The boy child, oh my how he makes me proud. And often in ways I totally did not expect or plan for.

He came out to me as straight at 8, which was just too cute for words (and would have been just as cute if he’d came out as gay) and boggled my melon for a bit. My awesome therapist explained that it is totally normal for kids raised in either gay or gay friendly households to announce their sexuality once they’ve got the grasp of it.

There is the fact that he’s been bugging me to dye a pair of pants pink for him for months. My 15 year old is “comfortable enough” in his manliness to want to wear the oh so girly color. He’s a teenager. He should be mortified by his peers and trying desperately to fit in, and he couldn’t care less what they think of him.

Which leads me to the most recent super proud but surprising moment of feminist parenting yet. For the Kid’s bday, my Auntie, having noticed that the Kid was very interested in my late grandmother’s china doll collection, got his about half a dozen china dolls of his own. And he’s over the moon about them. I sat through a doll display show last night where he showed me which ones were his favorites and how cool is this one that looks like a chibee of the big one and so forth.

I am the proud mother of a white, het, teenage boy child who loves dolls. I think I just won the feminist mommy lottery. Holy shit, all those years of work actually paid off.

(The pointing out of Kid’s sexual orientation is not to privilege het, but rather to show that the normal stereotyping of a kid like mine is that he must be gay. Perhaps there are more straight boys in the world who would like to collect dolls too, but because of social restrictions they have to make due with action figures instead).

Comments on this will be very closely monitored. You talk smack about my kid in any way and I will not hesitate to put a giant pile of whoopass on you, including but not limited to publishing of private contact information. He’s a kid, and he’s happy, and he doesn’t give a damn what you think. But I’m his momma and I will gut you like a fish for looking at him sideways.

MsExPat at Corrente finds this depressing. We stand on the cusp of one of humanities most dangerous moments.

We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy.

I do not. I find it liberating. I don’t know about you all, but I am sure as shit tired of bumping my head against immovable power structures that just don’t seem to break. I am tired as all get out of the circle jerk that modern politics. I am liberated by the thought that my job isn’t to fix a broken system, but to contemplate what next.

Our little system of democracy has broken down into the oligarchy deemed as inevitable by Michels as gravity. I find myself wondering daily if a lottery wouldn’t be a better way to choose our politicians.

I’ve been reading a lot of modern art and design blogs and getting way more positive philosophy there than I ever could on most political blogs. I’m thinking about things like production processes that take the eventual discard/disuse of the item as part of the creation of the product and a changing the way we make things to include the end life of a thing. I’m thinking about all the little crafters in the world making some money on Etsy doing old school things in modern ways like knitting and pottery, things that used to be considered purely decorative arts and the realm of women (and not of serious, read male, artists).

And thinking about making things safer and greener and better, or just making things, makes me happy. We can’t actually cease all consumption as a species, but we can seriously change our philosophy when it comes to stuff we consume. And that skips all the eco bullshit that is really just a way to wrangle women back into unpaid labor under the guise of protecting the environment (go google femivores to see what I mean) by putting the onus of sustainability on the creator and not the discarder.

And I’m thinking about things like darknet economies as ways to, as the author of the depressing post says, keep the humanity of humans alive in the coming chaos. Hey, if these little words that I write on this screen inspire some random searcher a hundred years from now to think past the horror and into the possible, yippy. But in the mean time establishing little trusted circles of social interaction in the internet world maybe the modern equivalent of a cloister.

This is, of course, not to say that I won’t still be sending the occasional douchebag email to members of our government or throwing tantrums when they do yet another stupid thing. It’s just to say that I have given up hope of fixing it and would much rather concentrate on how to build a better mousetrap next time.

They are not something to be bought and sold, bartered or traded, earned or won. They are fundamental and eternal. They are always true, even when they are not practiced or acknowledged or even legal. They are true even if we don’t know they are true yet. 50 years from now, clean water may be the human rights fight of the moment, or technology access, or the right to worship or not worship our robot overlords. Hell, we might even get around to realizing that drug use is a human right. You have a right to control your own body, even in unhealthy ways. It’s yours, I don’t care what you put into your body or take out of your body so long as you get to choose it.

What human rights boil down to is the right to self. The right to control over your own body, your own mind, your own opinions, your own needs, wants and desires (provided those needs, wants and desires don’t interfere with someone else’s body). That’s it. It’s basic. It’s simple. It’s not special rights to let lgbts marry or serve openly in the military or get or stay employed or housed. It’s not special rights to allow women and girls access to much needed medical care, including abortions. It all falls under the right to control your own body.

Human rights are not something to be patient for, to wait for. Telling someone who doesn’t have these rights to hold on for a bit is like telling someone to hold their breath. Selling the human rights of women to the lowest bidder in order to pass a craptastic healthcare bill is not okay. It’s not politicking finery. It’s a human rights violation. Period. We have just been told that our right to our own body is up for sale, and the only people on the market are powerful men in tacky blue suits.

