago, off this old-ass post -- haven't really been sure what to do with it:

The first thing I thought of when I saw how flippantly you were treating the issue of oppression, was, "he's gonna be a rapist".

Because, geewhiz, your son would never internalize negative perceptions about women, so you don't have to worry about it.

There's a difference between making fun of our sexist, racist culture, and dismissing it as a problem which needs no further attention.

You dismissed it. That's probably kinda harsh considering all the stresses of new parenthood, but it's exactly when we are most stressed that our true beliefs emerge. You dismissed it.

and I'm all - oy, this again?

but maybe it's more than just nasty bitches looking for the worst possible thing to say to me this time. maybe there's some point I'm really missing, or some mistake I'm really making, that will condemn my little boy to years and years in prison someday.

I don't think I'm flippant about oppression, except where oppression has it coming. it's a little like saying that Mel Brooks is flippant about Hitler.

but what makes a rapist in the first place? a mom who does not take The Patriarchy remarkably seriously on her blog? that's it? that's all I have to do to turn an otherwise happy, healthy little human being into a monster?

I'm thinking there's probably more to it than that. I'd have to teach him that girls are icky and have cooties, or conversely, teach him that girls are helpless victims of evil men and he should be ashamed of his ugly Y chromosome, or maybe teach him that girls exist for his pleasure alone and he should exploit them at any and every opportunity, starting in nursery school.

or all of that at once. with a side order of mommy-doesn't-love-you.

which, no. seriously. I'm way too lazy to go out of my way to teach something I don't believe myself.

as far as "internalizing negative perceptions about women," I'd like to know more about what is meant by that. damaging media messages? yeah, that's an uphill battle, no doubt. harmful social/interpersonal interactions? sure, I get that too. but what else was this commenter trying to say? I don't know. wish s/he would have elaborated as to how s/he thought I was helping an infant internalize negative perceptions about women by blogging disrespectfully.

hey - you got a problem with how I raise my kid? please, feel free to tell me all about it. give examples. be detailed. explain how my mistake will come to damage a woman that my son hasn't even met yet.

you're not interested in saving womankind from the scourge of Wolfgang? then piss off.

2008-06-22T17:43:00.000-07:00

still in kind of a slow gurgly downward spiral here - just when I think we'll be able to make a real stab at getting back on our feet, something happens to knock us back on our asses.

but, you know, hope springs eternal.

how are y'all?

2008-05-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

hello -

2 questions:

how do you put a paypal button on your blog using a library computer? (why am I using a library computer?...well, if my home internet wasn't cut off, I wouldn't need a paypal button, now would I?)

how do you replace a photo ID without another photo ID or credit card or social security card?

2008-04-18T13:28:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I also surfaced just in time to miss an epic discussion of Race and Feminism.

not that I could have contributed to that in any meaningful manner, except to say that white girls need to be very very VERY thoughtful before they go shooting off their mouths, either on the blogosphere or between bookcovers or wherever feminism is served, and also need to realize that no matter what they say, someone somewhere is going to take issue with it.

to that end, I have been very very VERY thoughtful about race lately. I'm really bad at writing about it, really inarticulate and shallow and never really contributing anything of weight or relevance. But here's something new (to me) about race and feminism, maybe, or race and me, at the very least.

from the time I got pregnant, maybe a little before, until just a coupla weeks before I delivered, I worked here, the Capital Region Education Council CHOICE Program.

back in the day, programs like the CHOICE Program used to be called simply "busing", wherein students (mostly black, some hispanic) from city neighborhoods were selected to attend suburban schools mostly attended by white students. Nowadays, playing the funding game requires cool catchy acronyms and mission statements and all that crap to stay hip and cool and relevant and funded, but it's the same thing today that it was 30 years ago.

The focus of the program is to reduce social, ethnic and economic isolation by integrating educational settings. and for the most part, it sorta works. at least, it tries real hard.

more importantly, the people in the office try real hard, struggle mightily against underfunded budgets, byzantine bureaucracies, vapid school administrators, angry parents and the students themselves.

here's the relevant part for today - out of an office of about ten people, I was the only white person. (I think I was one of five white people on the entire floor, in fact.)

the thing about diversity, as I experienced it at the office for nine months, is that it's. well, diverse.

three women were Puerto Rican. three other women and two men were African-American. the boss lady was Jamaican. and for every issue that came up, these nine people came up with ten different solutions. (my opinion totally did not count, not because I was white, but because I was a temp, and not an educator with a college degree.)

the lives of these people differed wildly - some came up hard on the mean streets, others had relatively comfortable childhoods. some grew up in rural areas, some in cities. some had children, some did not. One did time in prison. Many were very very religious.

one woman out of the seven called herself a feminist, but reluctantly. she didn't feel like feminism really spoke to her needs, but felt guilty abandoning the idea entirely. six women out of the seven were explicitly NOT feminists.

Obama-vs-Clinton? well, actually I think at least one woman intends to vote for McCain. Make of that what you will.

What I learned at the office is that, at least in that particular environment, yeah, feminism is not relevant to women of color. it's seen as a hobby for white women with more money than sense.

if the shoe fits, y'all.

more later maybe, as my little oppressor-kins is making a terrible racket, exercising his dominance in a most white and male manner...

2008-04-17T07:08:00.000-07:00

wow, man. I take five minutes to jump in the shower, clean two months of yellow goo offa me, clear my head of the new-mom fog, open my eyes to the world around me, and this is what I see:

So, I seems I might be uninvited to the forum at William and Mary. Why? Because apparently, Sam Berg, who has been booked as a panelist longer than I and is traveling further than I, is uncomfortable with me being there. Apparently, once upon a time I said I wanted to push her in front of a truck.

http://renegadeevolution.blogspot.com/2008/04/no-enough-no-this-is-silencing.html

Sam, let me say this plain: You are a big old baby.

Seeeriously.

you think you're right? you think your position is defensible? you believe in what you're doing? be brave, sister! the William and Mary debate is the perfect time and place to emerge victorious over the dirty dirty sexpoxes. and yet you lose your nerve, right at your golden moment.

Ren doesn't make you uncomfortable. the prospect of getting your ass handed to you makes you uncomfortable.

which, you know, is human. lots of people make me feel like a failure. I get that. but if you have any love for your movement at all, you'll take the podium and give it your best shot.

now, back to the Littlest Patriarch. see you in another month or so, probably.

2008-03-21T20:17:00.000-07:00

so, I was talking with my stepmother tonight and she told me that my brother The Marine should be returning to the US in 207 days.

I'll be counting.

2008-02-21T13:48:00.000-08:00

woah. ok. now what?

soooooo, Wolfgang A. H. Parsons was born at 10:56 pm on February 19, 2008, after about 18 hours of labor. at birth he was 8 pounds, one ounce, and 20 inches long, with a head full of hair.

we're home now, and kinda tired...more later as we adjust!

Thanks all for your good wishes, words of encouragement, and gestures of goodwill.

we loves y'all!

Heidi, Fred and Wolfgang

pictures to follow, someday.

2008-02-17T10:59:00.000-08:00

so, like every other thing in my life that I was supposed to accomplish by some milestone deadline date or face certain life-ruining misery forever, His Miniature Majesty is late. Only by three days so far, but late is late. damn it.

The world will have to wait for Yet Another Privileged White Boy to show his privileged face, smile his privileged smile, shit his privileged pants, and make his oppressive way from privileged infancy through his privileged childhood, into and beyond his privileged adolescence and away into his privileged adulthood, crushing the flower of womanhood beneath his heavy bootheel with every step he takes.

or, you know, he could grow up human, despite my best efforts.

That is, if he even shows up at all. I'm starting to doubt I was ever pregnant in the first place, first-trimester misery be damned. I must have made it all up. If I was really pregnant in the early spring of 2007, I'd have a baby by now, right? As it is, all I have now is the ass end of a wicked flu, sneeze incontinence and some seventeen extra pounds sitting lazily across what useta be my waistline (such as ever existed).

I guess he could still show up. I've tried putting a dish of Mountain Dew between my legs, to sort of coax him out, like a cat out from under the sofa, but no deal. same with the dirty ashtray. he's just not interested. I'm finally knitting him a cute little baby hat (well, to be honest, I'm unraveling a baby hat that I thought was cute but turns out to be rife with error), thinking maybe he's shy or concerned with being cold or something. Another thing I'm doing is speculating.

I have avoided making a lot of assumptions or expectations about (or cute little baby clothes for) The Fetus Who Would Be Baby, mostly because I'm a little superstitious. Don't want to jinx him at all. But this does not stop other folks from, you know, setting up due date pools - which are all out of whack now that the lazy little guy is late...wonder if anyone lost money on that? I mean, people will bet on anything - date, time, weight, length, length of labor, circumference of head, anything really.

But this morning I was full of conjecture and speculation. I can't resist any longer. Thought I'd share them with y'all, for your wagering pleasure. this is all highly scientific, of course, being based on exactly nothing. please, feel free to lay whatever odds you like, prognosticate at will, and share with the rest of the class. I'll get you started:

Eye Color: brown
Hair Color: auburn. Texture: Frizzy to a socially-crippling level
Body Type: endomorph (heavyset)
Skin Type: pasty, pale, excessively freckled
First Word: "NO!" age: three weeks
First tooth: four months First Biting of Mommy: four months, one day
First Swallowing of Something Dangerous: one year
First Willful Destruction of Something One Of Us Really Liked: two years
First Incident of Humiliating Parents To Death in Public: two and a half
Learns to Read: three years
Learns to Read Very Dirty Words: three years, one day
First Fire Set: four years
First Emergency Room Visit: five years
First Unanswerable Theological Question: six years Topic: "who did Cain and Abel marry?"
First Fistfight: seven years
First Time Parents Realize They're Late for the Birds and Bees Talk: eight years
First School Suspension: sixth grade
First Cigarette: twelve years
Last Cigarette: twelve years, one day
First Time I Threaten To Send Him To Military School: twelve years, six months
First Shave: thirteen years
First Band That Simply Must Practice In Our Basement: thirteen years Instrument: percussion.
Name of band: Phlegm In My Eyes
Duration of band: six months
First Significant Other: fourteen years
Duration of Relationship: three months
Duration of Unbearable Teen Angst: one excruciating year
First Time I Find a Condom In His Pocket: fourteen years
First Beer: fourteen years Brand: Sam Adams Environment: Home, dinner
First Beer at Raging Kegger: fifteen years
First Hangover: day after Raging Kegger
First Job: sixteen years Workplace: Abercrombie & Fitch Duration: three weeks
First Time Police Bring Him Home: fifteen years, six months
Circumstances: shoplifting socks from Abercrombie and Fitch
First Car: sixteen years Year/Make/Model: 1995 Honda Civic Color: Primer
First Car Wreck: sixteen years, six months
First Time I Find Pot In His Pockets: seventeen years
First Pregnancy Scare: eighteen years

Ah, sweet innocence of childhood!

That's about all I can think of, for the time being. I feel strangely a little better, seeing all my dire predictions all laid out like that.

I feel better reminding myself that I am not giving birth to a precious little bundle of perfection personified, but in fact to a baby human being, who's gonna fuck up the same as I did, and needs to learn to be in the world in as respectful and decent a fashion as possible.

Lest I be misunderstood, I don't plan to greet his every act of criminal mischief (or worse) with a cup of hot cocoa, a tilt of my head and a "boys will be boys!" I mean, I do understand that raising a boy to be a good man, by which I mean a man of kindness, empathy, altruism, loyalty, gentleness, strength, etc - it might require a hard line on some things, harder than I can even comprehend. I might need to (quel horreur!) spank or something. I and my husband may need to Talk To The Boy, for hours and hours on end.

"Look kid - the expression is 'boys will be BOYS', not 'boys will be disrespectful, inhumane, destructive, hateful, spiteful, naughty, thoughtless, obnoxious, bullying little monsters'. You will apologize/make restitution/knock it off/ RIGHT THIS MINUTE!"

I do, however, want to be sure I have as realistic a view of parenting as possible, so I'm not surprised when my kid acts all...well...naughty. Like I did. Like my husband did.

looking forward to your predictions, folks. Wish I knew how these mysterious "odds" worked.

2008-02-06T18:03:00.000-08:00

so, first things first: an update on The Littlest Patriarch, aka the Little Yolk Sac That Could,aka The Products of Conception, aka Wolfgang P., in utero -

The health care professional in charge of this whole thing tells me that his head is in position (headfirst, not feet first, or shoulders first, or some other complicated breech presentation) and he's estimated to weigh some seven pounds, and it's just a matter of days now until labor begins.

of course, I've heard that weight estimates are wildly inaccurate, and "a matter of days" may well mean something very different to the fetus than it does to me.

If anyone out there is my psychic friend, or wants to consult the cards or other handy oracle, please feel free to share.

but, if you're new here, I bet you're not so interested in stupid baby crap. I bet you totally don't give a shit about the new baby rapist I am certain to raise, from the minute he takes his first patriarchal breath. I bet you're far more interested in that pandagon thread.

well, far be it from me not to give the people what they want.

here's the big unforgiveable Fuck You post.

here is the post where I selfrighteously bloviated from my mountaintop about Heart's blog attack and related issues.

and here's where I bombastically and pompously declare that The Patriarchy Does Not Exist.

and here's a little bit on being sex-positive.

so. as usual, draw your own conclusions. I've been accused in the past of being a fencesitter, and that's probably true. Maybe that's a character flaw I ought to work on.

I've also been accused of being passive-aggressive. of course, every time I experiment with being regular aggressive, the situation really does not improve, so I'm not sure what to do about that particular critique.

but, yeah, conclude as you will, comment as you wish.

2008-01-25T08:07:00.000-08:00

it's been a bit of a while since I've done an "I'm a bi-sexeee first-amendment-is- hawwwt sexpozzie, hear me roar" type post. I guess I just haven't been particularly inspired in that direction - I mean, haven't I said just about every swinging thing I possibly can on the subject, at least twice? what a yawn. (not that it was so compelling the first time around...)

also, factor in all the warm fuzzy peace-and-harmony maternal hormones that seem to be kicking in with gusto lately, and it makes me kind of bovine and not really into being all aggressive and fighty. No real reason for me to be an instigator, I guess.

(unless, of course, you happen to be living in my house and you finished all the lemon sherbet. in which case, pistols at dawn, motherfucker!)

alas, all good things must come to an end, y'all.

I recently discovered this blog here by a blogger named pisaquaririse - and I have to say that the blogger made a point that really resonated with me:

I am anti-sexy.

Anti ANYTHING that takes a form as sexy or trying to be sexy, or, only-succeeds-when-found-sexy. I am anti use-sexy-to-get-rewards sexy. Anti want-to-be-considered-sexy sexy. Anti want-to-consider-others-as-sexy sexy.

(snippage here, for focus. I suggest you go read the whole thing if you haven't already, for context.)

Sexy is not in your hands. Sexy is the invasive appropriation of each others’ bodies and externalities. Sexy is the lens you are forced to look through. Sexy is the lens your are forced to be seen through.

Sexy is a constant state of against-your-will, without-consent, what’s-yours-is-mine, without-permission. (emphasis mine)

I don’t need to hear how you feel sexy when you are reading a good book. I don’t need to hear how your so-and-so thinks you’re sexier when you don’t have on make up or haven’t worked out in a little while. Sexy does not care. Sexy is only accounting for the role you play when you ignore your full human capacity. Sexy assumed your role all along. Sexy will still be there when you want out.

I don’t need to hear how you are helping young girls who have otherwise been abused and tortured and slain by patriarchy regain their “sexiness.” Sexy will not help. Sexy entitles our pleasure centers to others. (again, emphasis mine.) Sexy is the visual rape primaries.

Stop with the Sexy already.

To those caught up in trying to Save the Sexy, reshape The Sexy, regain, reclaim, refresh The Sexy—please, we are feminists—we’ve got enough to do.

To those enslaved by sexy, beaten by sexy, afraid because of sexy, hidden by sexy, appropriated by sexy, employed by sexy, abused by sexy,… my sincerest apologies. We are working on it.

so. here we are.

at least, I've been here - "enslaved by sexy, beaten by sexy, afraid because of sexy," etc. I have. I didn't like it.

Sexy is a constant state of against-your-will, without-consent, what’s-yours-is-mine, without-permission.

that part there? yeah, it sucked. I almost didn't make it out alive. and the whole experience left me with a dislike of artifice, props, "scenes", that occasionally resembles a straight-up fear or revulsion.

I'm not a big fan of sexual manipulation, "flirtyness" in general, so-called "feminine wiles", cosmetics, uncomfortable shoes, binding or itchy clothing, or needless removal of body hair - it's just not my thing, sexpozzie or not.

yeah, the "sexy" game is hijacked, as Ice-T might say. sure. What is commonly held to be "sexy" is often not intimacy, but a burlesque of intimacy.

But here's the problem - I do think that sexual arousal is innate in the human animal. People want to fuck. They just do, as a general rule.

I mean, not every living soul at every minute of every day all around the world at the same time, but in general, the sexual urge is present in Class People. Men, women, people under eighteen, people over eighty, people who look different than me, people people people of all sorts feel that warm tingly feeling and want to engage in sexual activity with others.

And trying to sort out whose sexual urge is acceptable (in this blogger's case, natural? un-messed-with? un-corrupted-by-the-Patriarchy?) and whose sexual urge is unacceptable ("pornified", so to speak, or "patriarchy-fied", maybe) is a fool's errand at best, and damaging at worst.

In other words, I don't think it's a good idea to try to limit what sorts of things are okay to find sexually arousing and what sorts of things aren't okay to find sexually arousing.

in fact, I think that's how we got into this whole mess in the first place.

for one thing, it might not be even possible to "just say no" to sexual arousal. (For some people, I'm sure it is possible to do just that. and more power to them, sure. I've never been successful, myself.) For another thing, the desire to seek out that thing/idea/visual stimulus may increase proportional to the number and intensity of "just say no" messages - the fascination with the abomination, as my old english teacher used to say.

The more forbidden something is, the more delicious and desirable it is, in some cases. There are those who would seek out the forbidden not out of any real desire for it, but just because of its forbidden-ness, just because they like to be weird and out-there and "dirty". (say, for example, me.)

I tell you this - if someone had said to me, when I was thirteen or so, "oh, yes, by all means, wanting to engage in sexual behavior while tied to a tree is perfectly normal," I might not have wanted to do it so much. The fact that every sort of sexual behavior I could imagine was labeled bad/wrong/sinful/dirty/weird only increased my desire to engage in it.

I don't think it's a successful strategy to say to folks "that thing/idea/visual stimulus that inspires sexual feelings in you? it's bad and wrong and you should stop." it wasn't successful two thousand years ago - it's not successful now, even if

Frankly, I don't see where "that which is "sexy" is bad because it hurts Women" in the year 2008 is any different, in effect, than "that which is "sexy" is bad because it makes Baby Jesus cry" in the year 1898, or "that which is "sexy" is bad because it is Offensive to God" in the year 1008.

