Anyone whose been a feminist for oooohhh say five minutes or longer has at some point gotten the “you’re looking for sexism everywhere!” speech. I got that one the other day, along with the whole “don’t be a victim” line.

I wish that I was making up the sexism. I wish that this was some form of paranoid delusion that the world is out to get me (and every other woman on the planet). Oh if only I was a hypochondriac . Then there would be a cure. I could fix this whole problem by myself, or at least with the help of a good doctor.

But sexism is everywhere, in everything. It starts as soon as we know what the sex of a child is going to be when we pick their names and the colors of their clothes. And it never stops.

One half of the population is taught from the beginning to fear the other half. Not all of them. But we are taught that our behavior can drive males into a violent fury. We check ourselves. How we dress, how we act, where we go, what we do. None of this ever actually prevents us from being raped or hurt, but if we behave in a completely virtuous manner, then perhaps if/when we are raped or hurt we will not be blamed for it.

We are taught to fear strange men in dark bushes. But we aren’t told that it’s more likely someone we know, even someone we love, will be the person who hurts us.

And then there are all the little papercut like wounds the world inflicts on women. The daily street harassment. The parents and teachers and bosses who treat as as less than and force us into roles we wouldn’t normally accept. The media that is always telling us that we are not good enough as we are. We must be thinner, whiter, prettier, meeker. A lady in the streets and a freak in the sheets. But not too freaky. Cause then you’re a slut.

And when things go bad, they go bad for us first and stay bad for us longer. The economy crashes and women’s jobs are the first to get cut. We never made as much as men anyways. When people are struggling economically, violence increases. And violence begins at home.

When I left the Kid’s dad, after he had tried to strangle me in a parking lot, I went to a domestic violence support group for a while. There is a phrase that they used, “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it”. They were talking about the abusive patterns and behaviors.

But it applies to sexism too. I could try to pretend it doesn’t exist, but my being ignorant of it, because I am female, doesn’t mean it won’t affect me. I can pretend that cat callers are really just complimenting me, or that my only real skills are filing and typing and mommying and cooking. Or that the real reason my life sucks is cause I haven’t found the “right man” to come sweep me off my feet.

Actually, I did try to prentend not so long ago. I was tired of the constant struggle. Along came a very handsome, very wealthy, very charming guy. Who wanted a trophy wife. I tried to pretend that it wouldn’t bother me to be someone’s well kept pet, that giving up power over my own life would be a good thing since I’ve so obviously screwed up while trying to wield that power myself. We got snowed in together one weekend. I spent the weekend cooking and fucking. And I saw what daily life with him would be. Cooking, fucking, cleaning, babies. Over and over. No partnership. No give and take. I was going to be smothered. I would never have to worry about money again, but I would also never be treated as anything more than a servant. Maid, cook, whore, incubator. I wouldn’t even get the fake power brides get in having my dream wedding (to elope in Rome or Venice with no one around but us). He said it would HAVE to be a big traditional wedding with all his gazillions of relatives. I cringed at the thought of being the center of all that patriarchal madness, dressed up like a giant cotton ball of virginal whiteness and marched down an aisle to indentured servitude.

Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

Needless to say, that ended. I couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist.

I see sexism everywhere because sexism is everywhere. I don’t need to go looking for it. I’m a girl, it finds me whether I want it too or not.

And I am not a constant victim. I am fighter. A warrior queen in the battle against the patriarchy. My weapons are words and facts and thoughts.

Hard, like a fist to the face.

It’s not just your .75 cents on the dollar, now it’s no cents at all for you ladies.

Mass layoff events hit a record high in August. On Sept. 23, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded 1,777 firms laying off 50 or more workers. The three job categories most seriously affected were temporary service workers, school and employee bus drivers, and professional association workers. These three occupations employ far more women than they do men. Unfortunately for women, the usual policy response to rising unemployment won’t help them much because this spending does not create jobs in the sectors where women work.

