Go read this right now

Huhmmmmmmm. That all sounds so familiar. Let’s see, same school district that we used to be in. Same neighborhood. Same AP program. Different schools. Oppression is a system, not the result of individual bias. (Unless of course it’s the same fucking teacher, in which case I will give the Mudede family every bit of my story to help them nail the district and the teacher.)

This was too awesome to simply throw into my shared items. Go read it, right now.

I am of the firm belief that you cannot have real democracy when you have any portion of the population that lives in fear. Fear of violence. Fear of hunger. Fear of imprisonment. You cannot be free and be fearful. They are incongruous. They are like toothpaste and orange juice.

It is possible to create a world where a person is worth more than what they can pay for. We have to start from the basic premise that food is a human right. Housing is a human right. Education and medical care are human rights. Without access to these things, no matter what our government or even our laws tells us, we are not free. We are not democratic when the scales of justice have the thumbs of the rich holding them down. And if nothing else, you all should see by how foggy brained I’ve been, how being hungry makes rational democratic choices impossible.

This could be triggering for people with eating disorders.

5 years ago I gave up dieting forever. I went through yet another round of exercise bulimia and was walking about 8 miles a day in addition to pilates and a couple of different aerobic dance things every day. I was in constant pain from leg cramps. When I wasn’t walking, I was thinking about walking.I was obsessed. I was a bit manic, though with a normal diet and daily activities I am never manic. I was eating very little. I was sleeping very little. I plateaued out after losing 30 pounds and then gained back 50 when I resumed eating about 2000 calories a day. I slowly realized how stupid the whole pursuit of perfection was.

In the last 2 months, I’ve lost 30 pounds. Not on purpose. It’s poverty, and like billions of mothers around the world, when money got tight (okay, nearly non-existent. We are living on the generosity of family and blog friends and they have all been mucho kind) I skipped meals. At first i went from 2 meals a day to one, then somedays instead of a meal it was a snack. Some crackers. A bowl of salad. Then somedays it was nothing but ice tea and the sugar to sweeten it. I didn’t want to lose weight. I just wanted to be less of a burden. I wanted to make sure there was food for everyone else.

But a funny thing happens when you starve yourself, and I am getting a very strange view of the whole dieting industrial complex from this side of it. First, not having enough calories fucks up your brain. I know that seems really, like DUH! But I was cranky about things that never make me cranky. I snapped at people. I started holding weird little grudges over imperceptible slights. The rational part of my brain was screaming “stop it!” But I didn’t have the mental resources to calm the fuck down. I hid in my room a lot instead. It was better than unleashing the bitter bitch on people who have been nothing but kind to me and the kid.

I also (some of you might have noticed)lost the ability to coherently string words together. I can’t go back and read most of what I wrote recently.

But wait folks, that’s not all.

It’s amazing how fast disordered thinking can sink back in when you aren’t feeding yourself. I don’t want to be thinner, or any of the euphemisms we use to convince ourselves it’s not starvation but a lifestyle change. I’d feel super sanctimonious when I could go more than a day without eating, like I was pure and virtuous and good. My flatter, empty stomach was awesome. My pokier hip bones were rad. Sure I was weak and couldn’t think straight and nauseous most of the time, but look how far I was willing to go!!!!!

Anyways, I’ve had 2 days of eating now. My brain seems to be working a bit better. I’m way less bitchy. I might be capable of writing a sentence or two. There is a little (large) voice in my head that is chastising me for being such a greedy eating pig. But I’ll shut her up eventually. She’s full of shit anyways.

If you’re a facebook friend, you know the tragic tale of sick baby kitty all ready. If you’re not….

Baby kitty, also known as Burleigh (after my grandma), Bee, Burls and numerous other nicknames, started having seizures yesterday. Burleigh was brought into the house by my uncle right around my birthday, and as soon as I saw her fluffy little self, I was silly for her. We called the vet, who suggested trying caro syrup (in case it was low blood sugar). That didn’t work. We tried giving her a bath, in case it was some toxin making her sick. That didn’t work. Auntie spent all night with her and we took her to the vet this morning. She’s got a neurological problem, possibly kitty leukimia or lesions on one side of her brain. All we can do is drug her full of phenobarbitol and steriods and hope for the best.

While we were waiting in the vet’s office we were chatting with a lovely lady about her newborn daughter and kids in general. Out of fricken nowhere this douchebag chimes in with “That’s nothing, my son tried to make out with my girlfriend, and he’s only 8”.

If that wasn’t weird enough, he goes on this homophobic rant about how glad he was that his child tried to mack on his girl because it means that his “only son ain’t gay,he’s gonna carry on the family name”. As happens when confronted with bigots, I got mad and my hands started to shake. Not helpful when trying to keep a wee baby kitty with seizures calm. Douchebag keeps going on and on about how having a gay son would be the worst thing in the world. Wonder, bless her, pipes up with “I think there are worse things in the world than having a gay kid, like having something actually bad happen”. Then douchebag goes on about his gay ex wife. Still trying to control my anger and calm a sick kitty, I said (as snakily as possible) “I can’t imagine what might have turned her gay””. The conversation just got worse from there, including Douchebag overestimating the weight of his pitbull and Wonder wondering if that’s the only thing he overestimates.

