Author Archives: The Red Queen
Women- not stupid, really.
I am a mother. I became a mother at a very young age, just a week shy of my 20th birthday. I am now and always have been pro choice and when I found out I was pregnant with the Kid I had to decide if I was going to have him. I was rational about it. I knew that I was going to end up parenting alone. I knew all the drawbacks and I still decided to have him.
I was pregnant before that and I’ve been pregnant since then. I have the bizarre fortune of being extremely fertile and if 2 methods of birth control aren’t used at all times I will end up pregnant again. I should totally donate my eggs to science. But in the mean time- I have one child, but I’ve had more than one pregnancy. I was just as rational, if not more so, in deciding to end those pregnancies as I was in deciding to keep the Kid.
Contrary to popular opinion, I was not ever coerced into abortion. Actually, when I was pregnant with the Kid more than a few helpful “friends” tried to push me into having an abortion and when that didn’t work, into putting him up for adoption. Neither were a possibility at the time. I cannot explain it, but the Kid was the kid I was meant to be mom to. I didn’t feel the same way about the other pregnancies.
When I found out I was pregnant with the Kid, I was at a Planned Parenthood. For the same price as a test kit from the drugstore I got a full examination and a pregnancy test. The doctor asked if I knew what my options were and what I wanted to do. I said I was having a baby and I was happy about it. There was never any pressure to change my mind about it from anyone at the clinic.
When I had an abortion I actually went through more counseling than when I decided to have a baby. The clinic staff always made sure that having an abortion was exactly what I wanted. I was as adamant about not having a baby as I was about having the Kid. I am sure that if I wavered at all they would have given me space to figure out what I wanted before doing anything. Throughout the whole thing I was asked repeatedly, at each step, if this is what I wanted. I was given more chances to opt out of an abortion by abortion providers than I was ever given to opt out of pregnancy by obstetricians (number of times an OB asked me if I wanted to be pregnant- ZERO).
So when some non-doctor in a suit wants to ensure that women are getting abortions of their own free will, I know that he has no idea what he’s talking about. Abortion providers already go out of their way to make sure women are making their own choices, because that is what reproductive rights are about. It is not about racking up numbers and profits, it’s about ensuring that women become mothers when they want to and that they have options to not become mothers when they need them.
We are not stupid. We know exactly what we are getting ourselves into when it comes to pregnancy and abortion. We know, better than most men, exactly the kind of work that parenting requires and how much of a sacrifice that is. What I don’t understand is why you would ever want to make someone perform those sacrifices who doesn’t with her entire being want to. That is not healthy for the mom or the kid.
About those horrible things we do to ourselves
Sunday Art Blogging
I don’t know much about Barbara Kruger. I just know that I love her work. This is normally the part where I give you a little history about the artist, but instead I am going to do something else. I am going to tell you why it is that these pieces hit me in the gut and make think.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the things women have to go through to make themselves presentable to the world. It’s not just a matter of looking a certain way, pretty enough to be worthy of attention but not so sexually available as to be prey for a rapist, but that women do things on a regular basis that cause them harm in order to be accepted in the world.
I wrote a while ago about the girl whose vagina was obliterated by pus after she got an infection from waxing- twice! More recently there have been problems with lead in lipstick. What about infections from manicures or toxins in nail polish? Did you know that manicurists suffer from high rates of respiratory diseases and pregnancy complications? What about all the stuff we put on our hair to make it shiny, straight, wavy, curly or another color? A lifetime of putting chemicals on our hair, face, nails and bodies has got to have some effect. Then there’s the shoes. Oh god I love how pretty high heels are but the pain from wearing them. Even our underwear causes us pain- whether it’s the discomfort from wearing a thong or the horrible things that happen when we wear something other than comfy cotton granny panties (yeast infections and the like).
And I haven’t even gotten into the risk of death from plastic surgery. The stuff above are just the little things we do to ourselves everyday. I’m certainly no feminist saint on the issue, I have one closet full of shoes that make me cry and another full of products to make my hair and skin perfect and a drawer full of matching bra and panty sets that make me spend the day uncomfortable.
Why do we have to spend so much time making ourselves into something we are not? Why is our default position when it comes to our looks that there is always room for improvement? Why does it seem that everything we do to “improve” ourselves involves some kind of pain, discomfort or risk?
Your body is a battleground means more to me than just how are reproductive freedom is usurped by old white men in business suits. Everyday we do things to our bodies so that we can get by as best as we can in the world with as minimum hassle as possible. It would be nice if we were actually free to be ourselves (whether that self is a lipsticked, high heeled soccer mom or an all natural makeup free ceo in birkenstocks) instead of having to put on an acceptable image for public consumption.
I’d like to send this guy back to a special place
Let me first say that racism wrapped up in a shiny bow that you call “love” is still racism, just like beating a child you love is still abuse and raping a woman you love is still rape.
Wonder and I have had these long conversations about our differing views on religion.I think this video, more than anything else confirms my disbelief. I cannot believe in a god who would create the entire world and then pit his creations against one another by allowing them to draw arbitrary borders around themselves. I cannot believe in a god who would chose sides between two waring religious armies while mothers and daughters are raped and families murdered to win the war.
I don’t believe that America is god’s chosen land. I think a lot of work went into our founding fathers’ decisions to make this a secular democracy for a reason. They came from England, a country that had almost 100 years of religious division between Catholics and Protestants and they understood how a simple change in leaders could turn a previously favored religion into a persecuted one. So they left god out of it on purpose.
