I will learn to read posts before I hit the publish button and edit out the typos.

Someday

I will find a cure for insomnia and my family will no longer be able to joke that I am a vampire.

Someday

I’ll find a job where I am neither stuck in a pink collar ghetto or forced to constantly prove myself as better than to be equal.

What will you do someday?

OuyangDan shared this post with me and I thought it was a perfect example of how to climb the kyriarchy pyramid on the backs of people you are supposed to “belong” to.

Now I haven’t read Amanda Marcotte or the pink obamabot ghetto that is Pandagon since the racist book cover shit. See Marcotte got a feminist book published- oh ahhhh money and legitimacy for writing about one’s beliefs (the blogger’s dream peeps- all us bloggers have it) but she didn’t get it without stepping on a few people. Namely, blacks. And once you start down that road of selling out to get ahead, it’s easy as pie to keep going. Next came all us girls who called Obama out on his sexism, now it’s poor sex workers (under the guise of wanting to help them- but remember agency folks- if you’re trying to help by giving someone less choice then you are taking away their agency).

But Marcotte is not the only blogger who has used the backs of lessers as stepping stones to elitism. There’s Markos Moulitas- go to fauxgressive for the opinion bunnies on MSNBC and head of the Big Orange Cheetoh. Kos is famous for his comments deriding the “women’s studies set” as well as banning anyone from Kos who wrote critically about Obama’s sexism, racism, classism, corporatism during the campaign, or who wrote enthusiastically about HRC.

And I assume you all know about the shithole that Feministing has become, a beacon of transhate and classism and abelism. Abelist Courtney is now one of the finalists to become a paid blogger for the Washington Post. Congratulations on using the broken backs of women to climb on.

Then there are the token gays- John Arovosis and Dan Savage. Both hate women, but Dan kicks it up a notch by throwing in some abelism, racism, fat hate.

These are some of your A list progressive bloggers folks, and I don’t see a progressive in the bunch.

And while I love Kate Harding and think she’s brill, there are more than a few fat folks with disabilities who feel stepped on by her promotion HAES (health at every size) and healthy fatties vs fatties with health problems dichotomy.

Now let’s contrast that with two big, truly progressive blogs and their leaders, Shakesville and Melissa McKewan and Corrente and Lambert Strether. Neither allows their blogs to use the people on the bottom of the pyramid as stepping stones. Consequently, both have to run regular donation blegs (as do I, though my readership is much smaller). Neither have book deals or tv appearances.

That is your blogging kyriarchy at work. You can’t get to the top unless you’re willing to step on someone else.

She knows why.

(and all other political wives)

Your husband(s) has done a horrible thing for every woman in this country, regardless of political or religious views. Insurance coverage for abortion of any kind will now be non-existent in this country.

Perhaps you share your husband’s views on abortion. Perhaps you think that the women who need abortions should be punished by having to pay for them out of pocket.

But I think about a dear friend who recently had an ectopic pregnancy treated with an abortion before the pregnancy either killed her or permanently ended her fertility. I think of a family member who, terminally ill and believing she was infertile, could either have an abortion asap, or both she and the baby would die. I think about myself, and how lucky both I and my son are that my old home state paid for abortions for poor women. Our lives, though hard and terrible as the are, would be exponentially worse if our little family of 2 was increased.

It is poor women and women with disabilities or traumatic pregnancies that will suffer the most under your husband’s amendment. It is women who cannot pay out of pocket for medical care who will find the idea of choice is just that for them, an idea but not a reality. Their reality, our reality, my reality is one of poverty, injury or death.

So I am asking you, as a woman, as a human being, as the person probably called “your husband’s better half” more times than you can count, for help.

We need you to stand up and tell your husband that women’s health care needs should not be a bartering chip in the political realm.

And if you really want to get creative about it, I would suggest a bit of a Lysistrata moment. If women cannot get insurance coverage for unplanned pregnancies, perhaps you should make sure there is no opportunity for an unplanned pregnancy in your own household by refusing to perform acts that lead to pregnancy. It is, after all, the only option that 90% of women in this country will be left with if this amendment is part of the final bill.