I don’t care what Doouchebag thinks, though I feel more than a bit sorry for his kid. I don’t want to be slapped in the face with his hatred and ignorance. I don’t wan’t anyone to be slapped in the face with hate and ignorance. But I really don’t want to have to get my fist shaking, kyriarchy smashing rage up when I am worried that my tiny ball of fluffy love is at death’s door.

(Baby kitty, after a marathon, drug induced 6 hour nap, seems to be doing a little better. She peed!!!!! And then ran off to play with her brothers. She’s still wobbly legged and can’t jump up on stuff too well. But maybe she’ll be okay).

Let’s see…

Israel is trying to start a war with Turkey and peacenik hippies and the US is blocking an independent investigation through its vote on the UN Security Council.

The top kill failed. The junk shot failed. There will be no more efforts to stem the gush of oil until the relief wells are drilled 2 or 3 months from now in the Gulf. But that oil spill is dwarfed by the one in Nigeria, apparently, where oil companies have been participating in state sponsored murder for at least a decade.

Economies in Europe like Iceland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, are lining up to drop like flies (if they haven’t already gotten to the austerity measures normally reserved by the IMF for browner skinned countries, then they will shortly).

Economics here ain’t much better.

And how many states are thinking of passing “Papers, please” laws similar to Ari-fucking-zona’s?

But what the news bunnies are covering today is Al and Tipper’s break up and “Is Obama aging faster than previous presidents?”. And no, this wasn’t fauxnews.

There is only one appropriate response

When I choose to become a mother, I had to decide what kind of mother I wanted to be. At the tender age of 20, the best I could articulate was “I’m not going to be like my own mother”. Years of abuse showed me exactly who I didn’t want to be, but it didn’t give me any kind of skill at being the type of parent I wanted to be. But I had very good intentions of not being awful. I think we all do.

The problem with having good intentions but no skills is that it doesn’t change anything. Only rigorous self examination and replacement of bad habits with good ones does that. It was not enough to say that I wasn’t going to be the kind of parent who threw screaming tantrums at a small child when I was stressed out. I had to consciously remove the parts of me that had been trained to deal with stress through anger. I had to be mindful of my moods, my actions, my words and behaviors, to be sure that I never let my child suffer because I had been taught all my life that children are their parents’ punching bags. Even though the kid is now 15 and taller than me, I still have things to learn. But the best thing, the first thing, I learned in this little bout of breaking the cycle was how to apologize and mean it and not ever do it again.

This self examination works for other forms of abuse as well. I am talking about racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, etc. etc. etc. These are forms of abuse inflicted on the weaker members of society by the more powerful ones. That they parallel child abuse is not coincidental.

Whatever our intentions are, we have all been raised in an abusive society. In order to fulfill the promise of our good intentions and of statements like “I’m not a racist” requires more than just the desire to be good. We cannot break the cycle unless we have new skills and are willing to examine ourselves critically.

I’ll give you a wee example. Several years ago, a girl friend walked over to my house from hers. It was about half a mile, not far. On her way over she got harassed by a bunch of guys doing the “hey baby, show us your tits” shit. She was freaked out, obviously. But not just because she’d just been terrified by a bunch of dudes. They were black, and she was white. And she was worried that her fear of them was because of their skin color, and not their behavior. She didn’t want to be harassed, but she didn’t want to be racist either.

We sat and talked. If the men scaring her had been white, would she have been more or less afraid (neither). Did this event make her less trustful of strange black men on the street, or of all strange men on the street (all). You have to go through this self questioning every time something makes you squeamish, or uncomfortable, or scared. You have to rip out the social programming and look at every side of it with a critical eye. Is this here for a reason, is it useful? Does it keep me safe or does it cause me harm? Does it cause others harm? Do they deserve that harm? That is the only way to conquer abuse. It’s not easy. it’s not pleasant. I’ve had to admit some less than pleasant things about myself in the process. But I can honestly say that i have done the hard work (and continue doing the hard work) to rid myself of the abuse I was taught at the hands of my mother and at the hands of society. Good intentions are never enough, they are just the beginning.

Ah the talking heads. I just heard some bloviating douchebag on tv declare that officers in Arizona are being trained to enforce the new “Papers, please” law in a just fashion.

Thank gawd I wasn’t drinking something at the time or I would have ruined the compy with a spit check. Was there ever a just way to enforce slavery? How about relocation of native peoples? A just way for Americans to throw Japanese-Americans into concentrations camps? A just way for the Nazis to carry out the final solution? A just way to keep women from voting? A just way to sterilize the disabled?

There is no compromise on justice. A thing is either just or unjust. You can’t make an act of injustice ok with good intentions or kindly actions or even with the entire weight of the law and constitution on your side. There were lots of laws for all those situations above. Not a damn one had anything to do with justice.

I just discovered a mess of comments that shouldn’t have been stuck in the mod que (including more than a couple comments from yours truly).

if you posted something and don’t see it, that’s prolly why (unless you are an unruly doouchebag

I just discovered a mess of comments that shouldn’t have been stuck in the mod que (including more than a couple comments from yours truly).

if you posted something and don’t see it, that’s prolly why (unless you are an unruly douchebag or an estranged family member, then you are exactly where you are supposed to be)