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).

to benefit from rape culture.

I know a gazillion good guys who would never rape someone and are completely oblivious to the fact that they still benefit from rape.

Rape and violence are the tools used to keep women in fear. Fear of violence from other men is what keeps poor women in relationships that aren’t healthy for them. If they were out on the street

a manifesto. So while I am not regularly interneted that is what I am working on.

So far I’ve got the Poor People’s Union/Revolution or PPU/R

That’s just not very catchy as a name, is it? Suggestions?

Also- for the non-poor but sympathetic (Like Blue Lion) of course you can be part of it, we always need allies. But like allies of other groups, self determination of poor people is the central idea. It’s not about charity, or pity, or trying to make the middling meddling middles feel better (not the Blue has EVER done anything like that- I’m talking about the standard charity model of not really helping the poor much while at the same time making poor people feel ashamed because the system chews them up and spits them out at the bottom)

So what would you all like to see in a manifesto? I want it to be as inclusive as possible, no leaving people behind because their flavor of oppression has too many intersections to be easily summed up.

After reading about higher jobless rates becoming the new norm, real unemployment being about 20%, homeless families on the street while new apartment buildings sit empty, and fucking fauxgressive douchebags who wanna fat hate at the poor- I’m in the mood to do something.

I also just watched The Future Is Unwritten about Joe Strummer (who I love with the passion of a 1000 fiery suns).

It’s time to get our punk rock, DIY, fuck your authority figures and the shiny horse they rode in on, on.

Nobody is gonna speak for us, the poor and ignored. Handouts and charity may feed you for a bit, but we are tired of begging for our fare share. I want to kick and break and punch and bite and scream.

And then I want to build.

I’ve been thinking that what we poor people need is a union. It shouldn’t matter what your job is (or if you have one). We need to band together and scream for ourselves. We need the boots off our necks. We need the boots off our kid’s necks. We need to be louder than the poor pitying tones of the middling middles.

It’s time for a class war, is what I’m saying.

Quickly- I am at the library with a scant few minutes of internet time before closing. Watch me type so fast my fingers flame

Here’s your top ten list of things not “cured” by shame, punishment or restriction:

1) Homosexuality
2) extra-marital sex (either pre marital or adultery)
3) rape (when the shame, punishment, restriction is aimed at victims or potential victims instead of rapists)
4)disease (did shame ever cure an AIDS patient? Or a lung cancer victim?)
5) obesity (if fat shaming worked we’d all look like Ralph Lauren models)
6)mental illness
7) immigration- legal or otherwise. (go back and ask the Irish if “No Irish Allowed” kept them from immigrating 150 years ago. Ask the Chinese in San Francisco if shame kept them out?
8) poverty
9)poverty
10)POVERTY

Einstein famously said that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result”. I think it’s more stupidity.

Several things above don’t need to be cured at all, they are blights on society (homosexuality, extra-marital sex, immigration, obesity)

The others are illness or disease, which last I checked only got cured through medical science, and poverty.

Poverty has been a source of shame for those who live in it since forever. Punishment doesn’t cure it either, whether it’s Workhouses or debtors prison or Welfare to Work policies.

We’ve tried shame, punishment, and restriction for eons to end poverty. Perhaps it’s time we tried something less stupid. Perhaps it’s time we realized that poverty is not the result of personal, individual failures but of a society that refuses to provide basic living requirements to the least powerful of it’s members.

(It is probably a good thing that our internet died when it did- as I was so angry at the fauxgressive, sexist, classist, fat shaming going on at Change.org that my blood pressure was seriously rising. I have no more patience for helpful wolves in sheep costume)

PPS– I cannot type blog posts from my phone, but I can read comments and might be able to respond, so consider this an open thread. I miss you peeps.