This is a reblog and expansion of something I wrote when the first rounds of defunding Planned Parenthood happened. The original is here. The carnival is brought to you by Shakesville and What Tami Said.

Since Republifuckers are so damned determined to lie about what Planned Parenthood does, and since so many of us have used their services, I think we should tell our stories. So here’s one (of many) that I have.

When I was a wee unmarried lass of 19 I confirmed that I was pregnant for 10 bucks at PP. But I didn’t just pee in a cup. They did a full exam and and then gently asked me if I knew what my options were. I knew from the second I thought I might be up the stick that I was keeping the Kid. When I told the doc, she didn’t lecture me about my age or state of non-marriage (as other doctors and nurses would later). She gave a prescription for prenatal vitamins, and told me the possible due date (which would later be nearly a month off because it’s not as an exact science as we’d like to believe AND the Kid was, as is his style, 2 weeks fucking late).

She gave me information on how to apply for Medicaid, including the actual forms, so I could get prenatal care straight away and she gave me a paper proving a positive pregnancy test result to include with the forms to speed up the process. At the bottom she scrawled ‘Elizabeth has decided to parent’. And that is the moment where I realized the enormity of the CHOICE I made. I decided to parent.

That choice is not often celebrated when the one making it is poor, young, unmarried, not white, diasbled or not neurotypical. Planned Parenthood is the only national organization that I can think of that does the boots on the ground, doctors in the clinics, actual support of women no matter what their choice is. All the feminist theory in the world and theoretical arguments don’t amount to jack shit when you don’t actually a safe, clean, staffed clinic for poor women and girls (and men and boys) to go to.  Choice doesn’t mean anything without that.

More carnival stories here.

I’ve spent the last hour on hold with DSHS. I did the same thing last week. Apparently it’s time for my review! Of course, since I moved 2 months ago I had sent in all the review information already (twice, since I didn’t get confirmation after sending it in the first time) but I still needed to be reviewed, again.

But I have a crappy mail carrier and never received the review request. I received the notice that I had failed to turn in my review. So I sent in (another) round of review information. And called to make sure everything was kosher. Had a phone interview. Sent in proof of income. Did everything, again, that I was supposed to.

And since it’s been a week and I haven’t heard anything, I called to make sure we’re still getting food stamps on the 8th (otherwise we are FUCKED). First round of phone calls, get hung up on by automated system. Second round of phone calls, get condescended to by call center asshole who doesn’t know jack about what she’s talking about but does know how to be extra shitty. Finally, get passed on to a supervising case worker who tells me my paperwork has been lost in the ether. She’s nice, at least, but we aren’t getting food stamps on Friday. She doesn’t know when we’ll get them. “Sometime, maybe. In the mean time, try a food bank. You’ve done everything you’re supposed to do.”

I’m going to go curl up in a ball and sob for a bit.

That’s a mouthful of a title, isn’t it.

I’ve been thinking about activism and anti-oppression work for a long-ass time, and that title is the best advice I’ve got.

I know, it might seem a little disheartening to a young, new thing, seeing the world all bright and hard for the first time and wanting to go kick doors down. But start with yourself. There are so many doors in our own heads that need to be smashed, so many little aspects of social conditioning that need to be broken.

As any 101 guide will tell you, the first step is to shut up, open your ears, and listen to the people who know. But we’ve all done some of that around here already. So what next?

For me, I try to make sure that even though I’ve done a lot of listening and learning, I am always trying to include new voices and faces in my media consumption. I made some comments to the Boyfriend that my music was veering way to heavily into the white boy territory. I am an Indy Pop Queen, that particular genre is seriously top heavy with skinny, upper-middle class white boys in tiny pants. So I am proactively trying to seek out non-white, non-straight, non-male voices to make my toes tap. Pandora is a big help for that. Also, I follow Female Rappers on Tumblr. I found Rye Rye there. She’s a young, single mother, female rapper with mad dance skills.