That said, one could certainly make a case for "this is bad FOR ME, because it hurts ME." Going all the way back to the place where I agreed with this blogger, I can certainly say that the relentless pursuit of "sexy" about finished me, where "sexy" equalled "be available to my abusive partner for any reason at any time".

But I think the key there is that my partner was abusive. And I've said time and time again that he'd have been abusive regardless of whether porn was nonexistent or ubiquitous. The concept of "sexy", and the quest for it, did not make him a heinous excuse for a human being. I believe that he just lacked any sense of empathy for other living creatures.

for him, art imitated life, not the other way around. If "sexy" didn't exist as pisaquaririse defines it, my abusive exhusband would have invented it.

This is kind of a crap post (done at the office, in fits and starts, and it shows), but I felt I had to respond more deeply than my comment allowed. I'm sorry, pisaquaririse - you deserve better. I hope to have time to go back and clarify.

in the meantime, comment away.

2008-01-23T07:04:00.000-08:00

This morning I woke up and turned on the news.

The first story was that Heath Ledger died. How sad. I'm sure the monde du cinema will never be the same. (seriously.)

The second story was something something meyow meyow meyow Britney Spears blah blah meyow.

The third story was a shortish piece about a psychological condition known as "drunkorexia", wherein young women allegedly go without food for a coupla three days between partying, accomplishing both dramatic weight control and a dangerously hellacious buzz. I guess.

I watched the news for 45 minutes before waddling off to the bus stop. There was not one mention of this intriguing bit of trivia:

Tens of thousands flee Gaza for Egypt

from the Yahoo story -

RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured from the Gaza Strip into Egypt Wednesday after masked gunmen with explosives destroyed most of the seven-mile barrier dividing the border town of Rafah.

they blew up a seven-mile-long wall. and we hear nothing, unless we're lucky/privileged enough to be online.

I'm not prepared to discuss the Situation In That Part Of The World. I'm just not. It's a big blogosphere, there's lots of places to discuss it to y'all's heart's content. Feel free - somewhere else. Don't make me mod comments for the first time ever, folks.

I'm saying - I just think it's sad that getting real news is a privilege.

this kind of thing really damages my optimism...

2008-01-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

So, here we are at the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. well, a day late. as usual.

(NOTE 1/23/08: apparently I was not late, yay. first time for everything. however, there was some sort of theme of "Blogging for Choice" day of which I was totally unaware. the theme was "Why it's important to vote pro-choice", or something to that effect. I totally missed it. Not that I'd have been able to come with anything any more articulate than what I have. meh.)

As I said last year, there is One True Definitive Statement on Reproductive Freedom which Puts All Others to Shame So I'm Not Even Going To Bother. It's found at www.barf.org. What are you still doing here? Go there instead. seriously.

but some of you still may be interested in what I'm on about. well, I can't do anything about that.

If you're the sort of person whose definition of "fun" includes watching horror movies, chewing inedibly hot chili peppers, sticking needles in your eyes and similar masochisms, you may enjoy this link here.

(yeah, I'm being a little uncharitable to the compulsory pregnancy advocates of the world. so sue me.)

I guess I'm feeling a little, um, nostalgic? lately, thanks to a rather peak experience I had over the weekend (which I might possibly blog about one of these days - not tremendously likely as it's wicked personal, but you know, never say never).

But I remember going to one of those "March For Life" things. I found it really challenging to be there, especially carrying a conspicuously pro-choice sign for the few minutes that I had the guts to. (and really, I got in touch with my inner wussbag that day, I tell you what. I learned that I am NOT strong, NOT brave, NOT anything but a giant blob of sensitive nerves and tender feefees. I was really disappointed in myself. Live and learn I guess.)

And now, almost fifteen years later, here I am about to give birth to a child of my own. Woah.

the thing to remember is, the only thing that makes it a "child" and not a "fetus" is that I want to be a mom. nothing else. just that.

I sat there in the doctor's office, and said "we probably shouldn't have this baby."

and the doctor said "well, the only thing that should influence your decision is whether you want to be a mom or not."

I want to be a mom, even though we have NO MONEY at all. No retirement plan, no college fund, no 401(k), no savings, no cushion, no equity, no assets, no giant jar full of pennies - right now we're living on hot steaming second helpings of love with a delicious optimism sauce, but still I want to be a mom, so I'm having a baby, not an abortion.

I want to be a mom, even though I'm forty years old and will probably never graduate from college or have more than a marginally-secure, marginally-non-soul-crushing clerical job in the pink-collar ghetto, even though my husband has complicated issues of his own - we will probably never be anyone's definition of "successful", but still I want to be a mom, so I'm having a baby, not an abortion.

I want to be a mom, even though the human race seems hell-bent on destroying itself by next Thursday, under piles of industrial waste and flesh-ripping bullets and whatever other wretched refuse of the Military-Industrial Complex washes up on our teeming shores - I can't imagine in my wildest nightmare what ill wind the next generation will inherit, but still I want to be a mom, I'm having a baby, not an abortion.

I want to be a mom, even though the world is a great steaming heap of shit for thousands of reasons. so, I'm having a baby in three weeks, and not an abortion six months ago.

I want to be a mom because I know that there are others out there like me, and better than me, braver and stronger and even more optimistic than me, whom I can help build a better world, and to whom I can introduce my child as he grows up, and say "hey, Wolfgang - go help them. they're building a better world."

But not everyone feels the way I do. Some folks don't want to be moms. Any of those reasons I listed (and many many more) are excellent reasons for NOT wanting to be a mom, for having an abortion instead of a baby.

I think the compulsory pregnancy advocates ought to be paying more attention to the reasons women give for not carrying a pregnancy to term - the fear of good old fashioned no-shoes, no-coat, starving-in-the-streets style poverty being chief among them, the idea that having a child will WRECK YOUR LIFE FOREVER being another.

For me, Roe v. Wade worked just fine - the decision to have a child was made between A Woman And Her Doctor, as the court's decision indicated. But I am one of the lucky ones, really.

more later, maybe. or maybe not.

2008-01-09T07:56:00.000-08:00

Better Med than Dead?

Lots of noise 'round the blogosphere about the relative usefulness (or deadliness) of the medications used in psychiatry. As someone who would not be alive today if it weren't for the tender mercies of Wellbutrin, Zoloft, and other helpful brain-chemicals-in-a-bottle, I'm fairly psychiatry-positive.

Some folks aren't. That's their right, for sure. as it is their right to proclaim their anti-psych-med Good News and spread the gospel of Fresh Air, Sunshine and Vitamins.

And to those folks I'd like to say, with all the passive-aggressive politeness I can muster - Congratulations. You're an inspiration to us all. Now please hold your collective tongues for a moment and hear what the rest of us have to say.

without the meds I took for several years, I'd be dead. I'd have Ceased to Be. I would have joined the Choir Invisibule. I'd be an Ex-Parrot. Get it? I would not be alive to bother you with my stupid opinions. I'd be a headstone, an urn, a dim memory, a fading picture, a line item statistic on someone's Domestic Violence Report.

and, you know, I'm screaming about this from pillar to post around the blogosphere. I'm probably being a great big pest. maybe I oughtn't make an issue of it, but I feel like my experience is not nearly as unique or isolated as some would have me believe. The insinuation that the meds I took were a crutch, or some sort of instant tonic of blissful ignorance, or even the pharmaceutical equivalent of Joo Janta Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses, is insulting.

Before the drugs and therapy, I was numb to life. I didn't care if I lived or died. I thought I deserved all the abuse that my ex could heap on me, and more. Without the self-respect and perspective I regained during my time with the psychiatrist, I would have let my exhusband BEAT ME TO DEATH, and felt nothing.

I don't think that's part of the normal human experience.

Thanks to the healthy chemical brainsoup created by the meds I can feel stuff now. I can feel pain beyond explanation, but also joy beyond measure. I can feel righteous rage, utter black despair and fiery revolutionary anger, but also hope for the future, optimism, and the desire to Make Progress. Although I can see what's miserably wrong with the world, I can also see what's remarkably, beautifully right.

No, I don't know why I was one of the lucky ones, or why the meds that worked for me drive others even further into despair. I don't know whether I wasn't really depressed after all, but simply besieged by The Patriarchy-Industrial Complex or malnourished or what.

I know what I know - I useta not give a shit about what happened to me. Now I do.

I owe it all to the Happy Pills. I'm not ashamed to say it.

2007-12-27T06:15:00.000-08:00

holy crap.
Benazir Bhutto was killed in a bombing.
This is terrible news.

2007-12-10T17:13:00.000-08:00

no doubt you've all heard of this:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22902781-601,00.html

look - I'm not australian,I am not of-color. but I know a gross miscarriage of justice when I see one.

and what do you say about something like this?

it's a gordian knot of outrage.

2007-12-07T09:28:00.000-08:00

(an expansion of a comment from a couple of posts down)

a full seven days too late for World AIDS day...but better late than never:

So - "sexpox".

I think the term originated a couple of months back, as a way to convey contempt for people who espouse a non-anti-porn, non-anti-sexwork, non-anti-BDSM, "sex-positive" point of view.

And then it was bandied about by people who espouse a "sex-positive" point of view, as a sort of snide self-identification, as a way to convey contempt for people who used the term to convey contempt for "sex-positive" people.

Now that I think about it, despite the fact that it's catchy and easy to remember and evocative and really, only five or six people use the term in its pejorative on a regular so maybe it's not such a big deal - I gotta say, I'm agin' it.

cuz, y'all, what about AIDS?

whatever side of the porn/sexwork/bdsm fence you sit on, what about AIDS, y'all?

I'm not HIV+, nor am I an AIDS activist. But I know people who work long and hard to purge the idea from the human consciousness that there is some consensual sexual behavior that deserves PUNISHMENT. Not just any punishment, but The Biggest, Baddest, Most Punishing Punishment - long, slow, conspicuously Capital Punishment in the form of a wasting disease, with clearly visible physical benchmarks of its progress as it slowly kills its victims.

so, when I see the word "sexpox", I don't think of cute hawtt titjobbed bisexee suckfuckers who giggle and simper on their spindly heels and tilt their empty heads and smile while cooing "ooh! I'm so empowerful! aren't I, Nigel?"

(and even if I did get that mental picture, it wouldn't match any of the individuals I know who identify as "sex-positive." the gulf of understanding here is unbridgeable, apparently, when it comes to that.)

when I see the word "sexpox", I think of a fatal disease that happens to people who fuck the wrong way, and need to be punished before they can die as a consequence for their behavior.

I mean, I guess, if you think there's a type of consenting adult sexual behavior that NEEDS to be punished by a fatal disease, because that behavior is THAT SINFUL that people who do it need years and years of suffering until they've repented enough to die in misery, then by all means continue slinging around "sexpox" like it's no more harmful than "tranny" or "faggot". (eyeroll)

but if you really think that there's a type of consenting adult sexual behavior that deserves the death penalty, may I humbly suggest you examine what that really means.

and if you think I'm being petty or trivial or oversensitive or coopting a movement of oppressed people in order to grind my own personal axe, may I say

FUCK YOU.

2007-12-06T07:36:00.000-08:00

more fun-n-games courtesy the fine folks at A View From A Broad:

said Ginmar:

Mrs. Bates is not a feminist. She's an anti-feminist. She's named her blog something that parodies Twisty, so basically, she's a fucking wannabe who can't accomplish anything unless she's bashing radfems. That's all she's got.

That kid is going to be a rapist by high school. She hates other women that much, that viciously. That whole crew is like the biggest gift the MRA movement ever got.

(Mrs. Bates = me, in case you're not paying attention.)

now, see, if she's so worried about Wolfgang's dick already, maybe she ought to be calling the police NOW, and save us all the trouble fourteen years from now. Think of the women she'd be saving from his poison gaze and rapacious libido, if he spends his entire life under the watchful gaze of prison guards, who will of course do everything in their power to make extra sure he doesn't grow up to be a rapist! God, Ginmar, I thought you were pro-woman. Won't you think of the women? pleeeeeeeeease?

Alternately, if she has any strong opinions on how NOT to raise a rapist, I'd wish she'd share them.

seriously - I also wish we could talk TO each other, rather than have to engage in this mutual-bathroom-wall-scrawling we're doing here. But I know good and well that without resorting to anon-commenting on her LJ, which would be a temporary (and kind of sneaky) measure at best, there's no way she'll allow me to speak to her directly. which I find sad.

On the other flipper, Crankycrone_101 said something intriguing, to wit:

If she had a girl, then she would have to start examining her *brand* of feminism. Things like, wall-to-wall porn in every home and shop, not exactly a good idea. The sexualisation of teen and pre-teen girls, objectification of wimmin, also, not a good idea. Fear of rape or child molestation, a genuine concern.

The list goes on...

Gotta give the devil his due, this is quite an intriguing proposition.

well, okay! let's examine!

I mean, would I treat a girl differently than I treat a boy? How would I cope with the obviously harmful sexism in media? How would I cope with any sexual pressure she might feel as a youngish child/teenager?

mind you, fear of rape or child molestation is a genuine concern, but I believe is pretty much the same concern whether one's child is male or female. So I don't see where I'd have to do a different examination for a girl than for a boy.

Also, how a healthy girl CHILD conducts her affairs seems to me to be vastly different than how a healthy girl ADULT conducts her affairs. How I as a grownup see the world might not necessarily be appropriate for a ten-year-old, for lots of reasons.

Maybe the way I'd treat a girl would turn her into some kind of predatory beast...it could happen, I suppose.

I'd like to tell her that nobody owns her body, not even her parents.

I'd like to tell her that the television lies, that pictures in magazines are fraudulent, that no means no, that it's okay to be who you are and feel how you feel and want what you want and not worry about what boys (or other girls) might think. I'd like to tell her that The Patriarchy is bullshit and nobody has authority over another person based on chromosomes alone. (which I'd also tell a boy.) I'd like to make her aware of the divine spark of life present in all humanity. I'd like to let her know her parents love her no matter what, even if she grows up to be a stripper or a prostitute or a lawyer or a stockbroker. yes, even a stockbroker.

so, that's all the examination I got for now. but Crankycrone_101 sure does have me thinking. what about y'all?

2007-12-05T18:17:00.000-08:00

So, I haven't done a lot of blogging recently. you may blame (or thank, according to your taste) the parasitic patriarch currently laying siege to my innards.

Seriously - the baby doesn't like it when I blog. He doesn't like it when I get my blood pressure all up and get all flappy and neurotic. he would much rather I stay relaxed, knit some stuff, have another Mountain Dew, lick an ashtray or two...

(actually that's not completely true. after all, I haven't knit anything for the baby.)

But I've tried not to get really overinvolved in blogwars in an unhealthy way lately, mostly because it does seem to be bad for the pregnancy (it makes me feel physically uncomfortable in a way that I can only assume to be pregnancy-related), but also because, you know, I see this stuff going on, and I think "a-ha! I can fix this, with my Pearls Of Wisdom! For I am so wise! behold my soooooooooper powers!" and I'm all full of optimism that what I say will be Part of The Solution, but by the time it gets out of my brain, through my fingers and on to the screen, it is clear that I'm just another Part of The Problem.

so, what's the point, really.

On the other hand, once in a blue moon, shit blows up in a way even I at my most broodmarishly maternal can't really ignore.

The executive summary? somewhere in the miasma of comments on Ginmar's blog, there occurred this exchange:

crankycrone_101
Hey Laurelin, even though technically not a death threat - don't forget the EXTREMELY LARGE FONTED "fuck you" to a select few radfems from butter-wouldn't-melt AntiPrincess!There is telling someone "fuck you".And telling them "fuck you" in uber-font.

ginmar
Typical Anti-P. Is this recent? I'm so glad she's having a baby. She'll be such a wonderful mother to the next Norman Bates.

crankycrone_101
I believe it was fairly soon after RenEv's "choking.." post, a week or two after(?)Perhaps we just call her Mrs Bates from now on? Her Norman will be one of the most impressive misogynists around, perhaps even become famous. What an honour!

ginmar:
Mrs. Bates? I like that. Mrs. Bates it is.

(here is the post under discussion. draw your own conclusions.)

My question is, how on earth does one respond to this in a way that doesn't just declare a permanent state of blogwar between the parties involved, ever expanding and never ending?

We have always been at war with Oceania...

yeah, I don't want that. For one thing, I'm way wicked lazy. So, I'm thinking there's got to be a better way.

I guess the main complaint (or one of the main complaints) lodged by the radfemblogosphere against the...the...sexpoxosphere? is that WE don't examine our choices, as we just blindly sort of drift along in life, like little baby oysters floating around until we find something big and masculine and privileged to anchor ourselves to. or something.

Well, I gotta tell you, after that whole Mrs. Bates thing, I'm in quite a state of examination, that's for sure. so maybe they'll get off my ass a little if I publicly EXAMINE that. How do I make absolutely positively sure the products of conception I'm currently incubating don't develop from an amorphous blob to a homicidal misogynist?

maybe I should have nipped this little problem in the bud six or so months ago. at least, it would have been easier to take the necessary medical steps to make sure the amorphous blob would never develop into a goddamn thing. and it's not too late, really.

But I'd rather have a baby.

One thing I could do is "refuse to nurse the male neonate", once it's born. that would ensure he wouldn't grow up to be the next Norman Bates.

But again, I'd rather have a baby.

I guess another thing I could do is refrain from sexually and emotionally abusing the baby once he's here. I could also treat him like a human being, and not a dangerous and hideous blight on the otherwise-stainless landscape of Womynland. I (and his father) could teach him not to be fucked-up about masculinity and femininity. we could teach him about the basic divinity and grace present in every living soul, male and female. we could teach him that no means no, and that television lies, and that magazine pictures are largely fraudulent. We could teach him lots of ways to stay sane in an insane world, that don't involve being a total asshole.

we could, in the immortal words of Bill and Ted on their Excellent Adventure, all learn to be excellent to each other.

hey, you know what?

maybe I should look at it this way: you may have saved a life, Gin. you're a regular angel. Thanks, Ginmar! I feel so much better, now that I've examined my choice to be humane with my child and endeavor to raise a decent human being.

yeah, if I hadn't already decided that in the first place, without your "help"...

2007-11-16T06:24:00.000-08:00

Justice Gone Awry, vol. 1:

Report: Court sentences rape victim Fri Nov 16, 12:27 AM ET

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - A Saudi court sentenced a woman who had been gang raped to six months in jail and 200 lashes — more than doubling her initial penalty for being in the car of a man who was not a relative, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The decision by the Qatif General Court came in a case that had sparked rare debate about the kingdom's justice system when it surfaced more than a year ago.

