I Think Jesus Would Have A Few Words To Say About This...

First let me say, if you're not following Sociological Images, you should be.  Awesome analysis of visual culture, updated quite frequently.  Love it. 

Secondly, trigger warning on the video for xenophobia, threats, accusations of domestic violence, and virulent Islamophobia. 

This video was posted on SocImages a few days ago.  A SoCal chapter of ICNA Relief, a Muslim organization which raises and distributes money for various charitable efforts including food pantries, disaster relief, and women's shelters, hosted their annual fundraising dinner in Yorba Linda.  The funds raised were to support women's shelters, as well as homelessness and hunger relief work. However, a bunch of racist fuckwits got wind of it, and came to protest.  Because, of all the things in this country to be protesting right now, a fundraising dinner for a charitable relief agency is totally Important, right?

So a couple hundred (according to news accounts) asshats showed up with American flags, signs, and vicious xenophobia to protest the dinner and harass the people entering and leaving.  Again, trigger warnings on the video - this shit is *ugly*.  Partial transcript below.

Footage shows groups of angry white people behind police tape, carrying signs and a veritable forest of American flags, screaming hateful things, interspersed with shots of Muslim families, some women in headscarves and some without, being harassed as they enter the community hall where the dinner was being held, and shots of elected officials standing on a flag-draped and -bedecked podium letting their ignorance and hate hang out for their constituents to see.

"Make no bones about it - what is going on over there is pure. unadulterated. evil...My son is a Marine - in fact, I know quite a few Marines who will be happy to help these terrorists to their holy meeting in Paradise!" - Deborah Pauly, Villa Park Councilwoman (R)

Random protester, after threatening to rip the video-taker's fucking camera out of his fucking hands and break it if he kept taking video: "Go back home!  Go back home!  You beat your women and children!  Why don't you go beat up your wife?  She probably needs a good beating!"

"The problem with America is that our children have been taught that every idea is right, that no one should criticize another's positions, no matter how odious...They call that "multiculturalism".  And it has paralyzed too many of our fellow citizens from making the critical judgment we need to make to prosper as a society!" - Congressman Ed Royce (R)

Random protester, as a woman in a headscarf walks by with a girl beside her: "One nation under God, not Allah!  Get out of here!  Never forget 9/11!"

Various other protesters: "Take your Shariah and go home!"  "You don't belong here!"  "You're not welcome here!"  "Get out of here, terrorist!"

I watch this video and want to cry with shame at what my "fellow Americans"* think is acceptable behavior.  The ignorance on display here, the hate and seething rage that feels, even from the distance of three weeks, half a state away, and viewing it on video, a hair's breadth away from exploding into outright violence, is stunning. This is the kind of mob mentality that ends up with people getting killed.  And further, that elected officials feel safe in getting up behind a microphone and adding fuel to the fire...I have no words for that.

Like Councilwoman Pauly's assertion that a charity dinner, purely by virtue of being sponsored by a Muslim organization, is "pure unadulterated evil".  And her veiled threat about Marines she knows who would "be happy to help them to a meeting in Paradise!"  I cannot believe that an elected official feels safe and supported in getting up and saying, on-camera, that she knows some people who would like to kill those people over there whose only crime is belonging to a religion she disapproves of.  What the fucking fuck?

Or Congressman Royce's schtick about "multiculturalism" being a bad thing that "paralyzes" our "fellow citizens" - hey, asshat, you know what?  Most of the Muslims at that dinner you're so loudly criticizing are, in fact, also citizens of this country.  I thought the whole point of America was that, even if you believe something different from the mainstream or dress differently than the mainstream, you are still American?  No? - from "making the critical judgments."  So, let's pull the veil off this one, Royce.  What exactly are those "critical judgments" you think we need to make?  I have a fair guess: you want us to outright declare that any beliefs but your WASPy traditions are Wrong and Bad, and only White Cis Straight Christian Men (WCSCM) should be allowed to run this country because they're the only ones with the right Principles and Morals, yes?  And of course it has nothing to do with the fact that you yourself are a WCSCM and would benefit greatly from official codification of the status quo and official condemnation of anything that does not fit your standards.  Right?

And of course, the protesters, who have no obligation to be coherent or even pseudo-rational in their screamed hate, because they won't have names attached to what they say.  The themes of "Go home" - as if there are no Muslim Americans?  As one attendee to the dinner was quoted in the local paper as saying, "I'm actually from Fullerton, CA.  So I don't know where "back home" is." - and of course, conflating "Muslim" and "terrorist" as if they are one and the same, are incredibly disturbing.  The anti-Sharia sentiment is telling, as well.  As I pointed out to a family member the other day, when talking about the wave of anti-Sharia bills being passed by various states, it's not as if anyone has ever proposed implementation of such in any American legal system.  And it's not like the Christian stranglehold on government is easing, nor is there some sudden Muslim majority in governments which could pass such a law.  It's a solution in search of a problem - and they are demonizing and scapegoating American Muslims to create the "problem" they need.  This protest just shows the fruit of those efforts. 