Sincerely,
RQ

During the campaign when the koolaide drinkers were yelling at us dumb girls because Obama was sooooooooooooooooo much better than the rethuglikans on reproductive rights?

You remember being told that we were just voting with our vaginas during the primaries, and then having those vaginas held hostage during the election- vote for Obama or your rights will be gone forever.

Yeah, who would have thunk that when push came to shove it would be the dems throwing women under the bus?

Oh wait- we thought that.

Everyday I am given further proof that my vote for Cynthia McKinney was the right one. I still hope to be proven wrong. I’d rather wallow in equal rights and social progress than revel in righteous foresight.

And yes- this is Obama’s mess. He is the head of the country and more importantly (at least for this) the head of the party.

Or the rough ideas of a manifesto……..

While I was in the land of no internet I was thinking about the kyriarchy and trying to create a visual model of it. I drew things that looked liked Wallerstein’s World Systems theory and things that looked like funny spider webs and after about half a day I realized it’s a pyramid with certain conditions pushing you to the bottom of the pyramid and certain conditions lifting you up the pyramid. But we are all stones in the pyramid, so every every time you move up it’s on someone else’s back.

Then we got the internet back and I could look up the actual definition of kyriarchy. At least my half a days labor of chicken scratch drawings wasn’t in vain.

In the process I realized something. Poverty is not an oppression like sexism or racism, it’s the goal of oppression.

Think of it this way- oppression is the means, control of access to resources is the ends. That’s why things like having a disability, being a woman, being a single mother, being a POC, not having the ability to marry (for both lesbians and gays and black women who have fewer men to pick from and an (unfair)image of being difficult) all lead to higher rates of poverty.

The labeling, categorizing, othering, is the means of deciding who gets fewer resources.

So if you are looking at the kyriarchy pyramid, it is sectioned off by economic class. The poor make up the base- it’s broad and diverse but not very tall, a thin wide band at the bottom. It’s kept as diverse as possible so that the people at the bottom can’t come together and change the system. The middle is not as broad but much taller and much more homogeneous. For example, you could be a disabled women in the middle class as long as you are married to a TAB white cis man. You have to have fewer points of oppression and more points of privilege to be in the middle. And the middle has multiple layers, the upper middles who act like elites, the middle middles and those middles who are on the verge of poverty (one injury and crappy insurance away from bankruptcy and poverty). With our current economic downturn and healthcare system, the bottom middle is gaining members. So is the poverty class.

Then there’s the top- the elites. The most homogeneous group of of them all. For the most part, the only people with any oppression points who get to this level are ones that are willing to forcefully continue the kyriarchy. (See our corporatist, women hating, anti-gay, classist president for example, or Michelle Bachman/Ann Coulter and even not so women or poor people friendly Arriana Huffington). We have a word for that cough*token*cough.

So with a little math and some basic demographics you can tell what class someone is likely to be in. What’s really important to remember is that most (though not all) characteristics are going to be things people have no control over, like race, gender, financial status of their parents, and health, and the things that people do have some control over like number of children or married status or access to education are the ones that we fight about all the time (abortion, birth control, gay marriage, private school funding, college grants).

What we should want from our little revolution is to neutralize the conditions, both positive and negative, that lead to poverty and elitism. Being a het cis tab white dude with wealthy parents and a good education should not make one automatically qualified for elite status. Nor should being a single mother of color make you more qualified for poor status.

Okay so that explains our current system. How do topple something as long lasting as a pyramid? And what do we replace it with?

First- a pyramid is held up by it’s base, that’s us. How do we throw off the upper stones on our backs? There are the standard methods of revolt-violence and martyrdom. But those tools of revolution have only lead to a rotating of the elites and not a complete change of the system in the past.