In its decision Wednesday, the court also roughly doubled prison sentences for the seven men convicted of raping the 19-year-old woman, the Arab News reported on its English-language Web site.

According to Arab News, the court said the woman's punishment was increased because of "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media."
She had initially been sentenced to 90 lashes after being convicting her of violating Saudi's rigid laws on segregation of the sexes.

Under Saudi Arabia's interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, women are not allowed in public in the company of men other than their male relatives.

The initial sentences for the men convicted of the gang rape ranged from 10 months to five years in prison. Their new sentences range from two to nine years, the paper said.

The attack took place in 2006. The woman has said that it occurred as she tried to retrieve her picture from a male high school student she used to know. While in the car with the student, two men got into the vehicle and drove them to a secluded area. She said she was raped there by seven men, three of whom also attacked her friend.

Reports of the story triggered debate about Saudi Arabia's legal system, in which judges have wide discretion in punishing a criminal, rules of evidence are shaky and sometimes no defense lawyers are present. The result, critics say, are sentences left to the whim of judges.

The judges, appointed by the king, have a wide discretion in handing down sentences, often said to depend on their whim. A rapist, for instance, could receive anywhere from a light or no sentence, to death.

The woman was identified in the media only as the Girl from Qatif. The case was referred back to the General Court by an appeals court last summer, after the woman's attorney argued the verdict was too lenient for the rapists and unjust for the victim.

The court also banned the lawyer from defending her, confiscated his license to practice law and summoned him to a disciplinary hearing later this month.

"I explained to them that it was my job to do everything legal in order to serve my client. But they did not listen," the lawyer, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, was quoted by the paper as saying.

and lest we here in the US think we've cornered the market on judicial wisdom, check out Justice Gone Awry, Vol. 2:

Rare robbery case brings cries of racism By JULIANA BARBASSA, Associated Press Writer
Fri Nov 16, 1:53 AM ET

LAKEPORT, Calif. - Three young black men break into a white man's home in rural Northern California. The homeowner shoots two of them to death — but it's the surviving black man who is charged with murder.

In a case that has brought cries of racism from civil rights groups, Renato Hughes Jr., 22, was charged by prosecutors in this overwhelmingly white county under a rarely invoked legal doctrine that could make him responsible for the bloodshed.

"It was pandemonium" inside the house that night, District Attorney Jon Hopkins said. Hughes was responsible for "setting the whole thing in motion by his actions and the actions of his accomplices."

Prosecutors said homeowner Shannon Edmonds opened fire Dec. 7 after three young men rampaged through the Clearlake house demanding marijuana and brutally beat his stepson. Rashad Williams, 21, and Christian Foster, 22, were shot in the back. Hughes fled.

Hughes was charged with first-degree murder under California's Provocative Act doctrine, versions of which have been on the books in many states for generations but are rarely used.

The Provocative Act doctrine does not require prosecutors to prove the accused intended to kill. Instead, "they have to show that it was reasonably foreseeable that the criminal enterprise could trigger a fatal response from the homeowner," said Brian Getz, a San Francisco defense attorney unconnected to the case.

The NAACP complained that prosecutors came down too hard on Hughes, who also faces robbery, burglary and assault charges. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.

The Rev. Amos Brown, head of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP and pastor at Hughes' church, said the case demonstrates the legal system is racist in remote Lake County, aspiring wine country 100 miles north of San Francisco. The sparsely populated county of 13,000 people is 91 percent white and 2 percent black.

Brown and other NAACP officials are asking why the homeowner is walking free. Tests showed Edmonds had marijuana and prescription medication in his system the night of the shooting. Edmonds had a prescription for both the pot and the medication to treat depression.

"This man had no business killing these boys," Brown said. "They were shot in the back. They had fled."

On Thursday, a judge granted a defense motion for a change of venue. The defense had argued that he would not be able to get a fair trial because of extensive local media coverage and the unlikelihood that Hughes could get a jury of his peers in the county. A new location for the trial will be selected Dec. 14.

The district attorney said that race played no part in the charges against Hughes and that the homeowner was spared prosecution because of evidence he was defending himself and his family, who were asleep when the assailants barged in at 4 a.m.

Edmonds' stepson, Dale Lafferty, suffered brain damage from the baseball bat beating he took during the melee. The 19-year-old lives in a rehabilitation center and can no longer feed himself.

"I didn't do anything wrong. All I did was defend my family and my children's lives," said Edmonds, 33. "I'm sad the kids are dead, I didn't mean to kill them."

He added: "Race has nothing to do with it other than this was a gang of black people who thought they were going to beat up this white family."

California's Provocative Act doctrine has primarily been used to charge people whose actions led to shooting deaths.

However, in one notable case in Southern California in 1999, a man who robbed a family at gunpoint in their home was convicted of murder because a police officer pursuing him in a car chase slammed into another driver in an intersection, killing her.

Hughes' mother, San Francisco schoolteacher Judy Hughes, said she believes the group didn't intend to rob the family, just buy marijuana. She called the case against her son a "legal lynching."

"Only God knows what happened in that house," she said. "But this I know: My son did not murder his childhood friends."

These moments of sagacity brought to you by Yahoo News.

2007-11-11T05:23:00.000-08:00

anyone else see this?

Government seeks to redefine privacy

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 5 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, a deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information.

Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act.

Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.

The original law required a court order for any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil, to protect Americans' privacy. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering.

The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people's private e-mails and phone calls without a court order between 2001 and 2007.

Some lawmakers, including members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, appear reluctant to grant immunity. Suits might be the only way to determine how far the government has burrowed into people's privacy without court permission.

The committee is expected to decide this week whether its version of the bill will protect telecommunications companies.

The central witness in a California lawsuit against AT&T says the government is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and phone calls as they pass through an AT&T switching station in San Francisco.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines.

does this make anyone else's blood run cold, or just me?

2007-11-06T03:41:00.000-08:00

in case you weren't paying attention:

Crazy Judge Gets It Wrong

From Ren:

See, if I take my car to get repaired and I drive off without paying the mechanic, THAT is theft of services. If I pull a gun on the mechanic, beat him, force him to repair my friend’s cars, then it becomes robbery with a deadly weapon, assault and battery, and assault with a deadly weapon. Oh yeah, and if I force him to have sex with me, its RAPE…even if he was hittin’ on me earlier.

or, if you like, more here:

Supporting sex worker rights is essential to fighting rape. As long as there is a class of women considered “bad” and somehow deserving of rape, all women, sex workers and non sex workers suffer. NO ONE chooses to be raped. The need for society to respect a woman’s right to choose, to consent, or not to as it comes to sex, regardless of how she dresses, what time she is outside, where she is walking, who she is with, and what she does for work, is a social necessity that we all must stand together for. Ending social views that deem some women as bad and deserving of rape is essential.

don't know what else to say - seems pretty obvious to me, really. but I suppose to some folks, speaking up for the victim in this case, and against the judge, is too close to speaking up for prostitutes in general.

sad.

2007-11-02T17:19:00.000-07:00

anyone paying attention to the weather in Mexico,
besides Mexicans?

if you're the sort who opens hir wallet to the suffering multitudes, this seems like a good time to do that. like, 900,000 times.

further south - anyone paying attention to Venezuela, besides Venezuelans?

I don't know how to feel about Chavez, and his whole "Fatherland, socialism or death" thing, and the changes made to the Venezuelan constitution that will allow him to be President-for-Life (am I reading that properly? do I have that right?) but I'm not Venezuelan. I'm a big fat spoiled american, and maybe there are delicate nuanced subtleties that make Chavez just the thing to cure what ails Venezuela.

any musings on the subject are absolutely welcome. comments wide open. if anyone has some good recommended reading so I can do my homework and not be an uninformed big fat spoiled american, that would be great.

2007-10-24T19:04:00.000-07:00

I'd be interested in what we all think about this:

Thanks to the fine folks at Yahoo News:

Prostitutes sew lips together in Bolivia protest

LA PAZ (Reuters) - Prostitutes in the Bolivian city of El Alto sewed their lips together on Wednesday as part of a hunger strike to demand that the mayor reopen brothels and bars ordered closed after violent protests by residents last week.

"We are fighting for the right to work and for our families' survival," Lily Cortez, leader of the El Alto Association of Nighttime Workers, told local television.

"Tomorrow we will bury ourselves alive if we are not immediately heard. The mayor will have his conscience to answer to if there are any grave consequences, such as the death of my comrades," she said, surrounded by about 10 prostitutes who had sewn their lips together with thread.

Some 30 other women were shown fasting inside a medical clinic nearby.

Mayor Fanor Nava told local radio he would not reopen the brothels and bars closed after city residents fed up with underage drinking and crime stormed the red-light district in El Alto, an impoverished city just north of La Paz.

Prostitution in Bolivia is legal but pimping is outlawed.

Student activists who want the bars and brothels permanently shut down were also on a hunger strike, along with the leaders of an association representing bars, restaurants and karaoke establishments.

"It's not only us owners and the sex workers who are affected, there are thousands of waiters, cooks, bartenders, taxi drivers and street vendors who will be without income," said Ramiro Orellana, spokesman for the business group.

El Alto is one of the largest urban areas in Bolivia, with nearly 1 million inhabitants, mostly Aymara and Quechua Indians.

Bolivian sex workers taking extreme measures to demand the right to work? student activists and sex workers in dueling hunger strikes?

the mind reels. as it should. comments are, as usual, wide open. I want to know what you all think, whatever side of the issue you fall on.

2007-10-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

here is a newly-minted blog by someone near and dear to me: Baby Love Child. (I shoulda done this yesterday but fell asleep before I could get my brain around it. sorry, BLC. better late than never?)

it's about adoption. but maybe not how you'd think. I'm still pretty much in the shut-up-and-listen stage (or should be, as evidenced by the rest of this post, I'm sure), but she's got a lot to say, as usual ;). go forth and show some bloglove!

the more pregnant I get, the more I get all ruminate-y about adoption, abortion, all that stuff - maybe as a distraction from the 3:00 am internal jackhammerings of ittybitty feet, or as a distraction from the terror of impending parenthood, or as a distraction from excavating the toxic waste dump that is my kitchen - but I find myself giving it all a lot of thought.

I think that often the impetus for both abortion and adoption springs from the same source - that big loud voice, that Myth-of-Patriarchy voice that tells you the products of your conception are misplaced, ill-timed, inappropriately-raced, inappropriately-gendered, doomed out of the gate to a life of miserable grinding poverty and shame, or otherwise Damaged Goods and Not For You, and should instead be removed, disposed of - whether it's before or after the products of conception grow into a baby, does it really matter? either way, The Voice tells you that what your body creates is Wrong and you should make its wrongness go away, whether sooner or later.

which is fucked up. really, the only voice that should tell a woman whether to become a mom is her own.

and yeah, a woman should be able to have sex however she wants, with whomever she wants, upsidedown and sideways and swinging from the chandelier if she wants, and still not become a mom if she doesn't want to be. but too often the conception of a child causes this weird chaos wherein everyone involved goes berzerk, as though the world will stop spinning if this misplaced conception is allowed to grow into a human being and stay with its mom. Voices that have nothing to do with the reality of the pregnant woman's life grow louder and louder, and her voice softer and softer, until it really does seem like she's committed some terrible offense against humanity, and her body is full of wrongness that must be purged, sooner or later.

a baby, a human life (if you will, if you must), should not be a punishment, the wages of sin, a heavy burden, a mark of disgrace. Bodies reproduce. It's what they're put on earth to do. no baby should be considered "undesirable" unless its mom isn't into motherhood, really truly not into it, and not just under the influence of The Big Mythical Voice and its pernicious lies.

you know, what I don't know about adoption could fill a book, no doubt. but apparently, both locally and globally, it's kind of a racket. The Adoption-Industrial Complex, so to speak.

And adopted kids, globally and locally - they don't all remain adorably sleeping in their basinets, all pigtailed and perfect for eternity. they grow up into adults. adults who sometimes have issues with how it all went down, who sometimes grow up with no idea of their history, their medical needs, their genetic tendencies - and who can't even find out, even if they ask extra super nicely and bow down to the Bureaucracy Gods.

I'm no more anti-adoption than I am anti-abortion. but so many voices (like Baby Love Child's, like other adults who were adopted as children) get left out of the discussion, so that it's hard not to turn a critical eye on the way adoption goes down. some say it's impossible to have an ethical adoption. I wonder about that.

well, I guess that's about all I have. comments are, as usual, wide open. just remember that real people are out there in the ether.

2007-10-17T17:47:00.000-07:00

Odds and Ends -

Trinity is going places I just can't go yet and I am truly thankful that she's brave enough to go there. Even five years on, it's just too painful for me. Someday it won't be, and the fact that folks like Trinity speak up makes me feel so grateful.

My temp assignment at my Dream Job ended abruptly (albeit with cake, and a lovely card, and excellent references, and many kind words), which made me cry. I'm going on a job interview tomorrow, for more money than I've ever seen in my life - this does not fill me with joy, unfortunately. the gig sounds utterly soulless, and I have to put on my Grownup Professional Lady costume. and I'm afraid that for all my efforts they won't hire me anyway, 'cuz the baby and all.

I'm trying hard not to anthropomorphize the baby, because it's not a baby yet. but I just felt some weird thrashy-wiggly feelings yesterday morning for the first time. parasite, thy name is Wolfgang...

oh, and I got a haircut. (must be an epidemic...)

see, I had this snarl. I thought I wouldn't tell anyone about it, because it was really embarrassing. but now I feel like I have to explain the haircut.

this snarl - it took up my whole hair. it was so big, it had its own zip code. you could see it from space it was so big. I shoulda joined the circus with it and charged people money to see it. it was SO BIG.

It was that big because I was uninterested in doing my hair (or much of anything) for about three months while I was otherwise occupied with my head in the fucking toilet.

but then I woke up one morning, feeling a little better, and when I went to wash my (long-ass, extremely frizzy) hair, I discovered The Snarl That Ate My Soul.

woah.

the hair-salon lady told me to dump a bunch of baby oil on it, and sleep with my hair under a shower cap for a coupla days. so I did that. and I worked on Snarly McTangle for about four days, taking breaks when I just-couldn't-cope. and tonight I'd just had enough. So I went back to the hair-salon lady, and she examined and considered and washed and poked and finally said - "It's probably best if I cut it out. But it won't be so bad. Don't worry. It will be healthier and grow back real fast because you're pregnant."

so now my hair, which I used to be able to tuck into the waistband of my pants, is now hovering just above my shoulders. I am greatly relieved to be snarl-free, but full of anxiety. Will I look like Bozo the Pregnant Lady? will my husband hate it? will I look non-professional in the morning?

it will grow back it will grow back it will grow back it will grow back...

2007-10-10T07:37:00.000-07:00

I don't often comment on Big Issues, those sorts of subjects that get EVERYONE participating - The News, The War, the Jena 6, the Newark 7, the big stuff like that. Often I find that I just don't feel like I have the experience or the credibility to really make a statement that means anything. Sometimes I feel like it's impossible to get the whole story, and how can I make a meaningful comment without all the information? And sometimes I feel like eightyseven other bloggers are already saying what I would have said, and all my readers (what, all seven or eight of y'all?) have already read all those others, so anything I'd have to say would be redundant.

But consider the Billericay One, if you yourself haven't already.

I'm not the caregiver of a disabled individual. TODAY.
Nor am I a disabled individual myself. TODAY.

but those conditions are liable to change at a moment's notice. you never know. It's always seemed sort of funny to me to speak from an able-bodied point of view, because that privilege is, in a way, so temporary. yeah, I'm not disabled - YET. my presence on this earth does not require adaptive measures - YET. my body is still quite functional, everything's all hooked up and operating normally, and still obviously and unequivocally mine - AT THE MOMENT. but who knows when that all goes out the window, due to age, accident, or genetic timebomb suddenly exploding.

I'm about to become a mom. I feel like I should be all "yay rah go mom! your daughter would thank you if she could!"

But I'm not.

Maybe this is my able-bodied, non-caregiver privilege talking, but I don't see myself gutting my daughter because it helps me sleep better at night, knowing she doesn't have that pesky uterus anymore.

It's not like missing a coupla days of cramps every month means that Katie is pain-free, considering her other disabilities (such as may exist).

and what about possible complications from surgery?

and if she already has incontinence issues, how does menstruation affect her overall hygiene?

frankly, this operation seems to be more disrespectful to her personhood than cramps, bleeding, and dirty diapers could be.

that's what I think, anyway. from my able-bodied, non-caregiving point of view. I just thought it was important to say that.

2007-10-05T06:08:00.000-07:00

so yesterday I got off the bus after a hard day at the office and began the long waddle homeward.

I like to think that I walk with the regal gait of the Divine Feminine these days, swaying gracefully left and right to accomodate my growing womb, gently rocking its contents into a tranquil state of fetal well-being.

but let's face it - I waddle. Like a big-ass duck. Even before I was pregnant I waddled, owing to my shall-we-say-generous physique. The only difference these days is that I'm hauling around a seven-pound sack of parasite, which not only requires some maneuvering but also makes my sciatica sing like Renata Tebaldi. so I'm slow and cumbersome. and yesterday afternoon, tired and cranky.

There's one intersection I have to negotiate on the about-half-mile walk home. it's a dangerous one, even with the helpful Mr. Walk light. Cars do NOT pay attention to pedestrians at this intersection. they blast through red lights, cut right-on-red corners, basically cruise on through like they own the road with no regard for people crossing the street. but that's people in cars for you. Usually I don't let it get to me.

So I trundle across the road (think of the oboe (?) solo in Peter and the Wolf, to get a good grasp of my pace and attitude as I drag my ass across the street, or whatever slow-and-heavy piece you like). But I'm halfway down the sidewalk on the other side of the street, nearly home, when this white car pulls up beside me, and a woman leans her head out the window, and shouts out "YOU REALLY SHOULD LEARN HOW TO WALK FASTER!" and drives away.

my only regret is that I was unable to get it together enough even to administer the most basic double-one-fingered-salute. But I was so confused! what did she think she was going to accomplish by that? Was it an insult, or a Public Service Announcement? Did she think I was going to immediately start bouncing down the sidewalk with a song in my heart and a spring in my step?

geez, I thought - must be nice to have a CAR, that you can DRIVE AROUND IN, and HOLLER THINGS AT RANDOM STRANGERS WHO ARE WALKING HOME AFTER TAKING THE FUCKING BUS A LONG DAY AT THE OFFICE AND CAN'T YOU SEE I'M FUCKING PREGNANT?

but boy, did that get me to thinking.

Lack of car notwithstanding, the White American Pregnant Lady is, in many respects, one of the most privileged of personages. Especially if she's an adult and not a teenager. Especially if she's lucky enough to have a job indoors with no heavy lifting or exposure to environmental toxins. Especially if she's lucky enough to have a husband. Especially if her family is cool with having a baby.

