This is the opening to her post:

I’ve never been raped.

Why?  Because I’m lucky.

Nothing more.  Nothing less.

Go read the rest of her piece right now because I’m going to be riffing on it in my own post.  Go on, read it.  I’ll wait.  Let me know when you’re done.

Back?  Good.

Unlike Emily, I am not a lucky one.  I have been in two situations in which I endured recurring rape.  Those of you who read my blog regularly know about it because I post about it from time to time.  The first time, it started when I was seven.  The second, I was 21 and in a foreign country.  Both seemed like they happened a life time ago, and yet, I still deal with the aftermaths and the ramifications to this day.

I started this post a few days ago, and I abandoned it.  Why?  Because I saw what happened in ee’s threads about rape, both at BJ and at ABL’s place.   I saw how the excuses started pouring in, the rationale, the apologia.  “Yeah, it’s terrible that she experienced that, but…”

No.  There is no fucking but at the end of that sentence.   No one deserves to be raped.  No one.  Not even if she* was in the wrong part of town late at night.  Not even if she accepted a drink from a guy and he slipped her a Roofie.  Not even if she was dressed in tight clothing.  Not even if she went home with a guy she didn’t know and then changed her mind.

No one deserves to be raped.  Ever.**

The second reason I abandoned this post is because I’m tired of talking about it even though both experiences have deeply affected me, and I still deal with the ramifications to this day.

When I sleep, I have to have a white noise machine on to block out the sounds.  I also wear earplugs, a mouth guard (because I grind my teeth), and an eye mask.  I sleep with a pillow over my eyes, and I pull the covers up to my nose.  When I am anywhere that is not my home or some place trusted, I have to be in a seat facing the door, and I cannot stand to have someone touch me without my permission or without me knowing the person is going to do it.  In a movie theatre, I have to be near the aisle.  I hate being hemmed in in any way.  I have a fucked-up sleep schedule in part because I prefer being awake in the night–when the bad shit happens.  When things get really bad, I sleep on the couch rather than my bed.  My cats love that because they aren’t allowed in my bedroom (I’m allergic).

If I see a rape scene in a movie and did not know it was coming, I immediately flash back to my own experiences.  It’s the same when I read about rape.  And, since I have an eidetic memory, I get all the sounds, sights, smells, feelings, bodily sensations, and tastes of what happened at the time.  When I read about the assault on Lara Logan, my body immediately tensed up, and I felt as if I were under attack.  My heart started racing, and my face flushed.  I can’t listen to rape jokes without flashing back on my experiences.  I may not experience the full memories each time, but with every joke, every account of rape, every depiction I see, my body immediately reacts as if I’m under attack.  Hell, when Representative Gifford was shot, I immediately went into a deep depression.  I could barely move for two days, and I couldn’t figure out why.  I felt stupid because I didn’t know her, and I didn’t want to appropriate her tragedy.  It was partly the PTSD, yes, but it was more.  When my therapist helped me realize why it affected me so, it was a relief, but it also made me realize just how much further I have to go in dealing with the ramifications of my rapes.   I have posted about it before, and you can look through my archives for more in-depth musings about how I have dealt (badly) with the rapes.

Rapes.  Plural.

Do you know what being raped does to you?  Or rather, did to me?  It smashed my soul.  I’m talking about the second experience as I still can’t really talk about the first very easily.  And, as I am cross-posting this at ABL’s place, I am even more careful in choosing my words.   In my case, it was a mixture of sex, cultural differences, and power.  This guy was a predator, and he knew that I was easy prey.  What I said didn’t matter.  What I wanted didn’t matter.  Who I was didn’t matter.  I was simply a receptacle for his sperm, and in that way, he mirrored my first abuser as well.

And, I believed him that I didn’t matter and that I was nothing more than a sperm-receptacle in part because of my first experience, so I stayed with him for as long as I was in the country.  I endured him threatening to kill himself if I left him, sex without condoms even though he visited prostitutes, and him telling me how many babies we would make together.  I was lucky in that I had gone to Thailand for a semester abroad, and I had a coming-home date.  Otherwise, who knows what would have become of me?  This was 19 years ago, and I can still remember it as if it happened yesterday.  No amount of stuffing it back stops the symptoms of PTSD from sprouting up all the goddamn fucking time.

The third reason I’ve put off finishing this post is because of something I touched upon earlier–all the blame and judging people do about victims of rape.  Within hours of reports of Lara Logan’s assault, people were opining that women weren’t fit to do the job, that she was pretty and blond in a savage country, so what could she expect, that she was a homewrecker who got what she deserved, and other ugly shit.  It’s a variant of,“She dresses like a slut. She deserves it.” “She’s in a man’s job. What does she expect?” “She said yes to him once, so it’s not really rape.” “Men can’t help it. They have needs.”

As a society, we are extremely unkind towards victims/survivors of rape.  We judge them in ways we wouldn’t dream of judging any other crime victims.  So, the woman is not only raped, she is taken apart yet again if she dares talk about being abused.  It’s no wonder that victims often times stay silent–who the hell wants to deal with being judged on top of dealing with the aftermaths of being assaulted/raped?

The biggest reason I haven’t finished the post before this, however, is because I didn’t want to make other people uncomfortable.  It’s hard to hear about someone being raped.  It’s not nearly as hard as being raped, but it’s hard.  What do you say to someone who recounts a horrific experience of abuse at the hands of her uncle, father, boyfriend, date, friend, stranger?   I have seen how people shift and look away when I bring up the subject.  And, to be fair, it’s not easy to work it into every day conversation.

All of this has kept me silent during the past week or so while my co-bloggers have been kicking butt on the issue of rape and taking names.  I have other issues going on right now, so I let it go.  I felt guilty, though, because I know that part of the problem of rape is that people don’t talk about it.   I also had to grapple with an unwelcome realization I had about myself while reading about all the anti-women bills the GOP wanted to pass (and did, in some cases, in the House).   They wanted to curb abortion funding (which only goes to rape in the first place and incest) only to women who’ve been ‘forcibly raped’*** along with a whole bunch of other batshitcrazy things.   Forcibly, meaning visible bruises.  My immediate response?   I would kill any man who tried to rape me before he could penetrate.  Me.  Who once said I would let someone kill me before I killed someone else.  But, you see, I cannot go through that again, and if I were to be raped and get pregnant and forced to have the child, that would be a living death, anyway.   It was not a nice realization, but it helped me see that I DO think I matter and fuck the Republicans for trying to negate that with their misogynistic bullshit.

While I was musing all this over in my head, I read this post by TNC.  In it, he talked about how victims/survivors of rape need to give up their privilege of privacy in order to make rape less shameful and secretive.  Only, he said it much better than I just paraphrased.  He was not advocating mandatory reporting (which I would not support), but he was saying that if we want to erase the stigma that surrounds rape, those of us who have gone through it must speak out about it.

I can’t recommend TNC enough.  He strictly moderates his threads, so we’re able to have thoughtful discussions that get heated and passionate, but never nasty.  Or, if they do, he cleans them up.  It’s because of this that several TNC commenters, male and female, felt safe enough to share their own experiences of sexual abuse/rape.   It was painful to read, but it was also powerful and empowering to know that so many cool people survived and even thrived from such horrific experiences.   I was sorrowful that so many people had experience something similar to what I went through, though.  I don’t want anyone to be a part of that club.

