When I was little and in pre-school, I remember “policing your area” to be a thing we did everyday, after snacktime, before quiet time. We were each responsible for picking up the bits of detritus created by a room full of 3 and 4 year olds during the course of a day in the space close around us. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t you that created the mess, it was your area, and your responsibility to clean it up.

I think that is true as adults too, though in more than just a tidy space kind of way. I am a feminist, that is my “area” and it is my job to speak out against other people who call themselves feminists and then do something hurtful, like claiming that transwomen aren’t “real” women.

I am also able-bodied, white, hetero, agnostic and female. When someone who shares my same areas says something stupid, it is my job to speak up, to police my area.

Now I can criticize things outside my area, like religion or men for example. But it’s not my job to change it. It’s not my area.

If a PWD, or a POC or a wealthy white male, for example, were to criticize me- I have two choices. I can listen to what they have to say and try to do better, or I can fight it. My general rule of thumb is that if what I am doing is causing harm to another person, then I will listen. If what I am doing is trying to stop someone from causing harm, then I will fight. This is where I almost universally end up when I am criticizing misogyny or religion.

Wonder and I have had this conversation before. She is not thrilled with my anti-religion stance, and she is one of the good Christians who I admire. But I make pretty valid claims against religion, and she sees that it is her area that needs policing, not my critiques. I don’t use strawmen to draw my conclusions. I’m not making up the image of the screaming hypocrites, the pedophile priests, the pro-lifers who couldn’t care less about actual lives, the Jesus lovers who only know Charity as a stripper from the local titty bar. I am not making up the fact that those are the majority of voices that get heard on the Christian front. And to me, though I know there are good people like Wonder who are Christians, constantly separating them out from the screaming hypocrites feels like it’s too much policing of another person’s area. It’s not my job to change the image of religious types from greedy god-bags to Christ followers.*

*I feel the same way about ALL religions, btw. I dislike the messages from fundy Muslims, fundy Jews, and pretty much any religion that uses God to justify violence and hate. But it is the fundys, the hardliners, the haters, that get heard most often. After 9/11 there was a huge liberal cry for moderate Muslim voices to speak out. So if we require it from them, we should require it of our own religious types.)

Are employers responsible for health insurance at all?

I think employers should be responsible for a lot of things like paying living wages, making safe products, creating safe work environments, not scamming the government out of trillions in bail out money.

But I don’t think that health care should be their responsibility. Period. It makes a business less competitive, it increases unemployment and under-employment (hello part-time workers who are that way because the cost of benefits is too high) and it makes it more “justified” to discriminate for health reasons.

Just imagine the kind of country we could have when healthcare is universal and public. How many small businesses could be started by people with great ideas who can’t leave their current jobs because of health insurance? How many more people could a business hire when their labor costs are drastically cut because they no longer have the burden of health and welfare benefits to carry?

Medicare for all is good for business.

First go read this about the rise of Christianity during the plague.

Note this quote

When disasters stuck, the Christians were better able to cope, and this resulted in substantially higher rates of survival. This meant that in the aftermath of each epidemic, Christians made up a larger percentage of the population even without new converts.

Now as we have all seen here recently, modern Christians tend to be less charitable than their dark ages forefathers. If charity made them more competitive during times of crisis, will their lack of it now make them less so? Will their meanness of spirit hasten their extinction?

One can only hope.

You have a tough choice ahead of you, several of them actually.

You can either do the things you need to do to get re-elected, or you can do the things you need to do to get money to be re-elected.

You have a majority in the Senate and the House. You have the White House. Not stop acting like you’re the av club at a frat party and you’re gonna get beat up.

We, the people, you remember us right? We sent you there to do a couple of things.

1. Healthcare, single payer or strong public option. No fucking triggers. We all know that any conditions you set up now will only be watered down by insurance vampires later.

2. And BTW- your base is mostly women, our health care matters too. Sell out our reproductive systems and just see how hard it is for you to get fundraisers set up come election time.

2. Stop fucking around with bi-partisan ship. It’s a freaking pipe dream and is NOT how our system is set up. Most of you are lawyers. You know about our adversarial justice system. Our political system is the same thing, adversarial, for a reason. If our system was set up for bi-partisanship then we would have more than 2 main parties and have all sorts of laws about how coalition governments are formed. But we don’t have that. We have a 51 percent, majority rules system because both sides are supposed to fight with each other. You and your fuzzy across the aisle talk are breaking the system.

3. The economy, the economy, the economy. Everyone not made rich under Bush is hurting bad. That means just about everyone. Do something, preferably something that puts more money in the hands of people and not bonuses in the paychecks of banksters.

4. Don’t wanna be seen as the mommy party? Then start acting like you’re just as mad as the rest of us over stagnant wages and crooked bosses and corporate thievery and a financial system that can hold the whole world hostage. Just because we don’t sink to the lying, tantrum throwing asshatery of the right doesn’t mean we don’t have a right, shit, an obligation to be mad at what has been done to our country and ourselves. How can we ever think you’ll stand up for us when you spend all your time sniveling?

5. The LBGT community and women got you elected. Dance with the ones that brought you mother fuckers. Overturn doma and dadt, protect bodily autonomy, and don’t fucking apologize for ensuring human rights for everyone. That is not something that should ever be compromised.

We are mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore. You can join us pissed off masses and do your jobs, or you lose your jobs.

I was, in fact, in the middle of a silent police action.

So much for this being a “good” neighborhood.

No work, paid or not. No phones answered, emails sent, meeting scheduled, copies made, letters typed, reports filed.

No toilets scrubbed, sheets changed, towels folded, dishes washed, meals cooked, dinners served.

No groceries bagged, no items scanned, no inventory counted. No bottoms wiped, dressings changed, homework graded.

No puts scrubbed, weeds pulled, recycling sorted. No lessons taught, no stories read.

No more work, until our work is paid for.

ETA+ I fucked up the link originally- it should now be going to the right place

This story about a gypsy childhood just hits me in the chest.

I changed schools 17 times. If I could, I’d live out of a suitcase bouncing around the world from one place to another. But the Kid, the Kid still complains because we changed houses once in the last 6 years- not schools but houses.

Oh to be on the road I would give anything.

And in the very very near future- I will be. (Details are still top secret- I shall fill you all in when I can).

h/t to Od (yes, we spend way too much time together chatting online- what of it?) for sending me this most impressive piece of awesome.

get your own motherfucking blog asshole

You should know, before reading this, that my gmail status is set to “Hold on there Margaret Atwood, you’ll get shaken baby syndrom” and that is why I am Margaret. OD is Sparkles because she is mildly peeved that I stole that for my staus before she did. Sucker.

me: Yes- sparkles- I know you are off doing important things, but i thought I should tell someone that i appear to be in the center of a silent police action- lots of flashing lights but no sirens, and a helicopter circling around with big spotlights

Ouyang: i am horribly underread

Edited to add
Ouyang: you forgot to mention my obsession w/ spam

me: if they can’t remember that I posted an entire video about spam dedicated to you then they are too dumb to be reading

Ouyang: bwahahaha

I have to learn how to make a gluten free version of this plus add the lights and sound effects in time for the Kid’s birthday next March.

I am fairly sure that peace in the middle east is an easier prospect than a wheat free, special effects ladden tardis cake.