Christian Students Protest Losing Overtly Favored Status. Call The Waaaahhmbulance!

I wonder if any of these kids had taken whatever American Government/Civics class is taught at Giles High School.  And I wonder if that class covered the Constitution, and specifically, the religion clause in the First Amendment.  Because if they had, and if it did...the point, they have missed it.

Apparently a display of the Ten Commandments had hung in the school for about a decade, and was removed recently under threat of a lawsuit by the ACLU and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  And now some of the Christian students, encouraged by at least one youth pastor who was quoted as being "proud of our youth for taking this stand," are all upset because the school, a secular government institution in a nation whose founding document explicitly condemns and rejects a government endorsement of any particular religion, is no longer endorsing their religion by displaying quotes from its holy book.

Or, to put it more succinctly:  These 200 Christian students are mad because their school has been pressured into following the dictates of the Constitution and our country's laws, instead of obliquely supporting Christian dominance.

It's a cliche phrase, but what are they teaching these children nowadays? 

One student said, "Christ is a big, big, big part of Giles County. For those who don't like it, go somewhere else."  Apparently the concept of tyranny of the majority, and why that's a bad thing and America's system is designed to protect against it, has never come up in social studies. 

But I think my favorite Christian-supremacist quote from a student was this one:

"If you don’t like the Ten Commandments, don’t look at them. They are ours to look at if we like to look at them. If you don’t like them, don’t look at them."

Uh-huh.  So in terms of the rights of Christian students versus the rights of non-Christian students, Christian students have the "right" to have the school displaying and thus tacitly endorsing their holy text, while non-Christian students only have the right to look away?  Yeah, that sounds totally like a fair and equal school experience between Christian and non-Christian students.  Totally no privileging of one religion at the expense of all others, nope.

Kids, if you want the Ten Commandments to be part of your school experience, I suggest you go to a private Christian school, one that is not funded by the government and thus has no obligation to the laws regarding endorsement of religion in a government building.  Or, failing that, print them out and stick them in your locker, or on the front of your binder, or embroider them on your backpack for all I give a damn.  That way you get to look at them, and nobody else is forced to look away. 

And to the youth pastor quoted, and the "about a dozen parents and community leaders" who met the kids outside the school and helped organize their protest:  Shame on you.  You're adults and you damn well ought to know better than to encourage this kind of pro-theocratic fuckery in your kids, inculcating in them the notion that their religion deserves to be catered to and granted power in government, despite America's pluralistic nature and explicit founding documents making clear our existence as a secular state.

AL Senator Says 10 Commandments "Not Distinctly Religious." In That Case...

...neither is the Charge of the Goddess, a staple prayer/poem of Wicca and Goddess-centered Paganism since Doreen Valiente wrote the core version of it back in the 50's.  If this asshat's law passes, I look forward to seeing this hung in schools and courtrooms:

Hear ye the words of the Star Goddess, she in the dust of whose feet are the hosts of heaven; whose body encircleth the Universe; I, who am the beauty of the green earth, and the white Moon among the stars, and the mystery of the waters, and the heart’s desire, call unto thy soul. Arise and come unto me.

For I am the Soul of Nature, who giveth life to the universe; from me all things proceed, and unto me must all things return; and before my face, beloved of gods and mortals, thine inmost divine self shall be unfolded in the rapture of infinite joy.

Let my worship be within the heart that rejoiceth, for behold: all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. And therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honour and humility, mirth and reverence within you.

...What?  If  "...you’d have a hard time saying the Ten Commandments are distinctly religious,” as a spokesperson for the Foundation for Moral Law - a new conservative-Christian group founded by Roy Moore, yes, that Roy Moore - who is helping to push this bill says, why is the Charge of the Goddess any more religious than this:

ONE: 'You shall have no other gods before Me.'

TWO: 'You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.'

THREE: 'You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.'

FOUR: 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.'

FIVE: 'Honor your father and your mother.'

SIX: 'You shall not murder.'

SEVEN: 'You shall not commit adultery.'

EIGHT: 'You shall not steal.'

NINE: 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.'

TEN: 'You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.'

Cause, yeah, that's totally not religious.  You know, despite the fact that the first four - that's 40% of the document - are instructions from their deity on how he wants his worshipers to worship him.  And that it comes out of a holy book for the coercively dominant religion in this country.  It's still not religious or anything.  Therefore, neither is CotG and I look forward to seeing them hung side-by-side in Alabama schools and courthouses and government buildings. 

...I was going to add something beginning with "in all seriousness" but really, how serious can you be about this kind of stupidity? 

Although I suppose it says something about how desperate they are to cram their religion down everyone's throat, that they're willing to claim that the How To Live Properly instructions that, according to their mythology, comes straight from their God's hand, are not religious.  The only ways I can think to interpret that are as I did, that this means no religious text may be considered religious for Establishment Clause purposes and therefore we can put up any snippet from any religious text on government property with government endorsement, or Christianity is not meant to be treated as a religion and therefore its texts aren't "religious" in nature.