One of the worst things about being raped is feeling like you’re alone, broken, and worthless.  I felt guilty and thought it was my fault, and I thought it permanently ruined me.   I did many crazy things after being raped the second time, and I didn’t care if I died.  Hell, my soul was already dead, so I might as well make my body match my soul.   I was too chickenshit to kill myself, so I left it up to the fates.  If I died in a fiery car crash (as long as no one else was hurt)–so be it.  If I got run over by a bus–so be it.

I was dead inside, anyway.  I can’t emphasize this enough.  I was the walking undead after experience two ongoing rapes.   I didn’t want to live.

In a way, I was lucky because I didn’t die, even though it didn’t feel like it at the time.  I was also lucky because I have always enjoyed (consensual) sex.  I love it, and I find it very life-affirming.  It’s joyful, playful, and just a whole lotta damn fun.  In addition, I know there are really damn good men out there.  I haven’t written off the whole gender just because of my two really horrible experiences and the other incidences that every woman endures (groping, cat-calling, insinuations, insults).  I have loved good men, and I have men as friends who are very dear to me.  I am grateful that my negative experiences have not caused me to lose faith in all mankind.

After reading TNC’s post, I summoned up the nerve to finish this post.  Yet, something was still holding me back.  Then, I read this post by Emily (my co-blogger at ABL’s place) recounting the story of a woman’s rape.   The woman had sent it to Emily and consented for it to be published.  It was hard to read, but it made my decision for me.  I had to write my post, come hell or high water (most likely the former).

Today, I am in the best place I’ve been in my life.   That’s damning with faint praise because I was in a really shitty place even two years ago.  However, I realize that I have to face the past, which means talking about it, and find new ways to cope with the old, old wounds.  Tai chi is helping me tremendously with that, as are my friends who are fierce in their loyalty to me.   My cats are of immeasurable comfort to me, and I have a brother upon whom I can count.  I have my health, my writing and performing abilities, and I have my warped sense of humor.  I will be relying on all these to help me continue to survive, hopefully, to thrive.

I write this post because I cannot stay silent–not now when the GOP is waging war against women (well, everyone who is not them, really, but especially women), trying to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood (donate! I did.  And, stand with them, too.  I did that as well), and being jackholes in general.   I have a platform, two actually–my own place and ABL’s place–and I intend to use them to the best of my abilities.  I am just one voice, but I know how to scream.

Cross-posted at ABL’s place.

*For the sake of simplicity, I will be using the heterosexual norm of man as perp, woman as victim/survivor for the rest of this post.  I am fully aware that men are victims and that women are perps as well.

**If we want to discuss things a woman might be better off not doing, that’s a different kettle of fish.  It’s also one I am not going to tackle in this post.

***And some minors.  The bill was poorly-written, so it was hard to tell exactly which minors they wanted to protect.

Actually, this started a little bit ago.  I have a party to attend this Saturday, and the dress is sexy/sophisticated.  I don’t wear makeup as a general rule for many reasons, but I suddenly had the desire to girl it up a bit.  I went to the MAC website (a colored girl’s best friend), and I did a little surfing.  I wear lipstick now and again, and I favor dark, bold colors.  I remember the last time I visited a MAC counter, they told me they were getting black-colored makeup in a few weeks.  I promptly forgot about it, but remembered it upon my visit to the website.  Now, in case you don’t know, black is my favorite color.  It’s like a second skin to me, and I wear it often.  So, I found a shade of lipstick called Cyber that is bluish-black, a lip pencil, and black nail polish for my toes.  I have no nails of which to speak on my hands, so I won’t bother with them.

Then, I got it into my head that I needed a cute pair of shoes.  I hate shopping.  I am extremely picky, and I have wide feet.  All I wanted were a pair of black platform heels in wide.  I scoured the intertubes, but I couldn’t find anything.  An offhand remark by a friend led me to looking at stripper shoes, and while I really liked the styles, I don’t DO four inch heels, let alone eight.  Plus, I don’t like patent leather–I prefer satin or suede.  So, while I love the look of this, this, this, and this (this is just hilarious), none of them matched up my specs.  I did find some cute black platforms with sensible heels (sensible stripper?)–for drag queens.

I gave up because I couldn’t find what I wanted–which is pretty much the norm for me.  I do have a pair of shoes that will work–and they are ‘in’ this year if my intensive research isn’t wrong.  That’s funny as I bought them many years ago, but fashion does like to cycle.  I also have a pair of go-to boots (you women know what I mean.  The pair you can always count on to match pretty much anything).  I have a sexy little black dress I’ve never worn, so I’m good to go.

“Minna, why the hell are you talking about clothes and makeup?” I can hear you say.  By the way, thank you for allowing me to put words into your collective mouths.  I really appreciate it, and it helps move things along.

I’m talking about them because I can, of course, but I’m also talking about them because for once, I feel like talking about them.

My history with being a woman is fraught with peril.  I have had very mixed emotions about being female, some that I wouldn’t even admit to myself.  When I was younger (in my early twenties), I got along better with men than with women for various reasons, and I was wary of other women–though I wasn’t really conscious of it at the time.  I eschewed all things typically considered feminine while at the same time declaring myself a feminist.

An aside:  Sarah Palin, I know feminists, and you, Madame, are no fucking feminist.

OK.  Had to get that out.  Back to feminine v. feminist.

I have a very byzantine mind in that I can twist anything into a pretzel.  I discovered feminism in college and became a strident feminist.  I stopped wearing makeup (which I only really started wearing in my last year of high school) and stopped shaving (not that I had much to shave, anyway).  If guys didn’t have to do all that shit, why should I?  Besides, I have very sensitive skin, and at that time, makeup was murder on the skin.  And, I decided getting forty-five more minutes of sleep was way more important than slapping on a face.

That was my stated stance and one I still believe to some extent.  However, it covered nuances such as how stupid I feel because I can’t put makeup on very well.  I’ve practiced, but most of the time, I end up looking like a clown.  When they handed out the girl gene, I was absent.  Lipstick is about the only thing I can put on without making myself look ridiculous, which is probably why I chose it as my signature piece of makeup.

In addition, and it took me years of therapy to figure this out, because of the abuse, I started identifying with my abuser, so to speak.  As much as I hated my father for what he did to me, I hated my mother more for not protecting me.  It’s not rational, and it’s not fair, but there you go.   I was saying something about this to my therapist years ago, and she said, “You’re equating feminine with weak.”  I was pissed, but she was right.  If I had to be honest, I did associate being feminine with being weak, and I wanted no part of it.  Now, you could argue that being a child, I wasn’t very feminine when the abuse happened.  True.  However, my experience in Thailand only reinforced that vaguely-held notion that being feminine was dangerous.  I was stalked by one guy in Thailand and date-raped by another.

The former was not my fault at all.  The latter though, was not my fault, but I had to take some responsibility.  Because of my own fucked-up view of sexuality and sex and all that shit, I put myself in a dangerous situation without truly thinking about the consequences.

