The thing about Afghanistan is that it’s damn near impossible for an outside force to take it. India gave up on it long ago. You know what the name of the mountain range Hindu Kush means? Killer of Hinuds. The Brits couldn’t do it at the height of empire. The Soviets failed.

Now I may be skipping the Roman empire- I don’t know that they even tried for it, but the only successful occupation of Afghanistan that I know of was Persia under Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes and that was because of the fundy Zoroastrians in Bactria.

So forgive me if I am just a wee bit skeptical that this whole increase troops to decrease troops strategy will work, or the idea that to save Pakistan we have to conquer Afghanistan I mean the Taliban.

History is on my side, after all.

What I would do, if I was queen for a day- would be to pay for every girl between the ages of 8 and 18 to go to boarding schools where they would learn practical skills like medicine, engineering, etc. I would pay their families for the loss of their manual labor. I would send the boys to school too, but I wouldn’t send them to a boarding school(boys don’t need to worry about acid attacks to the face just for learning how to read).

Within a generation you would have educated women with earning power and the ability to choose a husband with liberal ideas or support herself and her family without a husband. Those men who hold dear to ideas of honor killings and child brides will find themselves without anyone to marry, and without anyone to marry they have no sons and no power.

That’s how you kill the Taliban and other fundy, extremest religions (works for the polygamists in Utah too). Not with guns, but with school.

And if you want to save Pakistan- I suggest the same methods there.

Did that sound bitchy and demanding-oops.

Being off the intertubes- I couldn’t tell you all to GO VOTE FOR ME at 3 Quarks Daily. Voting ends tomorrow December 9th. I could so use the 1000 bucks, see post below.

See the list of nominees here and go vote– vote early, vote often. Baby needs new shoes and all that.

You may (or may not) have noticed my recent disappearance from the intertubes (again).

My lovely family has been footing the entire cost of housing and feeding us for the last 3 months. We are not a cost neutral addition to an already pinched household.And the internet is an expense they didn’t have before we got here. They’ve already got a house they are trying to save from foreclosure (think predatory lending + one of the few homes that isn’t upside in a mortgage in the state of Florida and you can understand why a bank might be keen to get it from them)and more out of pocket medial expenses than you can shake a stick at. It’s bad, but they took us in anyways.

I need help, to buy groceries, to pay the internet bill and get it turned back on, to play Santa Claus for the kid and for these people who took us when we had no where else to go. I also need the internet back on so I can find work. There isn’t a lot of it out there, but what I am qualified for requires me to apply online.

So if you’ve got some spare kibble- please throw it in the donation box.

The other day the Auntie was talking about the movie The Burning Bed. I have not seen it, but it made me think of In the Bedroom which was a great but horrible movie.

I am a big fan of the great but horrible movies, they are probably my favorite genre. These are movies that you NEED to see, that have important messages or give a concrete image to something horrific, that make you think and squirm and feel uncomfortable, but are well crafted, excellently acted and just incredible. Movies like Sophie Scholl: The Last Days or 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

We need a word or a phrase for the great but horrible movies. Help me out people? And please feel free to leave your favorite great but horrible movies in the comments.

On that note- I just watched The Last Enemy on Hulu last night and thought it was pretty good.

I’m still working on figuring out the structure of oppression. Once you can see the structure, you can break the structure. You can find it’s weak points.

Today I am thinking about stereotypes and exceptionalism. Every group has its negative stereotypes AND an idealized form attached to it. For PWD it’s the scam artist who is just trying to take our tax dollars vs the super crip who does everything perfectly well while still maintaining a demeanor of irrepressible optimism and cheer. For moms it’s the Welfare queen with her 6 baby daddies vs SuperMom (now only available in hot bikini version).

Pick a marginalized group- any marginalized group. Think about it for a bit and you’ll find the dichotomy. Be this, or be that.

This is part of the spectacle. For those of us who don’t fall under default personhood (i.e white, cis, het, TAB, educated, wealthy and male)we have the choice of striving for the best we can do without those qualities- i/e the ideal form of SuperMom or Super Crip, or Articulate Black Man, or we become part of the stereotype.

Here’s the thing though, we can never be the ideal. (See recent edition of bikini ready hot bod for new moms to the prereqs for SuperMomhood). And maybe we even fit some of the “negative” stereotypes of our group. I am, after all, a hairy legged feminist. I am a poor woman who would have had children by several different men if it weren’t for the awesomeness that is abortion access. I have been and will probably be again soon on welfare.

Even for those born into the super privileged class, there is an impossible to meet ideal that changes just as soon people figure out the easiest way to obtain it. (See the rise in beauty products marketed to men). It is how the spectacle/kyriarchy keeps us working to “improve” ourselves instead of taking a good look around and working to fix our fucked up system.

But the negative stereotype is just as false. Even though we may embrace some aspects of the stereotype(like WTF is wrong with black folks like watermelon and fried chicken? Why does it matter to anyone if I shave my legs? )I have yet to meet an actual walking, breathing, fully realized negative stereotype. I have not met a caddy driving Welfare queen, and I have sat in many many welfare offices. I have seen PWD who receive Social Security from a system they paid into with hard work and people who should totally be able to receive it but can’t because their disabilities are invisible. I’ve never met a TAB person who was getting a check for a non-existent disability, but if I did, by definition they wouldn’t count as a PWD (being TAB and all) but as an asshole.