This also highlights the further hypocrisy of mainstream political Christianity in this country.  They're so keen to have the government funding "faith-based" charity efforts and disaster relief - even our super-secular-socialist President has maintained funding for faith-based initiatives - and there have been outright claims that the government's social safety net programs can and should be replaced by community faith-based charity organizations and individual charity giving.  I've often heard it claimed, too, in debates over the merits of various religions in this country, that Christianity is superior because "all the charities that are religious are Christian.  Nobody else takes care of the poor and needy like Christians do."  And yet here it is, a non-Christian faith-based charitable organization, raising money from individual donors to spend on what I'm fairly sure would be nearly-unanimously regarded as Good Causes, and what do they get for it?  Protests, mocking, angry threats, told to "go home" even though they ARE home, being called terrorists.  Well, angry Christian assholes?  You say you want other religions to step up and be all charitable in order to earn your respect.  But then you do everything you can to make that not happen.  Which is it, hypocrites?

But there's a tiny little silver lining here.  Some nice, solid, undeniable evidence for the next time some privileged meatsack claims there's no anti-Islam sentiment in the US and that those hysterics are just exaggerating everything.  >.<

*I have absolutely less than zero interest in sharing any kind of cultural identity with these fucking shitstains, yet by virtue of being white and read mostly as middle-class (despite my current financial situation, I have the clothing, dialect, and mannerisms of a middle-class upbringing), most of them would classify me as one of them.

My Ode to Planned Parenthood

I've spoken here before about my abortion experience with Planned Parenthood.  But I don't recall having talked about the other times and ways PP has helped me.  Right now, it seems we need all the stories we can get about what Planned Parenthood really does.  You know.  Aside from the all-important abortion services which comprise a whole 2% of their operations.


Let's start in high school.  At 16, I was sexually active, as were several of my friends.  Most of us, for varying reasons, weren't comfortable with our parents knowing that, but we all knew (thanks to a couple of us having gotten actual good educational materials in one place or another - thanks, Mom! - and passing them around) about things like STDs and condoms.  But in the eternal dilemma of semi-privileged teens, affluent enough not to have to work but not so rich that we had much money of our own, most of us couldn't afford condoms, at least not in the quantities we needed.  So one friend went to Planned Parenthood and asked if she could get some condoms.  They gave her a big paper bag full of an assortment of sizes, colors, types.  For free.  She kept them stashed in her car or in her backpack, and everyone knew that if we needed a condom and couldn't afford any, we could ask Sam.  PP kept our broke asses safe with condoms all through high school.


After high school, I moved away to college, where I was living when I got pregnant and decided I needed an abortion.  Planned Parenthood was my first call when I got that pregnancy test, because I knew that even if they didn't do abortions - not all centers do - they would refer me to someplace that did, without giving me hassle over it.  As part of the pre-abortion exams, I was tested for STDs as well.


After my abortion, I talked to the doctors at PP about my birth control options.  The doctor recommended an IUD, since I wasn't planning on having children in the next 5 years.  But IUDs are expensive, so a nurse helped me to get enrolled in California's sexual health public assistance program, which allowed me to get the IUD for absolutely free.


Just this past year, I had some weird girl-bits symptoms.  At this point, I'm uninsured and at the time, was unemployed, too.  So who did I call?  Planned Parenthood.  I went in, got an exam, got a prescription for antibiotics, and was offered STD testing as well - all for about $10.  Again, PP helped me re-enroll in the public assistance program, so I would be covered for any other exams I might need.  And during the intake portion, when the nurse asked if I had any other conditions mental or physical, and I said I had unmedicated depression and couldn't afford to get therapy for it, either, she gave me the phone number for the counselor who works with their clinic, and told me I could probably get a few free or low-cost sessions with her if I needed it.


This year is the last year of my IUD's 5-year lifespan.  I'll need to replace it this summer.  Take a guess where my still-uninsured self is going to go for help with that?  


So over the course of a decade, I've received services via Planned Parenthood for two types of contraceptives, STD testing, enrolling in public assistance, an exam and a prescription, and was offered a referral for counseling.  And that's really light usage, since I have the privilege of being fairly healthy and not needing services very often, plus I just don't go to doctors unless I absolutely have to.  Otherwise, I could probably add on yearly well-woman exams and Pap smears when necessary.  Yes, PP provided my abortion as well.  But that's one abortion to six other services I've used.  Without PP's help, I could not have afforded my IUD.  Without PP's help, I have no idea what I would have done when I had that infection last year.  They were able to offer me free and low-cost help because, in large part, of the funding they receive from the government to provide those services.  As I said, my usage of those services has been light; just imagine the impact it will have on millions of people, primarily women, primarily low income, which given the demographics and institutional racism endemic in this country means primarily people of color, who need and use these services even more than I do.  


Now.  With that in mind, go forth and cosign the open letter to Congress on this travesty.  This, as so many other things in this new Congress' brief time in power, is nothing less than class warfare.  Right now, I'm genuinely unsure how helpful any action we can take will be...but teaspoons ahoy, nonetheless.

I Am So Very, Very...Tired.

The U.S. House of Old White Men Who Will Make Your Decisions For You Representatives has just this morning voted to defund Planned Parenthood.