People cut me all kinds of slack all the time. I rarely have to lift anything, or be on time for anything, or really actually DO anything. and people give me food, and stuff, and then say "no, I'm glad to do it - you're pregnant!" I don't know how people actually feel about me, but they sure do treat me like I'm special and delicate and worthy of making a tremendous fuss over.

But I'd say I'm in about the nth-fraction-of-a-percentage that gets this preferential treatment, globally speaking.

and it's bullshit. Women get pregnant ALL THE DAMN TIME. and carry on with their lives without a fanfare following them wherever they go. They have to do whatever work they were doing before they got knocked up, carry on bending over sewing machines and pulling up weeds and carrying laundry and mopping up other people's shit and whatever else women do around the world. but somehow I Heidi get to coast for nine months because I'm a Special White Lady Carrying A Special White Baby.

ugh.

It's not like I'm hauling the Last Hapsburg Prince around with me, or some genetically-modified Experimental Sewwwwwwwwwwwwwwper-Genius. I have every reason to believe that Wolfgang will grow up to be really really ordinary. He'll eat, sleep, shit, puke, grow up, drink, smoke, fuck, and die. He'll be a jerk sometimes and a great guy sometimes, just like everyone else.

if he even makes it out into the world alive. it's not even a baby yet, though the urge to anthropomorphize is (obviously) irresistable.

so where do I get off, snailing my way across the street like that?

2007-09-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

So, the ultrasound revealed unto us many interesting aspects of the fetus, to include knobby little knees, wiggly little brain, robustly-pumping chambers of the heart and, notably, incontrovertible evidence of gender.

it's a...
it's a...
it's a PATRIARCH! a baby patriarch! (and trust me, if the state of my stomach is any indication, he's already oppressing at a fifth grade level.)

(once again, I shame the matriarchy.)

So our old pal Bimbo dropped by to say hello, and I showed her the blurry little ultrasound picture which, I'm told, clearly reveals evidence of predestination-of-oppressor-status, and she went "Yay! have you thought about a name?"

Well, yeah, I says. we still like Wolfgang. it's non-negotiable, according to the Patriarch-in-chief.

"So, what about a middle name?" she asked. she had some helpful suggestions:

"Caine, Joseph, Angus, Edgar, Huck, Horatio, Hieronymous?"

"eh," I says.

then she gets a little quiet. she smiles. she goes -

"I've got it. it's perfect.

"Wolfgang Patriarchy."

"See, that way," she says, "anytime something breaks, you can say 'I blame the Patriarchy! go to your room!', and when he says 'that's not fair', you can say 'I said, Go to your room! I'm oppressing the Patriarchy!'"

Genius, thy name is Bimbo.

2007-09-21T14:34:00.000-07:00

Daisy's got something to say. And since she couldn't bring it to the source, she took it to her own blog.

Consider this:

FTR, I think sex work sounds terrible. I would not want to do it, or have my daughter do it. I would also not want to pick grapes or soybeans out in the fields, or work on an assembly line, as my father did. However, I do want the migrant workers and factory employees to have rights and unionization, whether I think they are exploited or not--in fact, PRIMARILY and PRECISELY for this reason--to prevent FURTHER exploitation.

Do you in fact agree that workers need unions and rights? Why are you making an exception for WOMEN, in this case? Why have you bought into the MALE definition of sex work as SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS rather than a business transaction?

It's men who fantasize about the sex-work-scenarios being "real"--surely you realize they are not? They are part of the job, just as a car salesman laughs at our dumb jokes in hopes we will buy one of his cars. But you seem to have a totally different standard for judging women's work, in this instance, and what has historically been men's work. Men's work is respected by you, and women's is not, unless it's sewing, childcare, knitting or canning fruit.

(emphasis mine) or fucking for money, presumably.

The idea that only the men matter in the prostitute-client relationship is, well, sexist. Why would someone who calls herself a feminist (the best and most radical and least fun kind) want to be sexist?

Allowing men's opinions (or what are presumed to be the opinions of all men) to be given EXPONENTIALLY more weight than women's opinions on any given subject is also, well, sexist.

"men hate you." yeah, whatever. that doesn't mean I have to hate me, regardless of whether I exchange sexual activity for money or not.

I mean, speaking as a non-prostitute, there's a limit to what I can say on the subject, I know that. I have never had a pimp (though I did have an abusive husband who told me exactly who I would and would not be fucking on any particular evening, and to whom I surrendered my entire paycheck every week for the privilege, and who beat me often enough to keep me in a perpetual state of fear, and so on), nor have I ever accepted cash in exchange for intercourse (though I had no problem exchanging all manner of sexual activity for dinner or a place to stay or just some good conversation).

I can say that about 20 years ago, well prior to the aforementioned abusive marriage, I considered it, but for me personally I was dissuaded by several factors:

1) I didn't feel comfortable charging money for something that cost me nothing, and that I'd almost certainly give away free (and often did, to more-or-less-random-strangers).
2) As a somewhat non-traditional body type, making a rather unpleasant visual statement (short, fat, uninteresting, hairy), I wasn't sure I'd be able to earn any more money than I could earn sitting behind a desk without significant effort on my part to bring myself "up to spec", so to speak.
3) I didn't have a need for immediate cash, having no children to look after, or chronically ill relatives to tend to, or real deep pressing desire for something I couldn't afford on my more-or-less measly, and sadly far-from-frequent, paychecks.

but I never excluded sex work on the basis that it would make me a cumdumpster, or less worthy of respect in anyone's eyes, or because the act of intercourse was intimate and should not be degraded by money, or because my body was at all sacred or special or inviolable, or sex for money was rape, or anything else.

and how I felt about sex, and how I felt about myself, was not, and ought not be, contingent upon how others feel about me or about sex.

So, you know, take my opinion for what it's worth - significantly less than two cents, no doubt. But I can certainly envision a situation where a woman might look at her options and decide - eh, it's a living.

I think that for some women prostitution is just a job. I would not be surprised if some folks out there think it's not just a job but an avocation, a labor of love. (And of course, none of this is to diminish the fact that for some women, prostitution is a living hell.)

To assume that all women SHOULD hold the same opinion about a particular issue, and that opinion SHOULD be framed only in reflection of how MEN feel about the issue, is, well, sexist.

But, that's really all I can say on the subject. I'm not the boss of y'all, not trying to tell you what to think. Follow the links and make your own decisions, form your own opinions.

and when you do, please feel free to share them with me. Just because commenting is a spectator sport at The Margins for those of us who don't agree with Heart, doesn't mean the same policy is in effect here (obviously). Commenting around here can sometimes be more like extreme BMX solo synchronized downhill slalom Monster Truck cliff diving - but that shouldn't scare anyone away. ;)

I don't care if you agree with me or not - but if you have something to say, you are more than welcome to get it off your chest here. in fact I'd prefer it.

2007-09-19T17:31:00.001-07:00

Anyone watching "Kid Nation?"

2007-09-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

Timely:

from Yahoo News:

In Asia, MTV turns camera on trafficking By Simon Montlake
Tue Sep 18, 4:00 AM ET

Bangkok, Thailand - Its high production values, driving musical score, and slick edits make the film, in the words of its producers, "very MTV."

But don't expect to see boy bands or risqué hip-hop. MTV's "Traffic" is a hard-hitting, US-funded documentary that is part of a campaign aimed at educating vulnerable youth in Asia about the risks of being trafficked illegally for exploitative labor.

The movie, which premieres Tuesday on MTV Thailand, is tailored for the US broadcaster's vast youth audience in go-getting East Asia. By raising awareness of the dangers, campaigners say they hope to address a practice that is akin to modern-day slavery.

"This is a criminal enterprise and it involves criminals," says Richard Whelden, deputy director in Asia for the US Agency for International Development, which is funding the MTV campaign. "It's undercover and in the shadows. What we're doing is putting a spotlight on the problem and bringing it out in the open so you can see what it is: slavery."

Antitrafficking advocates say that governments in Southeast Asia, where smuggling of women and children is rife, have begun to tighten laws and step up cross-border cooperation. This has allowed for some successful criminal prosecutions. But traffickers continue to exploit porous borders and lax policing, while shifting their operations to countries that have yet to fully outlaw the practice and only enforce labor laws with milder penalties.

MTV's 24-minute television special seeks to portray the dangers of human trafficking in Asia through the harrowing stories of three young victims. One is sold overseas into commercial sex work, another is beaten and abused as a domestic servant, and the third is forced to work around the clock in a factory. Viewers will also get advice on where to turn for help and how to get involved in the campaign.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 12.3 million people worldwide are engaged in some kind of forced or bonded work, including child labor. Much of this takes place within a single country's borders: Hundreds of teenagers and adults were found earlier this year toiling in prisonlike conditions in kilns and mines in central China.

The State Department estimates that around 800,000 people are sold illegally across national borders. It says that 80 percent of those trafficked internationally are women and children, most of whom are sold into prostitution. The global market for smuggled people is worth between $7 billion and $10 billion annually, second only to the illegal drug trade.

Thailand's sex industry has long been a magnet for traffickers. As Thai authorities try to curb the most egregious abuses, criminals have switched to supplying women to brothels in Malaysia and Singapore, says Edelweiss Silan, an antitrafficking coordinator in Bangkok for Save the Children. "They're trying to move to where laws are not in place, and people aren't aware of the issue," she says.

These shortcomings will likely dampen the impact of regional information campaigns unless they're harnessed to long-term rural development and better governance, say advocates. "Raising awareness is not enough. Government interventions are not enough ... there needs to be a critical mass developed to reduce the numbers," says Allan Dow, a spokesman for the ILO's antitrafficking unit in Bangkok.

Called EXIT, or End Exploitation and Trafficking, the MTV campaign includes public service spots, South Korean-made animation shorts, and a multilingual website (www.mtvexit.org). "Traffic" is being dubbed into eight languages by local celebrities, such as Korean pop icon Rain. In South Asia, a separate documentary called "Sold" will be aired. Advocacy groups say trafficking patterns differ in that region.

MTV says it reaches 380 million mainly urban households across Asia. To get the message out to rural areas where traffickers mostly recruit, EXIT specials will be rebroadcast on free-to-air channels, says Simon Goff, campaign director for MTV. Local organizations will also screen films in at-risk communities. In Burma (Myanmar), where TV coverage is limited, MTV plans to distribute free copies via consumer-product marketing networks.

Experts say another factor complicating the response to trafficking is that it's often hard to untangle the forced, illegal movement from voluntary migration. People smugglers offer a way out of rural poverty, so migrants who are rescued and repatriated may try to leave again, despite the risks. Some antitrafficking raids on brothels in Thailand have incurred the wrath of sex workers who reject being classified as victims who need to be saved.

Given this complexity, campaigners say MTV's message to viewers isn't as simple as "Don't do it." "Some people will still take risks. And this is why we've got to continue making these programs to try to ensure that they know these resources exist that can help them," says Mr. Goff.

thoughts? questions? comments? smart remarks?

2007-09-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

sad news from Yahoo:
HARTFORD, Conn. - Author Madeleine L'Engle, whose novel "A Wrinkle in Time" has been enjoyed by generations of schoolchildren and adults since the 1960s, has died, her publicist said Friday. She was 88.

L'Engle died Thursday at a nursing home in Litchfield of natural causes, according to Jennifer Doerr, publicity manager for publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The Newbery Medal winner wrote more than 60 books, including fantasies, poetry and memoirs, often highlighting spiritual themes and her Christian faith.

Although L'Engle was often labeled a children's author, she disliked that classification. In a 1993 Associated Press interview, she said she did not write down to children.

"In my dreams, I never have an age," she said. "I never write for any age group in mind. When people do, they tend to be tolerant and condescending and they don't write as well as they can write.

"When you underestimate your audience, you're cutting yourself off from your best work."

"A Wrinkle in Time" — which L'Engle said was rejected repeatedly before it found a publisher in 1962 — won the American Library Association's 1963 Newbery Medal for best American children's book. Her "A Ring of Endless Light" was a Newbery Honor Book, or medal runner-up, in 1981.

In 2004, President Bush awarded her a National Humanities Medal.

"Wrinkle" tells the story of adolescent Meg Murry, her genius little brother Charles Wallace, and their battle against evil as they search across the universe for their missing father, a scientist.

L'Engle followed it up with further adventures of the Murry children, including "A Wind in the Door," 1973; "A Swiftly Tilting Planet," 1978, which won an American Book Award; and "Many Waters," 1986.

2007-09-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

from Yahoo news:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A newly discovered virus may be killing bees or may be making some bees vulnerable enough to disappear, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

While the virus probably does not alone account for what scientists call colony collapse disorder, or CCD, it could help explain what is happening to bees across the United States, they said.

The virus, called Israeli acute paralysis virus, or IAPV, was discovered in Israel in 2004 and is new to science.

CCD hit an estimated 23 percent of all beekeeping operations in the United States during the winter of 2006-7. "These beekeepers lost an average of 45 percent of their operations," the researchers wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.

Beekeepers do not find bees dead -- they simply find the hives nearly empty, with the queens alone and workers gone.

Honeybees originally imported from Europe are used to pollinate $14.6 billion worth of fruits, nuts and other U.S. crops annually. Bees also have disappeared from hives in Brazil and across Europe.

A team led by Dr. Ian Lipkin, an expert in the spread of infectious diseases at Columbia University in New York, ground up bee samples from across the United States and compared them to non-affected bees from Pennsylvania and Hawaii. They also looked at bees imported from Australia and samples of a bee product called royal jelly from China.

They then sequenced the genomes -- the entire collection of DNA -- and looked for genes from bacteria, viruses and parasites. They found five major bacterial groups, four lineages of fungi and seven types of viruses.

"We found a remarkably high viral burden in bee populations -- both those that have CCD and not," biologist Edward Holmes of Pennsylvania State University told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Only one was always associated with CCD -- IAPV.

"Whether it is a causative agent or a very good marker is the next major question that we need to address," said Diana Cox-Foster, an entomology professor at Penn State. A marker might mean that something else that was making the bees disappear also helped them become infected with the virus.

Jeffery Pettis of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory in Maryland said IAPV was only one of several leads that must still be followed.

"I hope no one goes away with the idea that we have actually solved the problem," Pettis told the briefing.

"I still believe that multiple factors must be involved in CCD." Perhaps interactions among parasites, viruses and nutrition could be involve, he said.

IAPV can by transmitted by the varroa mite, a parasite known to affect U.S. bees.

Lipkin said in a telephone interview the next step is to infect healthy bees with IAPV and see if their colonies then collapse, as seen in CCD.

Cox-Foster said the team was also looking at other possible causes of CCD, although some leads were being pursued more urgently than others.

"We have very little evidence that the radiation from cellphones could impact bees," she said.

She said tests also have shown that genetically modified crops have no ill effects on bees, although chemical pesticides could be adding stress.

As for why the bees disappear, Cox-Foster said they may deliberately avoid returning to the hive when they begin to feel ill, perhaps to protect their sisters and the queen.

I have a tremendous fear of bees, wasps, hornets - anything that wants to sting me. I'm not allergic, just really really phobic.

so you'd think that I'd be delighted at the recent bee shortage. Not so.

I'm totally not a biologist, but I do know that no bees = no flowers, which doesn't just mean no daisies, no roses, no lovely gardens, but also no vegetables, no fruits, no grains, no trees, no nothing that bashes its way out of the ground and grows up from the dirt.

so, I am grateful that scientists are looking into it, phobia be damned.

nonetheless, I'm skeptical of their findings that humankind's interference is statistically irrelevant. I hope their research continues and figures out effective ways to combat bee death/disappearance.

I trust science, but not scientists.

2007-09-06T11:08:00.000-07:00

Fatherhood.

ok, whadaya got? do I even have any fathers among my readers?

what's it all about, Alfie?

is fatherhood an outmoded concept that can be cheerfully discarded along with dial phones and the telegraph?

was fatherhood ever as important as some folks might claim?

and if fatherhood really is as important as those folks are claiming, how does it happen that so many men abandon their children, whether physically or emotionally?

or is the whole "absent father" trip the mythical part, and the state of fatherhood is actually perfectly sound?

2007-09-05T04:01:00.000-07:00

I'm wondering if I shouldn't post some sort of "comments policy" or something, or at least explain my thoughts behind how I run things here.

I don't delete comments, as a rule. not from anyone.

and I'll talk to anybody who shows up. women, men, IRL friends, family, sworn enemies of my best internet pals, conservative republicans, radical feminists, anonymous troublemakers - I try my best to answer every comment, in good faith and with a civil tongue, and as far as I know, I have yet to delete anyone's comment just because I disagree with it or dislike the commenter.

sometimes I fail, yeah. sometimes I don't get a chance to answer every comment. and sometimes my faith is less than good and my tongue less than civil. usually when that's brought to my attention I try to make it right.

and now that I think about it, there was one occasion, back in the mists of time, where I did remove someone's comments from a thread. but I don't make a habit of it, and certainly that commenter is welcome to participate again if s/he likes.

And I know that some folks don't dig how I handle my comment threads. some people that I consider good close friends don't like it. but they seem to understand that's how it is here.

I'd say, if you really have a problem with what I'm saying or how I'm saying it, you are welcome to take advantage of my wide-open comments policy and talk to me about it.

if I say I'll let anyone comment, I mean ANYONE. if anonymous assholes can comment and be treated more-or-less humanely, why can't you? go for it!

2007-09-03T16:15:00.000-07:00

happy 200th post!

was parenthood easier thirty years ago?

were the rituals of pregnancy and motherhood less fraught and weighty, or more?

any thoughts?

2007-08-28T06:37:00.000-07:00

God, I wish all sex pozzes would die under a truck for the way they've treated feminists, choking on their own blood.

Now let's see, shall we, what becomes of this experiment? It will be fun, won't it?

Ladies and Gentlemen - Ginmar.

I don't know what kind of reaction she was expecting, really. I mean, it's hard to say whether the experiment was successful (or even fun) because we don't know her hypothesis. But I read that post, and the (rather short) comments thread it spawned, and I'm put in mind of the immortal words, slightly paraphrased, of that great philosopher, Eric Cartman:

"It's my hot bloggy, Ah'll do what Ah want!"

yes, honey. yes it is. and yes you can. all day long. you can even rigorously screen out comments from people who disagree with your behavior, to make it seem like the whole world just loves what you're doing with your hot bloggy. because it's yours, and you can do what you want.

even if it makes you look silly.

it's your hot bloggy, after all, and you can do what you want.

2007-08-14T19:46:00.000-07:00

and in other news:

Van Halen is touring?

except not with Michael Anthony on bass, but with Wolfgang Van Halen instead.

is this one of the seven signs?

note: for more delicious VH-related goodness (actually, a really cool post inspired at least tangentially by little old me) click here.

2007-08-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

Huh -

Mary Winkler is out.

