To be a little less pissed off about which asshole ends up in the White House, Obama brings the finger wagging.

So McCain- still an asshole, always an asshole. But Obama never misses an opportunity to be the disapproving school marm. In talking about the abysmal state of the US educational system, I actually like Obama’s plan for $4000 per year for college in exchange for community service. But he just can’t quit there.

But there’s one last ingredient that I just want to mention, and that’s parents. We can’t do it just in the schools. Parents are going to have to show more responsibility. They’ve got to turn off the TV set, put away the video games, and, finally, start instilling that thirst for knowledge that our students need.

Seriously! Yes it’s us lazy parents who are teaching our kids that “learning is for suckers!” Perhaps having to work 2 or 3 jobs to keep up with housing and insurance costs (which your economic plan doesn’t actually help with) means that parents have less time to spend with the kids. But the problem with the educational system is not lazy parents, it’s CRAPPY FUCKING TEACHING METHODS. And that has nothing to do with teachers, it’s how teachers are supposed to teach here. The same information taught over and over and over with just the tiniest bit of additional knowledge every year does not make smarter kids. It makes bored kids. It makes under-educated kids. And piling on 3 or 4 hours of homework per night to make up for the time spent on repeating crap doesn’t help either.

I may have yelled “Oh Fuck You!” very loudly at the tv (from the other room) when I heard him spout that shit.

On our way to the grocery store (Whole Foods, sad but true)

Ruth (noticing bumper stickers on car in front of us): Someone’s in a PETA car

Me: PETA is more misogynistic than Focus on the Family, I swear to god.

Ruth: Totally true

Me: At least Focus on the Family admits they think women are inferior, PETA can’t understand why we take offense when they say women are a better source of dairy products than cows.

the Kid has been wandering around singing “Snape, Snape, Severus Snape” for days. And I just watched the video that it came from.

Now I am singing “Snape, Snape, Severus Snape”

The no longer little germ factory formerly known as the kid has given me a very nasty cold. I think my head is gonna explode from all the snot.

Kid will now be known as El Nino, since he has the destructive force of a major weather system.

Please talk amongst yourselves while I slink off and die.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a

I read this story the other day and meant to blog about it, then up in gmail chat pops a link. Thanks Sooper. I lurves ya.

So a 15 year old girl takes naked pictures of herself and sends them out, like a dumb 15 year old might.

Now what do you think happens next. Do her parents find out and banish her from all technology usage till she’s 30? Do her friends mock her? No

She gets charged for child pornography, essentially she is charged with abusing herself.

It’s like the most bizarre version of a Victorian punishment for onanism. Heaven forbid this girl might have some kind of sexual agency of her own. We can’t have that now can we? NnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnOOOOooooooooooooo

She is being a dumb teenager, I give you that. But we were all dumb teenagers at one point (hell, I was the cheerleader who sold acid, and someday I might tell you all about my underage drinking ticket). But prosecuting someone for taking pictures of them self is about the stupidest thing ever. Dear gawd, I am sure there are dozens of photos of young boys mooning cameras for a laugh, where is the child porn charge there? How about naked babies in bathtubs? Every parent has one of those (at least- my Kid was such a little nudist that getting a picture of him wearing clothes was a rare thing).

I am a parent. And I am just as freaked out about the nasty pervy abusers out there as the next mom. But a 15 year old girl is physically incapable of sexually abusing herself. There is no power imbalance or coercion or force. There is no lack of consent or need for consent for that matter. You ONLY need consent when there is another party involved.

October 18th is to be “Tell the sexist boy bloggers to shut up” day.

Everyday here is tell the sexist boy bloggers to shut up day, but perhaps a more organized form of attack is advised.

Ideas? Do we troll the sexist blogs with inane and repetitive comments? Do we flood them with links to previous posts about the stupidity of sexists pretending to be progressives? Do we just drop helpful links to the Feminism 101 blog?

What are you going to do on October 18th? Actually I think we should rename it Shut Your Pie Hole Day, but them I am not a very nice person when it comes to loudmouthed idiots.

When kid was just a wee boy of 8 we had this little conversation:

Kid: Ok Mom, I think I got something figured out.

Me: All right, what is it?

Kid: Well, if you’re a boy and you love another boy, you’re gay.

Me: Uhuh

Kid: And if you’re a boy and you love a girl, then you’re straight

Me: Also if you’re a girl who loves girls you’re gay, and if you love boys you’re straight.

Kid: Okay, well when I grow up I think I am going to be straight and marry a girl

Me: Ok. But there are also people who love both boys and girls, they are called bi

(At this point this was too much information for his 8 year old brain and he ran off to read a book)

If the kid had said that he was going to grow up to love other boys, that would have been ok. I would have been worried about how the world would treat such a tenderhearted monkey, but I wouldn’t have tried to make him be anything other than what he is.

The Kid is absolutely his own person. There are bits of me and bits of his dad in there, but he is a person in his own right. He is not the physical incarnation of my hopes and dreams of the future, and therefore who he loves is not a reflection on my skills as a parent.

So I take the news that he is straight the same way I take the news that green is his favorite color. It has nothing to do with me. And if he had said he was gay, it has nothing to do with me. I just want him to grow up and find a place in the world for himself of his own creation.

I know that for many children the news that they are not what their parents had imagined leaves them open to abuse, depression, homelessness and suicide. I know that my first gay boyfriend, when he came out to his parents at the tender age of 15, was gang raped by a bunch of his dad’s friends to “teach him a lesson”. It broke my heart to hear that.

