A List:

1)Mrs. or Miss. Can’t we all be Ms.? For that matter, if I am filling out a form for say credit or even a fucking magazine subscription, why does my gender matter. Can’t we skip that whole box of questions and move on?

2)Uncomfortable underwear. Now I like my pretty girly undies, but there is no reason that pretty girly undies cant also be comfy. Same thing for bras. Why do I have to choose between wearable or pretty. And can we make some underwire that doesn’t jack up under my armpits and hurt? Like half an inch shorter with better sewing reinforcement would work to do that.

3)The gawd awful idea that school for children should start at the crack of ass. Kid gets on the bus at 6:30 am to be at school by 7:30. He’s exhausted (we had a mini meltdown this afternoon cause I told him he is going back to a 9pm bed time. You would think that I told him video games have been canceled FOREVER). Why can’t kids start school at the more reasonable 9am?

4)The idea that where you buy your groceries from makes you more morally righteous than everyone else. I’m talking to you- Whole Foods shoppers. It’s a fricken grocery chain started by a libertarian for fucks sake. Just because you overspend on produce does not make you the King of all that is Ethical! Just like people shopping at Walmart are not the scourge of the earth.

5) The lollipop head female ideal that has invaded Hollywood. Go watch some early Friends and check out the women that the guys dated. Still Hollywood pretty, but not severely, concentration camp style, undernourished. Some girls are slim by nature (Kyra Knightly) you can spot them because they don’t look like they need a neck brace. This is not true for most of the women in Hollywood or the world for that matter.

6) The stupid stereotyping done by “educated” liberals and conservatives alike that black kids don’t read or have books in their homes. If I have to hear one more jackass say that black kids are left to linger in the street while good kids like them read a book, I will punch someone in the face. A) It’s not true and B) How stocked is your public library with books where a black kid is the protagonist? Perhaps these kids that you don’t think read have already gone through every book available to them that has a character they can relate too.

7) Conversations that include phrasing like “Is Obama REALLY a black man, he’s only half” “Is Palin REALLY a feminist” “IS a transwoman/man REALLY a woman/man”. YES they are. You can quibble all you like with Obama’s condescending attitude towards poor black men or Palin’s anti-feminist views on abortion or birth control or transpeople’s different experiences from those of the majority of their gender. But people get to identify who they are themselves and you all are gonna have to suck it up and deal.

What do you want to do away with?

I am anti- adoption.

In my heart, I don’t think that bringing a child into the world only to reject it is a good thing. Perhaps my view is colored by having parents who couldn’t give a rats ass about their children, but I think it must be one of the deepest kinds of hurt to realize that the first person who should have loved and wanted you, didn’t. When I decided to be a parent, I searched my soul long and hard. If I couldn’t love this kid with everything in me, then I shouldn’t have him. Of all the kids I could have had, I’ve only felt that way once. And I have only one kid. As craptastic as our life is, he never has had to question whether or not I love him and want him. He knows it. Not all kids get that from their parents.

Of course, as a rational human being I understand the need for adoption. Children need parents, there are lots of children whose parents cannot or will not care for them.

So I don’t condemn women who have chosen differently from me, even if they have made a decision I abhor.

And I wonder about those women who do condemn other women their choices. I wonder what secret regrets they are covering up. Almost always when someone is that full of hate they have their own psychological skeletons they are trying to keep at bay, justifications they are making to themselves to rationalize their choices. Like the forced pregnancy godbags who get abortions themselves. Their choices are the only ones that are righteous and good, all other women in their situation are dirty sluts.

But those same godbags aren’t that different from the screaming abelist assholes on the left asking if Sarah Palin choosing to have a baby with Downs Syndrome is a horrible affront to modern science, or trying to end sex selection abortions in India.

It is a choice, people. Every woman gets to make one, even if their choice if different from yours.