It’s weird because I thought of being feminine as being helpless and weak, but I thought of feminine sexuality as too-powerful.  It drove men to do crazy things, and it destroyed people in the process.  I am not saying this was a rational way of looking at things, which I know, in retrospect, that it was not.  It was, however, the result of my messed up childhood and experience in Thailand.  My femininity was not to be trusted because it was powerful and because it made me weak.

A decade ago, Kiki and I had a friendly disagreement about being girly.  I had bought a couple barrettes with glitter on them, but I was hesitant to wear them.  She said it was OK to be girly now and then, but I didn’t trust that.  Recently, I had the same discussion with Choolie, and she said essentially the same thing as I revealed my hesitation about buying makeup and shoes.  Kiki told me she loved it that I was girling up.

One reason I have such a hard time with wearing makeup and intentionally dressing sexy is because it garners attention.  I know that there are people who find me attractive for some unfathomable reason (yes, I had to add that on), and it makes me uncomfortable to draw attention to my assets, as it were.  Now, one would think because I have such a laissez-faire attitude towards clothing that I wouldn’t have a problem with drawing attention to myself, but in my mind, there is something distinctly different about throwing on a tank top sans bra and a pair of boxers to run to the local store and actually dressing up with intent to be hawt.

It’s difficult for me to think that I can be consciously sexy and not have it used against me.  But, I am willing to take baby steps in trying to reclaim my femininity and to stop thinking of it as a bad word.

I am still working through this issue, obviously, so I am sure I will blog about it again.

Moving on to my therapist’s office.  One of her specialties is mothering so she has many parenting magazines in the waiting room.  One of them is Brain Child, which is an interesting read.  In the one I picked up, there was an review of three books about childfree women.  I thought, “Oh, interesting” and started to read.  The writer, I’ll call her Jill because I can’t remember her real name, and I can’t be bothered to look it up, starts out by saying she’s childfree, so hey, she’s a good woman to review the books.  Fair enough.  But then she talks at length as to why she’s childfree (genetic faults in the family) before reviewing the book.  Disclosure:  I haven’t read the books she was reviewing, so I am actually critiquing her review of the books and not the books themselves.

The first was divided in three parts.  The first part was by women who were firmly childfree.  The second was by women who were ‘on the fence’ (I think the section was even labeled that), and the third was by women who decided to have kids (if I remember correctly).  Jill talked very briefly about the first part, but dismissed it as not interesting.  She said the other sections were richer.  Huh, what?  It turns out what she meant was the other sections were more compelling to her because they featured similar stories of women who struggled with the decision before deciding not to have them for mostly genetic reasons.

Jill’s conclusion of this book was, “It’s OK for women who are childfree to say they regret not having kids and for women with kids to say how hard it is to be a parent.”

Now, while I don’t dispute that many of the women who haven’t had children may have regrets about their decision, I am not one of them.  And, I don’t think it’s verboten to say that you have regrets about not being a mother.  When I was in my early twenties, it was damn-near expected that I would express my deepest remorse for not wanting kids.

Jill decried the second book because it was written by a twenty-something who was trumpeting how great her life was as a childfree woman.  As for the third book, Jill emphasized how many of the women focused on nurturing children even though they were not moms.  Jill’s conclusion was that you, too, can be a nurturing woman without kids of your own–and it’s an inherent part of a woman’s being to be a nurturing person.

Again, I fully acknowledge that I read the review through my own biased filter, but she pissed me off.  The whole damn time she was apologizing for not having kids or rationalizing and focusing on the essays that reinforced her belief that being without is somehow lesser.  Again, I don’t doubt that many women who choose not to have kids have mixed feelings about their decision, but not all of us do.

By the way, the second book apparently uses the term unparenting to describe her childfree status.  No.  Just no.  That’s a stupid word.  I don’t even like childfree, but it’s better than childless.

Anyhow, as I have said before, deciding not to have kids was the easiest decision I ever made, and the best one I ever made.  I don’t regret it, and I don’t wonder what my life would be like if I had kids.  Do you want to know how often I think about the fact that I don’t have kids (when I’m not blogging about it)?  Never.  It’s a non-factor in my life, incidental at best.  And, I resent the implication that I have to think about nurturing kids in some way because I don’t have my own.  I don’t hear that being asked of men without children.

As for the richer reasons not to have children, sure, not having kids because I don’t want them isn’t sexy or a rich, complex reason, but it’s true.  I mean, I could add on the fact that I was abused, that I think I would be a horrible mother, blah blah blah, but that would just be embellishing to make other people feel more comfortable with my decision.

Something about the simple phrase, “I don’t want kids” made people uncomfortable when I first started saying it.  I don’t think it’s as true now, but if this article is any indication, it may not be entirely false, either.

Finally, Oliver Wang is guest-blogging at TNC’s place.  He posted an entry about the correlation between hours of housework being done and how much sex a married couple was having.  Predictably, the thread evolved into a ‘men want this, women want this’ discussion.  There was one man in particular who irritated me by stating that men need to be drained at least twice a week and who wants to sit next to a woman watching reality TV for hours just to get laid?  I am exaggerating, but only slightly.  You can read the thread if you like, and I am sure you can figure out who I am by my handle.

Anyway, I called him out in part because I am tired of the meme that men are horndogs and women are frigid bitches who only put out to please their men.  This guy was making it seem like a universal with a few guys backing him up.  My point was that this was his situation and I have consistently been in the opposition position, which, again, I will admit is probably not as usual as his situation, but I know other women who have very high sex drives, so it’s not as if I am completely alone in this.

The interesting part to me was that some of the mothers commented that after spending the whole day fending off their children, they don’t necessarily want to be touched by their husbands.  After spending appreciable time with my nephews, I could emphasize.  One woman said she wanted her body to be her own.

Anyway, the first guy got hammered by several women and a few women, not just me, but it left me wondering as to how much of an outlier I am.  Then again, he was talking post-children, so who knows?  His main point was that if the wife doesn’t put out, she shouldn’t be surprised when the man cheats.  He gave lip-service to both parties being satisfied, but it was clear that he only meant himself.  And, he said if a woman wants sex all the time, what man isn’t going to be OK with that?

Um, dude.  Seriously.  Back that truck up.  Not all men have high sex drives.  That’s a myth.  And, while men may think about sex a lot, they aren’t always so eager to actually have it.

But this is my point.  He was talking about his experiences and extrapolating them to other men.  Another guy said, “You just described my marriage!”  However, these guys married these women knowing full well what they were like.  And, the first guy married TWO women knowing full well what they were like.  So, to some extent, they must want those kind of women.  It’s like my ex telling me that men liked to complain about their women not liking sports because it’s a way of bonding.  They don’t want their women to like sports.  I agree.

As for sex, in my personal experience, guys are threatened by a woman who wants sex more than they do, so while they may complain about their girlfriends/wives not wanting sex, they would complain more if their wives were constantly after them for sex.

I will fully admit that my tendency in the past to choose people who talk more than they put out is partly because of my neuroses.  I have had exceptions, but for the most part, it’s true.  However, I have other female friends in the same boat who don’t share my neuroses, so it’s not completely just me, either.

