Ruth says that I am unusually sensitive to stalker like behaviors (she didn’t mean it in a bad way). I would never leave repeat voicemails or send multiple emails without getting a response (with one exception, which I won’t go into but no one who heard the details would think it’s weird). I would never read the blogs of people who don’t like me (shit- i didn’t even read the trash at Jill Staneck’s place, apparently being trashed by Staneck gives me feminist blogger rock star cred- who knew?) or even of people I don’t like. Life is too short to be worried about people who don’t wish you well, and I’ve never really cared about other people’s opinions of me. I would never troll a blog (except that one time that OD made me do it to explain privilege to a clueless white dude, but even then I felt super icky about it for days). I don’t google ex-boyfriends or friends to see what they’re up to. These things, to me, seem like the height of rudeness and intrusion.

Actually, I am way more likely to never call or send an email unless one has been sent to me first. This has been a bone of contention with romantic interests and friends in the past. My big response is- meh.

So when people do those things to me (and there will be more a few reading this blog post and wondering if I mean them- and I probably do mean them) I feel both icky and pissed. Seriously, what part of banning, refusing to answer emails, telling you I have no interest in further conversation by using the time honored classic “fuck off” is unclear? Why would you, stalker types, want to hang around a place where you are unwanted, or get the attention of a person who thinks that a vacation to the green zone in Iraq would be more pleasant than being your facebook friend? What is so broken in you that a relationship founded on disgust and harassment sounds swell?

I do not understand this behavior. And worse, I really don’t want to understand it. I really just want the stalker types to get a clue and move on, preferably to a desert island with no internet access.

But you know, I’m sensitive that way.

With so many arguments about what people choose to do with their own bodies, it always seems to come down to a choice between one side or the other and neither side being the optimal decision.

Abortion is one example. Our dear foes on the side of forced pregnancy never want to do anything that might actually give a woman a reason to choose motherhood, like say making parenting while poor easier. They just want to ban abortion, full stop, no additional measures needed. I don’t think anyone should be forced to be pregnant against their will, but I also think we should make it easier for women who want to be mothers but can’t because of money or education or whatever, to choose motherhood.

The other one is the right to die. Now I come under a bit of fire on this one, because people who I dearly love would be the first ones into the soylent green lines. Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town has done some really good writing about how if PWD were given the tools and access they really need to have a good life, then they might be less likely to want to die. But instead they are left to wallow in filth while we ignore them. But I still want the right, if all else fails, to choose my own ending. I don’t think it should be better care for PWD or the right to die, I think it should be both.

I think that

Cause she is still stranded.

Though if she were stranded with him?

Is in fact a bleeding heart, pinko, commie anarchist at heart.

But that is not all my fair readers. I’m morally all pink and squishy too

So take a test or two and tell me how you fared.

h/t to JJ, who reminded of this test.

How the fuck did it get to be Friday? I think I lost an entire day somewhere, probably Thursday.

In Niger, where if I recall correctly the number one risk factor for HIV is being a married woman, because you can be pretty sure that your husband will be sleeping around. Niger has a complete ban on all abortions, and will not sell contraceptives to unmarried people.

In Nicaragua and El Salvador, where abortion is completely banned, even to save the life of the mother.

How about Chile- another forced birther paradise.

These are all places with complete bans on abortion. What about the “liberal” places that allow them to save a woman’s life?

Afghanistan, frequently used as an example of why us western feminists should STFU because we don’t have it as bad as Afghan women do.

Iraq, Iran, the UAE, Jordan, Egypt and Syria, also not places known to be good for women.

And then there is Ireland, both the Republic and Northern Ireland ban abortion except to preserve the life of the mother. This is tragic, but fortunately Ireland is part of the EU, and operates like any state in the US where where abortion is difficult to come by. The women who can afford it go to England, and unless you’re a 17 year old girl in foster care, the state can’t do a damn thing to stop you.

What should be noted is that in all of the above mentioned places (except Ireland) poverty is crushing, honor killings are real, so is forced marriage and child marriage. The lives of women and children are considered expendable. That is not an accident, that is the result of refusing to allow women the full status of human beings.

That is what the forced birthers in this country want for us.

And I say no.

OD (who I have been entertaining via chat because she’s stuck in Japan)want to come up with mad libs as a new fun troll baiting game. Bingo is soooooooo 2008 (as the Black Eyed Peas say). Feed the troll mad libs!

For the abelist concern troll dismissing your disease (I left this at OD’s place- so I am stealing it back):

But have you tried (insert bizzare treatment here). My (insert distant relative or friend of a friend here) tried it for (insert totally unrelated illness here) and it totally worked!

does not in fact make you stronger.

I have been thinking, as have many many people in the blogosphere, about Melissa McEwan’s amazing piece The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck.

To say my mother was hard on me would be an understatement, but she didn’t have to be that way. She wasn’t hard on my brother, not in any way close to how she was on me. In those rare moments of clarity, when I could ask her why without triggering a giant fight about how I was just “overly dramatic, blah blah blah” she said it was because the world wasn’t going to be nice to me, and I should learn to deal with it cause I’m a girl.

She thought that she was making me stronger. I will give her that. But years of therapy, bouts of depression and agoraphobia and an inability to finish things that might actually make my life easier, like school, and I know that what she did didn’t prepare me for the world. Each new cruelty, each little bit of unfairness, left a crack, a tiny fissure of pain and insecurity. I am a road map of scares and breaks and bruises.

That’s what our terrible bargain does to us. It’s not just “eat shit or spoil the afternoon”. Those “jokes” about women drivers or pms or rape, leave a crack. Each cat call, or scary moment with a boy who may not take no for an answer, or ass grab, leaves a little fissure. Every dude who refuses to acknowledge our right to control our own bodies cause real, not theoretical, damage to real women.

It is a testament to our strength that so many of us carry on, cracks and all.

So when confronted with the daily hurt, we can choose to shut up, or we can choose to fight. But choosing one or the other doesn’t actually lessen the damage. Either way we are going to get hurt. I’m a fighter by nature, but lemme tell you that after a while I feel like curling up in a ball and crying. When good guys, like one of my roommates decides to go on a screed about his (admittedly) awful ex by using every horrible sexist name in the book, it hurts me. He’s not just insulting his ex- he’s insulting every woman on the planet. So I ask, in nice terms, cause this is a person i like most of the time, if he can try using different insults. I explain- nicely- why. But but but he says, trying to justify why in this one instance misogyny is not just ok, but justified, required even.

Those kinds of things cause cracks. Roommate and I used to cook dinner together fairly regularly, now i don’t even want to be in the kitchen. I don’t want to be around someone who, when the chips are down, will hate on people like me and not see a problem with it.

And after what seems like ages of troll battling with yet another dude who thinks his (poorly reasoned) intellectual arguments and refusal to actually hear the stories of real, living breathing women are his god given mission, I am tired and hurt and still more damaged.

And any man, who claims to love women, or who claims not to hate them, should try not to hurt them, and should listen when we tell you that you are hurting us. It’s not an intellectual game, it matters and it hurts.

that feminist moms have sons?

Only daughters sometimes.

I mean- hello- feminist here. According to the trolls I’m a man hating, hairy legged, shrill feminazi.

And I am raising a boy. But not just a boy, a boy who will grow up with feminist values and ideals.

But apparently feminists can only give birth to female children or something.