I do the same with movies and tv, which is made much easier with sites like The Hathor Legacy and Women in Hollywood and the Bechdel test as a bare minimum requirement.

for those of us in thrall to the alcohol-industrial complex: Anti-hangover shower gel. It’s wide-awake mornings at Elizabitch HQ from now on.

Dennis Byrne, in an anti-gay marriage op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, accidentally blurted out a truth:

[M]arriage, among other things, seeks to protect the lives and rights of women and children in a historically patriarchal society.

Dennis! Yes! You see the light! You’re tired of being the asshole who’s unfit for mixed company, right? Can we count on your help to dismantle the patriarchy? Sign right here! Hey everybody, good news, we signed up a conservative white guy!

Wait! Dennis? Dennis…?

Oh, hell.

Here’s everything you ever wanted to know about America in one interaction (story shamelessly stolen from a Dear Friend)

Dear Friend now works as customer service for a cruise company after 3 years of unemployment/ temping. She makes less than a living wage and decidedly less than she did pre-layoff. But it’s full-time, permanent, with benefits. It’s a unicorn job.

Customer is worrying that they will be “stuck on a boat with nothing to eat but soup and bread for a week”. Dear Friend is eating soup and bread, because that is what she can afford for lunch. She eats soup and bread a lot. Soup is cheap. You can make buckets of it and the liquid makes you feel full even if there isn’t a ton of calories in it.

America* is a land where rich people complain to poor people and poor people have to listen and respond with cheerfulness. “Of course, you (great pimple on the ass of society) won’t be stuck eating just bread and soup. That would be awful”.

*I am sure that’s true in just about every country. But we like to pretend all our poor people are lazy, government-teat sucking layabouts, not full-time workers.

Upon obliging son with iffy aim to clean up around the toilet seat: “If it comes out of your penis, it’s your problem, you deal with it.”

Add this to the file containing the trash can shaped outdoor fireplace for the rich jerk who wants to get his (aesthetically and aromatically pleasing) warm on in traditional homeless fashion.

Now, a club for rich people who want to smash shit. No really, that’s all it is. Pay a(n undisclosed) membership fee, choose the item of your vexation, get picked up in a limo, dress in fancy smash-stuff attire, and break shit.

Now I’m not going to begrudge someone getting their smash on. I do it to every “gift” (read object d’obligation) sent by a certain stalker. But I’m smashing tacky porcelain spoon rests, not grand fucking pianos. The waste alone is breath taking.

ETA I knew this idea wasn’t original. It’s part of the plot of The Last Word.

It. Was. Made. Of. Win.

I could stop there. But, I am wordy. There may be spoilers.

Hanna is, despite the modern trappings, a good, old-fashioned fairy tale along the lines of most orphan quest stories. There’s the tragically dead mother, the wicked step-mother (Cate Blanchett), the well-intentioned but somewhat inept father figure (Eric Bana) and the normal-ish adoptive family that gives the hero of the story a peek at how the rest of the world lives.

It also has some pretty fight scenes (oh fight porn, how do I love thee) and an evil government program. What it doesn’t have is a view of any of the female characters as sexy props. There was no “she’s sexy evil” or “she’s sexy prodigy” or “she’s sexy lit professor”. I found myself holding my breath, waiting for the busting cleavage/ slow-motion / gunshot scene (you’ve seen Angelina do this in every action flick she’s been in) and it never came. The women in the show weren’t asexual either. The road tripping,lit-professing, middle-aged mom (played by Olivia Williams!) has sex, embarrassing to her teenage daughter, but basic matrimonial sex. And Hanna has a couple of sweet teenage moments. But it’s all bleedingly normal and not pornified, meant to show the character’s humanity and not their breast implants. (Actually we don’t see anything but a rocking camper with the mom’s scene).

Joe Wright, I am officially on board as a fan. I liked Atonement. You’re version of Pride and Prejudice, while not Colin Firth wet-shirt awesome, was a nice way to spend an afternoon. But Hanna is incredible. Well done, sir.

Really. The side effects are interesting.

h/t to Renee