It seems that the root of the gender divide is still there.  There are more men and women who have moved past it, but there are still plenty in the trenches fighting that tired war.  As I am struggling with my own issues re: femininity and sexuality, I really need to stop participating in what I consider non-issue subjects (that women can want to have sex as much if not more so than men).  I just need to stick to that resolve.

P.S.  Fourth vid is my official stripper song, even though the lead singer has a very tame idea of what a crazy bitch actually is.

It’s partly political.  I have been avoiding the story about the woman who worked for Halliburton/KBR and was gang-raped by her coworkers while they were in the Middle East.  I mean, I know the basics.  They locked her in a container for twenty-four hours afterwards, and the military lost her rape kit somehow.  There is a clause that only allows these kinds of ‘disputes’ to be settled by arbitration.  My kick-ass senator, Al Franken, introduced an amendment that would allow cases like this to go to court (which seems like a no-brainer).  It easily passed in the Senate, with thirty No votes.  Care to guess to which party all those No votes belonged?  No points for guessing Republican.  In addition, all the female Republican senators broke rank and voted Yes for the amendment.  Here is a look at the roll call for the vote.

It passed.  Good.  But, today, I read this post over at Balloon Juice.  Apparently, several sources say that Senator Daniel Inouye, (HI-D) is preparing to water down the amendment or remove it completely after being vigorously lobbied by defense contractors who are adamant it be removed.

I shouldn’t have read the post at all.  I shouldn’t have read the comments.  I have difficulty dealing with news about rape in general, and this was a particularly horrifying and egregious story that, I fear, was all-too-emblematic of the attitude towards sexual assault by the mercenaries–er, contractors–we hired to work for us in the Middle East.   We got one of the usual trolls bleating about the injustice of going around arbitration.  We got another well-meaning soul saying that arbitration isn’t necessarily biased.

Doesn’t fucking matter.  Because of some stupid law, the woman cannot press criminal charges.  Or rather, the feds won’t touch the case.  The woman was gang-raped and locked in a container for twenty-four hours afterwards, and she has no legal recourse?

I felt like puking.  I still do when I think of it.  This is not sexual harassment.  This is not a pinch on the ass or a suggestive comment.  This isn’t even, “Sleep with me or lose your job.”  This is a felony, and it can’t be prosecuted.  And yet, congress can go after ACORN?

I despair.  I really do.  No matter how far we come on gender issues, we still have so much further to go.

Thinking about this reinforced how worthless I felt as I was growing up.  No, I didn’t remember the abuse, but I remember very clearly how poorly my father treated my mother.  He would stay out until all hours, never bothering to call home to tell her when he’d be home.  She would cater to his every whim when he was home, and he just accepted it as his due.  He never told her he appreciated her for–well, anything.

In addition, she worked full-time and raised my brother and me while he worked full-time and got his Ph.D. in economics at the U.  Once he got his degree, he considered himself above her, even though she had her MA in psychology and put her own career on hold to raise the kids and allow him to get his Ph.D.

It was well-known my father had affairs.  It was never talked about in my family, but we all knew.  He beat my brother until my mom made him stop, and then he (my dad) ceded all discipline to my mother.  Yes, if he couldn’t hit my brother, then he wouldn’t do anything.   As I have said before, he was the only one allowed to show anger in the house.  He was the only one who could yell.

When I was a teenager, I was an outsider.  No boys were interested in me except as a friend.  This was before Asian women became exotic and sexy.  Back then, if you didn’t fit in the cultural norm, then you were invisible.  So, my dad gave me this helpful bit of advice, “If you want a boyfriend, you have to raise your voice in pitch, never beat a guy at any sports, and let him help you with something.”  I looked at him and told him that if that’s what it took to have a boyfriend, I didn’t want one.

He taught me to play ping-pong when I was six.  When I hit my late twenties, I started beating him on a constant basis.  Once I beat him two out of three games, he quit playing with me.   He offered to buy my brother a sports car if he (my bro) married a Taiwanese woman.  At a cousin’s wedding, my dad turned to me and said, “I don’t think I could give you away.”  I replied, “You won’t.”  One, because I wasn’t getting married, and two, because I wouldn’t have that in my wedding if I ever did get married (which I wasn’t), anyway.

He travels all over the world for his job, and one of his stops was in Banff, Canada.  He visited a hotel there that was actually a castle converted into a hotel.  He showed me a brochure.  ”They do weddings there,” he said proudly.  ”I’ll pay for the whole thing if you want to have your wedding there.”  I looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.   Besides the fact that I had no interest in getting married, I was most certainly not the castle type.  I was no fucking fairy princess, and I certainly wasn’t looking for my Prince Charming.

Now, my parents live in Taiwan.  They live in the same house, but they still live completely separate lives.  My mom can’t call my dad at work or he’ll get mad.  If she buys him some short-sleeved shirts that are really nice after he says he doesn’t wear short-sleeved shirts, he yells at her.  When they both came to visit, he was in the bathroom taking an epic bath (all his baths are epic), and both my mom and I needed to use that bathroom.  She tapped on the door to ask when he’d be out.  He came out and started shouting about how inconsiderate it was to interrupt him when he was taking a bath.  He went on in that vein for at least fifteen minutes before lapsing into a sullen silence.

I got told I was fat by both my parents.  Still do.  Probably will when I’m in Taiwan.

I became my mom’s confidant when I was a teenager.  She would tell me her woes with my father (excluding the marital affairs), and she was deeply depressed.  I didn’t want to hear about it because I lived with the man, but I didn’t know how to tell her that what she was doing was inappropriate.  She still tells me things about him I would rather not know.  I still don’t know how to tell her I’m uncomfortable with her revelations.

My point is that when I was a kid, I observed how shitty it was to be female.  So, even though I grew up to be a feminist, I still bought into some of those ideas, subconsciously.  I began to make a mental list of things not to do.  No giggling.  No cooking or cleaning (ok, the last one is more a matter of laziness, but still).  No makeup, no high heels, no push up bras, nothing.

To be fair, some of that was truly because I didn’t believe in doing it–such as makeup and shaving my legs/armpits, but for the most part, I equated being a woman with being weak–and I was so fucking done with being weak.   I didn’t want to be a man because they came with their own set of problems, but I most definitely did not want to be a woman.

It was another way I desperately tried to make myself safe.  If I eradicated my femininity, then I wouldn’t be vulnerable.  I learned to stride instead of mincing.  I developed a hard stare and a rigid body posture that said, “Don’t fuck with me.”  For the most part, it worked.  People were properly intimidated, and I was able to fool them into thinking I would kick their ass if I need be.

Inside, though, it was a different story altogether.  I still didn’t have a core.  I still didn’t believe I had worth.  I still couldn’t say no.  The hardness was to stop people in their tracks so they couldn’t see how empty I was on the inside.

People have said they admire me because I’m assertive and speak my mind.  I don’t give a shit about what people think–or so it seems.  Quite to the contrary, I would worry about everything I said or wrote.  If someone expressed the mildest rebuke for something I’d said or done, I would castigate myself harshly, scolding myself for ever saying anything in the first place.  One of the reasons I stated my opinions so firmly was because deep down, I didn’t think I had the right to say anything at all.

