Kid: Mom, what does emasculate mean?

Me: It means to say or do something to a man that makes him less masculine.

Kid: So can you defeminate someone?

Me: No. No matter what happens, I will always be a woman. But for men there is this silly idea that you can take their manhood away through insults. There is also a word effeminate, that is used to describe a boy who isn’t masculine enough. Kinda sucks for you and it’s really stupid that the worst insult you can say to a boy is that he’s a girl.

Kid: That’s dumb.

Me: Yep. But you know, we don’t think there is really any difference between masculine and feminine. Girls can be strong and boys can be sweet. They are both just made up descriptions.

(Why is it that it is so easy for a 12 year old to understand these things, but 30 year old men still think I am going to sympathize because someone called them girly? Seriously, being compared to half the population of the world is not so bad. It’s not like someone called you a Bush lover)

Sex and the City was a TV show, not an anthropological blue print to the minds of all ladies between 18 and 40. Please stop using Carry Bradshaw references to make your point about wacky single girls. We are not a monolith and we are not all able to be put into Carry, Miranda, Charlotte or Samantha categories.

Unlike the make believe Carry, I cook, fabulously well actually. I know how to make a bechamel sauce from a rue. I know how to do things with fleshy animals that would make your mouth water and your tummy growl. And every girl I know cooks something. But I get tired of cooking every single night. Sure, there may be some girls who don’t know how to cook, but most of us single types learn how to cook because we have to. Very few of us have the kind of budgets that make restaurants and take out a nightly affair (especially with the 70 cents on the dollar wage gap).

And Micheal Pollan- STFU already. Has anyone ever noticed that when it comes to improving the quality of life by eschewing modern consumerism that the onus for those corrections is put on women.

Let’s see

Environmental fixes: woman are the ones sorting the trash from the recycling, using craptastic non-toxic cleaners that increase the time they spend doing laundry or scrubbing toilets, hunting down recycled unbleached toilet paper and washing cloth napkins to save a tree, looking for organic cotton t shirts and socks that will very quickly be ruined and/or lost by most children.

And food. When it was slow food, who do you think it is spending all those extra hours in the kitchen making slow cooked soups and sauces instead of opening up a can. It is women who spend the time and effort hunting down locally grown, organic, nitrate free all natural goodness while trying to stay within the family budget (they don’t call it whole paycheck foods for nothing). It is women who are required to stay up on the latest whole grain, low fat, high protein, no carbs, good carbs, too much sodium, god fats, transfats, not enough vitamin whatever and don’t forget to get enough folic acid cause you might be pre-pregnant bullshit.

And don’t even get me started on those stupid Barbara Bush commercials about families eating dinner together. Seriously, if you want families to eat dinner together then make it so Mom and Dad don’t each need 2 jobs to pay the mortgage. But the guilt trip about how children suffer when nobody sits down to dinner with them is directed straight to moms.

That is all

I was describing to someone this morning why it is exactly that Obama fans piss me off. “They are like those frat boys who listen to Dave Matthews. They think they are being all sensitive and progressive but they are really just over privileged white boys”

But someone at Jezebel gets it! Yay. (Third bullet down)

And it’s not getting better.

For the first time ever, I may not vote for the Democrat in the presidential election. I am pissed off the Obama’s supporters are acting like rabid, foaming mouthed Republicans. I am pissed off that Hillary had the ovaries to apologize when someone from her campaign said something slightly racist, but Obama lets sexist tripe slide out of his own lips without batting an eye.

I will not vote for bullying. I will not vote for misogyny. Up until a few days ago, I thought we had two great candidates. I don’t think that now. I will throw a vote away on the green party or the socialist workers party, but I won’t support a candidate (or his supporters) who think that women are the throw away vote. Just cause we’ve always been willing to vote the party line before does not mean we will do so now.

I am pissed off more than anything that I might be pushed into this corner. What does your precious electibility mean when you’ve insulted, demeaned and bullied the base of your party? The Republicans know how hard it is to win a campaign when you fuck with the base.

I am so pissed off right now that I have to back away from this blog for a bit. I will stab out the eyes of someone who makes another sexist remark to me, and that is not a healthy state to be in. I don’t get to walk away from sexism when I am tired of fighting because no matter what, I am always going to be a girl and misogyny is like a creepy subway groper who keeps pushing his hardon into your leg. But you can never get off the train and away from it, the groper is always there. Talking to you boys is like saying “Hey, there’s an asshole trying to rub his cock on my ass” and you boys all responding with excuses: it’s not really his cock, it’s only an accident, it happens to everyone, blah blah blah. I find it astonishing that my 12 year old boy has no problem calling out sexism when he sees it, but grown up men can’t.

Until I can think about this without grinding my teeth, clenching my fists and wishing I could use my Brazilian horse whip over the internet, I am going to go read about happy things and write about happy things, and maybe find a subby boy who has a high tolerance for pain.

I’m feeling a bit bruised and disappointed at the mo. It’s one thing to know sexism is out there, it’s a whole other thing to have proof of just how entrenched it is in people who you consider allies or even friends.

Bullying. That is what we get from Obama supporters. Nice. I don’t think that is either inspirational or hopeful.

You guys proud of yourselves now? You still think it’s about candidates and not sex. You think you’re above this kind of behavior, that we all are above this cause we happen to be on the left side of the political spectrum.

Nope.

But thanks for showing your true colors.