I wonder how the people who think that this is a Christian nation would feel if the tide turned and we became a nation built on the beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It would be a country without Christmas or birthday celebrations. Organized sports would be canceled- no World Series, no Superbowl, no Nascar and no cheerleaders (athletes receive praise for their accomplishments that should be going to god and turn themselves into false idols and cheerleaders are worshiping false idols by giving glory to the sports players rather than to god).
If we allow ourselves to be a Christian nation, then we also allow for the possibility of those ideas being overturned by another religion. It is only through secularism that the beliefs of ALL religions are safe from harm. The founding fathers knew this.
We are not a Christian nation and Christians of all denominations should rejoice in that fact. You are free to worship or not worship however you see fit. You will not be punished for being Baptist when Catholics are in power and vice versa. You will not be killed or have your children taken from you for your beliefs. But with that freedom comes the restriction that you cannot harm another person for believing something different from you.
If you believe this is a Christian nation then I ask you to think about what happens when all the non-Christians are removed from society. The power struggles then happen between denominations. Maybe first everyone gangs up on Mormons, they’re not really Christian anyways. Then maybe all the Catholics get taken out by the various Protestant denominations. Then the Baptists start taking out the Methodists and Episcopalians. There is no end because there is no one true Christian faction.
For those of us who don’t believe, it doesn’t matter which religious faction is in charge once the secular line is broken. But for those of you who are Christians, you might want to fight with us non-believers to keep politics and religion separate. Without that secular line in place you do not know what kind of religion you will be forced to follow, even if your heart and beliefs tell you that it is wrong.
How to waste time when you’re supposed to be writing research papers
The Kid is making dinner (Spanish rice- very easy, out of a box) and lost (lost!) the grocery bag full of dinner fixins. He just spent almost 30 minutes searching the entire downstairs for the bag. Ha!
In the meantime, I have been reading the internet. All of it. My excuse is that I am supposed to be researching what the Grandmother hypothesis might tell us about modern teenage pregnancy (per my proff ” That kind of ties into my Malthusian ideas” I am not sure what the hell he means by that, but he is an old hippie and tends to babble). Instead I have found that I am not the only person that thinks that Milan Kundera is a hack.
I dated a guy once who thought that Kundera was the shiznit. Of course the guy was a middling middle class academic from Eastern Europe who liked to cheat on his wife and had no respect for women, so Kundera was a kindred spirit. He also liked John Irving novels (another middling, middle class academic who thinks adultery is the height of sexual expression).
Dear Literary Gods! Please can we get over the sex lives of middle class men. They are dull beyond all recognition. Seriously. They are the Harlequin Romance Novelists of the tweed jacket set. I’d much rather read Lisa Carver.
The older I get
The more I realize that there really are only two belief systems in the world, and that the differences within those systems are negotiable, but differences between those systems are not.
You either believe in justice for everyone or you believe that justice is earned. The justice for everyone crowd believes that all humans deserve some basic rights and have some basic responsibilities (we may differ on what the rights and responsibilities are). The justice is earned crowd believes that the right to live your life as you wish is earned through power and money (it’s ok to have homosexual sex if your a politician while voting to keep homosexuals without power and influence from living their lives).
Neither of these viewpoints is particular to any religion or lack of religion. Actually, nearly every religion I know of has some version of justice for everyone in it. You can call it the golden rule, or just say “do unto others” and everybody will get what you mean. I am not religious, but I come to my view of justice through John Rawls’ veil of ignorance, meaning I try to look at the world as if I don’t know what my place in it would be, and by not knowing if I would be the lowest of the low or the most powerful person, I want to create a world that is just for both ends.
But why is the idea of justice so important? It is the core value from which all ideas of fairness and rights come from. When enough people feel that their society has become unjust, revolutions happen. When working hard is not enough to feed your family, when one half of society sees the other half as their property, when the mechanisms of everyday life become tools for creating greater disparity between those who receive justice and those who do not, society falls apart. That is why everyone deserves justice. That is why when person is treated unjustly, there is no justice for anyone. The rules of society must be applied universally or they are not only unjust, but they create the power inequities that will ruin the society eventually.
Not gay is the new gay
There is a saying in Latin America that if I tried to remember the exact Spanish I’d murder- so I’ll just quote the translation
“I am man enough to fuck another man”
Which pretty much means that as long as you’re not the bottom in a sex act, you’re not gay. I’m starting to think we have our own American version of this: “I’m not gay” when uttered by a Republican politician means ‘I secretly have sex with men but will oppress those who are open about their sexuality.’
I think it would be good to start asking ALL Republicans if they are gay. I’m pretty sure we know what their answers would be.
Happy Halloween!
Kiki of Kiki’s Delivery Service- My Favorite Witch Ever
To all my pagan friends out there (and stealing a line from Ms. Brendann) May all your trick or treating get you the big candy bars, none of that snack sized shit.
Dear Guy Old Enough To be God’s Grandpa
It has been a long while since the stone age and women are no longer required to put out when you buy them dinner.
Also, 19 year old women are not required to find wrinkled old man ass hot.
I would find this story so much more shocking, except that I am regularly hit on by men my dad’s age and older. Which is fine. If you don’t ask, you never know and there may be women who want that. But I get pissed off when my “thanks but no” becomes an invitation to call me a naughty girl who needs a spanking.
Thankfully, I’m not being sued by any of them for declining to share a viagra fueled night in their bed.