Don’t let anyone sugar coat it for you. Don’t let them tell you how this isn’t really about rights, but about votes and federal dollars and blah blah blah. The government spends money on shit we morally object to all the time, like say killing families in Afghanistan or paying Blackwater, KBR et all to rape and pillage. This little bit of politicking is just one more of the thousand paper cuts which will just as surely kill us as a full sweeping no abortion ever bill would. And it’s been brought to you by Democrats, the party made mostly of women but run mostly by men.

Now if you have the time, I recommend you watch this movie on Hulu, Rain Without Thunder, about a future society where abortion and birth control have been slowly but surely outlawed. And then try to tell me how very little Obama’s fucking executive order is going to matter to us living, breathing, human women.

And I am not ashamed.

Text below:

Thanks for using my right to adequate and comprehensive healthcare as a bargaining chip with the Stupaks.

I really really love when a bunch of douchebag men in tacky blue suits pat each other on the back for once again trampling all over women’s bodies. It makes me really proud to be a democrat.

Oh wait, no actually. The green party sure is looking good to us democratic women. We’re only 60 percent of the Dem party to begin with. How many of us do you think you can loose? Do you think that maybe not acting like republicans might, I dunno, keep us from running away. Even if we don’t vote third party, if we just kept our votes and cash and volunteer skills out of elections totally, do you think you could even win a city council seat?

You all might have noticed that I have a tendency towards melancholy sometimes. It’s true, I do.

And I’ve been chaffing lately. I’m cranky. I’m feeling pigeonholed and ignored at the same time “oh here little blogger girl, you’re so good at writing about poverty- thank gawd it’s a topic we almost universally ignore”.

I didn’t start out being a poverty blogger. I started out, like a lot of women, being the big idea political blogger. That’s my major after all. I can get down with the inside out Washington wonkery with the best of the Big Boy Blogs. But I’m a girl, and no one listens when girls write about that shit unless they are former rethuglicans turned fauxgressives (Arriana Huffington-cough). I can give you the run down, off the top of my head, the average percent of gdp spent on healthcare in prolly 15 countries. I can also break down for you exactly how those countries provide universal care, either through cost controls or non-profit private insurance or a mix of a things. But I’m a poor single mom who couldn’t afford to finish a degree, my knowledge carries exactly no weight in the political sphere.

I wrote a long ass time ago about the Pink Zennana, the women’s only ghetto of politics that we are pushed into (or join gratefully, happy to finally have an audience where our words aren’t drowned out by bellowing boys). Hurray, feedback! But only if we stick to a very short list of topics with a decidedly pink theme.

So great, I’m good at writing about the poor. Because I am actually poor, I will never get a paid position writing about the poor. We don’t allow that in this country. Period. And because I am actually, full throated-ly progressive (and female), I will never get a paid job writing about big politics. We don’t allow that in this country.

So after many many years of blogging, I’m a bit frustrated.

And there are so many other things I like to write about. I love art. I would be an art critic in another life. But why not this one? And music. And movies. Fuck it, if my serious shit is going to be ignored for the most part (not by you, my darling few readers) then I might as well throw in more of the writing that makes me happy.

So that’s it. You all will be seeing more (and have been seeing more) of the fluffy posts. It’s better for my mental health. Not that I’m giving up politics, but writing should either make me happy or make me money or both. It should not make me more pissed off at the world.

And now for a thank you. Yesterday I got a zillion happy birthday, I love you messages from my darling friends and family. It’s hard being physically away from my friends, and I’ll tell you a little secret. Growing up in the house that I did, I am always shocked that people remember who I am, let alone that they like me or love me. It’s a deeply seeded childhood insecurity that comes from never being able to trust that your parents love you. I think it must be an abused kid thing.

Anyways, I got all these awesome messages and I think my heart exploded. It feels a bit like becoming a solid thing, something that takes up space in the universe, that has a place and a mass, instead of being just a bit of whispy ether with no tether to the world. Thank you all for that. Big smooches and serious love for that.

So if any of you all can drop one or all of these pretty pretty men off at my place, I’d give ya a birthday smooch
Noah Wyle (shameless admission time- I LOVE the silly Librarian movies)

And since it would be a crying shame to leave out Goran Visnjic if we are including former ER hotties- here he is

And no list of my favorite eye candy would be complete without Clive Owen

I think you all also know of my love for Tahmoh Penikett

And you all should know that I frequently re-watch Monsoon Wedding just to get my hot Indian boy fix (I am only allowed to look, I cannot for sanity reasons date another hot Indian boy no matter how pretty they are)
This is Parvin Dabas- he plays the groom in the movie


And I can’t for the life of me find the name of the guy who shows up at the very end of the movie, but trust. Watch the movie (it’s really good) and wait for the eye candy treat at the very end.

I just realized that there is exactly one American on this entire list. Yep- that pretty much looks like my dating history for the last 10 years or so. What can I say, I’m an international girl.