Apparently she was treated for depression and PTSD, and released.

According to CNN:

Winkler never denied shooting her husband, Matthew, the popular new preacher at the Fourth Street Church of Christ in Selmer, a town of 4,500 people about 80 miles east of Memphis.

On March 22, 2006, church elders found his body -- with a shotgun wound to the back -- in the bedroom of the parsonage after he failed to show up for an evening service. His wife was arrested the next day with the couple's three young daughters in Orange Beach, Alabama, on the Gulf coast.

Mary Winkler was charged with murder, which could have sent her to prison for up to 60 years, but a jury found her guilty of voluntary manslaughter following an emotional trial in which she testified about suffering years of verbal and physical abuse.

In a statement to police after her arrest, Winkler said she didn't recall pulling the trigger .She said she apologized and wiped the blood that bubbled from her dying husband's lips as he asked, "Why?"

Prosecutors and Matthew Winkler's family members said he was a good husband and father.

But on the stand, Mary Winkler described a hellish 10-year marriage during which, she said, her husband struck her, screamed at her, criticized her and blamed her when things went wrong. She said he made her watch pornography and wear "slutty" costumes for sex, and that he forced her to submit to sex acts that made her uncomfortable.

She testified she pointed the shotgun at her husband during an argument to force him to talk through their problems, and "something went off."

A defense psychologist testified that she was depressed and showed classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mary Winkler initially received a three-year sentence in June. But Circuit Court Judge J. Weber McCraw required that she serve only 210 days, and allowed her to serve the rest of the time on probation.

She also received credit for five months she spent behind bars awaiting trial, which left only about 60 days to her sentence. McCraw ruled she could serve the time in a mental health facility.

2007-08-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

Consider a man, a woman, a chess set.

the woman, a novice, challenges the man, considerably more experienced, to a duel on the blasted heath of the black&white squares. he accepts, intrigued. she smacktalks savagely, all bravado and bluster. he patiently waits until she makes a series of beginner mistakes, then takes her apart, like a cat delicately but savagely dismembering a mouse, until she realizes she's quite dead.

"good game", she says. she means it. they shake hands and part friends. she's exhilarated. the humiliation is delicious. addictive. they will meet again.

so here's the question. here we have a man, a woman, a chess set. considering that the woman is a novice, and men generally have dominated the chess world (as far as I know), what should a fellow do in this situation, if he considers himself a feminist, an ally, a profeminist man, whathaveyou? how should he behave in order to remain consistent in his principles?

should he:

a) grind her into paste, as that's the only way to learn to be a good chess player, and it is certainly desirable to encourage good female chess players (by any means necessary)?
b) let her win, so as to balance out the 2000 years of chess inequity, acting as an agent of reparations in a way?
c) "chess? who wants to play chess? that's soooooooo patriarchal. let's go shopping!"

I mean, when it comes to men and feminism, is it faith or works that distinguish the good guys from the bad guys?

2007-08-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream that Twisty and I got married.

it was a lovely ceremony, in Texas as I recall. and everyone was just thrilled.

(I guess that's how I knew it was a dream.)

but, naturally, when I woke up I had to go back to IBTP, for the first time in a while.

It's mostly the same as it ever was. The title of one of her recent posts is eyecatching and amusing, to wit:

"Are You A Fake Feminist?"

I take no small satisfaction in knowing that, apparently, I was a Fake Feminist waaaaaaaaay before it was cool.

The post is all about those stupid quizzes that show up here and there around the web, notably the "Are You A Feminist" quiz. She objects, naturally, and dissects the whole thing rather adeptly, and comes up with her own one-question "are you a feminist or not" quiz. Which, you know, no surprises there.

The thing about those quizzes is that they always, ALWAYS reveal more about the quiz-maker than the quiz-taker.

so here's Twisty's question to tell whether you're a feminist or not:

True or false: Anyone with the means to do so who doesn’t vociferously advocate women’s total liberation from male dominance and oppression is misogynist scum.

There you have it. Any thoughts? questions, comments, smart remarks?

Mind you, I personally can't answer the question before I know what she means by "means". fiscal? intellectual? emotional? what?

Nor can I really wrap my brain around what she's really after when she uses the words "liberation", "male dominance", and "oppression." So, if anyone has any thoughts on that, feel free.

A related question - is the author Gerda Lerner considered a reliable source?

2007-08-08T10:11:00.000-07:00

probably the more-or-less last post about Heart, at least for a while.

I don't know how many of y'all are really following the collapse of Heart's internet house of cards, but I have rather mixed feelings about it all.

which is not to say that I would not be distraught if (or, maybe more to the point, will not be distraught when) some idiot wind blows down my own internet house of cards. But nonetheless, I'm ambivalent --

One of the things I really admired about Heart, for all my disagreements with her, was her ability to build huge, apparently relatively diverse communities. And I still have to admit that her blogroll is enviably huge, her discussion threads enviably long, her readership enviably numerous and loyal (more loyal these days if not quite as numerous).

So, yeah, I'm awfully sad for her that her message board was destroyed. That's an awful lot of hard work and time and effort shot to hell - and that's a shame. That wide-ranging internet presence that is/was The Margins was not the result of an occasional offhand hour or two of HTML coding, but a real concerted effort to learn how to create functional web environments which, you know, takes real persistence and determination. And I have to say that even though our ideological differences are canyon-wide, I really respect that effort and dedication.

And now, all gone. Adieu, adieu, all's vanity. As a fellow human being who knows from loss, I can't help but grieve with her.

On the other tentacle, however, I hold no illusions that my shared grief will endear me to Heart or her pals. I am, and my pals are, after all, largely part of the problem in their eyes with all our porn-not-hating and Nigel-tolerating and patriarchy- um, whatevering. And that angers me to a level which threatens to eclipse my feelings of genuine sympathy. The idea that I, or any other nonradfem woman, is just the same as, just as bad as, a basement-dwelling adolescent 4channer is intolerably insulting.

I have to be honest about that, otherwise I feel like my expression of genuine sympathy is meaningless.

To be fair, maybe Heart herself doesn't believe that. but I get the sense that many in her community do. And I can't help but mention it.

Emboldened by my anger, and secure in the knowledge that she and her crew would spare me no tears if such a thing were to happen to me, I am moved to say this:

If y'all gonna talk shit, be prepared to draw flies.

Yes, I think that her campaign has something to do with the DNS attack. Absolutely. Presidential campaigns make people, um, inquisitive - just ask Gary Hart. People who are running for President ought not do certain things where people can see them - like hang out online with, and give all manner of approval to, people who would prefer to have aborted their male children rather than deal with knowing they masturbate with naked pictures. It's just not very presidential.

Yes, I think that it's reasonable to expect that a message board that amounts to a cesspool of intolerance is going to get hassled every now and then, not only by people with legitimate issues but also by people who think it's fun to wreck stuff and watch the fallout. And I think that a distinction should be made between one and the other.

Yes, I think she shoulda seen this coming.

So that's all I got on the subject. Good luck in rebuilding, Heart.

2007-08-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

The homeschool thread was really interesting. thanks, y'all.

here's a related question: what was your adolescence like?

Traumatic? Agonizing? Excruciating? Carefree? Easy? Fun?

How did you make it through high school? Were you "tracked"? College prep? Vocational? Art/drama?

Anyone get their GED?

Did anyone's parents do anything RIGHT?

2007-08-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

someone left this comment at "women's space the margins"

"Heart, this is horrible. I¹m sorry that this is happening to you.
These people want nothing to do but to hurt you and your cause. I feel for
you.

In fact, I want to feel you now. I¹d like to tie you down, take a
knife, and slit your throat. I¹d penetrate you over and over in all
orifices, and create some of my own to stick myself in."

And to this commenter I direct the following:

I have to wonder what you're really getting at here. Are you just trying to get a rise out of her? take the piss, as the british say?

I know it's fun to throw a little molotov cocktail-type comment like that into her internet living room, and watch everyone scurry like roaches to rush to her defense. But here's the problem with this particular type of attack - it doesn't work. It backfires. Nobody is looking at you like you're a hero - in fact you look like a moron and she looks like the Queen of Womanly Virtue.

I'm not saying that Heart is any great example of Human Brilliance - but the way you went after her only allows her and her pals to weep and moan and complain "see, see how men hate us? see how terrible those terrible men are? oh, woe is us! woe is us!"

which allows her to gain strength from all the "go sister" comments and praise she gets when she bitches about your comment. and with that strength she continues to spread her dubious philosophy like cow manure all over the internet. is that really what you had in mind?

Now, I'm not trying to tell you how to be or how to conduct your online life. But Heart and her gang are so dramatically illogical and irrational - why go for the low-hanging fruit of being sexually threatening, when you can actually address her on a more level playing field?

Just a thought. Knock off the immature bullshit and use your head next time.

2007-08-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

what would you put on a CD to take with you into the delivery room the day you have your baby?

here, I'll start:

Embryonic Journey, Jefferson Airplane
Fathers and Sons, Cat Stevens
Sleepwalk, Santo & Johnny
Isn't She Lovely, Stevie Wonder

or whatever you choose - what do you think would be cool?

2007-08-04T09:20:00.001-07:00

ok, the mom-angst seems to have subsided a bit, for the time being.

thanks, all-a-y'all, for the words of encouragement.

so, anyone here homeschool? special-private-school? public-school? school-in-a-tree? school-underwater?

who has some thoughts on education they'd like to share?

Me, I'm intrigued by the whole homeschool/unschool thing, perhaps because the whole school trip made me totally bonkers. I rarely did my homework, hated math in all forms, skipped class to go to the library and read (that really made my parents mad) - and everything in my life from the time I was about 6 until I finally escaped was contingent on school.

Should an institution have that much power over a life?

All my parents and I ever did was fight. and I wasn't a druggie, I wasn't a noisy rock-n-roll chick, I didn't stay out late, I didn't run around with boys - I just didn't give a shit about school, so I had trouble at home. No end of trouble.

So I'm thinking - how about a life that is not so ground-into-paste by a tortured relationship with an institution that doesn't care if you live or die? I mean, The School System had no real investment in me or my life, beyond my performance on standardized tests (which I managed fairly easily). How about taking care of education in ways that don't cause World War Three around the dinner table every night? sounds like a plan.

BUT Antiprince has a few objections to the whole homeschool ethos.

Now, he himself had a rather chaotic childhood and a somewhat off-the-beaten-path educational experience. But, nonetheless he seems to think that public schools are adequate to the task.

or at least he thinks that homeschooling is no real solution to the problems presented by public school.

When he was working retail at the Discovery Channel Store back a few years ago, he noticed that a great many homeschooling families came to avail themselves of the many educational toys, games, videos and other objets d'smartypants that were sold there. He observed that some eight out of ten of these homeschooling families pulled their kids out of school to protect them from the eeeeeeeeevils of modern life - sex, rock music, the color red, that kind of thing. and the children of these homeschooling families were, in Antiprince's estimation, "odd", due to the social isolation that seemed to go hand in hand with homeschooling.

"Kittens spend lots of time playing with other kittens, learning to be big cats. It's the same with people. Growing up in isolation like that makes kids odd. I don't want my kid to be odd," he says.

"well, any more odd, anyway," I reply.

Funny thing - for as long as I've known him, this is the one thing we've ever disagreed on to any great extent...always in the abstract, until now...

anyhow - feel free to bloviate upon education. who knows, maybe Heart herself will stop by with her expert testimony on homeschooling, to edify us all with her extensive knowledge, or something.

2007-08-02T05:10:00.000-07:00

Riddle me this, Batmom:

What's a doula? do I want one?

What's a "birthing ball"? How come nobody talks about Lamaze anymore? What's up with the "birthing tub"?

WHEN WILL I FEEL LESS LIKE DEATH?

And more to the point:

How can I make sure, absolutely positively rocksolid sure, that our child will love us? or even like us? or just-barely-tolerate us?

Because there's no guarantee of that, even if we were the Most Perfect Parents Ever.

I'm sure my mother didn't mean to be neglectful and drunk most of the time. I'm sure my dad wasn't trying to be terrifying. God knows they did their best, right?

And for my husband's part, I'm sure his parents did not intend to be too wound up in their own complex and disturbing pathologies to pay any attention to him and his sister.

blah blah blah, road to hell, blah blah, good intentions, blah.

And, you know, if those good people, our parents, who were by all accounts Nice People and Hard Working Solid Citizens with Good Traditional Values - if they could let it all come undone, what are the odds that marginal, barely-functional freaky types like us can keep it together?

It took me my entire life to learn to love my mother. by the time I figured it out, she was gone. As for my dad, well - the jury's still out.

And every decision I make about the baby, every thought I think about it, every option I contemplate down to the color of baby blankets is haunted - haunted - by my stepmother's curse, spat out between clenched teeth and narrowed eyes, aimed at my heart:

"I hope you have children who are JUST LIKE YOU."

So I could know how much I made them suffer, so I could see how awful, how terrible, how disgusting I was in mirror image, so I could be sorry sorry sorry I ever behaved so badly. So I would understand, finally, and regret, and Straighten Up.

because nobody really wants children who are JUST LIKE ME. how could they?

Riddle me that, Batmom.

2007-07-27T05:13:00.000-07:00

We're a little sad today at our house.

our parakeet, Ms. DeBird, died.

She came to us from our next-door neighbors. They said that a relative of theirs had found this parakeet at their bird feeder, and caught it, and gave it to them, but they were going on vacation and would we mind keeping an eye on "Mr. Bird" for them, for just a little while?

and that became three years.

She was bossy, aggressive, demanding, pushy, not at all friendly. but she'd whistle back at you if you whistled at her just right, which was adorable.

She seemed not to have suffered tremendously, although her feathers were looking kind of rumpled over the past week. I thought she was just molting. I feel so bad that I was wrong.

It's sad to lose an animal. And you know it's dumb and foolish to grieve over a parakeet of all things, and embarrassing, yet it's sometimes easier to grieve for a pet than a person.

2007-07-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

oh wow.

Words of wisdom from Heart:

Male-to-female transsexuality/transgender is really about men’s rights. It has nothing to do with feminism. As such, as feminists, just as we oppose men’s rights, in general, we oppose this manifestation of men’s rights as well.

"we oppose men's rights in general." well, okay. now it's out in the open. but if that's really what you think, I think Amnesty International would like to have a little chat...

See, this is embarrassing.

Heart carelessly? foolishly? truthfully? freudian-slippedly? claims that feminists oppose men's rights. I am hoping, because I am an optimistic person, that she really meant The Men's Rights Movement, ideological home of such concepts as repealing women's suffrage, a "return to traditional families" (which never existed in the first place), and other such crap.

Otherwise, I'm forced to conclude that Heart thinks that feminists oppose things like life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, representative democracy, speedy trial, unreasonable search-n-seizure, no cruel and unusual punishment, all that sort of stuff, for people with XY chromosomes.

Heart, tell me I misread you. Tell me I misunderstood you. Tell me it was a typo and you forgot to capitalize. Tell me SOMETHING.

Otherwise I'll have to think you're a bigger embarrassment to feminism than I originally thought.

2007-07-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

A Modest Proposal for justicewalks:

yeah, I'm going after a radical feminist. whadaya gonna do, call my mommy?

Here is JW's comment on a recent thread at the IBTP board:

We could do this by refusing to be mothers to males. Even in places where abortions or other adequate birth control are lacking, women could refuse to nurse male neonates. You may wonder what horrible tragedies would befall the poor women who didn't give men the sons they demanded. Might they be beaten? Might they be raped? Might they be killed?

Women are being beaten, raped, murdered, sold, and dehumanized right now, in torture porn and elsewhere. I'd rather die fighting as one of the last generation of women to suffer at the hands of men than to live a life of patriarchy-provided comfort, at the expense the generations of daughters to come.

First of all, I'd love to know where all the generations of daughters to come are going to come from, without any grown-up sons around to help out with that.

But, I'll let that itsee-bitsee lapse of logic slide for now, in the interest of sisterhood and understanding.

Because I have an invitation for you, JusticeWalks, or anyone else who shares her view.

Come visit me in early February. Stay with me a while, as I come to the end of my pregnancy. Meet me. Meet my Nigel. Talk to me. Defend your position on what to do with boy babies in order to create a better world. Explain to me why the world is better off without my son (if indeed I am having one). I promise I will listen with an open mind.

You can even hang out with me the day of delivery. And if you've managed to convince me that boy babies should be eliminated from the face of the earth, by all means I will hand the squirmy, slimy, screaming little bundle of patriarchy over to you immediately, and you may dispatch it as you see fit. to hell with what my Nigel thinks.

Humanely euthanize it, and wash your hands of the entire affair. or, starve it and watch it slowly expire over time. or, what the hell, bash its skull against a rock, why not, and let the blood cascade over your hands, and feel real good about yourself. You're making the world a better place.

Frankly, justicewalks, I don't think you have the guts to make living things dead in this manner. But if you think you do, come on down! our door is always open. We want to make the world a better place too, and if you think you have a better idea, well, we're waiting to be convinced.

oh, yeah, may be triggering. sorry.

2007-07-19T05:19:00.000-07:00

Round round get around I get around...

found here, at ye olde Twistyverse:
http://easypersiflage.com/blameforum/index.php?topic=882.msg11785#msg11785

Medusa, I have hesitated to address your Nigel Jr issues as well, because you want to take it personally that radical feminists do not care what a good little patriarch you are raising. Radical feminists only care that, so long as patriarchy exists, all little boys, down to the very last puppy dog's tail, grow up to be patriarchs, who are our enemies. Your joy at your son's empathy or niceness or whatever doesn't change the fact that the existence of patriarchs (especially the ones who 'can do no wrong') at all means that girls and women will continue to be oppressed by male supremacy. The joy your son brings you is gotten off the backs of the women and girls your son has/will continue to exploit (and exploit is broad; please give some consideration to the ways even 'good' men exploit women before you let your hackles raise too far; if he's school-aged, he's probably already stolen more than his fair share of the teacher's attention from some equally deserving girl, not his fault, but still a fact of life), and off the backs of the women he'll stand by and let his brethren rape and exploit. While I don't deny that women do not currently have much choice in the matter of raising our oppressors, that doesn't change the fact that it is nothing to celebrate on a radical feminist forum, not least because it isn't radical.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Medusa got a chance to answer this commenter. So I don't know what she thinks of the comment, or even if she'd be cool about my discussing it here. But, as they say, it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

(It's probably worth mentioning that there's another thread elsewhere on that board for women discussing the raising of boys. It's a very low-key, quiet, please-don't-hurt-me type thread, in my estimation, but judge for y'allselves: http://easypersiflage.com/blameforum/index.php?topic=750.0)

OK - back to business.

As someone who could potentially be the mother of a son (I guess we'll find out sooner or later), I find this extremely disturbing. let's EXAMINE this, shall we?