I think it’s almost time to lighten the mood around here a wee bit. I still want you boys to come up with my one example from the post below, but when you’ve become massively frustrated trying to find one, here’s a game to pass the time.

I have a lot of musician friends, and musicians are in bands. And bands are always breaking up and reforming. So we spend a mountain of time think up new band names. So much that it has become a party game. But with political season upon us, we’ve got a more timely game going.

Name the imaginary cabinate post.

For example:

Mike Huchabee, Secratary of: Wifely Submission, Biblical Constitution, Fundie Rednecks

Mitt Romney, Secretary of: Animal Cruelty, Flip Floppery

John Mccain, Secretary of: Toilet Paper (he’s spent years wiping off his brown nose, he’s an expert).

Have at it and you can include Dems to. Like Nancy Pelosi, Secretary of Selling Out the Poor

With a working computer- IN MY OWN HOUSE! It has been exactly one month since I sat in my chair, feet propped up on my desk and keyboard in my lap typing away. Damn it feels good.

Now I’ve been thinking that maybe, just maybe I’ve been too hard on you boys. So I have a proposition. You find me one instance of a main stream male politician or media figure complaining about the sexist tactics used against Hillary. Just one. It can be print, blog, video, a transcript. Whatever. And I’ll take back telling you to go fuck yourselves. Just one guy who publically decries the misogyny corps Hillary bashing, and I will be impressed.

Just one. If this is an election that really isn’t about sexism, it should be easy to find a male public figure who thinks that Hillary nutcrackers are disgusting. Just one.

Just one. I would love to be proved wrong. I would love to be told that all this hate that is spewed towards women isn’t real. I can fix that. But without some people with penises who are willing to publically cry bullshit, we women can’t fight sexism by ourselves.

Just one.

Please go fuck yourself.

I’m voting for Hillary. For the first time in the history of this country, there is someone running who understands how much different it is for girls. Some who understands that we spend a whole hell of a lot of time between the ages of 12 and 50 worrying about getting pregnant, being pregnant, having a baby or not having a baby, taking care of our children and all the other stuff we are saddled with for less money and no power.

I totally understand why African Americans would vote for Obama for the same types of reasons. And I don’t begrudge them that. Actually- HALEFUCKINLUJA. For the first time in history the presidential election won’t be all about the old white men when November comes around, regardless of who wins the primary.

But you white male dems piss me off. You say it’s not about gender. You say it’s about electability. Of course, you said it was about electability last time. That’s why we got Kerry- who lost, btw. And we won’t even talk about you big fucking whiners who voted for Nader in 2000. While you were all bitching that there was no difference between dems and reps, those of us with ovaries know exactly what the difference is since it impacts us so much harder than it does you.

Hillary has her flaws. She tends to run towards the center, she’s a free trader, she won’t admit Iraq was a mistake. But she is also a hell of a fighter. She’s been through damn near close to 16 years of national scrutiny, humiliation, slander, and every kind of rank sludge that can be thrown at her has been. She can’t win for losing, she’s too cold or too emotional. She’s too dowdy or she’s showing her cleavage. She’s a ball breaking bitch who controlled all of her husband’s decisions when he was president or she’s a whimp who can’t keep him in line. If there is another person out there who is capable of taking that much crap and still being elected to dogcatcher- I’d like to see them. We white women are pulling for Hillary cause we are impressed. We go through minor versions of that shit everyday of our lives, but to see someone handle it with such grace and strength in the public eye is awesome.

So back to you boys. I would understand if the white male vote split 50/50 between Obama and Hillary, but your running to Obama just proves how much sexism there still is on the liberal side of the party. The code phrases of electability and likability don’t fly anymore. We’ve bought into that so many times so you could have a candidate you were comfortable with. We women make up the majority of the democratic party. We are the base. We count. And Hillary is plenty electable to us, it’s about time you all shut up and do what we have done for years, suck it up and vote for someone who doesn’t share the same sex parts as you. It’s only fair.

And for someone who says it all way more elegantly than I- GO READ THIS NOW

This is awesome news. I must admit to being a wee bit of a geek about cell workings. My favorite part of science class was drawing cell diagrams and I love finding out about the awesome things our cells can do. (Yes I am a dork, shut up).

A few years ago (in a botany class of all places. I have the world’s largest black thumb but for some reason I thought botany would be like a romantic Merchant ivory film where we spent hours drawing pretty pictures of plants and their parts. Instead we had to ACTUALLY GROW THINGS! I can’t do that.) I saw a film about how cancer and HIV are the flip sides of the same coin. Normal, healthy cells will kill themselves when they’ve outlived their usefulness. This is called Programed Cell Death. In cancer, the suicide mechanism gets shut off and the cells that should be dead build up into tumors. In HIV, cells that are healthy commit suicide for no reason. So it makes total sense that cancer and HIV research has a lot in common.

But HIV is a smart virus. It adapts so that drug therapy becomes less effective and it acts a bit like a cancer when it gets into microphage cells, making them live much longer than they are supposed too rather than killing them off so that there is always a residual pool of HIV in the body.

So along comes the drug miltefosine, which is already used to treat leishmaniasis, an parasite infection caused by sandfly bites. Miltefosine kills microphage cells and may work to deplete residual HIV pools. Because miltefosine is already approved for use in humans, testing can be fast tracked to see if it will work in HIV patients. Yay!