I knew the vote was coming up.  I'm on the email list for NARAL, for Planned Parenthood, for NOW, and several others.  The emails piled up in my inbox this past few days, warning me, offering letters to cosign and phone numbers for my representatives.  And the emails piled up in my inbox this morning, letting me know it had happened exactly as we feared.  (Twitter told me first, mind you; it usually does.  As I told a friend of mine the other day, follow the right people on Twitter and you'll never have to watch the news again.  But I digress.)


I watched videos this morning, in my Google Reader, of various Democrat Representatives speaking out, vehemently, forcefully, eloquently against this travesty.  I watched Rep. Speier's moving admission that she herself had needed an abortion.  And I knew that this issue wouldn't be one that I could open in a separate tab and promise myself I'd get to it later, tomorrow or the next day or whenever, as I so often do.  I had to write about it, now, today.


I was angry, at first.  This post was going to be a scathing diatribe on the stultifying level of fuckery contained in this latest round of "How Can We Screw Women This Time?".  But now, as I'm sitting down to write this, I'm just...tired.  


I am tired of living in a world that does not value my personhood, but values my uterus and what it can do for others.  


I am tired of living in a world where my right to choose whether or not I bear children, and when and how to do so or not do so, is not supported.  Is, in fact, a hotly contested issue as to whether I should have that right at all.


I am tired of living in a world where, should I become pregnant, the fetus inside me is considered, by a very angry, loud minority, to have more rights to my body than I, myself, do.  I, who have lived in this flesh for 25 years.  Who have used this body's hands to create, to write, to connect, to work.  Who have used this body's voice to speak out, to help persuade, change minds, change lives.  I, who have 25 years of feelings, memories, pain, love, life in this body...can be, may be, and to far too many people, should be considered subordinate to the fetus who happens to take root inside me.


I don't cry.  I'm not a crier.  (I have years of negative association between crying and femininity and femininity and weakness, therefore crying and weakness, that taught me how to tightly control my emotions in order to be taken seriously, so that it can actually be impossible for me to let myself cry when I need to and want to, but that's a topic for another time.  I share this now, only to give you a context for what I am saying.)


But as I am sitting here, feeling this latest salvo in the Republican's War on Women hit me like a physical blow, there are tears quietly slipping down my face, and my throat hurts from choking back sobs so I can keep writing.


I don't understand them.  I have never really understood them.  Intellectually, I can rationalize it.  Either with benefit of the doubt - they genuinely believe that abortion is murder, and given that belief, are doing the best they can to combat a terrible evil - or without - they do not like women having the freedom to be sexual without consequences, they believe that women who get abortions are irresponsible sluts, and they are using rhetoric of "teh baybeez!" to cloak their virulent misogyny.  But it still floors me sometimes, how much they truly must hate us.  Us, of course, being women/pregnancy-having people*.  It cannot be anything less than searing hatred.  Or perhaps, searing indifference.  Which is almost worse; hate is at least something you feel for people.  Indifference is what you feel for things.  And gods help me, but I'm fairly sure the viciously anti-choice forces in this country see us more as the latter than the former.


I am just so, so, so tired of fighting.  It never stops.  It never ends.  We suffered the Bush regime (I start with that because it was the start of my paying-attention-to-politics era; there was plenty of suffering and fighting before that, to be sure).  And then we threw it into gear and got a Democrat elected for President, swept away both houses of Congress in the bargain.  Obama was the Promised One, come riding from Heaven itself on a shining unicorn to bring peace to the land, and he had a veto-proof majority in Congress to help him do it.  


But even then, the struggle didn't end!  It dropped into a lower gear, but progress was still achingly slow and we had to fight tooth and nail for every inch.  Our dear leader compromised us away, piece by piece, as the so-called "Tea Party" rose, and their childish tantrums took over the news.  


And now, having gained their power by beating a constant drum of Jobs! and the Economy! and Businesses! and Low Taxes!, they show their true colors by immediately turning a laser focus toward declaring their war on, well...everyone.  Everyone who isn't a rich, thin, straight, Christian, able-bodied, cis, neurotypical white man, anyway.  They want to cut funding for pretty much every program which serves anyone who genuinely needs the help, while pitching a fit anytime someone suggests cutting corporate welfare down a tiny bit.  


But it's specifically their War on Women that is getting the focus right now.  H.R. 3.  H.R. 358.  Defunding Planned Parenthood, defunding Title X entirely, reinstating the Global Gag Rule, expanding so-called "conscience rights" for providers to pick and choose what healthcare they'll provide to whom.  And where I know I should be angry - and make no mistake, under everything, I am angry - instead I just feel the crushing despair of a lifetime spent swimming upstream against this tide of hate and/or indifference.**  How do we even begin to fight this?  The people who hate us are the ones in power.  How do you make a difference against that?  Against the flow of money that keeps them in power?  Against the obvious profitability of declaring war against the less-privileged, in hundred thousand ways subtle and not?  We are only individuals struggling to move against this overwhelming force, and where they can walk away at any time, we can never leave our posts for an instant, lest we be overrun and pushed back just a little bit further.  To quote a favorite novel, about an unwanted royal daughter facing multiple assassination attempts: "The odds were against me.  To stay alive, I had to succeed every single time, where they only had to succeed once."  Like her, our success simply keeps the status quo.  Their successes, on the other hand, change things.  