I can only hope that someday in the very near future all parents will take their children’s sexual orientation as something that is as neutral a statement as “I like green”. It shouldn’t be a big deal. It shouldn’t cause pain. It just is.

Me: We could have something that rymes with wodka

ouyang: i love something that rhymes w/ wodka!

me: pear collins rhymes with wodka

ouyang: O…M…G

me: Becky look at her but

ouyang: did you see the vid on shakes about the woman who is all upset that they didn’t retouch a photo of Gov Palin!

me: I didn;t watch but i read it
stupid burns

ouyang: “i want to open an orphanage for unwaned facial hair”
LOL

me: I loved that

ouyang: i know
for fuck’s sake…if it is disgraceful to not retouch someone as conventionally beautiful as Sarah Palin, then most of the rest of the public should just stick our heads in the oven now

me: Oh I’m just waiting for the gas to be reconnected so i can stick my head in the oven. What;s your excuse for continuing to live while not looking like a magazine cover

ouyang: electric oven
me: Ah
I see

ouyang: and i just made myself cry right thre
laughing too hare to type

me: Can’t you drop a toaster in the bathtub or something

ouyang: i’ll try…but my toaster is actually part of my microwave, which is too big to go carrying around
lemme see…OOOH! We have an iron!
if i’m not back in five minutes I have done justice for Sarah Palin!

me: dear gawd- what kind of freakish contraption has a toaster microwave combo

ouyang: you should blog this

me: I tottally am
typos and all

ouyang: I got it at the Naval exchange in monterey

me: you were trading belly buttons?

ouyang: yes, as a matter of fact i was
i am the proud new owner of an inny and a toaster microwave combo

me: how many belly buttons did that contraption cost ya

ouyang: i am too embarrassed to say, in this economy

me: You were spending belly buttons like an AIG executive, weren;t ya?

ouyang: shamefully it’s true
i did enter a twelve step program, but then we got that belly button relief fund from the government…
so no worries

me: kewl

ouyang: and no, you can not borrow fifty belly buttons from me.
😉

me: I hate to think of you walking around without a belly button to your namew

ouyang: i totally love you

me: I love you too

Anyone whose been a feminist for oooohhh say five minutes or longer has at some point gotten the “you’re looking for sexism everywhere!” speech. I got that one the other day, along with the whole “don’t be a victim” line.

I wish that I was making up the sexism. I wish that this was some form of paranoid delusion that the world is out to get me (and every other woman on the planet). Oh if only I was a hypochondriac . Then there would be a cure. I could fix this whole problem by myself, or at least with the help of a good doctor.

But sexism is everywhere, in everything. It starts as soon as we know what the sex of a child is going to be when we pick their names and the colors of their clothes. And it never stops.

One half of the population is taught from the beginning to fear the other half. Not all of them. But we are taught that our behavior can drive males into a violent fury. We check ourselves. How we dress, how we act, where we go, what we do. None of this ever actually prevents us from being raped or hurt, but if we behave in a completely virtuous manner, then perhaps if/when we are raped or hurt we will not be blamed for it.

We are taught to fear strange men in dark bushes. But we aren’t told that it’s more likely someone we know, even someone we love, will be the person who hurts us.

And then there are all the little papercut like wounds the world inflicts on women. The daily street harassment. The parents and teachers and bosses who treat as as less than and force us into roles we wouldn’t normally accept. The media that is always telling us that we are not good enough as we are. We must be thinner, whiter, prettier, meeker. A lady in the streets and a freak in the sheets. But not too freaky. Cause then you’re a slut.

And when things go bad, they go bad for us first and stay bad for us longer. The economy crashes and women’s jobs are the first to get cut. We never made as much as men anyways. When people are struggling economically, violence increases. And violence begins at home.

When I left the Kid’s dad, after he had tried to strangle me in a parking lot, I went to a domestic violence support group for a while. There is a phrase that they used, “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it”. They were talking about the abusive patterns and behaviors.

But it applies to sexism too. I could try to pretend it doesn’t exist, but my being ignorant of it, because I am female, doesn’t mean it won’t affect me. I can pretend that cat callers are really just complimenting me, or that my only real skills are filing and typing and mommying and cooking. Or that the real reason my life sucks is cause I haven’t found the “right man” to come sweep me off my feet.

Actually, I did try to prentend not so long ago. I was tired of the constant struggle. Along came a very handsome, very wealthy, very charming guy. Who wanted a trophy wife. I tried to pretend that it wouldn’t bother me to be someone’s well kept pet, that giving up power over my own life would be a good thing since I’ve so obviously screwed up while trying to wield that power myself. We got snowed in together one weekend. I spent the weekend cooking and fucking. And I saw what daily life with him would be. Cooking, fucking, cleaning, babies. Over and over. No partnership. No give and take. I was going to be smothered. I would never have to worry about money again, but I would also never be treated as anything more than a servant. Maid, cook, whore, incubator. I wouldn’t even get the fake power brides get in having my dream wedding (to elope in Rome or Venice with no one around but us). He said it would HAVE to be a big traditional wedding with all his gazillions of relatives. I cringed at the thought of being the center of all that patriarchal madness, dressed up like a giant cotton ball of virginal whiteness and marched down an aisle to indentured servitude.

Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

Needless to say, that ended. I couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist.

I see sexism everywhere because sexism is everywhere. I don’t need to go looking for it. I’m a girl, it finds me whether I want it too or not.

And I am not a constant victim. I am fighter. A warrior queen in the battle against the patriarchy. My weapons are words and facts and thoughts.