But don’t tell Dana Perino that. She thinks we all just need to stop sucking on the government teat that is Unemployment insurance and GET A JOB!

Did the bailout work yet?

How about now?

Now?

Still waiting to find out what good that $700 billion dollars is gonna do.

Seems like someone who was whipping up the fury in the house to get the bailout package passed was threatening some congress critters with marshal law if they said no.

In more hopeful news, a film by my second favorite Italian Marxist, Piere Paolo Pasolini, is now out on a big shiny 2 disc set. Pasolini is not for the faint of heart or stomach. He shows brutality for what it is.

What you see on screen in “Salò” is certainly bad enough, as the four aristocrats, unable to find any genuine pleasure in their depravity, urge each other to commit ever-worse atrocities upon a group of abducted children. But aficionados of films like “Hostel” and the far edges of Japanese horror have definitely seen worse. Pasolini always maintained that he abhorred the film’s scenes of violence, but that they were necessary as the logical fulfillment of the social system he was excoriating — that is, both the system of the literal fascist era and that of the homogenized, consumerist state he saw emerging in mid-’70s Italy, which for him were two sides of the same coin. It might be more accurate to say that Pasolini saw fascism and consumerism as two aspects of the powerful and evil urge to dominate inherent in human nature; as Marxist atheist homosexuals go, he was always an ardent Roman Catholic.

Unlike our current Hollywood schmucks, Pasolini had no problem sticking a mirror to the upper classes and showing us what they look like. I kinda wish I could do the same to our entire government and every bankster in the country right now.

Big news! McCain is a doochebag.

Okay, not big news. Not even news. We all knew that.

What is news to me is how Obama has suddenly seen the light (or heard some of the phone calls begging congresscritters not to pass the bailout) and NOW he’s all for regulation.

Now, seriously, just like in the last week he’s decided that Republicans have got that whole deregulation thing ass backwards. Was a time not so long ago when Obama was pretty cozy with deregulation and Republican trickle down theory.

And I really don’t know how to take this. Has someone with a giant economic brain smacked Obama in the head and said “stop endorsing criminal thievery you moron!” Did he really need to wait for the collapse of the world wide economic system (Sorry Iceland!) to see that Republicans don’t know shit about economics except how to steal money and influence the Treasury. Cause you all know we are Democrats, right? We’ve always had the better economic ideas (see Clinton- 1992 to 2000 if you need proof, though praise for Bill Clinton’s economic mastery will NEVER pass through the lips of the Precious)

There is NOTHING we can do about the upcoming election. Either way an asshole is going to be in the White House come January. But I am really tired of the Hopey Changey types thinking that Obama is gonna smooth over the nasty economy with one signature from his rainbow colored glitter pen.

My only consolation is that I feel a mighty bout of schadenfreude coming up. Mighty.

Kid and I went sailing around Lake Union tonight on a wee little sailboat. It was beautiful and the most fun I’ve had in a long time.

And now I think I want to steal a sail boat and live on that instead of in a real house. I already promised to come visit Ouyangdan in Hawaii and later in Korea. She thinks I should claim some island that Korea and japan have been fighting over for years and become a real monarch.

But I totally get why people become all obsessive about boats now. Totally.

Free market reforms broke Iceland.

Sorry Bjork.

This is what a casino economy does folks. It breaks countries.

Can we be done with it now?

This story did.

This picture has nothing to do with the linked story. I just liked the lady boxers.

Ouyangdan wrote this amazing post on what it’s like for her to be a white passing native.

She got me thinking (as she often does). I am Cherokee, how much is questionable since my family never did take no long walk to Oklahoma to be put on a reservation. (I’m sorry but even thinking about my family back in North Carolina and Tennessee and I start talking like them). We managed to skip the Trail of Tears because my female ancestors married Europeans. They traded in the power and dignity they had as the matriarchs

gets it right with the Gmail ad stuff.

Today I got this quote:

The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning