I feel like I’ve spent the last few weeks in a whirlwind of capitalist ecstasy. I have been shopping, y’all. And not a package of underwear here and a t-shirt there, but full fledged (well semi-full fledged. I’m still a poor person and I still love thrift stores) back to school shopping for the Kid. I haven’t been able to do that since 2007. I have had to do things in tiny pieces with crossed fingers that the Kid wasn’t going to have a growth spurt and suddenly not have any pants that fit. Kid needing new shoes would create a fiery pit of fear and worry in my belly. And then there was the incident just a few months ago when I asked the kid where he was going to store his socks and underwear in his new room and he said “you mean my 3 pairs of underwear?” Oh the heartbreak and guilt and shame of not being able to properly clothe a rapidly growing child is something I hope none of you all ever has to feel. But thanks to employment, the Kid is clothed. New(ish) pants and t-shirts and long sleeve t-shirts and button down shirts and jeans and hoodies! And a dozen new pairs of boxers! New school supplies, and books. Oh I might have gone a little crazy with the books. This year’s science is biology and because my favorite part of biology was making the cell drawings, I got El Nino the biology coloring book. And the Outsiders. He’s a good age for it and Hinton is a woman who wrote the book about teenage othering of poor kids while a teenager. Better than reading Catcher in the Rye, in my opinion. And then there are the many “how to write a paper” books, since that is definitely an area that the Kid hates but that must be done this year. And Howard Zinn’s illustrated book on empire and and and. Today was the end of it. Kid got new shoes and socks. Provided he doesn’t have a freakish growth spurt, he’s all set till spring. I don’t even. What. How. I.. Shit. The long running list of shit that MUST. BE. BOUGHT. is down to half a page of notebook paper, and except for a memory foam pad for my bed (hello fibro-fucking-myalgia! Thanks for making sleeping torture!) it’s all want and not too much need. Is this how normal people live? I can’t even remember. It’s been so long. Now I have to do some serious saving of the money for the most extravagant of luxuries- dental work. There will be root canals and crowns y’all. And cleanings. Think about that.

Cherrums- plum shaped and sized fruit that tastes like a plum-cherry hybrid. So fucking awesome I may eat a dozen right now (not really, that’s like drinking a week’s worth of prune juice in one go).

I have discovered, after years of subsisting on one meal a day plus copious amount of coke(a cola), that I actually function much better if I 1) drink coffee and tea 2) eat lots of little snacks like a cut up piece of fruit or a yogurt 3)eat an actual lunch, no eating the convenience store muffin I tossed in my bag just because it was easy and calling lunch, that I feel much better. And do my job better too (I get graded on job performance every. single. day. So I know when I am slipping).

Good lord, I hope I am not on the verge of becoming a virtuous foodie. Feel free to shame me if I do. But until then, try a Cherrum! They are way better than pluots!

And I should write a big, meaty fucking post on that. But I am just burnt the fuck out from work. Thank the FSM that I have today off. Thank the FSM that I have a job and today off (paid, shocking, nez pas?) Thank the FSM that I have a job, today off, and make almost a living wage.

And we all best be thanking an imaginary deity for that shit, cause lord knows the weasels-in-charge of governance of the masses for the elites ain’t doing diddly fucking squat for the unemployed, the semi-employed, the employed but not making enough to live on, the employed but my heath insurance ate my paycheck, etc, etc.

Alternatively, thank a Union. For it is to the mighty (not so much anymore) Unions that we owe 40 hour work weeks. Thanks to the Union, I earned 60 bucks in overtime last paycheck. 60 bucks, that’s a half a week of groceries. Used to be a whole week of groceries, but wages as we all know, have not kept up with inflation the last 30 years or so.

Speaking of groceries, I am off to buy some. This working full plus time really cuts the fuck into my dinner making time. So I am stocking up on sammich makings and frozen pizzas. Truth is, Americans eat like shit because we don’t have time to shop and cook and pay tribute to the mighty gods of Corporation Welfare.

We need shorter work weeks. If our productivity is so high now that we produce an extra month’s worth of work every year, we should both be making more actual money and working fewer hours. But that seems way too logical to the weasels-in-charge to get.

Oh look, President Fuck You has declared today as National Women’s Equality Day. It would mean so much more if he didn’t treat equal rights for us female types as a bargaining chip. Keep the meaningless holiday, I’d rather have non rapey cops, equal pay and sovereignity over my own damn body.

Not for myself this time.

Arthur, patron saint of us disabused, disenchanted and disappeared folks is having a rough time of it. I know how gut-wrenchingly awful it is to have to bleg for a living, and I don’t put out damn near the quality of righteous anger and analysis that Arthur does. I’ve said it before, if the world were just he’d be a national hero. But alas.

If you’ve got something to spare- send it his way.

It took, what, 3 years for the big name left-ish* types to figure out what we’ve all known about Obama since the primaries. He’s the second coming of Hoover. A stand in the face of history, shrug, and potter around with meaningless bullshit type.

We’ve know this for so long. And trust, I would have been super happy to eat crow had I been wrong. Had Obama shown that he was more than just empty speeches and kleplotcratic, I would be the first person to sign up for phone banking come 2012.

I wanted, and still want, a government that functions by the people, for the people.

But I am not going to see that anytime soon. My Kid is looking at a world where he may be my dependent well into his late 20’s because job options and education options for a child of poverty, even a straight, white, male, tab child of poverty, are growing smaller everyday. And the president can’t be assed to seriously talk about it.

The one tiny consolation I have is the “told ya so” consolation. It’s mildly petty, sure, to be standing in the middle of the street while Rome burns yelling about how we all should have invested in fire fighting programs, but I still want my little bit of credit. This path that the president has led us down seems so shockingly out of character to the johnny-come-latelys of anti-Obama-ism. But for us old hands, TOLD YOU SO. FUCKERS.

So I am more than a wee bit peeved that they are calling it “firebagging” after Fire Dog Lake. If I remember correctly, quite a few people got kicked off that site for cautiously suggesting that Obama might not be the messiah, and now they get the credit for disaffection. Fuck you. Oh, now you want to primary Obama. Tough shit. The only people that primary sitting presidents are unelectable attention grabbers. You voted him in. You gave him legitimacy. The next chance we have of changing that won’t come until 2016, or more likely 2020 after a few years under President Bachman-Perry-Paul-Romney. Bad political decisions are very long lasting. You cheerleaders for Hope and Change just fucked over an entire generation. Suck it up, you unthinking douchenoodles.

We have a president who veers to the right of Warren Buffett. Let’s all remember that Buffett’s ONLY claim to leftisness is that he doesn’t believe in inherited wealth. He doesn’t actually think the government is all that good at providing services. But he also doesn’t like the volatility of a stock market in the grips of rating agency madness over the national debt. Tax the rich to pay the debt, don’t hand children billion dollar inheritances. That’s Buffet, and that’s Obama on his right.

So I am taking my little consolation. I was right. You all were wrong. If I vote at all in 2012, I’m voting for Rosanne Barr. I like her. She’s funny. She’s feminist. She gave Joss Whedon his first writing gig. She don’t give a fuck about what you think of her. And I’d be making a more productive use of my ballot by voting for any joke candidate than by giving it to an asshat only because the other side’s asshat is less eloquent in describing just how he/she plans to fuck us all over.

*left-ish. They aren’t the bastions of progression they like to claim to be.

So today was try number 3 at girding my loins for the War on Women, aka IUD placement. Due to my crooked bits, my doctor had tried on 2 separate occasions with no luck. So today I saw a specialist.

I don’t just want the IUD for it’s happy baby blockage. I have horrid, week long, heavy periods that make me weak, feverish, exhausted and crampy. I have to take iron because they leave me anemic. Forget about tampons, I have to use giant pads and still have to change then every 2-3 hours. I sleep on old towels. Just going from the shower to the bath rug without this layer of protection has ruined more than a few rugs. I spend a week of every month with my knees locked together, in pain, trying not to ruin furniture.

So if the IUD couldn’t be placed, the next option was ablation, or basically having my uterus power washed so that I don’t have periods anymore. That was the back up plan. (Actually, I would have gone straight to ablation, but thought an IUD is reversible if needs be where ablation is not).

The specialist, who I liked a lot, gave it her best shot. She tried everything she could think of. But you just can’t get a straight stick, or even a slightly curved stick, to go around a 180 angle. I looked at the collection of sounds she used, trying to get in there. 5 centimeters. That’s as far as she could go.

And since ablation uses the same method and tools as IUD insertion, that’s out too. Maybe, if I was under anesthesia in general surgery they could do it. Maybe. But the doctor wasn’t hopeful.

So here I am. Still with the awful periods. Now without even a decent back up plan, short of hysterectomy. Which I’m not ready for yet. I have to go back on the fucking pill (which I hate) because that is all that can be done. I can’t even use the Nuva ring (which is not awful) because I haven’t quite been able to give up smoking yet.

I know, there are certainly much worse health problems to be upset about. But I cried in the car on the way to work afterwords. It feels like such a betrayal, when your body won’t cooperate, when it leaves you hurt and tired and mad with no decent solution. And then I got to spend hours at work, hunched over and cramping with all the side effects of an IUD insertion and no fucking IUD.

Someone, anyone, invent a medical sound and IUD combo that can go around a u-shaped corner, and I will worship you as a god/dess.

Just a note of warning- there will be some triggery language and use of words meant as slurs against sex-workers in this post. The use of the slurs (in quotes) are phrases I have actually heard and are not meant to demean sec workers in any way, but to illustrate the bias in the system.

The Stranger (groan, I know) has a piece up in favor of legalizing prostitution(their word- not mine).

Here’s the thing, if we lived in a world without classism or sexism, sure. I think every adult has the right to do whatever they want to their own body with whomever they choose (so long as everyone involved are consenting adults). But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where the only occupations where women consistently make more money than men are sex work and modeling. We live in a world where a woman with a BA degree will make, on average, the same amount of money as a man without a degree. We live in a world where one out of every 4 women has been the victim of rape or attempted rape. We live in a world where 70% of single parents don’t receive child support, where daycare costs more than minimum wage pays. We live in a world where college costs more than house and universal healthcare is a pipedream.

Sex work puts workers at daily risk of rape, assault, robbery, disease, and death. Perhaps legalization could so something as far as mitigating these, and that would be great. But once you legalize sex-work, the scanty social safety net we have in place for low-income women gets scantier. There was not-exactly a joke about welfare where I grew up in Nevada. “Why would they pay women to stay home on the state’s dime when whoring is legal?” If you think that’s hyperbole, just a few years ago in Germany, where sex work is legal, several women were denied benefits for refusing to work as sex workers. Eventually the decisions were reversed, but you get the picture.

So how about legalization? The Swedish model, the decriminalizes the selling of sex but criminalizes they buying of it, is an elegant, and widely considered to be the best, solution. But it’s not without huge problems. I am all in favor of not arresting or prosecuting sex workers and in giving them legal means of protection from violent clients and pimps. While this kind of decriminalization is important, it doesn’t change the fundamental inequities in the system. It does nothing to give women at the very bottom more choices for supporting themselves and their families. It does nothing to provided healthcare for sex-workers who are struggling with substance abuse and using sex work to pay for the means to self-medicate. It does nothing to give young women better options for paying for college than crushing student loans or exotic dancing. It does nothing to give a poor single mom affordable daycare so she doesn’t have to work as a massage therapist who provides happy endings.

And legalization doesn’t change society’s view that “you can’t rape a whore” (said by and SPD officer while giving a guest lecture as Seattle Central Community College). While there technically may be avenues for legal recourse if a sex worker is assaulted, the chances are fairly slim of her (or him) prevailing because of ingrained views.

Until the inequities are changed, the idea that most sex-workers are of the sex positive, happy hooker, who has chosen sex work over a career as a rocket scientist* variety is false. If your choices are limited to starve, suffer, or be a sex worker, then that’s not actually a choice.

*Yes, of course some people are exactly that. Good for them. But as in most things, they tend to be the top of the pyramid. Healthy, without children to support, with enough power and security in their work to be able to choose clients and minimize risk. But when we let the top of they pyramid speak for everyone, we all know what happens.

There’s a post up at Jezebel about a woman who was sterilized against her will when she was 14, after being raped and delivering a child that was conceived during that rape, who is now waiting to find out if the state of North Carolina will finally give her financial compensation for having invaded her body in the most atrocious way possible.

As feminists, we talk a whole hell of a lot about choice, the choice to have an abortion, the choice to use birth control. But there is a huge portion of the feminist community that can’t see the otherside of choice. I have heard from declared feminists that “poor women shouldn’t have babies they can’t afford”. Well there goes a majority of the world’s population. And the racism, oh the fucking racism. Think about the people who spout “we’ll we know the world has too many people”. They usually mean too many (brown) people having too many (brown) babies in countries where the resources footprint per capita could fit an entire village into the footprint of one single North American.

While pregnancy doesn’t always come at the most opportune times to the most “deserving” (read white, married, educated, employed, insured, middle-class or better straight folks), choosing to parent is a profound act of hope. You have to believe that even if things aren’t ideal now, they will get better. You have to take a leap of faith that your own strength will pull you and your child(ren) through. It’s not always true that they do get better, but you have to believe it just a little bit to have a wanted child.

And to be one of the undeserving, you have to believe it even harder. No one is running around nagging poor women “when are you gonna start a family?” Instead, as soon as the stick turns blue, people start telling you about your options, abortion or adoption. “Are you going to keep it?” is asked with the slight sneer of condescension, much the same way as someone saying “are you going to eat THAT?” if you were to order a chocolate cake covered in anchovy paste. It is an impossible thing. Can’t actually be true. Why would you, oh undeserving woman, think you are capable of motherhood? You, woman with a disability, can’t possibly be considering motherhood. You, poor Latina with no real education, can’t possibly be considering motherhood. You, 19 year old with a meth junkie boyfriend who refuses to work and just got the car repo’d to buy more drugs, can’t possibly be considering motherhood.*

But choose motherhood we do. It’s a radical act to choose motherhood when the whole world** wants to spit on you for it. But we make the choice to be hopeful for our own future and the future of our children.

Elaine Riddick was never given that choice. Not when she was raped, not when she was sterilized.

*That’d be me. BTW.

** Whole world meaning the “well meaning” sorts of faux feminists and straight up conservative asshats.

And I gotta say, I liked the second season a whole lot better than the first. I know, Wheadon was trying to make a point about consent but there was just too much porny “look at me in my short skirt being a sexy, empty headed doll” in the first season.

And I realized something tragic. Tahmoh Penikett is a stunningly pretty man, but his acting is wooden and not great. Compared to the guy who played Boyd, Harry Lennix, Penikett’s Ballard was wooden and became superfluous. Compared to the amazing Olivia Williams, who played DeWitt, Penikett was like a bowl of pudding that hasn’t set yet, occasionally slopping over the sides when jostled into action. But I still like looking at him.

Did it make the point I think Wheadon was trying to make about bodily autonomy? Not really. I think it was much better at showing the problem of corporate domination (see the episodes with the senator, for example). Maybe if the show hadn’t been cancelled, Wheadon wouldn’t have hamfisted so much of it. But he’s Joss Wheadon, he’s got to know by now that his shows have a 50% chance of getting axed right when it get’s good. (See Firefly, for example).

I don’t think Dollhouse is nearly as good as Firefly or Buffy. I won’t be rewatching it anytime soon. But it’s still better than most of the schlock on TV*. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t actually turned on my TV in months.

*Those of you with cable probably have better TV options. But us poor folks with our antennas are shit out of luck.