How can we ever make headway, given this?  When our definition of "success" is "We stopped them from implementing [some horrible, anti-woman, autonomy-eroding law]!"...how can we ever regain the ground we've lost?  We are so thoroughly on the defensive that there isn't time, money, or energy to try to retake lost ground.  We have our hands full just trying not to lose more.  I don't know how to fix it.  I just know I am incredibly tired and demoralized from this struggle right now.


So I'm sorry.  I have no caustic commentary today, no righteous rant to offer.  Maybe another day.  Today, I'm just too tired.


*I do not want to conflate the two, as they are largely but not entirely overlapping groups.  However, the kinds of people I'm talking about certainly do consider the two synonymous, so I use the slash to indicate both their conflation and my unwillingness to perpetuate it.

**I realize this probably comes off as so much privileged whining to many people, since although I am a woman, I am also white, cis, able-bodied, and queer-but-het-partnered, making "woman" my only major axis of oppression.  I'm sorry.  I do know there are others who have it worse than I do.  I do not, in any way, want to minimize or co-opt that.  I apologize if this comes off as so much "white women's tears".  This is the only truth I live, however, and I believe there is still value in speaking it.

On H.R.3 And Buffet-Style Taxpaying

I've been on an Internet sabbatical for a little while.  Before that, it was the holidays while working retail, and that shit takes it out of you.  But I'm back now.  Hi!

So.  H.R.3.  In a crashing economy, when the teabaggers ran on a platform of Jobs! and Businesses! and Small Government!, the "highest priority" according to the new Speaker of the House of Representatives is a bill about making it harder for poor women to access abortion funds and redefining rape more narrowly.  Small government, except for its control over the bodies of women!  Wait, what?

Look, people, I do not care what you think of abortion.  The fact remains that it is a legal, safe, and relatively common medical procedure accessed by 1 in 3 women at some point during their lives.  The fact also remains that poor women do not hand over their right to bodily sovereignty and self-determination to "the taxpayers" simply by virtue of being poor.  This sentiment that taxpayers have a "right" to deprive poor women of access to something they morally disapprove of via the control mechanism of financial pressure is bullshit, and it needs to fucking stop.  Period the end.  


Do not give me bullshit about how it's about "taxpayers and their say in how their money is spent" instead of being about controlling poor women.  That will not fly.  First of all, once your taxes go to the government, it's not your money anymore, and you have no right to say what's done with it.  If you don't like a government program, contact your elected representatives or elect different ones or take any of the routes this country gives its people to air their grievances about the governance under which we live.  But since this money is not yours anymore, to try to have such an intimate say in how it's spent that you want to go in and ban one specific medical procedure - not coincidentally, a procedure that is accessed by pregnancy-having people, who are for the most part women - is blatantly a grab for power over vulnerable bodies.  It's not about the money, and you're not fooling anyone by saying it is.  The money is just the mechanism you're using to assert your power over those bodies.


Just to make sure we're all aware of how much this is NOT about the money:  Statistics for 2001, the most recent year for which there are statistics available, show that between federal and state-level Medicaid programs there were funded a grand total of...wait for it...81 abortions.  81.  In all 50 states, over the course of a whole year.  And that figure includes not only abortions in case of rape, which are the cases this travesty of a bill is trying to limit, but also for health-of-the-woman and incest exemptions.  So if you assume they're divided out equally, one-third of 81 is 27.  27 abortions in a *year*.  Abortions cost, on average, about $500 - it varies depending on the kind of abortion and prices in a given local area, but $500 is a reasonable average.  $500 * 27 = $13,500.  In the grand scheme of government money-flow, that is a miniscule fraction of a percentage point.  It's peanuts.  It's chump change, when you're talking government expenditures.  It's not like banning those few abortions from being funded is going to save the government a lot of money or anything.  So no, this is in no way about the money or reducing government expenditures.  It's about finding and exploiting a vulnerability to try to make abortion inaccessible for just a few more women, because your vision of morality and forcing other people to live by that is more important than allowing people to live by their own morality and make their own decisions.


Thankfully, they've removed the "forcible rape" language from the bill, so this is less fucking-over-survivors than it was.  But it's still bullshit predicated on some imagined "right" of the taxpayer to decide which forms of medical care beneficiaries of government-subsidized insurance should be able to access.


Of course, we could just go to the kind of taxation style some anti-choicers in Massachusetts are trying to push.  They're pushing for a measure that would allow taxpayers to "opt out" and have whatever portion of their tax money currently goes to state-Medicaid-funded abortions, go to information outreach for the Baby Safe Haven Law instead.  You know - once you've forced those irresponsible sluts to have their baby, make sure they know they can leave it on a designated doorstep to languish in the system for 18 years be adopted by a Good Christian Home™.


But hey, I think this is a great idea.  I look forward to the new IRS forms, in which your yearly tax return must be supplemented by form WTF-AMIPAYINGFOR, a ten-page list of programs with checkboxes next to them for "Yes, my taxes may fund this" or "No, spend my taxes on something else".  So I can designate my tax dollars to fund Planned Parenthood, comprehensive sex-ed programs, low-income clinics, and only the salaries of Democrat and Green party elected officials.  