If you really want to end abortion (not possible, but dream big people) then you have to make birth control widely available and infallible, make rape non-existent, and make a big, cushy safety net for people who are going to be impoverished by having more children than they can afford. If you really want to end sex selection abortions, then you have to change the environment so that girls aren’t undervalued by society. If you want to stall the birth rates in poor countries or to poor women, you educate the women and girls and give them access to employment and birth control and control over their own reproductive and economic futures.

But all that is a lot of hard work and expensive programs. Judgment, shamming, and abstinence programs are cheap excuses to keep society just as oppressive to both women and children without actually doing anything to fix the problems they scream about. Whining about babies being born to older mothers is ageist and in the case of Palin, abelist. Complaining about how many babies someone has is just as bad as complaining about how few babies someone has*.

It’s a choice. It’s not your choice unless it’s your uterus.

*Except in the case of Quiverfull families. Anyone who keeps having babies specifically to become fodder in a religious war is pushing the boundaries of child abuse. May god bless such families with many gay sons and lesbian daughters.

Lambert’s got a post up about how we would change things if we had the power to do so. And do I have some ideas for you…………

(Quin- this is what i meant by a wiki think tank- jump in!)

1. Corporate Taxes: One of the most profound things I ever read was in a biography of the first socialist Swedish Prime Minister, Tage Erlander. Horribly paraphrased, his idea was that a company that could not afford to pay it’s employees a high enough wage that the employees could then pay income taxes, was a failure as a company. Business’s 1st and most important function for the state is the taxes it brings in, either through straight corporate taxes or the payroll taxes its employees pay.

We’ve fucked up that idea somehow and forgotten that both business and government work FOR the people, not the other way around.

So I would eliminate all corporate tax deductions except: living wage rate wages paid to employees (not including CEOs) and deductions for materials, etc that are made in the US. We shouldn’t be giving tax breaks on money spent or kept outside the country.

I don’t have any illusions that all employers would pay their employees enough to live on, but this would give employers who treat their employees fairly a competitive edge and an incentive to give raises.

2. Fair Trade: Once we’ve cleaned up our own abysmal pay problem, we allow free trade only with other countries that have living wage rules in place. For poor countries that are trying to enact progressive labor policies, we give liberal trade assistance to get them up to speed faster.

There is little likelihood that we can keep jobs in our country as long as there is cheap labor to be had around the world, but we don’t have to be complicit in the downward pay spiral. Countries that do not and will not set fair wage laws will be charged import tariffs on any goods and services brought into this country.

3. The Social Safety Net: I would eliminate Welfare and Unemployment and roll them into Social Security. The I would put in place a mandatory minimum income (indexed to inflation) that gives anyone whose income falls below the poverty line enough money to make up the difference. I would use the IRS and a person’s tax returns and eliminate the nanny state investigations of the poor. I would also include the ability use this safety net for parental leave or FMLA reasons.

4. Universal, quality childcare. Maybe using the French model so that families have a range of options from straight up preschool to subsidies for inhome care.

5. Universal higher education with subsidies to poor students for living expenses and extra classes, tutoring as needed. With the loss of manufacturing jobs there is no way to earn a living in this country without a college education and we are desperately in need of doctors, nurses, and other high skill professionals. The people to fill in these positions could come from the uneducated ranks with a little extra help.

That’s all I’ve got on a day with no coffee. What’s your big idea?

ETA- Oh Oh Oh DAMN me and my non caffeinated brain. I forgot bodily autonomy.
New constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to control your own body. This includes access to abortion but also an end to pointless drug laws. Free up the prison and put the money into treatment for those that choose it. I’d also structure it so that giving someone false information that results in bodily harm (say abstinence education or falsified drug research) is a criminal act and a violation of civil rights.

And for Lost Clown- Of course there would be universal healthcare.

If you listen to WOC talk about reproductive rights, you get a profoundly different view from the dominant white feminist talk that centers on abortion. For poor women and brown/black women, choosing to parent is seen as an affront to decent society.