Medusa, I have hesitated to address your Nigel Jr issues as well, because you want to take it personally that radical feminists do not care what a good little patriarch you are raising.

well, yeah. I think it's quite reasonable to take it personally - I mean, the statement is not only designed to provoke Medusa, but it's also completely irrational. If radical feminists want to eradicate patriarchy, why would they not care about the raising of boys?

Radical feminists only care that, so long as patriarchy exists, all little boys, down to the very last puppy dog's tail, grow up to be patriarchs, who are our enemies.

holy shit - seriously? I thought biology was NOT, specifically NOT, definitely NOT, absolutely NOT destiny. I thought behavior, not chromosomes, dictated one's level of worth to society. right? that's how it's okay for women to have independent thoughts, desires, worth, etc. - because we are not universally subject to the whims of the womb, as was previously thought. This commenter seems to think that anything with an XY chromosome is chained to his destiny of oppression, no matter what steps are taken - how is that different from thinking that anything with an XX chromosome is chained to hers?

Your joy at your son's empathy or niceness or whatever doesn't change the fact that the existence of patriarchs (especially the ones who 'can do no wrong') at all means that girls and women will continue to be oppressed by male supremacy.

but if more mothers (more parents, really) expressed joy at their sons' empathy and niceness, maybe such behavior would be reinforced, and the oppressive behavior we all deplore would, if not disappear, at least diminish over time. But you gotta start somewhere - why not in the cradle? and why on earth bust on women who are trying to do just that?

The joy your son brings you is gotten off the backs of the women and girls your son has/will continue to exploit (and exploit is broad; please give some consideration to the ways even 'good' men exploit women before you let your hackles raise too far; if he's school-aged, he's probably already stolen more than his fair share of the teacher's attention from some equally deserving girl, not his fault, but still a fact of life), and off the backs of the women he'll stand by and let his brethren rape and exploit.

Oh for the love of friendly purple dinosaurs! I think the child in question is all of five years old. How on earth can one even reasonably speculate on his future of oppression? for all we know, the boy in question could grow up to live all alone on a mountaintop, eating nothing but roots and berries, too fearful of oppressing any damn thing to come down. Or the poor darling could meet with a tragic accident (GOD FORBID, seriously) and never grow up to stand on the backs of women at all - what would the commenter say then?

"oh, well, sorry for your loss, Medusa, but at least it's one fewer foot on all of our necks, so don't despair! Viva la revolucion!"

While I don't deny that women do not currently have much choice in the matter of raising our oppressors, that doesn't change the fact that it is nothing to celebrate on a radical feminist forum, not least because it isn't radical.

ok - here's where this commenter just crosses the line, for me (as if any of the rest of her comment was any more acceptable). What do you suggest, commenter? what modest proposal can you put forth as an alternative? I'm sure boy babies can be easily recycled as food for wolves, vultures, hungry lunatics such as yourself...

and, if I have not made myself clear yet, let me do so now - the effort to raise humane boys, with the intent to create humane men, is WAY more radical an idea than "I blame the patriarchy."

Whew. I'm done. more or less.

Coupla others have weighed in on this, notably Kim and Rootie. Share and enjoy.

2007-07-18T06:58:00.000-07:00

Well, looks like the great Cease Fire of 2007 has lapsed. Great! We're all well rested, got our second winds, ready to fight the good fight once again.

so - CHARGE!

I think I read on Witchy's comments recently someone mentioned the fact that the "yaypornies" aren't listening. they never listen. that's the whole problem. they don't listen.

well, here - let's listen. let's listen and respond.

Here's a comment from a commenter on a recent thread at IBTP:

I hate that they pursue orgasm by degrading and harming fellow human beings.

A good phrase to translate “pro-porn”:

“pro - pursuit of orgasm by degrading and harming fellow human beings “

wow, y'all. really? is that really the sum total of what it means to be pro-porn? That's what it reduces to? well, yeah, that's awful. I'm not at all comfortable with degrading and harming fellow human beings.

BUT - if no fellow human beings were degraded or harmed in the pursuit of my orgasm, then what I'm using to pursue it is NOT porn? so I'm in the clear?

OR if fellow human beings were degraded or harmed, but I'm not pursuing orgasm, I'm still okay?

I guess it depends largely on one's definition of "degrade" and "harm". and maybe even "orgasm". and no, I'm not merely playing semantics games. definitions are important.

I know some folks who become aroused when looking at pictures of objects. not people. no fellow human beings involved at all, yet intense arousal happens, lust is inspired, orgasms occur - you know, normally object fetishists don't get no respect, but in this case maybe they've got it figured out - sexual thrills without the human cost. who's the freak NOW?

and I can see the eyes rolling, hear the impatient sighs - "you KNOW that's not what we MEAN! We mean PORN. ASSFUCKING. BLOODY BLOWJOBS. etc. ad naus."

I tell you this - sitting for my FAMILY PICTURE with my abusive exhusband was exponentially more degrading and harmful to me than any bloody blowjob assfuck session.

which is not to say that the bloody blowjob assfuck session is everybody's cup of tea. I get that. But I have to admit that I've had some very satisfying, very intense sexual experiences that were a bit beyond the pale, and did not leave me feeling "harmed" or "degraded."

Sitting next to the man who wanted to KILL ME, and smiling like it was nothing, pretending we were Mr. and Mrs. America - yeah, that was a thousand times more humiliating.

So, yeah, we're listening. and responding. but lots of us feel like y'all don't care.

2007-07-12T05:30:00.000-07:00

Everyone say hi to the new girl:

Silvia Sea, at The Annihilating Feminine!

HI SILVIA SEA!!

she's smart, she's brave, she just kicks major butt. go see for y'allselves.

g'wan! git!

2007-07-05T10:49:00.000-07:00

not for nothin' but it looks like my husband will be teaching guitar lessons at our local Music and Art Center.
this is huge. I'm really proud of him.

so if you know anyone in the area who is limping through "Stairway" and wants to take guitar lessons, send 'em our way. hammer-ons, pull-offs, that wheedlywheedlywheedly stuff, Smoke on the Water, Advanced Spandex - he's your guy. c'mon down!

it's cool because a) it's something he knows really well, rock guitar, and b) he is totally NOT a 9-5 tie guy and this is a good way for him to make some money and stay sane (more or less), and c) he will have a delightfully flexible schedule which will be great for when the baby comes in february.

so rock on, my husband. I am really proud of you and bragging to the whole blogosphere. (hope that doesn't jinx it...)

2007-07-05T09:25:00.000-07:00

ok, so I see I've been tagged by no fewer than THREE folks for the Random 8 Meme.
apparently inquiring minds want to know...something.

so, what can I offer...you know it's amazing how hard I've had to think about this and still come up empty. I fear you will all be disappointed!

1) I went to the Smith College Community College Connections summer program a few years ago and dissected a sheep brain and learned samba and wrote really long papers on the cultural importance of Saturday Night Fever. it was awesome.

2) I don't drive. I've gotten close a couple times, but the fear always wins.

3) I used to work as a costumed interpreter at the 1840 House at the Baltimore City Life Museums. Best Job EVER.

4) I have terrible math anxiety.

5) I stayed back a year in high school. it was messed up and embarrassing.

6) I blame the Enclosure Acts.

7) I've voted for third party candidates in every election I've ever voted in.

8) I wish I was a better housekeeper.

yaaaaaaaawn. well, now folks might get off my back. tag, you're it!

2007-06-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

Try as I might, I can't see how this could be BAD news.
In fact, hooray for Egypt.

Courtesy the fine folks at Yahoo News:

CAIRO (AFP) - Egypt on Thursday finally banned all female circumcision, the widely-practised removal of the clitoris which just days ago cost the life of a 12-year-old girl.

Officially the practice, which affects both Muslim and Christian women in Egypt and goes back to the time of the pharoahs, was banned in 1997 but doctors were allowed to operate "in exceptional cases".

On Thursday, Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali decided to ban every doctor and member of the medical profession, in public or private establishments, from carrying out a clitoridectomy, a ministry press official told AFP.

Any circumcision "will be viewed as a violation of the law and all contraventions will be punished," said the official, adding that it was a "permanent ban".

A survey in 2000 said the practice was carried out on 97 percent of the country's women.

In the latest fatality, 12-year-old Bedur Ahmed Shaker was taken by her mother to a private clinic in Minya, a town on the Nile south of Cairo, for the operation. She died before she could be transferred to hospital.

Her mother accused the woman doctor of negligence, charging that her daughter's death was linked to the anaesthetic and not the removal of the clitoris, for which she had paid 50 pounds (nearly nine dollars). Police have arrested both women.

I wonder how this will be enforced, and what punishment will be used.

I am also moved to wonder if similar laws will be enacted to prevent male circumcision. (just curious, not trying to start shit. just curious.)

2007-06-25T16:15:00.000-07:00

Mingle² - Online Dating

in case y'all were wondering.

2007-06-25T07:30:00.000-07:00

Update - here are some more folks talking about the ban on alcohol and pornography in Australia:http://mal3ficent.livejournal.com/179570.html
Someone actually from Australia
I think this blogger is also from Australia
here's a Christian perspective
and finally this blog here.

Governments worldwide are taking a hard line on pornography, but not without controversy:

courtesy Yahoo News -
SYDNEY (AFP) - Police and soldiers began deploying to outback Australia Monday as part of a radical plan to end child sex abuse in Aboriginal communities which has been criticised as a return to the nation's paternalistic past.

Prime Minister John Howard last week announced he would use police backed by military logistics to seize control of indigenous camps in the Northern Territory to protect women and children.

The controversial decision, which includes bans on alcohol and pornography and medical check-ups for all children under the age of 16, was taken following a damning government report into child abuse in indigenous communities.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said 20 Australian Defence Force personnel were already on the ground and their number would be boosted in coming days as they prepared to deploy to remote communities.

"Right now I'm trying to stabilise in the order of 70-odd towns in the territory -- that is a massive undertaking," Brough said.

Federal police also began arriving in the Northern Territory capital, Darwin, Monday along with those from several states, each of which has been asked to contribute 10 officers.

But one of the most troubled communities, Mutitjulu near Uluru, has questioned what some of its leaders termed a military occupation.

"The fact that we hold this community together with no money, no help, no doctor and no government support is a miracle," community leaders Bob and Dorothea Randall said in a statement released by their lawyer.

"Police and the military are fine for logistics and coordination but healthcare, youth services, education and basic housing are more essential."

They also questioned whether children should undergo medical checks.

"Of course, any child that is vulnerable or at risk should be immediately protected, but a wholesale intrusion into our women and children's privacy is a violation of our human and sacred rights," the Randalls said.

Former conservative prime minister Malcolm Fraser also criticised the plan as a throwback to paternalistic practices of the past, such as the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families.

"People must be treated with respect, and in relation to this point they have not been," Fraser told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"In relation to that, I said it was a throwback to past paternalism because it clearly this time has been put in place, announced without any consultation with the communities."

Mutitjulu resident Mario Giuseppe said women were scared that the police were coming to take their children away, just as the so-called "stolen generation" of Aborigines were snatched from their parents under ethnic assimilation policies between the 1930s and the 1970s.

"They think the army is coming to grab their kids and the police are coming to help them," he told ABC radio.

"This is bringing back a lot of memories and opening a lot of scars for these old people here, they are running to the hills and hiding."

Howard dismissed accusations of high-handedness over the plan, which was devised without consultation with Northern Territory leaders.

"I have no doubt that the women and children of indigenous communities will warmly welcome the federal government's actions," he said.

I haven't seen much of this around the blogosphere - possibly because I haven't been paying close attention, but it occurs to me that many of us living with White Woman Syndrome are a little daunted by the prospect of commenting on the lives of Native Australians, which I gotta admit I know less than nothing about. in fact, I wouldn't even know where to look for reliable information. So maybe the relative silence (or at least, as I've observed) is due to the fact that no one wants to look like a bigger idiot than usual.

And I can see how concern for women and children of Native Australian descent led to the Australian government's action - you don't need a master's in Native Australian Studies to grasp that the most vulnerable members of that community are really suffering.

However, if one comes out AGAINST government troops with guns marching on Native Australian communities, does that mean one is coming out FOR pornography, in this case?

and what is this "paternalism", anyway? what does that mean?

and would a kinder, gentler, less stormtrooper-y approach really make a difference?

here's something from a blogger from Australia, Scarlet Words (linked above):

However, I don’t believe that Howard has got it right. It’s pretty hard to ignore the fact that these decisions have been made without any consultation with community leaders or even Clare Martin, the NT’s Chief Minister. Instead we have a disturbing paternalistic intervention that does not address the two biggest contributors to their predicament: Addiction, and the horrific events of the past 200 years that began the cycle of this widespread addiction. For the record, non-indigenous Australia is responsible for most of those.

is the Australian government trying to say that only indigenous Australians are harmed by alcohol and pornography? if not, why are they only "protecting" indigenous Australians?

2007-06-15T05:16:00.000-07:00

and you thought YOU were anti-porn:

courtesy the fine folks at CNN, via Trinity, Belle, Ren, etc:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's parliament on Wednesday voted in favor of a bill that could lead to the death penalty for persons convicted of working in the production of pornographic movies.

With a 148-5 vote in favor and four abstentions, lawmakers present at the Wednesday session of the 290-seat parliament approved that "producers of pornographic works and main elements in their production are considered corrupter of the world and could be sentenced to punishment as corrupter of the world."

The term, "corrupter of the world" is taken from the Quran, the Muslims' holy book, and ranks among the highest on the scale of an individual's criminal offenses. Under Iran's Islamic Penal Code, it carries a death penalty.

The "main elements" referred to in the draft include producers, directors, cameramen and actors involved in making a pornographic video.

The bill also envisages convictions ranging from one year imprisonment to a death sentence for the main distributors of the movies and also producers of Web sites in which the pornographic works appear.

Besides videos, the bill covers all electronic visual material, such as DVDs and CDs. Other material, such as porn magazines and books, are already banned under Iranian law.

To become law, the bill requires an approval by the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog in Iran.

It is widely believed that the drafting of the bill came about as a reaction to a scandal last year, when a private videotape, apparently belonging to Iranian actress Zahra Amir Ebrahimi and allegedly showing her having intercourse with a man, became available across Iran.

The videotape was leaked to the Internet and released on a black market DVD, becoming a full-blown Iranian sex tape scandal. Ebrahimi later came under an official investigation, which is still ongoing. She faces fines, whip lashing or worse for her violation of Iran's morality laws.

The unnamed man on the tape, who is suspected of releasing it, reportedly fled to Armenia but was subsequently returned to Iran and charged with breach of public morality laws. He remains in jail.

In an exclusive interview with the British newspaper The Guardian early this year, Ebrahimi denied she was the woman in the film and dismissed it as a fake, made by a vengeful former fiance bent on destroying her career.

In recent years, private videotapes have increasingly been leaked to the public in Iran, riling the government and many in this conservative Islamic country, where open talk of sex is banned and considered taboo.

However, pornographic material is easily accessible through foreign satellite television channels in Iran. Bootleg videotapes and CDs are also available on the black market on many street corners.

Iran does NOT play, y'all.

But it's not an inconsistent position to take, really, even if one is not an Iranian Fund-o-crat. I mean, if your hatred of pornography is intense enough, why not support such an ordinance?

It's perfectly fair and uniform. Everyone involved gets punished more or less equally.

and if your hatred of pornography is not intense enough, how can you really call yourself anti-porn?

I'd hate to be one of the five representatives who voted against the ordinance, though. I imagine they're having a hard time.

think their colleagues call them "porn-lover"? "tool of America"? "collaborator?" "corruptor-of-the-world-lover"?

Wonder how they found the strength to stand against the anti-porn ordinance.

2007-06-15T05:04:00.000-07:00

I don't blog so much anymore, because I find that most of what I want to say is being said much more effectively by others. Case in point:Kim --

The woman is out of time at the DV shelter in mid-July.
Her options are to transfer to a family shelter, if there is room, or to another shelter in a different part of the state -- where she will have to begin the apartment search all over again.

Solve this problem.
(Or keep talking about the evils of pink.)

A woman finally gets the nerve to leave her abuser.
"Come to shelter, we will help you!"
Except, after her time at the shelter has run out, she is homeless.

***

Where are these women, these very same feminists who are so outraged about others "ruining what they started?"
Started back in the days when folks got off their lazy, self-righteous blogging asses and did something.
Protested, got sent to jail, looking for a revolution.
NOW, it appears this "revolution" can take place entirely ONLINE?
You think?
Where are these very serious, very non-fun radical feminists for this homeless woman?

Busy, it seems, weeding out the good women from the bad; the deserving from the non-deserving.
Busy, it appears, making threats and saying hateful things.
Busy it appears trying to all be Commander in Chief of their troops.
Because not one of them wants to be a foot solider.
But anyone could, if they wanted to, oh laws, yes, sister, we know.
If you wanted to, you could.
But you're busy.
Starting blogwars.
Reveling in self-righteous Woman Loving.
Gathering fans and sneering at the bones, makeup, tits and ass of other women.

Do you think, this homeless woman, would give a crap if a volunteer who was also a stripper wanted to help her out?
Do you think, this woman would care one iota?
When this woman says and I quote verbatim, after a non-productive day of searching for housing, "I see now why women go back to their abusers," do you think it matters at all?

2007-06-04T19:22:00.000-07:00

so...sex ed.

does anyone remember that sweaty nervous day in 4th or 5th or 6th grade when all the boys went with the gym teacher and all the girls stayed in the classroom? remember those little pink pamphlets with the flowers? remember? remember thinking you already knew everything because, after all, you already read Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret?

remember asking your teacher "is there any way you can, like, NOT have your period?"

I always wondered what the boys were doing. It had to be more interesting than what we were doing with all those flowers and maxipads. I remember we were all on the cusp of menstrual technology - the birth of the beltless, pinless, adhesive sanitary napkin. sweet liberty, so we were told.

but really none of us wanted to talk about bleeding. we wanted to talk about boys. boys boys boys. except not. we wanted to talk about "doing booty". except not. we wanted to talk about our parents getting divorced and why bras were important. except not. thanks to our parents, largely, and the brisk circulation of "dirty" paperbacks smuggled from our mothers' bookshelves, most of us had, I think, at least somewhat of a handle on the physics of sex, - it was the chemistry that made us all dizzy and sick and feverish with curiosity. but, when given every opportunity to ask a real live woman - nothing. not a peep. we were scared.

so, aside from some basic questions about cramps and stuff, we were all silent.

huh.

And we remained so, at least in an academic context, until high school. It wasn't until ninth or tenth grade that the subject was even touched upon again, and then the focus was on pregnancy and STDs, and how to prevent such things at all costs. And again, we were on the cusp of something - AIDS.

This time, the adults were more scared than the kids.