Instead I like the idea of organization, work stoppages, “liberation” of resources, squatting, etc. We take what we need and refuse to give back to the system unless we are properly compensated for our labor. (If anyone can tell me how to set up pirate internet service- I will give you a big lip smacky kiss). I’m not saying that we should all be shoplifting from Whole Foods (wink wink) but it’s not a bad start. I’m not saying that we should be publishing the names of rapists (yes- rape is one of the tools the kyriarchy uses to keep women in place)or dead beat dads, or ableist/racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic businesses but I think I’d probably throw a name or 10 on that list.

What to replace the system with is trickier. We’ve lived in a hierarchical system for so long, and attempts at replacing it have failed miserably (communism)that even I have a hard time seeing what a new system would look like.

But baby steps, peeps. Baby steps.

Hey ladies, wanna hear something crappy?

Democrats (you know the party that is made up of 60% women) couldn’t get a health care bill through the House unless vagina americans got thrown under the bus.

Oh ladies, it’s not that the men in blue suits hate your lady bits, they just don’t want you to use your lady bits in any way that they find icky.

Now if we had a decent supreme court then it could easily be argued that disallowing certain medical practices that only ladies need is a form of discrimination, but we have a supreme court full of scaredy boys who think teh girls are teh icky.

Okay- I’m done with the infantlizing.

We pay for plenty of things we don’t like with our taxes, things like bailouts for banksters, wars for oil, extraordinary rendition.

You may not like abortion, you may never want or need to have one yourself. I hate banksters and war and torture and would never sign up for any of them. But my dislike doesn’t mean I get to ban all poor kids from military recruiting offices.

The biggest restriction on abortion access in a generation, brought to you by the democrats.

Don’t you all love our 2 party system?

The kid is learning about biological anthropology for science right now and we just got to the section on genetic drift.

Since it is a college text book we’re using, he needed a little help with some examples of the definitions in the book. One definition was about sampling errors and the book used the classic 10 flipped coins as an example (since I’m not teaching the kid statistics and probability till the end of his math book- this example left him confused).

Me: So imagine you are an alien and you are trying to learn about people by watching tv shows.

Kid: Ok

Me: You know how so many things use the 2 guys and a girl set up.

Kid: Oh yeah- I hate that.

Me: Well if you were an alien you would think that men outnumbered women 2 to 1 because that is the dominant example you see on TV. But you’d be wrong,because women are actually closer to 52% of the population.

Kid: Ohhh that’s a serious sampling error.

First- did you miss me? Cause I missed you internet land. Being without internet is a wee bit like amnesia. I know I know stuff, but without ready written evidence to back me up I feel all lost and woozy and disconnected.

But once more into the breach I am.

Wonder and I were having a discussion a while ago about the friction between feminists who hate that the burden of caring and nurturing is always put on the backs of unpaid women, and PWD who need care in order to function in the world. Both Wonder and I have experience as carers, but for personal reasons I fall more into feminist side of the argument and Wonder falls into the PWD side.

Both of us are right and the solution lies not in acquiescence on either side, but in a 3rd way.

The problem is that women are expected to be the free labor backbone of society, not just in caring for children and spouses but parents and school functions and houses and and and and. It’s free labor. It’s hard work. It’s worth something more than we have been given (less income over the course of our life times, for example). It can wear you out. There is no vacation time from one’s own family, after all.

We need caring to stop being seen as some form of biblical punishment that’s been inflected on us since Eve ate that stupid apple. We need it to be seen for what it is, and immensely valuable profession that is necessary for society to continue.

And you know the thing about professions is that people get to choose them. They aren’t usually forced onto folks.

On the flip side, PWD are part of society, and they deserve every bit of help they can get. Just like children shouldn’t be seen as a punishment for wanton trollopy, lapses in good health should not make a person “burdensome”.

We need “women’s work” to be seen as valuable to society. PWD need to be seen as valuable to society. We need to cough up the money to pay for the tools and the work that it is done to keep society running.

Children need to be looked after, houses need to be cleaned, grandpa shouldn’t be left alone during the day because he forgets to turn off the stove. These are valuable jobs. We should pay for them and we should pay well.

(You all know that once caring becomes a “skilled” profession with a livable wage,suddenly all sorts of men will discover their nurturing side- best antidote to the second shift problem I can think of).