I have a long and tedious history of educating the boys around me about feminism and the ways women are kept down. I can always see the conversations coming from a thousand miles away, saying the same things over and over and over again about how “women can’t stop rape, only rapists can” or having the same argument with same boy that I’ve had a million times. This is why feminism 101 exists. This is why we get tired. Why the fuckity fuck do we, the oppressed, have to educate the privileged over and over and over.

When I was pregnant with the Kid, I wanted a boy. Not because of family names or because boys are inherently better than girls. I was a bit terrified of what kind of mother I’d be to a girl. In my family, boys are so coddled and loved that we might as well be Chinese or Indian, and girls suffer. That’s how it is. And at 19 years old, I didn’t know if I had the skills to break that family tradition. I didn’t want to do to my daughter what had been done to me, or to my mother and aunts. Having a boy meant that I could skip all the reprogramming my brain would need. A boy I could just love, a girl would require much more serious therapy.

I’ve always been a feminist, from the time I was a little girl. It was always glaringly obvious to me how unfair it was that I was the one who got blamed for a messy house or who had to put their needs aside in favor of my brother. My mom showed up to every one of my brother’s baseball games (which he hated playing) but never went to single one of my volleyball or softball games, never came to watch me cheer a football or basketball game, and only showed up to state cheering competition when I begged. By the time I was the Kid’s age, my mom was doing everything she could to push me out of the house including moving into homes where everyone had a bedroom but me(and my anger at the whole situation made me happy to leave). Girls in my family are supposed to work their asses off, all the time. Boys get pats on the head just for trying.

It wasn’t until I cut off contact with my mother that I started examining the minutia of feminism, the things beyond access to work and reproductive rights. By that time, the Kid was 8. If he had been a girl, that poor child would have had 8 years of a life with a horrible parent. I’ve made some mistakes with the kid, but overall I’ve been a good mom to him. If he had been a girl, I don’t know that would have been true until a few years ago.

Please understand, this isn’t because girls are more difficult children. They aren’t. I cringe whenever someone says things like ” be thankful he’s a teenage boy and not a girl, then you’d be in real trouble”. The only thing that makes girl babies harder to raise is that society hates them so fiercely, and that parents are part of society. If the kid was a girl, right now I would be dealing with creepy middle aged men (and teenage ones too) who think growing boobs means a girl is asking to be sexually harassed. I would be walking a fine line between trying to keep her safe from rape without making her feel that not being raped is her responsibility. I would be trying to teach her that she is beautiful but that is not all she is when every message she gets from the world says that she must fix her physical flaws or no one will love her. The Kid is chubby, but if he was a chubby girl (highly likely given our genes) I’d be struggling with keeping him healthy and keeping him from an eating disorder (or an exercise disorder with a mild case of orthorexia- which is what I had). The biggest struggle I have with a chubby boy is finding pants that fit, and now that he wears grown up clothes it’s much easier.

Everytime I make the kid do the dishes is an act of feminist rebellion. The rule of the house is either you do the cooking or you do the clean up. But if he was a girl, I would just be reinforcing the idea that the house is the responsibility of the woman. My brother, at 32 years old, hasn’t washed a dish in forever. And I know cause he used to pay me to wash his dishes and do his laundry and clean his bathroom. The Kid knows how to scrub a toilet and used to help me with paid cleaning gigs.

Until a few years ago, I wouldn’t have even recognized most of these things as issues. I might have blindly gone into things in the exact same way my mother did. And at 19, I knew that there were all these tiny issues that needed to be dealt with, but I didn’t know what they were. So when the ultra-sound revealed that he was a boy, I felt relieved. This I could do. I could be a good mom to him.

Now 15 years later, I could be a good mom to a girl. Now there wouldn’t be an 8 year lag between me figuring my shit out and becoming a better parent. Now, most of the baggage from my horrid childhood wouldn’t be passed on to a girl child.

So when I read this, I took a deep breath and made a wish for this woman’s daughter.

About a month ago, the Kid had a nasty flu bug. Not swine flu (I think) but just your general sore throat, fever, snot nosed flu bug. I kept him home from school while he had a fever (cause I’ve always been told that a fever is a good sign that it’s still contagious) which meant 3 days of the monkey face lounging on the couch.

After 2 days I got a call from the school. When I explained that Kid was sick, I got some nasty feedback about how he “needs to be in class” and a super snotty “Well! Are you going to send him tomorrow!” phrased less like a question and more like the exasperated flouncing of a southern belle who just found out the slaves were freed and wants to know who is going to wash her pantaloons.