There is a long and sad history of eugenics and forced sterilization of “undesirables” in this country. While white babies are considered a treasure, brown babies are considered a burden on society. You could even posit the idea that the insanely high prison rates for black and brown men is an underhanded attempt at keeping them locked up so that they cannot reproduce.

But there are more obvious racist and classist eugenics programs that are already in place. And several of them spring from Welfare reform. Ronald Regan started the idea of the Welfare Queen, a woman so diabolical that all she did all day was spread her legs so she could pop out more babies to suck on the government teat. Welfare reform decided to deal with this mythological beast by putting in blocks to additional aid when a woman already receiving assistance gets pregnant while on assistance. If you are a poor single mom on TANF and you get pregnant, you will not receive any additional money. And as I’ve written before, it’s not like TANF gives you all that much to begin with. In WA state the amount for a mother and child is $440 per month and it’s been the same for decades. And we’re one of the higher states. $440 doesn’t cover rent anywhere, it barely covers the cost of diapers and laundry soap. Add a 3rd person into this budget, and kids are spending a long time in a wet diaper simply because there is no more money for clean ones.

But it doesn’t stop with TANF. The same rules apply to housing grants.

Now part of Welfare reform did include provisions to provide post-pregnant women with birth control. But it’s only birth control. If during the course of a routine pelvic/papa smear to get you the pill they discover cancer- you’re SOL. They don’t actually care about keeping you healthy. They just care that you don’t bring anymore snot nosed brats into the world. And don’t you forget it.

Besides- we all know that birth control is infallible. Right?

Very few states have figured out that it is cheaper to pay for abortions for poor women than it is to not pay for them. Washington is one of them. If you walk into a Planned Parenthood in WA state to take a pregnancy test, and you are poor, they help you apply for Medicaid. If, during the application process you tell them that you want to have an abortion, the application is speeded up. But you still get Medicaid, temporarily, whether you decided to parent or not. As soon as you are not pregnant either via birthing or abortion, you lose all medical coverage except for birth control.

Personally- I think having the option of abortion is a good thing. And it’s one of the things the WA state does right. But for a majority of states, abortion is not covered by Medicaid. As a poor woman you have the choice of finding a way to pay for it yourself (upwards of $400 for an early procedure, substantially higher the later you go- and remember that most women on Welfare receive less than $400 a month to begin with.) or having a baby. But if you choose to have a baby, you won’t get any additional money from the state. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t position. And that’s before we even get into personal choice.

I can guarantee you that no one would applaud a poor black woman’s choice to knowingly have a downs syndrome baby like Sarah Palin did. The first thing they would say is that she was trying to milk the government for extra money for the disabled kid. And the kind of hoopla surrounding Bristol Palin’s pregnancy would be changed to something about how young brown women are too lazy to get an education and opt out with pregnancy instead.

But if we really do believe in choice, then the poor have just as much right to choose parenthood as everyone else does. If we put a mandate that people can only have the number of children that they can afford right now, then the entire world would depopulate within a generation. In an ideal world, we would all get to parent only when we wanted to and with enough resources to raise healthy, well educated, future paragons of society. But this isn’t an ideal world. And pretending it can be isn’t much different from fundies thinking that they can brow beat everyone into heterosexual marriage where everyone stays virginal till the wedding night.

What we can do is provide the resources so that only women who want children have them, and that they have enough resources to raise their children without the violent punishment of increased poverty.

Turns out Sarah Palin, while pro life, is also pro contraception:

Palin said last month that no woman should have to choose between her career,
education and her child. She is pro-contraception and said she’s a member of a
pro-woman but anti-abortion group called Feminists for Life.
“I believe in
the strength and the power of women, and the potential of every human life,” she
said.

http://dwb.adn.com/news/politics/elections/governor06/story/8049298p-7942233c.html

showing again that McCain made a good choice.

And cut me the “Match .com would have vetted her better” and other Kos talking points.

She has more experience than Obama- working with the canadian government constantly as opposed to the guy who didn’t do his job in the Senate and did nothing about foreign policy, and never went to Europe before his rock star tour.