"No." they said. "No. not in a box, not with a fox, not in a house, not with a mouse. No. just - no."

"but what about...?" NO
"how about...?" NO
"hey - I read that..." NO.

slowly that turned into "not until you're married, or, if you simply must, not without a condom."

"why? and what about?"

"hey - don't look at me, kids. I'm not here to compromise anyone's family values. This is what the curriculum says - not until you're married, or, if you simply must, not without a condom. See you next week."

and if you grasped that much, you passed with a lady's or gentleman's "C" and were left alone, to muddle your way through as though you never had the class at all.

think you're queer? talk to the shrink.
think you're pregnant? talk to your parents.
think you're sick? talk to the doctor.

because the teacher was not there to really educate the class. the teacher was there to tread the thread between state mandates and parental pressure. She couldn't really help it. She was a field hockey coach impressed into service, not really a sexual health education specialist.

I don't imagine that's changed so much in twenty years.

do they still separate into boys' classes and girls' classes? do parents still do "The Talk" or "The Book" or whatever?

(I always imagined myself giving a powerpoint presentation to my children. did anyone else do that?)

does any woman remember anything else besides those little flowery pamphlets, at the end of it all?

2007-06-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

I love my husband. I truly do. and here's why:

iTunesU. of Stanford. or Berkeley. or Penn State. or fucking Harvard. wherever.

podcasts of REAL lectures of REAL classes in BIG FAT WHOMPING COLLEGES just ooooooozing prestige and gravitas.

Elementary Greek. Modern Theoretical Physics. CS Lewis on the Hope for All Creation. Sociology 291 - Integrating Identities.

oh. oh. OH!

see...this changes EVERYTHING.

I can rock my smarty boots-boots for free. I can go to school in my underpants. yeeeeeeeeeha!

(I hear Yale offers great huge delicious sizzling chunks of their curriculum online for free. is that true?)

2007-06-03T17:48:00.000-07:00

Ah Twisty, you are the "fire!" in my crowded theatre.

It's cool she has a forum up. It must have been quite an undertaking. I mean, I don't have a forum up. I couldn't forum my way out of a pillowcase.

I guess that's the thing now. Lots of other erstwhile infotainers have message boards and the like. Bill O'Reilly comes to mind.

Mark Twain would have had one. or maybe not.

2007-06-03T17:16:00.000-07:00

I'm not dead!
(well, I got better...)

so hi. didja miss me? ;)

Funny thing - I don't have a permanent gig yet, my temp job pays a fraction of what I used to make, my commute is exponentially longer - I should be shaking myself apart with worry. but somehow I sleep a thousand times better these days. I mean, nights.

I suppose some of that can be attributed to the fact that I love the little temp job the agency tossed at me. I have a humongous collective crush on all my coworkers. It just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to go to work. it's been a long time since I could say that.

"My" office works to place (and retain) urban kids at suburban schools, as part of a statewide mandate to improve education for all. There is an office which administers the suburban-kids-to-urban-schools side, but I (for now) help out on the urban-to-suburban side. I have nothing especially important or relevant or skilled to do - but someone's gotta put away files and answer the phone. and for now, that's me. and I'm grateful for the opportunity.

everyone in my office appears to be wicked committed to the agency's mission. It's a beautiful thing. It's really inspiring to be around women who are so focused and determined.

I am the only white girl among my office mates. I try not to be a pain in the neck. I do what I'm told and stay out of the way, pretty much. Apparently I'm really good at that because my assignment has been extended "indefinitely."

The supervisor said "don't make any plans." so who knows.

I guess while I was more-or-less absent the usual chaos reigned. anyone else feel like they just can't keep up?

2007-05-10T16:44:00.000-07:00

I am so sad, y'all.

I lost my job.

I've looked under the sofa and behind the fridge and I can't find it ANYWHERE.

seriously - I been be-fired.

if anyone knows of some golden opportunity in the Hartford, CT area (or, fuckit, anywhere else), lemme know.

in the meantime, I think I'll have another beer. or something.

my husband is being a prince and a saint and my friends are all being so gentle and kind and loving. I am truly blessed. I am so lucky to have people in my corner.

thanks. just wanted to say that.

2007-05-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

Oh, for the love of little green apples:

Somali forces ban, burn Muslim women's veils By Guled Mohamed

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali security forces are seizing and even burning Muslim women's veils in Mogadishu to stop Islamist insurgents disguising themselves for attacks, authorities and witnesses said on Wednesday.

The Western-backed government's crackdown on veils is a highly symbolic turnaround for the Somali capital. When it was under Islamist control in the second half of 2006, women were instructed to cover their heads.

"Every policeman and government soldier has orders to confiscate veils from veiled women," senior police officer Ali Nur told Reuters in Mogadishu, saying various recent attacks had been carried out by people in disguise.

"Some of the remnants of the Islamic Courts have been caught wearing veils. During the war, these remnants, pretending to be women, killed so many government troops."

Somalis are generally moderate Muslims and most women traditionally cover their heads but not faces. Officials say some suicide attacks have been carried out by men disguised under full face-veils.

Mogadishu residents said government troops and police had been forcibly removing veils and publicly destroying them.

"Yesterday, so many veils were burnt by the police," said taxi driver Abdullahi Mohamed.

A Reuters witness saw some veiled women running away from police on Wednesday.

One girl, 17-year-old Iftin Hussein, said she had left her veil at home to avoid encounters with the police. "Yesterday, I was forced to run away to escape from being unveiled. This is wrong, but we cannot do anything, we are powerless," she said.

SECURITY DRIVE

A senior cleric, who declined to be named for fear of retribution, urged the government to be sensitive.

"If the government is unveiling women out of security concerns, then I think it is acceptable. However, this can raise public anger," he told Reuters.

"The government has to undertake it very carefully. They should use women to frisk and unveil women, not men."

Backed by Ethiopian troops, tanks and warplanes, Somali forces ousted the rival Islamist leaders in January.

Although the Islamists received some support for bringing relative security to Mogadishu, the welcome cooled when they banned Bollywood films and qat, a popular mild stimulant leaf.

The government has been fighting an insurgency that has killed at least 1,300 people since February. Just days ago, it declared victory, but is still wary of guerrilla-style attacks.

As part of a security drive in the gun-infested city, government and Ethiopian troops handed African peacekeepers weapons, including anti-tank mines and rocket-propelled grenades, they say were seized from an insurgent stronghold.

National police boss Abdi Hassan Awale said the weapons were unearthed at a Koranic school in northern Mogadishu.

"For children to be taught in a house with all these weapons buried underneath it, is against our religion," he said.

2007-05-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

check out this comment onthis thread 'round by Sage's place:

Oh yes sir! Master please tell us all again how we're allowed to feel about it. Because, clearly if we don't worship porn and your opinions then we're just fundamentalist nazis - or something. Please, tell us what we're allowed to feel, and think. I wanna be a good, fun, cool feminist! Just like these good little obedient girls trained so well to do and say exactly as their told. It's so empowering to watch women celebrate being obedient! Yay obedience!!

Here's a clue skippy - most sex workers are not happy in the work because most sex workers aren't there voluntarily. Check out any study done on the topic in the last 50 years. Therefore focusing on the few obedient girls who've spent a great deal of time convincing themselves they like being treated like human toilet paper is ignoring reality. Which is par for the course for pornstick dudes.

(emphasis mine, follow link for context)

I'm trying not to derail the thread or cause trouble, so I brought this all back to my own living room to piss on.

is having sex considered "obedience"? is not having sex considered "obedience"?

What kind of sex? sex with whom? obedience to whom?

When I was a young teenager in the early 80s, it was clear to me that the worst worst WORST thing any girl could do was fuck. Fucking was more unforgiveable than drinking, more unforgiveable than smoking, more unforgiveable even than failing geometry (and believe me, that was pretty unforgiveable). Fucking would RUIN YOUR LIFE. Instantly. Completely. I got the impression that once that cherry was popped, a girl's life would be nothing but poverty, misery, and broken dreams. Intercourse was a one-way ticket on the bullet train to hell on earth.

Maybe other people had sane parents, but this was my experience. Girls and sex did not mix. No no no no no no no. and get your hand out of there. and wipe that crap off your face. and button your blouse. and stop reading that trash! and don't you have homework? why are you so boy-crazy?

(it should probably be pointed out here that I was both boy- and girl-crazy in equal measure. which caused problems of its own.)

So - it should come as no great shock that all I wanted to do was the horizontal pogo. Once I was in college, I made up for lost time, you bet.

I remember shedding my virginity like a snakeskin. I remember being surprised that I didn't break out in green and purple spots, or manifest a sudden bright neon "A" on my forehead. I remember that my first forays into the world of sexual activity felt not only physically pleasurable but also personally unshackling, and politically relevant. Fucking felt like the ultimate autonomy to me.

"fuck me, Johnny!" was really "fuck you, parents. fuck you, school. fuck you, heels and pearls and folded hands and empty minds. fuck you, meat loaf night. fuck you, preconceived notions of what is success and what is failure." while this young man (whoever he was) was sticking it to me, I was sticking it to The Man.

I'm not ashamed. or even sorry. to me, in 1989, a woman owning her sexual pleasure was a radical thing. brave. rebellious. hardly obedient.

Almost twenty years on, even after all I've experienced, I still think that a woman owning her sexual pleasure is a radical thing. I don't think it sells out the sisterhood to admit that I think sexual pleasure is worth prioritizing, at least a little bit.

but maybe things have changed for younger women. maybe there are social pressures I don't see, possibly due to the fact that I'm approaching the Age of Invisibility anyway. maybe there is some increased pressure to be all sorts of fuckable all the damn time. I can see where that would get tedious, to say the least. Maybe the rebellious, disobedient thing is to not fuck these days, no matter how much a woman really really wants to. and if you want to be rebellious and disobedient, that's what you do.

sex NEVER felt obedient to the patriarchy for me. (it still doesn't, husband notwithstanding.) and I speak up and say this not because I want to make it ALL ABOUT SELFISH SELFISH ME, but because I know I'm not a unique snowflake and I have a hunch that I am not the only individual out there who has had a similar experience.

any thoughts?

2007-04-27T06:39:00.000-07:00

I've learned a lot this week.

over the past week I was privileged to see some strong voices come out in support of me - as I may have mentioned, I am deeply humbled.

at the same time, I was also privileged to see some strong voices coming out extremely critical of me. and I am equally humbled.

among other things, I've learned that I can come off a little(or a lot) sarcastic, without even trying. I should work on that.

I've learned that not everyone reads my attempts at civility as attempts at civility. some folks think I'm twofaced, disingenuous, insincere...well, I guess I can't really help that. I don't think outbursts like the one below should be the only way to convince people of one's sincerity.

And even as I write this, there will be folks out there going "Oh, choke on your false humility, you twofaced, disingenuous, insincere..." etc.

To them I say - this is my truth. and I daresay nobody knows my truth better than I do. but if anyone would like to argue the point, please feel free.

As to the Great Wall of Feminism proposed by Stormy and others - frankly, I think this is a bad idea.

Please note, I do not think the people proposing the idea are bad. The people proposing the idea clearly have the common good in mind, and care about Class Woman, and even some individual women, and really really want to stop the insanity so that everyone can go back to feeling safe and healthy and OK again. I am absolutely convinced of their sincerity and desire to Do Good.

but as Robin Morgan once said - "Sisters, this is not the way."

I agree that it's best not to engage with every other blogger who has expressed a distaste for you. I agree that sometimes a retreat back into sanity or so-called "safe space" is the wise and healthy thing to do when you're just not getting anywhere. And I totally agree there's no place for insults, personal attacks, threats, or outing.

But I don't agree that the sort of permanent separation that Stormcloud has proposed will be good for feminism in the long run.

I mean, we could just learn not to insult, attack personally, threaten or out, even while rigorously questioning and examining each other's points of view.

That way, nobody would be limited as to blog content, or comment content. Nobody would have to live with the unpleasant creeping fear that her latest post might possibly be construed as "bashing", and should she take it down? should she rephrase somehow? should she not even consider questioning whatever it was that got her thinking in the first place? did she break the truce?

If I adhere strictly to the "separate rooms" idea, it means I don't even read radfem blogs. so, how am I gonna know whether they're keeping their end of the bargain?

Less dialogue means less learning. less learning is no kind of progress.

does this make me pro-blogwar? I don't think so. it just makes me anti-wall.

The sort-of-sadly-amusing thing is that the folks who are most in need of reading this post are the folks who are supposed to be avoiding me, in the name of "separate rooms". and even if they did, they couldn't comment.

I don't know if I'll be blogging here anymore. I might, I might not. I'm still deeply ambivalent about the whole thing.

was this post "bashing"?

comments are, as always, open and unmodded.

2007-04-21T09:51:00.000-07:00

NOTE: for what it's worth, I do regret losing my temper. I regret even more deeply losing my sense of perspective and for a moment forgetting that all the people I cussed out are people, even for our disagreements, and for that reason alone deserving of more respect than I showed.

I'm still angry with those folks. I'm not going to apologize for that. but maybe instead of "FUCK YOU" I should have said "EXAMINE YOUR BEHAVIOR!" or something.

I can't take the post down - I said what I said, I meant what I said, and I'm accountable for what I said. But I can certainly express some sincere regret for my loss of temper.

In recognition of my blogiversary, here in its entirety is my very first blog post ever, from April 28, 2006:

Greetings -

I've been lurking around the radfemblogosphere for a goodly while, occasionally screwing my courage to the sticking-place to post here or there. Usually what happened next had all the hallmarks of non-consensual public humiliation. (So much for schwesterhof.) Finally today I realized that while my comments may not be especially welcome on other people's blogs, that did not mean I had to suffer in silence.

So here I am.

Don't get the wrong idea. I am not an "amazing new voice." I'm not bucking for a Koufax by any means. I'm just a girl with her handy-dandy pocket Constitution burning a hole in her jeans, a cranky old fat lady who still has a battered old coffee-stained library edition of Sisterhood is Powerful propping up her wobbly sofa leg - and I'm not afraid to use it!

See, I just don't get the sense that this world, this culture, this neverending Waterloo of gender was really what they had in mind, the Florynce Kennedys and Shulamith Firestones and Ti-grace Atkinsons and Roxanne Dunbars of the world. Those piles and piles of radical women's journals cranked out on mimeograph machines and now rotting in landfills from coast to coast did not contain a road map to where we are right now. I really want to know - where did we go wrong? and what can be done to make it right?

I cordially invite any and all to chime in with opinions, personal experiences, questions, comments, smart-ass remarks, opposing viewpoints, whatever needs to be said. I do not require commenters to agree with me, defend me, or otherwise blow smoke up my gloriously ample ass. I do require comments to be more or less free of spelling errors, heinous transgressions of grammar, so-called "scare quotes" (get it?) and inter-commenter snark. Disagree all you want, please. Dissent, oppose, negate, disprove, debunk 'til the world looks level - but don't humiliate. I believe firmly that growth can occur through a healthy exchange of ideas - emphasis on the healthy, that's all I ask.

So I should probably throw some content up here to get things rolling. in the meantime, please feel free to say hello.

And many of you did. which was great. I met all sorts of interesting folks, some even in real life. I had some great epiphanies, enjoyed some marvelous meetings-of-the-minds, had some peak experiences (Belledame, Bimbo, I'm looking at you). Opportunities to learn and grow were everywhere. The blogosphere has been very good to me.

I'd like to say thanks to all-a-y'all who contributed to my comments threads, which I'd also like to say gave me great pleasure in all their diversity. Thanks for the challenging of my preconceived notions, the healthy exchange of ideas, the dumb jokes - just, thanks. thanks for making time for me. thanks for expanding my world. thanks.

nonetheless, it has come to my attention that some of my attempts at civility, dignity and respect have been dismissed as "passive aggressive". Some of y'all don't like that.

So, here - have some regular aggressive:

FUCK YOU

to Witchy, Heart, ChasingMoksha, Delphyne, Pony, Stormy, Gayle, Bea, Sam, Ginmar - you love women, but you hate me. you love women, but you pity me. You love women, but reject me. you love women, but I am beneath contempt. My woman's heart is not bloody enough for you; my woman's mind is not tortured enough for you; my woman's soul is not oozing despair enough for you; my woman's sorrow is not sorrowful enough for you. It's almost like you feel like I deserve all the pain I suffered at the hands of men. It's almost like you feel I don't deserve to be at peace, don't deserve to be among you, speaking my truth.

and anyone who says "no, I get it, I understand you, Heidi" - is somehow stained, tainted, equally beneath contempt. even if they don't feel the same way I do.

shame on y'all. shame.

I never thought I'd say it - hell, I never thought I'd feel it, but you disgust me.

but you don't care. and it's a good thing. if you did, the guilt would lay you flat, and you couldn't do all that good work you do for Class Woman.

I should never have even thought I could create a corner of the blogosphere that would bring people together in an atmosphere of respectful learning and growth. I was a fool. I should have known better.

Shame on me.

Got anything to say? say it now. Last chance.

2007-04-12T05:52:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut died.

according to Yahoo News:

NEW YORK - In books such as "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle," and "Hocus Pocus," Kurt Vonnegut mixed the bitter and funny with a touch of the profound.

Vonnegut, regarded by many critics as a key influence in shaping 20th-century American literature, died Wednesday at 84. He had suffered brain injuries after a recent fall at his Manhattan home, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz.

Vonnegut's more than a dozen books, short stories, essays and plays contained elements of social commentary, science fiction and autobiography.

"He was sort of like nobody else," said fellow author Gore Vidal. "Kurt was never dull."

A self-described religious skeptic and freethinking humanist, Vonnegut used protagonists such as Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater as transparent vehicles for his points of view.

He lectured regularly, exhorting audiences to think for themselves and delighting in barbed commentary against the institutions he felt were dehumanizing people.

"He was a man who combined a wicked sense of humor and sort of steady moral compass, who was always sort of looking at the big picture of the things that were most important," said Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times, a liberal magazine based in Chicago that featured Vonnegut articles.

Some of Vonnegut's books were banned and burned for suspected obscenity. He took on censorship as an active member of the PEN writers' aid group and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The American Humanist Association, which promotes individual freedom, rational thought and scientific skepticism, made him its honorary president.

Vonnegut said the villains in his books were never individuals, but culture, society and history, which he said were making a mess of the planet.

"I like to say that the 51st state is the state of denial," he told The Associated Press in 2005. "It's as though a huge comet were heading for us and nobody wants to talk about it. We're just about to run out of petroleum and there's nothing to replace it."

Despite his commercial success, Vonnegut battled depression throughout his life, and in 1984, he attempted suicide with pills and alcohol, joking later about how he botched the job.

"I will say anything to be funny, often in the most horrible situations," Vonnegut, whose watery, heavy-lidded eyes and unruly hair made him seem to be in existential pain, once told a gathering of psychiatrists.