It was exhausting, monitoring everything I said or did.  It also felt like such a sham.  I looked so confident, when inside, I hated myself.

So, now I’m struggling with letting all of that go.  The old belief system; the old thoughts and ideas; the old way of being.  What’s more, I’m struggling with not hating myself for being so weak all these past years, for wasting nearly my whole life up until now.

I endured.  I didn’t live or thrive or even survive.  I endured.  I hunkered down in my shell, tucked my head under my arms, and I froze.

Now, my heart is aching inside my chest.  It is filled, almost to the point of bursting, with tears of regret.  There is a sliver of anger under the pain–anger at how thoroughly I gave up and gave in, but mostly, there is sadness and pain.  I am crying once again as I type.  The sorrow is overwhelming.  This time, though, the sorrow is for the current me.  The one who is caught betwixt and between and is scared out of her mind as to how to proceed.  The one who feels parts of her crumbling at her touch and turning into dust.  The one who is lost and doesn’t know if she’ll ever find.  The one who still doesn’t have a core.

I am almost howling as I weep.  I grab my hair near the scalp with my hands, and I squeeze.  Hard.  Guttural moans escape my lips as I listen to Say Goodbye by Girlyman (see above video) and feel as if they are tearing out my soul.  The pain inhabits my body, taking over every inch from my head to my little toes.  It floods through me, nearly bringing me to my knees.  Please, make it stop.  I will do anything to make it stop.   The agony is more than I can bear.  I am not that fucking strong.  I know I have to say goodbye to the old me.  I know I have to let her go.  I know I have to grieve and move on.   It fucking hurts too much.

Why am I maundering on about the feminist movement?  Because I had a conversation with my niece yesterday that completely disheartened me.   Now, she knows that I am not married (obviously), that I am childfree (again, obviously), and that I dress in a rather funky manner.  She gives me crap about it every now and then like telling me I should have children, just because, but for the most part, I am accepted as the beloved quirky aunt.

First, some facts.  She has always been both a girly-girl, loving dolls and the color pink, and a more rugged little girl.  She liked to play outdoors, climbing on trees and such.  It never concerned her to go from playing with her Barbies to running around the backyard.  That is as it should be.  To me, part of the feminism movement meant embracing all the different aspects of my womanly nature.  Full disclosure:  I do still struggle with the idea that doing womanly things is weak.  I used to be hardcore about this.  I loathed pink.  I hated dolls.  I refused to do anything I considered “soft”.  The first breakthrough when Kiki convinced me that wearing glitter once in a while was not a bad thing.  In other words, being girly and glam can be a fun thing–as long as it’s not a “should”.

The previous sentence brings me nicely to the conversation I had with my niece.  We were wrestling a bit, and she exclaimed, “You forgot to shave your armpits.”  I said that I didn’t shave them at all.  She was appalled (remember, this is the same girl that flipped when I told her I didn’t wear panties after she asked me what color my panties were) and told me I had to shave.  I asked why.  She said  because in that tone that parents of preteen girls know all-too-well.  Her tone said I was the dumbest person on earth for not realizing the importance of this issue.  I took a minute to decide what to say, and I settled on, “I don’t have to shave my armpits.  Guys don’t.”

I thought that would be the end of that, but she started to tell me of all the things she wanted to do that she wasn’t allowed to do yet.  This list included piercing her ears and shaving her legs.

I reflexively winced.  The girl is eleven.  What hair she has on her legs is negligible.  I didn’t want to get all Elizabeth Cady Stanton on her, but I had to probe this issue just a little bit.  She complained that her friend, also eleven, got to shave–even though she had no leg hair.  I bit my leg to point out the stupidity of shaving when one doesn’t have any hair to shave.  Instead, I mildly said that I didn’t shave my legs, either.  What she said next blew me away.  She said, “You’re not married.  You don’t want to get married.”  I immediately understood what she was trying to say, and I replied, “You know, there are lots of guys who don’t care about stuff like that.”  She shook her emphatically, opened her eyes wide and said, “Yes, they do!” as if she knew it with every fiber of her being.

My niece is gorgeous.  She is stop-in-the-street-and-stare gorgeous.  She is creative, funny, bright, caring, warmhearted, curious, engaging, and a bunch of other  really cool things.   She’s also eleven years old!  Eleven, and the pressure to change herself to please a guy is already starting.

I tried not to jump on her because she is just eleven, but it made me dispirited to realize how far we haven’t come in the last thirty years.  But, on the other hand, we have.  She thinks she can be President of the United States (but doesn’t want the job because it’s too hard), but she also thinks she has to wear makeup and shave her legs and armpits to snag a husband.  Is that progress, or is that more of the Superwoman conundrum?

I have to add that I was already feeling defeated because of an earlier incident.  Before going to my bro’s house, my mom and I went to lunch to see one of my cousins.  I haven’t seen her in ten years, and she looks better than ever.  Before we went, I was wearing a nice pair of beige pants and a fitted shirt (black, of course).  My mom gave me The Look and asked if I wasn’t going to wear the dragon shirt she’d given me (she meant the ones with the zebras).  She said it would go nicely with the pants, but I could tell by her tone that it had more to do with the latter shirt would cover my stomach better.

In an instant, I felt like a huge, lumbering elephant.  I felt fat and ugly and just…gross.  I immediately went to change my outfit, and I still felt like crap.  I was self-conscious the entire time we were having lunch with my cuz (great to see you, girl!  I will definitely visit you on my East Coast swing).  I could just feel the fat bulging and squishing in a most obvious fashion.   It didn’t help that I was fully aware that the last time I had seen my cousin (at her wedding), I had been the skinniest I’d ever been.

So.  That was the mentality I was holding as my mom and I went to my brother’s house.   When I was younger (late twenties), I used to cut myself.  I mostly did it on my upper left arm (to avoid my tats), but I also did it on my stomach because I hated it so much.  I once traced out the letter F and U on my stomach for Fuck you, but also for Fat & Ugly.   I might as well have tattooed it on my soul; I felt it that deeply.  The stomach cuts were fairly light so the scars aren’t easy to see, but the arm ones are very visible because I’m keloid.  That means that I scar twice as badly as everyone else.  I lied to both my mother and my niece as to how I got the scars.  I no longer hide them because I am not ashamed of them, but I don’t feel the need to explain them to anyone, either.  My ex used to call them my war wounds, and he was right.  If it weren’t for them, I might not be here today.

So.  Put all of this together, and I am feeling pretty down right now.  I am upset that I am slipping back into the “I am worthless because I’m so fucking fat” mode, and I am unduly bothered by my niece’s view on what it takes to land a guy.  I know she’s still young and her views can change (mine certainly did), but I still despair over the pervasive idea that a girl has to mold herself into some standard in order to be acceptable.  Am I talking about my niece now or about me?  Both, and that’s why what she said bothers me so much.  She has given voice to the unspoken message that I myself believe.  I knew there was a reason I don’t like mirrors!