Or perhaps a better way to illustrate the level of absurd entitlement going on with H.R.3 would be to have someone propose the No Taxpayer Funding for Dentistry Act.  If a person can push to defund one medical service for aid recipients based on their individual religious and moral beliefs, why not another?  I demand that no more of my hard-earned tax dollars go to fund the legal, widely-used medical procedure of dentistry, because I believe it is immoral and it's my right as a taxpayer to impose that belief on poor people!  ...right?


Right?


*crickets*


The second half of this post was much better before Blogger ate it.  My apologies!

Salvation Army V Harry Potter. FIGHT!

The Calgary chapter of The Salvation Army, that bastion of anti-gay hatred and occasional fundamentalism, has made a bit of a stir lately over the revelation that donated Harry Potter and Twilight toys will not be distributed to children in need along with other toys they receive to distribute, nor will they be passed on to other charities who will distribute them, because they are toys revolving around "witchcraft" and "the demonic" and the rest of the utterly predictable list of objections this kind of thing always brings up.


Which is stupid, and denying children in need toys they would enjoy and play with simply because of one's personal religious beliefs is reprehensible, but nothing more than I'd expect from SA.  I just have one question, though, and this is for all the anti-HP types who freak out about OMG WITCHES over it:


If your god is, as you so love to claim, a "god of love"...why do you so vehemently hate a book series in which the entire premise of the protagonist's power against the main antagonist is, quite literally, LOVE?  

(For those who have not read Harry Potter, Harry survived Voldemort's original murder attempt and retains an odd, inexplicable power to resist him, despite being in all other ways a more or less average young wizard, because his mother loved him so much she sacrificed herself to protect him, leaving him with the lingering protection of love, something Voldemort cannot understand, fight, or control.)  It just makes no sense.  You're screaming about OMG demons and witchcraft for a book series where *love* is the basic premise of the protagonist's power, and in which the forces of light are doing battle with the forces of darkness.  Not to mention, spoiler alert, in the end the protagonist sacrifices himself willingly to help his side win the battle.  Jesus parallel much?  


It's just dumb, and anyone with half a brain can see through the fearmongering.  Please stop now, and stop letting your irrational hate interfere with children getting toys to play with.

Anti-Choice Hypocrisy, Part 465,423,831,835

Exhibit A: "Informed" Consent, or "Whose information are we offering here?"
 
A so-called "informed consent" bill is introduced by an anti-choice legislator in Guam.  Reproductive justice advocates know these bills are purely propaganda, designed to emotionalize the pregnancy and try to turn women away from abortion.  Sure enough, the original form of the bill requires women be told the "gestational age, anatomical and physiological characteristics of the fetus, as well as of the medical assistance benefits for prenatal care, childbirth and neonatal care," plus a video describing "the unborn child" and information on agencies offering "abortion alternatives".  Other legislators, however, got their hands on the bill during the amendments process, and the finished version instead requires that the woman be given information including "the name of the physician who will perform the abortion, the medical risks associated with carrying the child to term, the need for anti-Rh immune globulin therapy, and the consequences of refusing the therapy."  You know.  Actual, relevant information on carrying a pregnancy to term.

The legislator who originally introduced the bill is having a tantrum now, saying "...after further review of the bill in its final form, I realized this potential law may encourage abortions. ... This one-sided presentation no longer protects Guam's future children."  So, acknowledging that there are physical risks associated with carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth = encouraging abortions, and we can't have that...but downplaying those risks and editorializing about the "unborn child" in a blatant, outright attempt to encourage giving birth is perfectly fine?  Look, sir, your bill was clearly intended to influence women's decisions about their pregnancies in the first place.  You have no leg to stand on here, just because you're upset that it might influence them in the other direction than what you wanted.  If you don't want women influenced in a way you don't like, don't try to step in and influence them your way, either, because this is what you open the door to: equal-opportunity influencing.  Which, let's face it: that's not what you hypocrites want.

But back to this whole idea of "informed consent".  Pregnancy *has* risks.  That is solid, undeniable, medically-established FACT.  First-trimester abortion (which is when some 98% of all abortions take place) is, statistically speaking, safer than giving birth at full term.  Anti-choicers claim to want to "inform" women, but when it comes to giving them actual information about the risks of pregnancy and childbirth, they want to cover up all the negative information and portray it as a win-win situation.  How could this be said to be about information at all, at that point?  It's not.  It's about deception and influence and controlling women to do what they want us to do.  Period the end.  So they don't like *actual* informed consent requirements, because they're afraid of what women will do if they're actually given information and space to make their own decisions.

Exhibit B: Clinic Regulations, or "We are rubber, you are glue, attempts to regulate us bounce off of us and stick to you!"

Last month, a bill passed the Michigan Senate, regulating how clinics which perform abortions dispose of the products of conception.  Based on an unfounded accusation that someone found fetal remains in a dumpster behind a clinic (although police investigations over a period of 8 months found no such remains, and what the hell were they doing going through the dumpster anyway?), the bill would require clinics to bury or cremate fetal remains, and would mean fetal remains are no longer classified as "products of conception" along with the placenta and other tissues.

Simultaneously, over this past year anti-choice "crisis pregnancy centers" in Baltimore and NYC have been screaming bloody murder about "violations" of their First Amendment rights, because of bills being debated/passed that would require them to display signs openly admitting that they do not provide or refer for abortion or contraceptive services, and advertising whether or not there is any medically-licensed staff on-site.

