There’s a post up at Jezebel about a woman who was sterilized against her will when she was 14, after being raped and delivering a child that was conceived during that rape, who is now waiting to find out if the state of North Carolina will finally give her financial compensation for having invaded her body in the most atrocious way possible.

As feminists, we talk a whole hell of a lot about choice, the choice to have an abortion, the choice to use birth control. But there is a huge portion of the feminist community that can’t see the otherside of choice. I have heard from declared feminists that “poor women shouldn’t have babies they can’t afford”. Well there goes a majority of the world’s population. And the racism, oh the fucking racism. Think about the people who spout “we’ll we know the world has too many people”. They usually mean too many (brown) people having too many (brown) babies in countries where the resources footprint per capita could fit an entire village into the footprint of one single North American.

While pregnancy doesn’t always come at the most opportune times to the most “deserving” (read white, married, educated, employed, insured, middle-class or better straight folks), choosing to parent is a profound act of hope. You have to believe that even if things aren’t ideal now, they will get better. You have to take a leap of faith that your own strength will pull you and your child(ren) through. It’s not always true that they do get better, but you have to believe it just a little bit to have a wanted child.

And to be one of the undeserving, you have to believe it even harder. No one is running around nagging poor women “when are you gonna start a family?” Instead, as soon as the stick turns blue, people start telling you about your options, abortion or adoption. “Are you going to keep it?” is asked with the slight sneer of condescension, much the same way as someone saying “are you going to eat THAT?” if you were to order a chocolate cake covered in anchovy paste. It is an impossible thing. Can’t actually be true. Why would you, oh undeserving woman, think you are capable of motherhood? You, woman with a disability, can’t possibly be considering motherhood. You, poor Latina with no real education, can’t possibly be considering motherhood. You, 19 year old with a meth junkie boyfriend who refuses to work and just got the car repo’d to buy more drugs, can’t possibly be considering motherhood.*

But choose motherhood we do. It’s a radical act to choose motherhood when the whole world** wants to spit on you for it. But we make the choice to be hopeful for our own future and the future of our children.

Elaine Riddick was never given that choice. Not when she was raped, not when she was sterilized.

*That’d be me. BTW.

** Whole world meaning the “well meaning” sorts of faux feminists and straight up conservative asshats.

Arthur Silber has been continuing where Mark Twain was obliged to leave off when rudely interrupted by death.

Mark Twain was a ferocious anti-imperialist who was enraged and disillusioned by the US colonialist involvement in the Phillippines. His essay “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” describes the ruse of th

The simplest, most important reason that women’s opinion needs to be considered as seriously and immediately as men’s is sometimes, goddamnit, we’re right. This passage from the section on women and the French Resistance from France: The Dark Years 1940-1944 by Julian Jackson portrays a scenario us Hillary supporters are all too familiar with:

Even Helène Mordkovitch, one of the founders of Défense de la France with Philippe Viannay..was reticent about imposing herself. Unlike Viannay, she never harboured any illusions about [Marshal Philippe] Pétain [head of the wartime French regime at Vichy], but it never occurred to her, or to him, that her views on politics should be taken into the account on the newspaper, which remained a male preserve. It took her husband two years to reach views she had held from the start.

The timing of two to three years is striking. In the Chicago Tribune op-ed HIllary for President , a former Obama supporter rallies to the idea of Hillary–about three years too late to be of any use. Apparently his personal identification with Obama clouded his thought process. His outrage at the Hillary campaign’s “3 AM phone call” campaign ad is because the ad directly challenges his divine right (and Obama’s) as holder of the twin pillars of authority, the law degree and the penis, to rule. “I am mature enough but you are not” remains an unacceptable assertion from a woman to a man. Even if, goddamnit, and to the young pup’s sorrow, she is right.

Occasionally I open a newspaper and am not instantly punched in the face. On my latest long-haul flight I read a review of the book “All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion” by Lisa Appignanesi in the International Herald Tribune (the global edition of the New York Times, the American bourgeoisie’s house organ and purveyor of genteel sexism.) Imagine my astonishment at reading such simple, shining truths “until women entered the field [of studying sexual attraction] and started asking different questions, the experiments tended to produce stunning affirmations of Western patriarchal stereotypes. ”

Contemplate also the sparkling passage:

..Appignanesi, who has written extensively on the history of psychoanalysis, turns her back on the ever-­growing scientific literature on love, largely out of disgust with the way sociobiological theories get used to defend a conservative social order: “I’ll believe in evolutionary psychology more, perhaps, when it’s used less as an explanation for male philandering and female nesting,” she writes.

This from a newspaper that files all woman-related stories, including one about lesbian separatism, in the Fashion & Style section? Knock me over with a feather.

My lover left Afghanistan yesterday after being deployed there for a year. He’s now safely in another country, where he’ll spend a few days outprocessing with the military, before going to another country, lather, rinse, repeat. It’s probably another 10 days or so before he gets here.

I can finally breathe. I’m starting to cry. It’s safe to cry now that he’s Not There anymore.