35 years ago today, I was born. For the first time, I feel old. I don’t know if it’s actual age or the horrid state of the world, but I feel every ounce of my years and then some. 30 was an easy breasy piece of cake, (I had my 30th birthday 3 times, that should give you all some idea of how much fun 30 was). But 35 makes me want to stay in bed. No drunken karaoke. No phallic cookies. No trips to exotic places. Just a warm bed and a stack of sappy movies. Recommendations please? I just watched White Teeth on Hulu and thought it was fab. Not so much sappy, but I loved it.

Now that I’ve depressed you all.

It’s also the blogiversary, 4 years to be exact, of this here little blog. It’s had it’s ups and downs. It’s spikes in readership and drops. It’s trolls. It’s had 2 names and more co/guest bloggers than I can shake a stick at. Overall, it’s been a good thing. But sometimes I feel so frustrated that so very little ever changes. It’s hard sometimes not to get bogged down in the totality of shit that there is in the world.

Speaking of shit in the world, on this day, March 19, 2003 Bush started the Iraq war. 7 years later and we’re still there. That should shock and awe the shit out of you. Perpetual war, great.

So here’s a little birthday music to lighten the mood

The Sugarcubes- Birthday

Concrete Blonde: Happy Birthday

Altered Images: Happy Birthday

Last weekend, for Kid’s birthday we took him to the local strawberry festival. Think county fair plus strawberries. A good time was had by all.

But……

Kid wanted strawberry cheesecake as his b-day cake. Auntie promised to make it and what better place to get awesome rad strawberries than a strawberry festival. Now I have shopped at a bunch of farmer’s markets, etc. Never have I been given the stink eye for being picky about what I am buying, till the Strawberry festival. After confirming that my aunt did in fact want an entire flat of strawberries (12 pints people) I went about looking through the flats for the nicest one. And I didn’t like any that I saw. When the booth lady finally came up to me I said “I want a flat, but I want pretty ones”. She pulled the top flat off, looked at the (moldy) one underneath it and proceeded to pack up the one I didn’t want. While Wonder was paying her, another booth lady came over and replaced my now purchased ugly flat with a flat of gorgeous, perfect strawberries.

“Uhm excuse me, I don’t mean to be a pain, but can i have these instead?”

Booth lady (with obvious annoyance) “They’re all the same berries!”

Me: “True, but these are prettier and I’m a food snob”.

I got my pretty berries peeps, and Auntie informs me that my pickiness paid off. Only one strawberry out of 12 pints had to be tossed.

It’s odd to me, having bartered in open markets and pantomimed to french grocer’s to get pretty carrots and onions, and having lived for a long time in a city with one of the best farmer’s markets in the country, to have been to a festival all about pretty strawberries and to have been harumphed for wanting pretty strawberries. Lemme tell you folks, the French have nothing on the unpleasantness of rural southerners.

Since I have now spent 3 days in bed due to a horrible menstrual cycle and a uterus that hates me, Wonder and I were discussing the possibilities of getting rid of said uterus via craigslist.

Now i understand the type of crunchy earth goddess feminists who love their periods and want to make paintings with their own blood. But that ain’t me. Granted, I bleed enough every month to stock an entire Sherwin Williams store, but meh. The crunchy earth goddesses I have known were never laid out once a month on a pile of already ruined sheets and towels, making only short trips to the bathroom and worrying the entire way about staining the floors underneath them. That’s my reality, more of a Niagra falls than a gentle flow.

So if you know someone who needs a perfectly functioning but otherwise unwanted uterus- take mine. It works. It’s been pregnant more than once, it carried the kid through an entire pregnancy and then some. It bleeds on schedule, if somewhat excessively. Moving expenses, of course, not included.

The peeps at Jezebel are having a hard time coming up with a feminist playlist cause it’s hard. Insert pouty face). Boo fucking who for them. For YEARS and years and years, whenever I’ve given a dude a playlist of some sort it has always included some kick ass feminist stuff (subverting the patriarchy one mix tape, burned cd, mp3 player at a time).

So here’s a list, just off the top of my head, of some of my favorites

Le Tigre- Hot Topic
This song will give you a quick and dirty guide to a motherload of awesome feminists. That’s all the song is, a list of names. And it’s catchy as hell

One of the bands mentioned in the above song is Sleater Kinney. Here’s I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

The Sundays- I Kicked A Boy Till He Cried (I love love love Harriet Wheeler’s little girl voice singing mean sarcastic lyrics)

The Gossip- Standing in the way of control

And since Pearl Jam’s been on my mind lately, how about Daughter

PJ Harvey: Sheela Na Gig (this was the Kid’s favorite song when he was younger. Now he’s moved on to Green Day)

And (just as a fuck you to Onion’s AV club for including the original of this song, by James Brown, on their list) Concrete Blonde covering It’s a Man’s World

Let’s see, that took me about 5 minutes o’ googling, maybe a few more because I couldn’t find the Betty Blowtorch video that I wanted. And granted, yes this playlist dates me as 90’s slacker teenager.

What’s your feminist playlist look like?

ETA: I can’t fucking believe I forgot this one. It makes me cry every single time I hear it. Patty Griffin- Mary