What's wrong with this picture?

Seriously.  Anti-choice CPCs, generally staffed only by volunteers, which are well-documented to lie, pressure, manipulate, and threaten women into keeping their pregnancies, throw tantrums worthy of a spoiled 4-year-old being denied hir favorite toy at the idea of being subject to any kind of truth-in-advertising regulations, while the same anti-choice legislators who support those CPCs will happily regulate every possible aspect of a *real* clinic's functioning they can get their hands on, from record-keeping to scripting their counseling sessions to which kinds of ultrasounds they must offer on what kind of equipment and, now, how they dispose of medical waste.  (Yes, antis, pregnancy tissue, including the fetal remains, are medical waste, same as tissue remnants from any surgical procedure.  So are your tonsils.  Get over it.)

Have these idiots even noticed what gigantic, flaming hypocrites they all are?  Do they even care, at this point?  Or are they so far gone in their war on women's autonomy that they will ignore any contradiction and go to any lengths, no matter how irrational, to further their ultimate goal of total control over women's sexuality and reproductive rights?

This, by the way?  Is why common-ground approaches are doomed to fail.  You can't compromise with this kind of shit.  Attempts to do so will only give them more ground, and they will *never* be satisfied.  I thought we would have learned this by now.

Pregnant Women Are Public Property

If you don't know PostSecret, here's the quick version: an art project begun several years ago, in which people were asked to anonymously write a secret of theirs on a postcard and mail it in, blossomed and grew into a huge thing.  There's the website, where a selection of a dozen or so postcards are posted every Sunday.  There are, I think, four books now of collected secret postcards.  There's the exhibit, which travels from gallery to gallery around the country, displaying secrets of all kinds, all anonymous.  There are events, at which PostSecret founder Frank Warren talks about the beginning of PS, what it's done, what he's learned from it, and people have an opportunity to share their secrets.  It's all about finding our common humanity in the things we would never admit out loud.  I find it fascinating.


I also follow the @PostSecret Twitter account.  Frank tweets random stuff, and also sometimes tweets secrets from postcards that don't make it into the weekly post.  Then yesterday, this tweet was posted:

Today's Secret: "I work at Starbucks. I judge pregnant mothers and decaffeinate their drinks, even though they ask for caffeinated."

I'm sorry, what??? Now, I've seen secrets like this pop up before. A few months ago, there was one about a civil servant who always marked down servicemembers as blood/tissue donors in case of death, whether they had said they wanted to or not, which a lot of people were angry about, myself included. There are a half-dozen secrets I can think of that involve someone in some kind of service-based position admitting to the ways in which they judge, help, or sneakily undermine customers, from a grocery store checker who "forgets" to scan every tenth item for people paying with food stamps or using WIC coupons, to a call center rep admitting zie puts angry customers on hold to let them cool down instead of dealing with them. As a retail shift manager who does, in fact, decide whether or not we'll take your return based on how argumentative or pissy you are with me about it, I can relate.

But this one about the decaf for pregnant women goes beyond that. It's not just "customer service employee is judging you", it's "a person feels that they are entitled to decide how a pregnant woman's body should be treated better than the pregnant woman in question." And it ties into a long, ugly history of the public feeling like pregnant women's bodies are fair game for denial of bodily sovereignty. It's a way of playing "good mother, bad mother" with a total stranger who is just trying to have a damn cup of coffee. It's a person saying, "Because you are pregnant, I am going to make decisions for you instead of letting you decide for yourself." It's sexist, it's fucked up, and I have the sneaking suspicion that the person whose secret this was fully expects to have public opinion on hir side. Because after all, the person whose decisions zie's overriding so cavalierly? It's only a pregnant woman.

A Roomful Of Women With Men's Eyes

[TMI warning for family: I talk about a pole dance class and enjoying/experiencing my sexuality through dance.  You may or may not want to hear about this.]

I love the art of pole dance.  Vertical dance.  Vertical gymnastics.  Whatever you want to call it.  I love the flexibility of the dancers, the incredible way they can hold their entire bodies off the ground by wrapping one arm or a leg around a pole and look like they're flying.  My ex, not too long after we broke up, got into pole dance, and performed at a few clubs for awhile.  She had a pole installed in her house, and once we started being friendly again, she had me over and taught me some basic spins and showed me some videos of competition-level dancers.  Ever since then, I've wanted to try it myself.


But I couldn't.  First it was a problem of money, then of finding a place nearby, then a problem of time, and always an undercurrent of body-issues.  Last night, a blog I read linked to a video of a woman of size performing some very cool pole tricks, and it started the longing up all over again.  So I did some research, found a studio that offered introductory one-off classes, checked the schedule, saw that there was one tonight, and this morning I called and reserved my spot.  So tonight, less than 24 hours after deciding I'd like to try, I walked into a brand-new just-opened pole/erotic dance studio in Walnut Creek along with a trio of women (sisters or friends or something) for an Introduction to Sensual/Pole Dance class.