In no particular order, I felt guilty for not being married, for not having children, for being bi, for being loud about issues such as racism, for not being a Christian, for letting myself get out of shape, for thoroughly enjoying sex in so many different ways and with so many different people, for not making more of myself, for wasting my life, for not having to worry as much about money as do other people, for not being able to single-handedly save the world, for being alternately aloof and clingy, for being so damn narcisstic, for craving fame, for not working hard enough to get said fame, for being a repudiation of everything my mom is, for accidentally kicking Raven twice today, for not being a better aunt/sister/daughter/friend/cat caregiver, for the Cold War, for evaluating my worth as how skinny I am, for not being enough of ______  (fill in the blank) and too much of _______  (fill in this blank, too).

Now, while I’m worrying about everything little thing I’ve ever done wrong and will ever do wrong in my life, there are people who act like their shit don’t stink.  Because I follow politics, my examples are of politicians and of the so-called pundits who opine about said pols.

First, the song Crazy Bitch by Buckcherry because I need it.  It was suggested to me by one of those FB quizzes.  It’s my stripper song, apparently.

Ok.  Now, on to the screed.

Here are people who need to feel guilty and don’t (the short list because these are the ones who are currently bugging me the most):

1. Pat Rober–er, Buchanan
2. C-Street Mafia
3. Stupid rightwing pundits, especially the hacks such as Ross Douthat and Jonah Goldberg
4. GOP members who questioned Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court spot

First up, Pat Buchanan.  He is considered a prominent Republican for some unfathomable reason.  He has a permanent seat on the MSNBC lineup bench, and he’s frequently seen spouting his vitrolic venom on the webs as well.  His latest hatchet job has been on Sonia Sotomayor for entirely spurious reasons.  I know Rachel calls him “Uncle Pat” and thinks he argues with class, but even she raised her voice at him tonight in the segment on her show in which she called him out on his despicably racist views.  I don’t know how it ended because I clicked to the next video clip (about the C-Street Mafia, ironically) in order to try to tamp down my rage, and then, I got up and punched a wall.

Buchanan made it disgustingly clear that he is a racist fucker who thinks white people are always superior to people of color.  He dismissed all the accomplishments of Sonia Sotomayor (which are vast), and he got angry and defensive when Rachel called him on it.  He thinks that white men are the victims now–hey, Buchanan, quick heat check for you–take a look at the boards of all the big banks and tell me how many non-white men are sitting on them.   Look at the top of any corporation and see how many women of color are there.  Then, come back and fucking talk to me about racism against white men.

He went on to spout how this country was built by white men, how the constitution was written by white men,  and how the wars up until the Battle of…Normandy?  That can’t be right.  I refuse to look it up, though, were fought by white men.   So in other words, white makes right?  Or excuse me, might makes right.  Ed. note: Yes, he said Normandy.  Even though he’s been corrected on that many times before.

Besides, fuck you, Pat Buchanan!  This country was taken from the indigeneous people after a massive genocide.  This country was built on the backs of slaves from Africa and coolies from China.   This country is continuing to be built on the back of migrant workers who come here from Mexico in order to feed their families.  This country was run by white men because they decided it so, not because they were more qualified.  For you to suggest that to have only 2 people of color out of 110 is because the white people fucking deserved it more makes me want to punch you in the face.

I am a pacifist.  An angry, cynical, bitter pacifist, true, but a pacifist, nonetheless.  However, vitriol and smug entitlement like the shit you spew make me see red.  It’s an extension of this (and yes, I’m linking to myself.  So sue me), and Buchanan takes it to its ugly conclusion.

It’s beyond frustrating because there is no way to argue with this mindset.  Anything said in Sotomayor’s defense, for example, can be brushed away with, “affirmative action” and be done with it.  She made it into Princeton and Yale?  Affirmative action.  She graduated summa cum laude at Princeton?  Affirmative action.  She was the editor of the Yale Law Review?  Affirmative action.  Buchanan even trotted out the tired old, “Half the students graduate cum laude from Ivy League schools, Rachel!  I know it and you know it!” line.  By the way, I fucking hate that, “you know it” bullshit.  At least Rachel said, “No, I don’t know it.”  The problem with a bully like Buchanan is that he simply can’t be outshouted (though Larry O’Donnell gave it a hell of a try on a previous show).  Oh, and as for the ridiculous, “half the students graduate cum laude” at Ivy Schools, what a bunch of bullshit.  First of all, summa cum laude is the highest honor one can receive.  It’s not the same as cum laude.  Secondly, I graduated magna cum laude from a much lesser-known school (and Phi Beta to boot), and I worked my ass off (hey, maybe that’s why I don’t have an ass) to get my magna.  In fact, it was because of one messed up semester (my first one) that I didn’t reach summa.  I graduated with a 3.8 something in my major.  That was pretty damn hard, too.  I would have had a perfect 4.0 in my major if it wasn’t for the B I got in my Intro to Psych class and the shittiest prof ever, but no, I’m not still bitter about it, thank you very much.

The point of all my grade-flaunting is that I went to St. Olaf College.  It’s a private liberal arts college here in MN.  It’s a good college, and it has a decent reputation, but it is no Ivy League school.  Plus, at the risk of repeating myself, Sonia Sotomayor attended Princeton at a time when they had a quota limiting the number of women allowed to attend.  Justice Alito was involved in a group who wanted to keep out minorities and women from Princeton.  Maybe “Uncle Pat” and the insufferable bastards of the GOP should have a little chat with him about how Princeton operated back in the day?  They won’t, of course, because it would ruin their story line.

Hm.  This is running long as usual.  I will wrap it up about Pat Buchanan tonight and tackle the other three points on my list in a further entry (entries, most likely).  This is how I feel right now, by the way.  It’s Welcome to the Jungle by Guns N’ Roses, and it takes several seconds to load.

I am tired of MSNBC treating Pat Buchanan like the lovable loony uncle whom everyone avoids at the family reunion.  He is a vile, repellent, ugly, vicious, bitter old man who has lived a life of entitlement and who is now panicking because he’s perceiving that life being yanked out from under his feet.  He can’t fathom a woman of color being equal to (not to mention better than) a white man for any job (except maybe housemaid), especially not one as high as Supreme Court Justice.

In addition,  it was Melissa Harris Lacewell, Princeton associate professor and majorly gorgeous, who went on Olbermann’s show after it was disclosed that Sotomayor belongs (belonged now, she resigned) to an all-women’s professional association  called the Balezian Grove.  Predictably, Rush and others of his ilk mewled, “Imagine if a man belonged to such an all-male group like this.”  Oh, like, say, the Supreme Court?  Or the C-Street Mafia?

Anyway, Melissa Harris-Lacewell makes an important point on Countdown (about a month ago).  The Supreme Court makes decisions that affect all members of society.  Some white men (most likely subconsciously) can’t imagine having their lives affected so by a Latina!  As Harris-Lacewell stated, all white male Supreme Courts  ruled on slavery and immigration.  They got to decide things for people of color and for women for most of our history.  When you have the power, it’s unnerving to give up even a tiny portion of it.

I am disgusted by Pat Buchanan.  I wish MSNBC were, too.  Alas, old white male GOP members can say whatever the fuck they want and not worry about losing their jobs.  How the fuck isn’t that some kind of affirmative action?