So, Roy Moore et al, here's a tip for you.  If you want to get government endorsement of your religious texts and have the government displaying those texts for you, you should probably not try to justify it by claiming that they're "not religious".  That is a line of reasoning that can seriously come back to bite you in the ass, and in the meantime, it's just making you look stupid and/or blatantly duplicitous. 

On Mental Health Exemptions

Has anyone noticed the "required exemptions" for abortion bills seems to be getting narrower and narrower without much comment from TPTB?  It used to be, even in the most restrictive anti-abortion bills, you could count on there being an exemption for "rape, incest, and health of the mother."  But these days, it's more like "rape-rape (but not date rape or grey rape or whatever they're calling it these days), incest if the victim is under 18, and life of the mother but only if two separate physicians declare medical emergency."  Rape has become a negotiable term in these bills, thanks to H.R. 3.  Incest exemptions are narrowing to minor victims of incest and excluding adult incest survivors, also thanks to H.R. 3.  And most dramatically different, it's gone from "health of the mother" to "life of the mother", and the threshold for proving risk to the mother's life has gone up and up.  This last has happened more and more on a statewide level (the pro-forced-birth battleground of choice), where bills have repeatedly been passed that contain no exemption for the health of the mother, or which specifically disallow mental health from being considered a health exemption.

Cause you know those tricksy wimmenz.  They lie, you know.  And those sluts will totally lie about some emotional distress bullshit if it gets them their abortions, yep yep.  They'll say anything, won't they?  We can't trust women who claim that continuing a pregnancy will result in harm to their mental health, they're just saying that to get that abortion.  We all know mental health doesn't really count as health-health, amirite?

Well, here I go into personal story land again.  I am a woman with a mental illness - well, one diagnosed one, and symptoms of another one but I can't afford to see someone for it - and I am also a woman who has had an abortion.  And you're damn right considerations of my mental health factored into the decision to have an abortion. 

[TW for depression, forced pregnancy, suicidal ideation]

Because let's look at this.  Take a woman who is (especially at that time) suffering from moderate to severe depression complicated by anxiety.  Who has decided she does not ever want children, no seriously, she's not going to change her mind, she has thought about this and doesn't want kids.  Who also has some admittedly strange anxiety issues around the process of pregnancy and birth.  Who has a history of suicidal tendencies.  Now, if that woman becomes pregnant, and is told that she cannot obtain an abortion, but instead will be required to carry to term a pregnancy she does not want, and give birth to a child she does not want, what do you expect to happen?

I can tell you exactly what would have happened.  Setting aside the possibility of illegal abortion or doing it oneself for the moment, had I truly been faced with a reality in which I would have no control over my body and be forced to give birth, something I know without a shadow of a doubt I NEVER, EVER want to do, I would have rather killed myself than gone through with it.  I would have seen no other option.  Rather than be forced to have a baby, I would have chosen death at my own hand.  This is not an exaggeration.

To those who advocate stripping mental-health exemptions from abortion restrictions: do you know what it is you're really doing?  I know conservatives hate this word, but try out some empathy real fast.  Imagine being a woman who doesn't want to have a baby, but who is pregnant.  Imagine you're staring down the barrel of nine months of pregnancy, followed by childbirth.  Imagine you're facing the kinds of drastic physical changes pregnancy imposes on the body - on your body - against your will.  Imagine you're facing physical risks including permanent physical illness, disability, or even death.  Imagine you're facing labor and birth, a deeply trying experience by all accounts, one which, again, carries substantial risks.  I have one word for you: episiotomy.  Imagine you're facing the emotional trial of either completely rearranging your life and plans and goals and dreams to accommodate a baby, or giving it up for adoption and always wondering, always being haunted by what happened to it.  Adoption is not an easy decision to make, nor does it come without cost for the vast majority of biological mothers.  Your life has been turned upside down, and you are being denied the ability to control what happens to you.  This is your body, and you are suddenly being told that, because of a broken condom or failed birth control or a bad decision, you are no longer in control of it.  The state, and a fetus you don't know and don't want, own your body and you have no say in what is done to it.  Imagine the stultifying horror of that realization.  Then compound that with a vulnerable mental/emotional state caused by mental illness, pregnancy hormones, and suicidal tendencies. 

Now, having imagined all that, look me in the fucking eyes and tell me straight out that you you still think it's a good idea to remove the mental health exemption and force a woman who could easily become a danger to herself to have a baby against her will, because her mental health doesn't warrant an exemption from your law.

And if, after all that imagining and empathy and descriptive horror, you can still say you want to remove mental health exemptions from life/health of the mother exemptions...you are clearly lacking a crucial element of human compassion and should not be allowed within a mile of decision-making authority over other beings, not even a goldfish, much less other human beings. 

Praying To The Test

Via Religion Clause, a WTF moment that makes you genuinely wonder if the thought has even occurred to these people that, y'know, not everybody around them is or wants to be Christian...?