But this is not about that. Even if she had been an ambassador for 20 years it would not have been enough for the Obamazoids.

Because this is not about her. It’s about the fact that regardless how much a woman does, it’s never enough.

Choice goes both ways. Feminists get this.

I have chosen at different times in my life to stay pregnant or to not stay pregnant. I was barely older than Bristol Palin, at 19, when I decided to have to have the kid. I had enough pressure from everyone around me not have him. But despite the supposedly well meaning pressure from friends, despite being absolutely pro-abortion right down to my bones, I wanted him. I can’t explain it without using crappy metaphysical reasons. But I knew I was supposed to be his mom. And so I choose to stay pregnant. At other times in my life, I have chosen not to be pregnant.

I would hope that those of us who call our selves “pro-choice” would give Bristol Palin the benefit of the doubt about her own choice. And for the love of pete stop picking on a stressed out teenager. Those of you who continue to make her pregnancy an issue are hypocrites and assholes. Her individual choice is exactly that. Hers. Not yours to second guess or make political fodder out of.

So kindly STFU.

(And seriously- I know I am not the only one who is already sick to fucking death of having to defend a fundy godbag and her family from people who are supposed to be allies. Dear god could you people hate women any more?)

no one. Not you, not me, not America, not the scary terrorist menace ( note the snarkitude), not Hillary. not even Obama or McCain.

We are a screwed people, a screwed country, and a screwed planet.

For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over this election, the truth is that no one person is going to save us from ourselves. We have to fix it. And waiting for a savior politician ain’t gonna help. So if McCain wins or Obama wins in November- it doesn’t matter. We are screwed. And it is not in either of their best interests to help us. Unless we make it in their interest.

So what hasn’t really worked as far as getting the government that is supposed to be by the people, for the people to work? Those small everyday things that most of us do are gonna save us. Recycling is good but I’ve been sorting garbage since childhood and the planet is still heating up. Organized protests haven’t worked this time around. This isn’t the 60s and you mom’s methods are outdated.

Perhaps, since we live in a consumerist society, we should use that to our advantage. I don’t mean boycotts. Those are fine and all, but I think that boycotts are a bit like the protest non-voters. The voice not heard because it’s not saying anything.

Instead, I think that since our government is acting a bit like the cable company, charging us too much money for a shit load of services we don’t need and then only doling out the really good stuff to people who can afford it, that we should use the method of complaint with our government that we do with unresponsive corporations.

I think we need to create a Consumerist type way of annoying civil servants, politicians, and political worker bees like campaign managers until they hear us loud and clear. We are mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore.

It’s not that far off from the petition signing requests we see all the time. But think of this as petition signing with a vengeance. The point is no longer to passionately persuade. We are soooooooooo long past the point where reason, logic, compassion or ethics will make our government work for us. The point is to annoy, bother, pester, and make them change their behavior just to get us to shut up. I’m talking Donna Brazile and her crazy blackberry messages type of annoyance. I’m talking flooded inboxes, voicemails, and sorry to say it to my fellow admins in the world, but cranky secretary levels of annoyance.

So if the election has got you feeling lukewarm (or even despondent)- I’ve got a plan and some concrete things to do to make you feel better.

First we gather contact info. We need not just emails and phone numbers for politicians (easy enough) but for people like the civil servants at HHS who are trying to make birth control equal abortion or make opting out of providing services like abortion referrals legal. I want to know their secretaries phone numbers and email addys. I want to know the email and phone numbers of people who work under them and over them. If it’s a stupid and harmful bill that is about to pass, we don’t just lobby our senators or congresspeople. We take it to the corporate suits who are pushing for it. We take it to their underlings and overlings.

We will be our own lobbying group. But you know, not evil. Just really fucking annoying. Like Obamabot stalkers, except we will be exercising our constitutional right to petition the government instead of harassing women and bullying civilians.

What do you think? Can you be the squeakiest wheel?