I was, as I had fully expected, the largest woman there.  The other three students and the teacher were all at least four inches shorter than me, and I had easily 50-100 lbs on them all.  It was a heavy-duty test of FA's effect on me and my own self-esteem.  Thankfully, I passed with flying colors. ^_^  In a pair of borrowed stripper stilettos (the studio loans shoes to students for the intro class), I strutted across in front of the mirror, and even to my own usually-critical eyes, I looked fucking hot.  Neither hotter for my curves, nor less hot for being fat, than the other women, I just looked *good*.  It helped that the instructor asked, as we were setting up mats for some warm-ups, if I had danced before, because "You just have that posture and way of moving of someone who's done dance before."  It was a nice little ego-boost.  I explained that I've taken belly dance, ballroom dance, and modern dance before.  I also explained that my ex was an exotic dancer and had taught me some simple moves, although it was a long time ago.  She blinked a little at the clear connotation that I'd dated a woman before, but to her credit, didn't treat me any differently.


We did warmups, and some floor moves, and when it came time to try a basic spin on the pole, she said to me something like "I guess you already know how to do this, you said your roommate taught you, right?"  Um, no.  No, I never mentioned a roommate.  It was as if she had mentally edited my previous comments into a framework she was more comfortable with, where two women would only live together as roommates (although my ex and I never lived together, but what the hey).  So I corrected her.  "No, my ex did."  The blink again, and a slight stutter to her cheery small-talk, and she said "Oh, that's right" and moved on to a different subject.  Do not disappear my relationship just because it makes you uncomfortable, dammit.  Do not turn lovers and a beautiful relationship into "roommates" because you don't want to acknowledge that not every woman coming into your class is going to take the dance you teach her home to a boyfriend or husband.  (The irony, of course, is that insomuch as I take *anything* home to perform intimately [since that wasn't my intent in taking the class, I don't really "take it home" at all], at the moment, I would be taking it home to show my male partner.)


The class moved on, I enjoyed playing on the pole, and then the instructor was working us through putting everything together into a mini-routine.  She gestured to one end of the studio: "Pretend there's an audience over there.  Your boyfriend or husband or whoever.  Now, face this way..." and gave us this mini-routine, enlivening it by encouraging us to play to our imaginary male audience.  "Swing your hips at him...look back over your shoulder at him..."  


The studio is emphasized as a women-only space.  I kept wondering, what is the point of a women-only space, if you deliberately invoke the male gaze anyway?  So it's a group of women, yay.  But we're supposed to pretend men are watching anyway.  We couldn't possibly be dancing for the enjoyment of a female partner.  We couldn't possibly be dancing simply for our own enjoyment, to feel the glory of our own body moving in sensual, beautiful ways.  We couldn't possibly just want to dance, express whatever emotions we have, learn this dance form because it's just fucking cool.  No, we are now and always performing for a male audience, displaying ourselves sexually for his enjoyment.  


I realize that pole dance originates from a performance dedicated to titillating men.  I get that.  But if you're going to go to the effort of having a women-only space to learn and enjoy this dance form in, why would you still insist on making it about performing for men?  


I think it's because, in this culture, women are not taught to enjoy our sexuality for and by and with ourselves.  We are taught to see ourselves sexually, and even just sensually, through the lens of a man enjoying us.  It's as if, without the mirror of a man, or at the very least *a partner* to reflect our sexuality back to us, it doesn't really exist.  


Well, fuck that.  I can sashay around the pole, swing my hips and admire their sway, without anyone but me seeing it.  I don't have to pretend my man is watching in order to love the sensual way my body can move.  I can twirl around the pole, off the ground, hair flying out behind me, and take gleeful pleasure in the simple sensation of it, without an audience to witness.  I am a beautiful, sexual, and sensual being, and I don't need to have a man's eyes to appreciate it.

This Is How We Are Trained

In the discussions of the sick, fucked-up methods security theatre is using these days (pornoscanners and "enhanced" pat-downs that, if done by anyone but a TSA agent, would be grounds for a sexual assault charge), I was linked to a video that disturbed me greatly.  Trigger warnings for disrespecting a child's bodily autonomy apply.





For those who cannot view it, the video is a clip of a news segment about security procedures and the ordeal of the three-year-old daughter of one of the news program's employees.  A blurry clip taken on the man's cell phone shows his wife and daughter at airport security, when his daughter was required to undergo a pat-down.  The little girl is crying hysterically, screaming over and over again, "Stop touching me!" while her mother holds her for the TSA agent to examine.


And as I watched it, my heart hurt for that little girl, and all I could think was, This is how we are trained.  This is how the message sinks in, reinforced in so many ways by so many people: Your body is not your own.  You do not have the right to not be touched.  You do not have the right to say no.  Saying no, saying stop, does not work.  We tell children that if an adult touches them in a way they don't like, they should do something, say stop, tell their parents, etc.  And then in a situation like this...this three-year-old child is trying to say stop, and yet the adult carries right on touching her, with her own mother's assistance.  Tell me exactly how this doesn't completely undermine every time she's been told to say no and fight back?  