Oh, and because I need a small picker-upper after watching “Uncle Fucking Pat” and writing this entry, I give to you, Kylie Minogue.  My fake hubby from BJ posted it there some days ago because he knows I have a (guilty) thing for Kylie Minogue, as does he.  He says if you’re gay and Australian as he is, it’s practically mandated to have a thing for Kylie.  She’s not the best singer, and she’s not my type, but she has a nice butt, and she’s having a blast in this video.  Plus, hot gay boyz.  I love ‘em.  I can’t embed it here, so link for you.  Enjoy.

First of all, bullshit.  The true anti-choice activists don’t want any abortion to be legal.  As an aside, I heard on NPR today that only a small percentage of Americans (and, of course, they don’t bother to give the percentage) wants abortions to always be legal.  Really?  Truly?  Then, I guess that puts me in the minority–again.  To be fair, they also said that the percentage of Americans who want abortion to always be illegal is equally small.  Cold comfort, indeed.

Anyway, this is about goal post moving.  If abortions become illegal, then the anti-choice people will start protesting contraceptives.  Oh wait.  They already do.  What, you say, it’s not true?  Well, who the fuck cares?  This is a war they are fighting, and they will use whatever propaganda they have at hand to win it.  The leader of Prayer and Action, an anti-choice newsletter, Dave Leach (look, another guy!) said about the murder of Dr. George Tiller:

“To call this a crime is too simplistic. There is Christian scripture that would support this. ”

What Scripture has to do with American law is beyond me, but Dave Leach sees a greater law than the laws of our land.  His compatriot in arms, the truly vile founder of Operation Rescue, Randall Terry (another man!) said Dr. Tiller got his just desserts:

“(He) was a mass murderer, and horrifically, he reaped what he sowed. ”

Terry also said:

“ George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. ”

He goes on to talk about the Law of God. You can read the rest of his statement here. Note what his main concern is here.  It’s not that a man was cold-bloodedly murdered in his house of worship (which would indicate that he and his God were at least on a talking basis); it’s that the poor, helpless anti-choice activists might have to curb their activities that he deems peaceful, but that really aren’t.  It’s one thing to picket the clinic at which the caregivers work.  It’s another to follow their children to school or harrass the workers at their homes or places of worship.  In addition, I find it laughable that a mere man can presume to speak for his God.  What a monstrous ego this guy must have.

I know some people flinch at the use of the word terrorist in this context, but we must name it what it is.  Tell me, what is the difference between the tactics and the words of the anti-choice people and those of, say, al-Qaeda?  The former are convinced that they and they alone know what the Almighty would want (which, coincidentally enough, is a lot like the shit they are spouting) while the latter are convinced that they and they alone speak for Allah.

In addition, both groups decry the loose moral standards of Americans while holding themselves above the riff-raff.  Both groups use intimidation to try to force their opponents into submitting.

Let’s take the specific case of Dr. Tiller’s murder.  The suspect is Scott Roeder.  He has written on the Operation Rescue website, and he was found with the handwritten phone number of an Operation Rescue senior policy advisor named Cheryl Sullenger on his dashboard.  Ms. Sullenger herself has spent two years in prison on a conspiracy to bomb the hell out of an abortion clinic.  Roeder had ten bucks to his name when he was arrested.  He has been involved in vandalism of abortion clinics over the years, and he was caught glueing the locks shut at the very same clinic the day before.

Now, after the last flurry of doctor killings in the nineties, laws were passed to protect abortion providers.  Under Clinton, the feds were happy to prosecute these transgressors.  However, during the W. years, these laws were not, shall we say, rigidly enforced.  The previous clip is Rachel’s take on how Roeder was allowed to escape detection for so long.   Colleen Rowley, a home-grown FBI whistleblower said the FBI did not do enough in this case to prevent Dr. Tiller’s murder.

This has been my frustration all along.  The traditional media keeps talking about Roeder as one crazy individual who just went off.  However, when you dig deeper, you see that Roeder was surrounded by people who approve of using violence to get what they want, all in the name of God.  Here is Rachel’s take on the 6 Degrees of Randall Terry.   So why the fuck isn’t this a terror cell?  Why the hell aren’t Americans in outrage, demanding that Scott Roeder be waterboarded to tell what he knows?  He hinted that other shootings of abortion providers are planned for this week.  Ticking time bomb!  So, torture is the answer, right?  Wrong.  That was a strawman question posed out of frustration, but the underlying question remains clear.

Why the fuck are we (the sane people in the country) slowly ceding way to them (the crazy fucks who want to kill for their way of life)?  The anti-choice people keep parroting it’s about life and every life counts, but this is bullshit because obviously, a grown woman’s life does not count.  NPR had on an anti-choice surgeon (retired, male) today, and he said the killing of a life whether in the womb or not is deplorable.  I had to turn off the radio because the whole premise of the discussion was wrong.

I’m so very tired of this.  I am tired of men using their religion to bludgeon women over the head.  I am tired of my body being considered nothing more than a vessel or a container, whether it’s for their sperm or for their embryos.    Even so-called enlightened guys seem to want to quantify who deserves to have an abortion and who doesn’t.  None of these men will ever know what it’s like to be in the position of being pregnant and not wanting to have the child, for whatever reason.

In addition, what about the kids who are already born and are in dire straits?  Why aren’t the anti-choice people doing anything to help out those kids?  To me, it is the utmost hypocritical to talk about the sanctity of life with such hatred in one’s heart for anyone who’s already living.

So.  The terrorists have won.  They got the clinic shut down, and other anti-choice nuts will be emboldened by this victory.  We have not seen the last of anti-choice activists acting violently, and such is the current climate of our society that I don’t see Americans in general really giving a damn.

I would like to tap into my anger, but I can’t find it right now.  All I can do is despair.

With that in mind, let’s turn to the murder of Dr. Tiller.  Before it happened, I was tangentially aware of the pro-choice movement (and, more accurately, the anti-choice movement as well).  How can you not be if you grow up in this country?  I was pro-choice by default, but I never really thought about it.  Like marriage, having children is a foreign subject to me, and quite frankly (FREE AL FRANKEN!  Oh, sorry), abortion wasn’t on my list of important issues.

That changed in a heartbeat.

After Dr. Tiller was murdered, I grieved for two days.  Then, I asked myself, “Why am I grieving so much for a man I never knew?”  Only after reading more about him did I realize just how truly heroic he was.  I don’t use that term lightly, but he saved so many women’s lives.  He treated them with compassion, dignity, and respect.  He had a button that said, “trust women”.

I came to realize that this issue of abortion did mean something to me, on a personal level that is.  On the boards I read, many of the debates over abortion have been when does personhood start.  At Balloon Juice, one man insisted that he wasn’t a misogynist, but that women should have to deal with the “consequences” of getting pregnant.  He said consequences, but I heard punishment.  He goes on to say it’s about peoplehood and blah-di-blah-blah.

That’s when the full realization hit me.  I matter.  What the fuck, Minna?  Huh?  Yeah, I know, sounds moonbatty, but have a listen.