A flyer advertising the school-sponsored prayer service

Forget "teaching to the test", the premier strategy of US education thanks to Bush's No Child Left Untested Behind and an increasing culture of emphasis on standardized testing to measure schools' efficacy.  No, in a Baltimore elementary/middle school, they're praying to the test.  The school is holding optional Saturday classes to help kids prepare for the tests, and this prayer service marks the end of those weekend prep classes.

The principal says parents asked her to hold the classes and prayer service.  You know?  If the parents want a prayer service for their kids, and think that will help them on the tests, fine.  They can organize whatever they want at their churches or homes or whatever.  But that's a totally different animal from this, an official school-sponsored prayer service explicitly referencing Christian belief and citing a bible verse.

You have to wonder how a teacher or student or parent opting out would be received.  Peer pressure can be an enormous influence.  Do you want to be known as the teacher who wouldn't show the kids zie cared by being at their prayer group - especially with that fine print reading "Teachers, we would love to see you at the celebration and prayer!"?  Tell me how that doesn't imply a culture wherein Christian religious affiliation is preferred and potentially necessary to advance.  Or the kid who was noticed not to be there, or the parents who might be assumed to be disconnected from their kid's success and well-being because zie chose not to be there?

The president of the local principal's union is being a douche about the whole thing, saying the problem isn't the principal who arranged this, or the parents who requested it, but "the narrow-minded politicians from some 50 years ago, for removing prayer from our schools."  Really?  Enforcing the Constitution's provision of separation of church and state is narrow-minded, but holding a clearly sectarian gathering that makes broad assumptions about the religious choices of the students, parents, and teachers, and subtly implying that a particular religious choice is superior in that it is what makes the children succeed, that's, what?  The very definition of open-minded and tolerant, right?

Two different parents are quoted in the Baltimore Sun article as saying basically that this is what their children need to succeed.  Well, if that's what you believe, fine.  But that's something you provide for them, on your own time, sponsored by a church or family group, not something the school should be promoting and sponsoring and managing!  Can you imagine the flaming uproar if a non-Christian religious group, say Muslim or Pagan, had wanted the school to hold a prayer or ritual service to enhance the kids' performance on the test? 

Ugh.  My sympathy to any students, families, or teachers at the school who are of religious persuasions other than Christian and felt pressured or bullied by this stupid, blatantly unconstitutional act.  And seriously, if the standardized test is something that so frightens a school that they will go to these lengths...that's just a bad goddamn sign, and something needs to change that won't be fixed by at-school prayer rallies.

Commercializing International Women's Day

You may have noticed I've never been particularly good at observing "Days".  Coming Out Day, Blogging Against Disablism Day, I'm just terrible at getting posts up to coincide with observed Days.  International Women's Day would have been the same*, except for a thing I saw today which I couldn't let pass unremarked.


I'm a cosmetics-and-beauty-products junkie.  I have probably over 100 colors of eyeshadow, primers, liners, all kinds of makeup.  Lately, I've taken a renewed interest in painting my nails, enticed by Zoya brand nail polishes.  I love Zoya's polishes so much (I got my first bottle in January, and by now I have 11 bottles; admittedly, 6 of those were free thanks to their kickass Facebook promo, but still, for someone on a budget 5 bottles of polish in 3 months is kind of an investment) that I follow them on Facebook so I can jump on promos and sales when they're announced.  This morning, they announced an IWD promotion, so I clicked over to read about it on their blog.  The promo itself didn't really interest me, as it was offering their six-color spring 2011 collection at a special price that I still can't justify spending, and I didn't really like the spring collection anyway.  But in the copy for the promo, this jumped out at me:

Celebrate the great women in your life on March 8th – International Women’s Day! This 100 year old holiday is traditionally celebrated by giving small gift to the women that are important in your life.

IWD: Now non-procreative women can enjoy the tokenism and meaningless capitalism of Mother's Day, too!  


I suppose I shouldn't be so shocked, that a business catering to women is trying to capitalize on IWD to drive sales.  After all, Mother's Day began as an anti-war movement, and look what it's become.  But it struck me as ridiculous.  So I checked the official IWD website, and found a thorough explanation of the history of IWD, explaining the origins and goals of the movement, focusing largely on modern observance of IWD as a day to remind a complacent world that Feminism Ain't Dead Yet, with one little throwaway line...

In some countries IWD has the equivalent status of Mother's Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

...in three pages worth of text, describing how IWD is observed in some countries.  And this is what Zoya - a US company with a largely US customer base - boils it down to?  


Dear Zoya:  I love your nail polish, but please to not tokenize IWD as "another day to give small gifts to X woman".  IWD is not Mother's Day, nor is it Valentines Day.  It is a day to remember and celebrate how far we have come on the grindingly exhausting journey toward a truly equal and egalitarian society, while still being aware of how far we have yet to go and how many women have not even benefited from what advances we have made.  I get that you're a business and you're thinking of sales and your bottom line here, but could you at least have a blurb that reflects accurate reality, instead of turning IWD into a glorified Secretary's Day?


I would think the global struggle for complete social, political, and economic equality of half the world's population might deserve that much, at least.


*As it is, I'm high-fiving myself for squeaking in with 2 hours to spare on March 8th.

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.