The more I see this western society obsession with rrrromance, the more I believe that this oh so acclaimed thing is just another way for Patriarchy to opress women. Think about it.

Who is being told that not being part of a relationship means that you are uncomplete or just not good enough?
Not men.

Who is being told that rrrrrromance is supposed to be the ultimate goal of one’s life?
Not men.

Who is being told that rrromance is more important than one’s career, future, passions, ideas?
Not men.

It is a cultural venom so insidiously poured into all nonpenised creatures since birth. We are being raised on the ideal that being liked by others is the most important thing we should aspire to. Prince Charming gets to have all those adventures and kill all those monsters and gain the kingdom, whithe the poor princesses have just to sit in a fuckign tower and await for someone to ahve some use for them. They don’t exist per se, have no individuality, no ideals, no fucking life. They are prizes to be won, and THIS is how everylittle girl is raised.

We HAVE to be nice. We HAVE to be liked, lest we are nothing. We cannot allow individuality, personhood, ambition, get in the way of that ultimate purpose of the female existence, to be liked, to “live happily ever after ” with some guy we were never asked if we care about.

Has anyone ever bothered to notice that the prince kissing the sleeping/dead Snow White is in fact comitting sexual assault? Of course they haven’t.

Has anyone bothered to notice that the alleged Father of the Ghost on a Stick Joshua ben Josef, aka Yahweh, aka God aka Big Fairy Daddy from the sky raped Mary, since he never asked for her consent ?

Yeah, you can sometimes find love and enough mutual respect and compatibility and affection to make a relationship worth having, andyou can even call it love if you so desire. But it is only women that should give up everything for it. It’s only women whose relationship status ( or presence of ownership by an actual person as in penis wearer) has to be advertised publicly. It is women who are expected to abandon their name and individuality in order to become someone’s unpaid slave and progeny bearer.

But you know what? There will never be any fucking equality or even pretense of it until society stops telling girls that rrromance is the purpose of their lives.

You know? I grew up in Communist Romania. From many point of view it sucked VERY bad. Abortion was illegal being one of them. But you know what?

Every fucking little girl out there was told that she could be whatever the fuck she wanted to be. I grew up seeing women on TV being whatever they desired. Engineers, doctors, crane operators, officers, scientists, steel mill workers.

Each and every little girl anywhere needs to be told that. She needs to be told that it’s OK to defend herself without blocking herself when raising a fist against a penis wearer who attacked her. That actually happened to me. Some guy attacked me on the street and tried to fondle my breasts. I punched him. But for one fraction fo secind before hitting him, I froze. Hittign a man was against everything a woman was supposed to be. It was wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

End rant. And if you don’t like my language you can go fuck yourself.

Watching Netflix movies online may be the death of me.

Tonight, my insomnia addled brain decided that 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days would be a good movie to watch.

And now I feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut.

Awesome, intense, well made movie. But yeah, gut kicked and reeling is how I feel now.
And I am no stranger to abortion.

So I need a bit of hopeful thinking.

I like to play the “if I ruled the world” game in my head. Here’s some of the things I would do if I got to magically rewrite the laws that govern our country.

1)Eliminate unemployment insurance and welfare and roll them into an expanded social security program that also would cover family leave for things like child birth, adoption, and elder care. This would eliminate all the bureaucratic cost of having a zillion state agencies that handle these things, plus it would wipe away the class boundaries that keep welfare a cesspool of ineptitude. It’s a lot harder to cut programs for the poor when everyone benefits from them.

2) Bodily autonomy would be a constitutional right. This means that not only would abortion be safe, but we would clear out jails of casual drug users and crimes committed against the body (i/e rape, domestic violence) would receive stronger penalties.

3) Universal childcare and universal higher ed. You can’t survive this world without both.

4) Eliminate ALL agricultural subsidies to big agribusiness. Put the savings into the food stamp program so that quality food is available to everyone.

5) Tax the fuck out of oil. Use the taxes to fund green energy start ups.

So if you ruled the world, what would you change?