Furthermore and specifically, this is not only how we are trained to the knowledge that our bodies are not our own property despite claims to the contrary, but this is how we are trained to accept the intimate control of those in power.  When you are forced to accept touch you don't want by your own parents, because *this time* it's different, because *this person* is a Person In Authority, you learn additionally that you might be able to say no to other people, but you can never say no to Authority.  The government has the right to put its hands on you, whether you want them to or not, and all you can do is submit to it.  This is how you train a populace to just accept government overreach*, to not agitate, to not question.  Inculcate a fear of authority and a knowledge of one's own helplessness in the face of that authority, starting at a young age, and you'll end up with a society in which this shit goes unquestioned.  In which criticism of the government may safely be labeled "un-American", and it's considered legitimate discourse to tell dissenters to just shut up and support the President no matter what he does.  (Weren't the Bush years just *so* much fun?)


I hope this child is all right.  I hope this didn't scar her too badly.  And I hope that we can move away from this kind of violating security theatre, fast.  How, I don't know...but I hope we can.


*And before anyone - yes, Dad, I'm looking at you - jumps in with "Welcome to the Republican side!" or makes a crack about Dems that involves the phrase "nanny state", I'll remind you that the biggest expansion of executive power *specifically pertaining to* issues of "security" came from a hyper-conservative Republican, that conservative ideals of "small government" have only ever been meant for the privileged (white, male, cis, able-bodied, wealthy, etc) and that conservatives have always been quite happy to have government intruding on and regulating the lives and bodies of those with less privilege. 

Onward, Christian Soldiers ...Everyone Else Can Fuck Right Off.

Or, Happy Veteran's Day!  We support the (Christian only, please) troops!

In the town of King, North Carolina, there has been a bit of an issue over their local veteran's memorial.  Specifically, that it was flying a Christian flag as part of the memorial.  A local veteran complained about the sectarian bias, the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State got involved, and the city took the flag down while they worked out a "compromise" with the help of conservative Christian law group Alliance Defense Fund.  Which, frankly, if you're trying to get a genuine "compromise", I can think of about a bazillion better organizations to work with than ADF, but whatever.  Point being, they were trying.


They've announced a rough idea of compromise.  The city council will allow a religious flag to be flown, but it will be a rotation of flags chosen from the VA's list of approved religious symbols (the list of ones which may be chosen as grave markers in military cemeteries, and which Pagans fought for *years* to have the pentacle added to, culminating in victory not too long ago).  This means there may be a Christian flag flying at the memorial, but it might also be a Muslim star-and-crescent, or a pentacle, or a Star of David, or one of several other flags of varying faiths.  Reasonable enough, right?

Not to the local Christianists, who are protesting mightily and loudly, threatening to lodge a complaint with the city council, and if the policy takes effect anyway, organize amongst themselves to take every single "my flag, please" spot for the next few years and all fly the Christian flag in order to maintain their hegemonic domination of the memorial.  According to the leader of the citizen's group which is protesting the idea of acknowledging religious plurality:

Many of the foundation’s members are concerned that the city may allow religious flags such as the Muslim Crescent and Star flag, the satanic flag and Wiccan flag, all of which are recognized by the U.S. military, to be flown at the memorial.

Look, dude, I hate to burst your happy little Christian-superiority bubble.  Actually, I take gleeful pleasure in doing so.  But anyway.  You do realize that there are, in fact, soldiers of a persuasion other than Christian?  That Muslims and Buddhists and Pagans and Sikhs and Jews and atheists and humanists have all been, in smaller numbers than Christians for sheer demographic reasons, but nonetheless have been part of the U.S. Military and have fought and sacrificed and died for this country?  It is true.  You cannot argue this.  The facts are not on your side.  


So by kicking and screaming and making a big fuss about oh noes Wiccan and Muslim flags!, you are dishonoring the sacrifices made by actual Wiccan and Muslim servicemembers.  If you are going to support the fucking troops, support ALL the fucking troops, goddamnit.  My baby brother is a Buddhist and a soldier.  Don't you fucking dare erase his existence, and the many like him, simply because they had the temerity to be in the military while non-Christian.  They made the same choices, they spend the same time far from family, they are in the same danger during combat deployments as their Christian comrades.  That deserves respect, not erasure*.  


The only thing the people protesting the flag compromise are actually accomplishing is a clear demonstration of what they are *really* about: not supporting the troops, not honoring veterans, but further grinding their collective bootheel into the neck of everyone who isn't exactly like them as a demonstration of their own supposed moral superiority.


*I am deeply conflicted about honoring Veteran's Day and "supporting the troops", despite having a family member in the armed forces.  Not because I don't care about servicemembers, but because I am vehemently not okay with the "giving their lives to defend our freedom" rhetoric that usually is tied to such protestations of support, seeing as the wars we are involved with right now are wars of choice in which dead Iraqi/Afghani civilians outnumber wounded or dead American soldiers by approximately 100-to-1 or more.  That's not an honorable ultimate-sacrifice-defending-our-freedom kind of situation, to me.  That's a war we didn't have to begin, for aims which are poorly defined at best and completely fabricated at worst, in which the civilian populace in the country we've invaded are bearing the brunt of the losses.  That's not something to be proud of.  Further, such rhetoric fuels the proces of, and is utterly necessary to normalizing war and contributing to a thoroughly militarized society in which this kind of conflict is okay, and I do not want to be part of that.  So please take my phrasings of such things with a grain of salt.  It's not as pat and unconflicted as it sounds.  I am trying to acknowledge the difficulties and dangers of enlisting in military service for what they are, without glorifying war and the military with a veneer of defending! our! freedom!