Vonnegut was born on Nov. 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, and studied chemistry at Cornell University before joining the Army. His mother killed herself just before he left for Germany during World War II, where he was quickly taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. He was being held in Dresden when Allied bombs firebombed the city.

"The firebombing of Dresden explains absolutely nothing about why I write what I write and am what I am," Vonnegut wrote in "Fates Worse Than Death," his 1991 autobiography of sorts.

But he spent 23 years struggling to write about the ordeal, which he survived by huddling with other POW's inside an underground meat locker labeled slaughterhouse-five.

The novel that emerged, in which Pvt. Pilgrim is transported from Dresden by time-traveling aliens, was published at the height of the Vietnam War, and solidified his reputation as an iconoclast.

After World War II, he reported for Chicago's City News Bureau, then did public relations for General Electric, a job he loathed. He wrote his first novel, "Player Piano," in 1951, followed by "The Sirens of Titan," "Canary in a Cat House" and "Mother Night," making ends meet by selling Saabs on Cape Cod.

Critics ignored him at first, then denigrated his deliberately bizarre stories and disjointed plots as haphazardly written science fiction. But his novels became cult classics, especially "Cat's Cradle" in 1963, in which scientists create "ice-nine," a crystal that turns water solid and destroys the earth.

He retired from novel writing in his later years, but continued to publish short articles. He had a best-seller in 2005 with "A Man Without a Country," a collection of his nonfiction, including jabs at the Bush administration ("upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography") and the uncertain future of the planet.

He called the book's success "a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life."

Vonnegut, who had homes in Manhattan and the Hamptons in New York, adopted his sister's three young children after she died. He also had three children of his own with his first wife, Jane Marie Cox, and later adopted a daughter, Lily, with his second wife, Krementz.

Vonnegut once said that of all the ways to die, he'd prefer to go out in an airplane crash on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. He often joked about the difficulties of old age.

"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon," Vonnegut told the AP.

"My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I'll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children."

2007-04-11T06:49:00.000-07:00

Incurable Hippie is one of those who turns up in people's "thinking blogger" award lists fairly frequently - and for good reason.

She makes you think, no doubt about it.

check out her latest post.

In this post, Incurable Hippie comes to the defense of Charliegrrl, who has, apparently, been getting heaps of grief for her opposition to a certain workshop at the upcoming Ladyfest Leeds, a British feminist conference, which workshop

is to be based around criticising the recent legislation to criminalise the possession of extreme violent porn, and considering if this contributes towards women’s liberation or women’s repression..?

and I think this has to do with the debate surrounding the British restriction on violent pornography.

now, my opinion on matters of british politics do not, and ought not, matter. I'm a fat dumb spoiled American with my own fat dumb spoiled problems. However, in Incurable Hippie's post, it all drills down to this:

However, as a brilliant sum-up of a lot of the issues involved in BDSM sex, 'rape play', pornography, prostitution, lesbian S&M and abusive sex, I must send you on to read, How Orgasm Politics has Hijacked the Women's Movement" by Sheila Jeffreys.

Summary:
Just because it makes you have an orgasm, doesn't make it ok.
Think about *why* you might have an orgasm that way.
Put it in a political and gendered context. Think.

well, yes ma'am!

as a switch who mostly bottoms, I'm used to doing what I'm told and respecting authoritah and all.

So, off I go to think. some more. on why I'm such a reactionary gender traitor and unenlightened lumpenfraulein and wrecker of the Movement and selfish selfish pervert, off to contemplate how best to do penance for all those selfish selfish orgasms I've so gleefully and heedlessly flung all over the Feminist Landscape, crushing the tender buds of Revolution with every spasm...

(however, I did have to safeword on her exhortation to go slog through Sheila Jeffreys. I'm not that much of a masochist.)

Seriously, I gave it serious thought. as usual. All night. Why am I like this? why am I so sick and defective and bad? Where did I go wrong?

and I came up with the usual answers: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

What makes Incurable Hippie think I haven't thought about it? I've been thinking about it for coming up on twenty five years now. politically, gendered-ly, psychologically, morally, legally, name-your-adverb-ly - I still don't know. That's a lot of sleep lost to tossing and turning in the name of getting right with Feminism.

I know I feel a lot more functional, and make better, more healthy choices, when I'm not obsessing about what a bad person I am. And part of that is accepting what makes me tick, sexually speaking.

So, yeah, I thought about it, and I think I'm still a pervert.

but this bit, from her comments, really shit on my breakfast today.

courtesy a commenter named Emma:
Can we also clear up the 'you're attacking a minority sexuality' argument. No we are not, we are attacking ABUSE. There is a difference. If a person (male or female) was regularly being beaten or cut with knives assaulted or nearly strangled and it wasn't in the name of sex, we would say s/he was a victim of domestic violence. We wouldn't blame them for the fact that they didn't leave their partner, but would accept that there are complex psychological reasons why someone may stay in an abusive relationship. So there are complex pscyhological reasons why someone may indulge in BDSM, that doesn't justify it morally. The reason is generally accepted to be a history of previous abuse which leads a person to 'act out' the abuse as a coping mechanism. However this is harmful and prevents the person moving on and recovering. I know 2 women who have been involved in BDSM relationships and they both say that for them it was self harm by proxy. Both had previous histories of self harm.

So to summarise

BDSM is NOT a sexuality
BDSM is NOT 'play'
BDSM is NOT harmless.

So if you think that I personally don't like you because you practice BDSM - you're right, well spotted!

jeez. that hurt. some total stranger doesn't like me because I'm kinky. I mean, I know not everyone in the world is going to be my BestFriendForever, and I can accept that, now that I'm out of middle school - but damn. how can Emma not like me? Emma don't even know me! and unless I told her, she'd never know I was kinky. (like I got some mark of Cain on my forehead or something.)

This bit got under my skin especially:
The reason is generally accepted to be a history of previous abuse which leads a person to 'act out' the abuse as a coping mechanism. However this is harmful and prevents the person moving on and recovering. I know 2 women who have been involved in BDSM relationships and they both say that for them it was self harm by proxy. Both had previous histories of self harm.

ok, so - Emma doesn't like me because I'm kinky. fine. and she thinks that the reason I'm kinky is because I've been abused by others. so because other people fucked with me, Emma doesn't like me? way to blame the victim.

except I'm not a victim. I'm just an average everyday pervert. I don't think I've been abused, therefore I'm a pervert. I think I'm a pervert who happens to have been abused, occasionally. I think I was a pervert first, and worried about it, and deeply concerned about it, and thought it made me bad and defective and sick and DESERVING OF ABUSE because of my defective sick badness.

Strange - as I post this I realize that it was just this same topic that had me wailing and gnashing my teeth last April, which led me to start my blog in the first place.

huh. plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

2007-04-10T19:47:00.000-07:00

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

2007-04-05T12:57:00.000-07:00

This is interesting:

The Eritrean government has banned female genital mutilation (FGM), saying the practice was painful and put women at risk of life-threatening health problems.

A government proclamation published on Wednesday said it was illegal for anyone to subject a person to FGM or provide tools to anyone who intended to carry out the practice. Failing to inform authorities on intended plans to subject anyone to FGM also constituted an offence, according to the legal notice.

The government and civil society had in February expressed optimism that efforts to combat FGM were bearing fruit, saying the campaign against the practice had gained support in rural areas where it was most common.

"We do not have the statistics yet, but we have seen a positive response, with even village councils coming up with their own provisional laws with the people's consensus to discourage the practice," Dehab Suleiman, the head of information and research at the National Union of Eritrean Women, told IRIN.

Suleiman said FGM prevalence rates in Eritrea were estimated at 94 percent, but the practice was expected to decline in the near future because an increasing number of parents were choosing not to have their daughters subjected to FGM.

We have seen a positive change

FGM involves the cutting and/or removal of the clitoris and other vaginal tissue, often under unsanitary conditions. It is practised in at least 28 countries globally. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates that up to 140 million girls and women around the world have undergone some form of FGM.

It is practised extensively in Africa, and also in parts of the Middle East and among immigrant communities around the world. According to medical experts, it causes physical and psychological complications, as well as heightening the risk of HIV/AIDS when unsterilised instruments are used.

At least 16 African countries have banned the practice, and the Maputo Protocol, an African regional document that prohibits and condemns FGM, came into force in November 2005.

2007-04-04T07:15:00.000-07:00

Manly Week!

a week or so ago I asked the question "What is masculinity?" to a resounding chorus of crickets. This week, Veronica's started a most interesting conversation on the very same topic. Check her out!

My husband had a friend once upon a time who was rather obsessed with Manhood, being a successful Man, an attractive Man, a Man who moved comfortably in the world of Men as distinguished from the world of boys.

Antiprince observed, on more than one occasion, that the world of Men is essentially the world of boys, but with neckties.

any thoughts?

2007-04-04T07:11:00.000-07:00

check it: Hell's Kitchen

because Rootie rocks my world.

so, yeah - cooking, homemaking, aprons-n-shit. the most popular room at any party is the kitchen. there's a reason for that.

2007-03-29T06:20:00.000-07:00

so the blogosphere went to the antiporn conference and all I got was this lousy t-shirt...

so let me get this straight - coupla hundred people spent a coupla days and whatever it cost for travel and meals to get together and discuss how we can all move on from the damaging Porn Wars of the 1980s "by reframing our thinking on pornography, especially in light of the important changes that have occurred in both technology and pop culture over the past two decades."

was any of that reframing actually done? or did everyone just get together to look at dirty slide shows?

Did people attend with the intention of developing an action plan of some sort, or try to get some questions answered? or did they attend for the sole purpose of sitting in a dark room with 100 or so of their closest friends and feel that shock - shock!- and horror! and fear! and disgust! and have that delicious, hair-raising, pulse-quickening sense of shared revulsion, shared outrage, shared pity, shared compassion, and feel that tremendous sense of group bonding against the terrifying monster embodied in image after horrible image, carefully arranged to slowly climb to a climax of ultimate deplorable degradation?

I mean, I wouldn't blame anyone if they did just go for the slide show. it must have felt great. exhilirating. cathartic. empowerful. like a fire-and-brimstone old-time revival meeting. Y'all must have felt like a real force to be reckoned with at the end of it all.

so, did you actually happen to get to the point of the conference, to wit:

What do such economic and cultural shifts mean for feminist theory and activism, and how can we rebuild a vibrant feminist movement that addresses the harms of misogynist images that help define our culture, our visual landscape and our sexuality?

was anyone able to actually answer that question? or did you get a little distracted?

and, while you're at it, did anyone proffer an opinion on what steps can be taken to really really eliminate those images, purge them completely, wipe them from our visual landscape? what can be done to completely obliterate that which you find offensive and damaging, and leave the world a safer place for women?

it occurs to me that no matter what great ideas can be employed, I don't think it's possible to keep the world safe FROM certain women, women like me for example.

women like me who, even after the knifepoint rape and the regular beatings and the general grinding into paste from all the humiliation and misery and bowel-curdling terror we've experienced, are nonetheless likely to say "oh, you just want to take a picture of my face looking out of a toilet seat? sure, whatever."

got a master plan for keeping the world safe from women like me? or do you have to sit through a couple more slide shows?

So, glad y'all had an amazing experience at the amazing conference. But unless y'all actually answered those questions, and more, I believe you did more to help yourselves than to help our poor downtrodden sisters.

2007-03-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

Donna's questions:

1. A friend wins a vacation to a tropical destination and can bring half a dozen friends, you are one of them! You get there and are unpacking your swimsuit and your friend says that it won't be necessary, it's a nude beach. Are you thrilled, no tan lines, or horrified and nervous?

what, you mean I can run around a tropical paradise with no clothes on? sweeeeeeeeeeet. tan lines, schmanlines - I just hate clothes and look stupid in bathing suits. surf's up!

2. Is there any theme to your home decor?

oh, Donna, Donna, Donna - you are so droll. yes, my home decor has a theme, and even a theme song, to wit - Christina Aguillera's "Still Dirrty." all my stuff is second or third or seventh-hand, and just fucking filthy. I'm a slob and don't care about my surroundings. but we never argue about housework!

3. When was the last time you said something like, "Oops, well it seemed like a good idea at the time" and what was the "good idea"?

Marrying Mr. Abusive Ex. I guess that was almost ten years ago by now. Unless it was that time I...with the...oh, yeah, that seemed like a good idea at the time...

4. Do you have any irrational fears? Something you know you shouldn't really be afraid of or at least not to the extent that you are, for example spiders.

aah! bees! bees and wasps. and hornets. and teeth. and dentists. and failure. and confrontation. and being exposed as the fraud I know I truly am, totally undeserving of my great good fortune, deep down inside. and drowning. I could go on.

5. What's love got to do, got to do with it? What's love but a second hand emotion?

who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken?
seriously - well, love is better than nothing. without it we might as well be the walking dead.

2007-03-23T05:21:00.000-07:00

I am in arrears, questions-wise. let me not be a questions-deadbeat!

Mamalujo is curious about the following:

1. When you were a "rock solid" 100 lbs. and five feet tall, what was your cup size?

gosh - you know, I don't really remember. maybe "B". maybe "C". I wasn't paying close attention. my mind was rather clouded by the obsessive burning desire for potatoes and the urge to go hide under a rock. those were dark, dark times, my friend.

2. How do signal to your husband that you're "in the mood"?

I say "hey, honey, how 'bout some 'married time'?" in a humorously-salacious tone of voice, accompanied by comically-insinuating eyebrows and some inappropriate pawing.

and then he rolls his eyes and says "God! I'm not a machine, you know! I have needs!"

and then he says "Only kidding...race you up the stairs!"

wanna know a secret? I'm often too shy to ask. no, really. isn't that funny?

3. What's your favorite homebrew recipe?

oh wow - we have a great recipe that my husband made up. we were aiming for, I think, an amber ale? maybe? Antiprince took great care to devise a recipe using the Tastybrew calculator, we cleaned the kitchen like it was a nuclear research facility, we did everything strictly according to directions. we bottled it with a minimum of bickering (god how we hate to bottle in our tiny kitchen), and let it sit in the basement for what seemed like forEVER. Then we invited an expert to our house to taste a bottle.

we opened a bottle for him and the cap shot across the room and almost broke a window. ke-POW! "remarkably clean fermentation," the expert said. (oh, I could have died of pride right there.)

he examined and compared and inspected and tasted and measured and swirled and consulted and considered and finally said "Well, it's not an ale. It's delicious, but it's not an ale. I think it's an English Brown."

and we were like "delicious? really? not poisonous? that is so cool." we were awfully proud.

OK - none of that is really the recipe, I realize now. Maybe Antiprince will stop by and comment with more details on that.

4. Have you ever spent the night in a cave?

ooh. why no. is it fun? should I get our sleeping bags? I bet it's awesome. do bats bother you or do they leave you alone? what about cougars?

5. Do you enjoy having your hair brushed?

why yes. yes I do. but I have a great lot of hair. someday I'll shave it all off and give it to charity wigmakers, and tattoo a big angry dragon on my head. but for now, I love having my hair brushed. aaaaaaaaaaaaah.

2007-03-21T07:18:00.000-07:00

Twisty's got a fascinating thread going about the nature of femininity. Apparently a friend of hers is doing a project for her "Dress and Society" class, attempting to answer the question "what is femininity?"

Editorial note: originally, I claimed she had a fascinating discussion, which, upon further review, I have to say it ain't. A discussion, I mean. yet. but the comments thread is no less fascinating for its lack of discourse.

most folks are simply answering the question as they see fit: "femininity is blahbleeblah." but there are wildly nonconforming definitions thrown in among the rather expected contributions.

so, go for it. answer here if you're uncomfortable answering there. it won't count towards the project, of course, if you answer here, but it will make for interesting discussion nonetheless. Most of the answers there are sort of "Devils Dictionary" or "Wickedary" style atttempts at wit-n-snark, but there's a surprising amount of diversity.

and while we're at it, what is masculinity?

2007-03-19T10:46:00.000-07:00

Belledame's questions:

1) How're things going with the silk piece?

well, it's silk pieces now...many pieces. many explorations, some successful, most not, some stalled, none finished...a little frustrating but yet compelling. the weight of the fabric makes it both gloriously lovely to touch and at the same time impossible to control. fun.

2) What's the last book you finished? What's next?

oh, hey - The Women's Room. I finished it last week. it was, um, long. As a period piece and influential work of fiction - most intriguing. as the gospel truth - not so much. But I finished it. Next up is Chuck Pahlaniuk's Diary, which I borrowed from Bimbo and started last night.

3) How do you usually deal with anger?

now, see, because you're asking that, I have a sneaking suspicion that you already know how I usually deal with anger - that is, usually I don't.

I will make headlines someday because of it. but I'm not tremendously forthcoming about anger. I am, generally speaking, far too fearful.

4) Dark chocolate or milk?

dark, beyond a doubt.

5) If you can persuade antiprince to get a dog or cat, what kind would you get?
oh, wow. jeez. at this point, I'm not sure I'm so fussy about breed. I'm more concerned with how the potential new family member would behave around our birds. Also, I hate high-pitched barking noises. any dog that does not make high-pitched barking noises would be welcome. of course, the furrier and bigger and more oafishly friendly the better...

2007-03-19T07:53:00.000-07:00

AdequateDer's questions:

1) How does Hillary Clinton strike you?
like a handful of pudding to the solar plexus.
she does not represent me as a woman or me as an american. Hillary represents Hillary. which is great if you're Hillary. not so good if you're, say, me.

2)In the pantheon of feminist literati is there one person whom you feel is solidly in your corner or on your wavelength?
I'm-a think on that. it's a great question, and I want to make sure I do it justice. so I will return to this question shortly.

3)If you could play an instrument, what would it be?
the banjo, naturally - so I could make beautiful, chime-y, celestial-sounding tones like Bela Fleck. sigh.

4)What's the best restaurant you've eaten in? Or your favorite, if it widely differs...

best as in fanciest? best as in most delicious? best as in most consistent quality? clearly more information is needed. what do you mean by "best"?

5)Do you like snow?
Oh, yeah...next question...
5) Why are teeth bad?
Oops! I'm gonna hear it...moving on...
5) Wanna see my spaceship?
I'm totally done for...

I don't want to talk about snow, or teeth. Good thing for you I am too much of a lady to slap you silly. however, I would love to see your spaceship. are you from a different planet?

In all seriousness...

5)Can friends be lovers? Can lovers be friends?

well, I sincerely hope so. otherwise I've been doing it all wrong.
I used to think that friendship (that elusive combination of respect, warm regard, affinity, fondness, shared interests, and all that undefineable other stuff) was not a requirement for twue luv. I was sadly mistaken. I have learned that I can't possibly tolerate engaging in romance with someone who doesn't inspire feelings of friendship.

On the other hand, maybe that's just me.