Say what you wish about war. “It sucks” is as fine a place as any to start. But when it’s your loved one there, you don’t actually let go until your loved one is on the way back safely. My loved one was confined to a big military base while he was there, but it was still There. Rocket attacks, attempts to break security on base, suicide bombers. (Nothing that got near him, but it’s as much luck as anything.)

I’ve been through a lot since he left. Big life stuff. People who I’d trusted for decades suddenly turning untrustworthy, or downright unsafe. Big family stuff, his and mine.

But now he’s Not There any more. I can let go and cry, really cry. I can grieve all the shit that’s happened, and the people who hurt me or left me, and the loneliness and the oh-my-god-will-it-never-end-ness of it. I can let go because when he gets off the plane he’ll be walking off eagerly, instead of being carried out in a box.

And I gotta say, I liked the second season a whole lot better than the first. I know, Wheadon was trying to make a point about consent but there was just too much porny “look at me in my short skirt being a sexy, empty headed doll” in the first season.

And I realized something tragic. Tahmoh Penikett is a stunningly pretty man, but his acting is wooden and not great. Compared to the guy who played Boyd, Harry Lennix, Penikett’s Ballard was wooden and became superfluous. Compared to the amazing Olivia Williams, who played DeWitt, Penikett was like a bowl of pudding that hasn’t set yet, occasionally slopping over the sides when jostled into action. But I still like looking at him.

Did it make the point I think Wheadon was trying to make about bodily autonomy? Not really. I think it was much better at showing the problem of corporate domination (see the episodes with the senator, for example). Maybe if the show hadn’t been cancelled, Wheadon wouldn’t have hamfisted so much of it. But he’s Joss Wheadon, he’s got to know by now that his shows have a 50% chance of getting axed right when it get’s good. (See Firefly, for example).

I don’t think Dollhouse is nearly as good as Firefly or Buffy. I won’t be rewatching it anytime soon. But it’s still better than most of the schlock on TV*. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t actually turned on my TV in months.

*Those of you with cable probably have better TV options. But us poor folks with our antennas are shit out of luck.

and then I read some nooz….

A Colorado woman is suing the city of Denver and the state because their crappy computer Medicaid program meant her son couldn’t get the life saving asthma meds he needed, and he died. I am familiar with the Medicaid prescription run around. It sucks. I was lucky that I just needed meds that make me function, not that keep me alive.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. When Medicaid works, it’s like being on the NHS in the UK. You don’t have to worry that you don’t have the co-pay to go to the emergency room if you get hit by a car or that the out of pocket expenses from your monthly prescriptions cost most than your grocery bill.

Medicaid sucks only in that it’s a poor people program, and you all know what they do to programs that are only for us poor folk.

So that was enough to take me from “w00t w00t it’s Friday!” to “fucking government fucking assholes killing kids fucking fuckers but at least I live in a blue state”

Yeah, so much for progressive cities.

San Francisco, worried that their citizen-killing cops might start a protest riot ala London, jammed (or had companies jam) cell phone service where the protest was supposed to happen. Democracy at it’s finest!

And now I am going to go down a bottle of Advil because I have an abscessed tooth and my work health insurance doesn’t kick in for another 3 weeks. Sure, I’ve got Medicaid still, but that doesn’t pay for dental for adults, and barely pays for dental for kids- that is if you can find a dentist who actually takes it.

Arthur, quoting himself:

Equality was not granted, to the extent it was, primarily in recognition of an unspeakable, deadly injustice that whites had committed, although a few whites were aware of that. For the most part, equality was granted, to the extent it was, because the cost for failing to do so had become prohibitive.

We must make the cost of continued economic, political and social state sponsored terrorism prohibitive.

I am with Arthur on violence. I don’t care for it. But I can’t condemn people for resorting to violence as self-defense when all other options have failed.

For example:

Yes, said the young man. You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?

Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere.

More neighborhoods in London, as well as in Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool tonight.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the countries experiencing mass riots and/or protests are the ones that have enacted the roughest austerity measures. Ours have been bad, so far, but the worst is on it’s way. When you demolish the tiny safety net, you also demolish any good will the people might have had for a government under duress. At the same time, you stretch the police system to the brink.

And I have to wonder, since the fact that austerity and chaos go together is like peanut butter and chocolate- an old and oft tested remedy- what do the tacky little men in tacky blue suits think is going to happen when you cut and cut cut at the poor and the newly poor? I can’t believe they are really too stupid to know that their actions will have consequences. They are nothing if not opportunists. So what opportunity do they think this will create?

If you haven’t heard, the neighborhood of Tottenham in London erupted in riots yesterday. It was sparked, as these things so often are, by police officers killing a local. This problem, the problem of giving a tiny fraction of the underclass a badge and a gun and some power and turning them loose on the populace, is so old there is a phrase for it in Latin- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Or who guards the guardians?

It helps if you think of the police* as serving the same function that the Tea Party does. While the rhetoric may be all “patriotism, protection, freedom and justice” the result it generally more “kill the poor, rape the women, keep property in the hands of the wealthy”.

*Sure, there are some police officers who aren’t rage-aholic little dictators with batons. Some. But the psychology of the group as a whole often mitigates the best intentions of the few.