This system of positive and negative that we live within is false. It doesn’t exist, even though occasional examples may fall onto one side or the other. What we have is a system of images pressed into our minds that have little relation to reality, but where every single slight dip into stereotype is used as proof to reinforce the spectacle and make us ignore the reality in front of us.

The title of this post comes from a sentence I’ve heard spoken to me over and over and over. “You’re not one of those types of single mom, poor person, feminist” whatever. And it’s funny because each of us can think of examples of people we like that don’t fall into “those types”. The gay man who loves football more than interior design, the lipstick lesbian in high heels, the PWD who isn’t faking for attention or cash, the Asian who is bad at math and good at driving, the feminists who love men.

It is just one more way we divide ourselves up into deserving or other, in or out, right or wrong. But it’s not real.

(ETA- this post was written at 8am. I have not yet been to sleep. Any unclear sentiments or typos should be blamed squarely on the gods of insomnia. Good night)

FTR- I can’t stand Oprah’s OMG you don’t believe in religion schtick, or her belief that positive thinking is all it takes to get what you want. So it’s kinda nice to see her brain boggled by a bunch of civilized socialists.

Remember when I told you all that Wonder and I had been talking and I couldn’t think of a single grown woman I know who doesn’t have some depression/anxiety problem?

Perhaps that is just the natural consequence of our brains having too many synaptic fires while trying to hold onto the idea of the spectacle while also being confronted daily with it’s falseness.

If depression is not pessimism but realism, then depression is what happens when we see the world for what it is and realize how utterly powerless we are to change it for ourselves (meaning in each individual case, not that the world is unchangeable).

I know that is a huge part of it for me. I know I have enough education and thoughtfulness and understanding to see how the world works, but that also means that I see how utterly powerless I am to make it better for me and the Kid. (I have joked that I have enough education to see the system and how it all works, but not enough education to make any of that knowledge profitable). I can write here, and hopefully sometimes it makes it better or easier for someone out there to see it too, or at least to feel less alone as a hunk of meat in the ever churning sausage factory that is the modern world. That is good, great even, but doesn’t do anything to stop the daily fear of how are we just going to survive, put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads.

I think that explains why women, and particularly poor women, suffer from mental illness at higher rates than men. Having that oppression check on the kyriarchy means that we start seeing the truth from the lie very early and have to come up with ever more elaborate ruses to trick ourselves into disbelief. From the first time we’re catcalled (I was 10 I think) or groped (6 or 7) we realize that being a good girl has nothing to do with whether or not you’ll be bothered by men.

Or maybe it’s just me who is depressed not because of anything particularly personal but because THE ENTIRE WORLD SUCKS ASS!

Many of us are uncomfortable with the whole Indians and Pilgrims made nicey nice and had a big festive party to celebrate coming together meme of Thanksgiving. Hell, I haven’t called Thanksgiving “Thanksgiving” for years. It’s Carb-Fest to me.

It’s hard to maintain the illusion when you think about genocide and small pox blankets.

But I am a slightly vengeful person. Little acts of payback make me cheerful. I know, I should be a better person blah blah blah. Wevs.

So in the spirit of cheerful bits of revenge, think about this: while Europeans brought us Natives small pox, it is highly possible that in exchange for murdering us and raping us and stealing from us, we gave them syphilis.

It’s a really poignant form of revenge, only inflicted on rapists and after many many years it turns their brains to swiss cheese. It’s not enough revenge to make it fair, but it does make my cold dark heart a little warmer.

3 Quarks Daily is having a best political writing contest. I want to submit, but I need some feedback on what post you all think is good enough, smart enough, and gosh darn it, people love it enough.

My first choice is Middle Class Values Don’t Solve Poverty but I am open to suggestions.

(I am also totes down if someone wants to go nominate me- I am not above shameless blegging).

Also- How About You Economists Do Some Fucking Math Instead is good, but perhaps a bit too, uhm flowery with the language.

Not actually all that different in other parts of the world (right down to the trolls)

Wonder and I were just talking about this the other day. My mom- seriously scary clean freak, would not let us leave the house if it was messy in some way. It was as if a perfectly clean house could mask all the horrible crap like poverty and life Could.Not.Continue if the carpet wasn’t vacuumed properly.

Me- total slobby slob. Though every now and then I get weird twinges where I worry people will judge me on my slobby slobness, I try to think of it as the ultimate feminist punk rock act. Fuck you patriarchy and your insistence that I scrub floors. If I was a single dude who was as messy as I am, people would just tell me that I need to get a wife or a girlfriend.

(Also please note that when sharing a home with other adults, I do my part to keep the common areas clean. But my room is basically a floordrobe)

Here’s the thing- no one ever says to the perpetually tidy “oh your house looks so clean” or “nice job on the dusting”, but they may say something if you are messy. Don’t apologize. Tell them it’s the first step in the revolution and the dust bunnies are being drafted.

And then try to remember this: you are worth more than a closet full of clean laundry, worth more than sparkling bathroom tiles, worth more than a well organized fridge. Your value as a human being isn’t in how many tedious household tasks you can/will do for free.