I said he’s got a fever, he’s leaking snot from everywhere, and he might even have strep. Do you really want him sharing that with all his classmates? He’ll be back when he’s better.”

(Ruth wants to know what I have done to inspire the ire of the public school system that every dealing with a school person is chock full of condescending asshatery. It’s simple, I’m a poor single mom who fights back when they are shitheads. That’s all it takes).

Moving on. We now have one case of swine flu at a local middle school. That middle school is closed down even though the parent of the sick kid did just what they were supposed to do and kept the kid home. There are supposed to be more school closures announced tonight, at least 3. I gotta wonder if the school district’s policy of berating parents for keeping sick kids home helps or hurts the efforts to stop the spreading of disease. Certainly in the Kid’s case they would have been happy to have his feverish self coughing lovely influenza saturated phlegm all over their classrooms.

First- Charles Mudede is one of my favorite writers at The Stranger.

Today he is pondering just it is the male is the default sex socially when biologically the default is female.

After months migraines (sometimes 3 or 4 a week) and no relief from the usual suspects of drugs, I went to the doc on Friday.

He prescribed some more stuff (stuff I know will not work, stuff that may work but my insurance will be an asshat about) did some blood work and referred me to a neurologist for an MRI.

Doc’s office calls today to tell me that 1) my neurologist referral has been approved and to schedule an appointment. 2) they are doing the hoop jumping that the insurance company requires for the might work drug and 3) that my blood work is fine except that my folic acid levels are a bit low and I should start on a pre-natal vitamin RIGHT NOW.

I am not now, nor do I ever plan to be (again) pregnant. But in case I have forgotten that I am nothing more than a baby making machine, my doctor is more than happy to get me a pre-natal vitamin prescription.

Can I just say that menopause will be sweet sweet relief. I only have 15 or 20 more years to go.

Oh boo fucking who for you, my dear.

Let me play my teeny tiny violin.

You’re struggling with reduced finances. Your hubby’s portfolio is down 95%. You think you understand why we poor plebeians are so mad that some of us are picketing the homes of banksters.

You haven’t faintest idea. Your shame about not being able to spend like you used to is not the same as our desperation. We cannot feed or clothe, or house, or educate our children. You eat macaroni and cheese and think it’s virtuous. We eat ramen noodles because macaroni requires milk and butter, ramen just needs water.

You’re worried about your husband’s health. I bet that if he started having chest pains, you have the health insurance to take him to the hospital. We don’t have the luxury. Instead we use homemade remedies for alleviating an abscessed tooth while hoping and praying that it doesn’t lead to death, like it did for that poor boy in Baltimore.

You snipe about unworthy borrowers, but don’t have the brain power required to consider where they come from. 30 years of stagnant wages while men like your husband rail against minimum wage increases plus the loss of traditional pensions and skyrocketing education costs mean that the only way for average Americans to get ahead and send their kids to college and retire in some form of comfort was through home ownership and equity. Those who you call unworthy were doing the only thing they could to give their kids a chance at a better life. They were doing exactly what they have been told to do by society, by the government, and by people like you. And when that fails (and fails in a way which this semi-educated poor person had been predicting for years) you have the gall to say “no one saw it coming”. Everyone saw it coming, but the rosier-viewed among us thought it could be put off a bit longer.

So pardon me if I don’t find the details of how tastefully you choose to celebrate your husband’s birthday or how you duck into society events after the cameras are gone, humanizing. Forgive me for not having an ounce of empathy while you shop in your own closet, as I had to buy my kid thrift store shoes when his last pair become more aerated than a colander. And excuse me for my absolute lack of pity. You are the worst of America. And those poor people now populating the Hoovervilles (or Nicholsvilles as we call them here) would gladly trade their problems for your anyday.

watching PBS’ version of Dickens’ Little Dorrit (damn that seems like a shit ton of apostrophes)

There are only a few methods the rich use to fuck over the poor, but we keep falling for them. Over and over and over and over. In Little Dorrit’s case, I smell a Victorian ponzi scheme in the making.

Also, Victorians like Dickens and Gaskell use the term “speculation” with a snear, the same way southern women use the word “cute”. At one point the main character wants to invest in a bank that is doubling people’s money in a year. His partner snears “Isn’t that speculation?”. Main character assures him that it’s not, it’s “investment”. Same thing, new word. Not unlike “mortgage backed securities”.