Here is what I understand to be the anti-choice reasoning.  A few cells swimming in my uterus constitute a person.  This person has equal right to life that I do.  Therefore, abortion is wrong.  Oddly enough, some people will add, except in the case of rape, incest, and if they’re feeling especially generous, if the mental health of the person was at risk.  Why is this odd to me?  Because, if a life is a life is a life, then why make those exceptions?  Could it be because the life of the woman is more important in those cases?  If so, then why not in any case?  Ah, because the stupid sluts who have indiscriminate sex must suffer for their sins.

What, no?  That’s not it?  Then what is it?

Crickets.

Deafening silence.

The other thing I noticed is that most of the leaders of the anti-choice movement are men.  I’d like to give a big WTF for that one.  Men.  Who will never be in the position of having to choose to abort or to carry out a pregnancy are leading the charge to overturn Roe V. Wade (which, by the way, guys, not gonna happen).  Well, never say that men don’t have balls.   They are strident in their opposition to something that will never happen to them, and I think that’s part of the problem.

See, we women, we give life, and, yes, we can take away the potential of it as well.  Men can’t do this.  At all.  The next best thing is being able to control women in this capacity, and I think this lies at the heart of the issue for many men who are anti-choice.  If you read the newest asshole conservative at the NYT, he thinks Roe V. Wade was a power grab.  I’ve read his stuff, and he really is icked out by women who are unabashedly sexual.  Women should know their place, do as they are told, and not enjoy sex.  He really is rooted in the madonna/whore syndrome, which is doubly depressing as he is considered one of the bright young Serious writers of the right.  Anyway, I find this thread of thought very pervasive in anti-choice rhetoric.

Sluts shouldn’t enjoy sex.  If they do, they should be punished.

So.  Anyway.  Ahem.  Back on track.  The whole debate about personhood is another one of smoke and mirrors to me.  See, this is where I had my epiphany.  I don’t care if the zygote or fetus is a person or not–my life matters more because I am a viable human being.  So.  There is the uncomfortable truth that I have never said out loud before.  I matter more to me than does a fetus.  I quickly extrapolated it to, “The woman’s life always matters more to me than the fetus she is carrying.”

It blew my fucking mind.  Why?  Because then, so many of the arguments against abortion melt away.  I feel that the pro-choice movement has bowed down to the anti-choice side for far too long (much like Dems still cower and whimper before the GOP, even though WE FUCKING WON).  We try to placate and apologize and minimize.

Yes, yes, abortion is bad.  Yes, yes, no woman ever wants to get one.  Yes, yes, the goal is zero abortions.  Yes, yes, a woman should think long and hard about it and then be burdened with guilt ever after.  Yes, yes.  A woman is an evil slut if she gets pregnant outside of marriage (except, remember, in cases of rape and incest) and deserves to be punished, oh, I mean, bear the consequences.

No more.  I will repeat again:  I matter.  My life matters.  My body matters.  What happens to my body matters.  As such, I and I alone get to decide what happens to my body and my life.

I’m really making this crystal clear before I go on because the anti-choice movement has chipped away at abortion rights ever since Roe V. Wade was passed into law.  There has always been abortions.  Before they were legal, they were done in the back alleys by unqualified hacks.  Read this account from Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings and Washington Monthly and try not to wince.  There will always be women who get abortions.  This is a fact.  As long as there are women who are in situations where having a child is untolerable, there will be abortions.

Since this is running long, I do not want to get into the side issues of caring about the kids after they are born and such.  I want to re-focus on my core statement which is this.

A woman’s life supersedes the life of the life of the fetus inside her.  A woman’s right to choose what to do with her body, her womb, her life supersedes the right of other people to tell her what the fuck she should do with any or all of the above.  Abortion is a fact of life.  It is not a good fact nor a bad fact, but simply a fact.  Some women feel wretched about having them, and some women feel relieved.  Many feel both or neither and a whole range of emotions in between.  The idea that women have to be wracked with guilt over an abortion is another way to bludgeon us over the head in order to make us less likely to talk about having them and what we really think about abortions.

Sorry.  That wasn’t as focused as I wanted it to be.

I matter more than the life of a fetus inside me.  I am not a brood mare or a slut who should be shackled with a child for the rest of my life because a condom broke or I had unprotected sex.  I am not a vessel for a fertilized egg, and I am not ‘the body’ containing the fetus.

I am me.  I am a person.  A living, breathing person who matters.   This is the message that the pro-choice side has to promote when the anti-choice side talks about the right to life.  A woman has the right to her own life.

So, just for this post, I am giving in to the baser side of me.  I need to vent.

Dear Religious Right,

Listen up.  For far too long you have gotten to choose how to frame the debate around abortion, gay rights, and other things which, quite frankly, are none of your damn business.  I am not talking about Christians in general here, but the wingnutters who are the extremists to the right.  I am not pretending that you are anything more than what you really are–domestic terrorists.  If you had brown skin instead of pale, pasty white skin, you would be known as a terrorist cell.  

I did not know that the last doctor murder was while Clinton was president.  In fact, there were none during the Bush years, despite the fact that abortions rose during Bush’s reign as Decider-in-Chief.  By the way, per that article I just linked, here’s a little fun fact for ya.  Abortions were at 24-year low when W. took office.  Gee, who was prez before him?  Why, one Bill Clinton.  Anyway, as the right gets out of political power, it appears that the batshitcrazyinsane portion of their party feels hopeless and helpless and shoots people to feel better about themselves.  They don’t give a shit that it’s the Dem presidents who actually do things to improve conditions so less abortions are obtained, because really, who needs facts to get in the way of a good hard-on for hate?  

Let me interject with two points.  One, fuck the false equivalency.  I am tired of the right saying, “But, but, but you have crazies on the left, too!”  Damn right we do.  You know the difference, though?  Our crazies don’t go out and fucking kill people with whom they disagree in order to get the opposition to comply with their wishes.  You know why?  Because that’s fucking terrorism.  Most of the lefty loonies smoke pot and wander nekkid through the meadow, all the better to commune with the Goddess of Life.  They don’t pick up an pistol or a revolver or an AK-47 and blow away people in righteous indignation.  So, fuck the false equivalency.  Your loonies are far more despicable than are ours. 

Second point of interjection:  Fuck Sully and Frank Schaeffer and their moral superiority/squeamishness.  While they both condemn the murder of Dr. Tiller and are pro-choice–it’s only to a point.  Both of them are opposed to late-term abortion for moral reasons.  Here is Sully:

“ I want to reiterate my personal moral opposition to legal late term abortions. I understand the awful tragedies and complexities involved. I know too that most of these children would die soon anyway – or be subject to grueling operations with many risks. I just find the ending of human life to be something we avoid as much as we possibly can. And we need to find many more ways to facilitate contraception, the morning-after pill, and adoption to make these tragedies much rarer than they are. ”

 
Do you see what he did there?  He acknowledged that there may be great problems with letting these pregnancies continue (though he did not acknowledege that many times, the woman’s life is in danger), but hey, we’ll just, you know, get the morning-after pill and better education because…because what?  How in hell will the morning-after pill help a woman who is going to die from her pregnancy if the fetus is not aborted?  

His maddening logic (if you can call it that) is one reason I no longer read him.  The boys over at Balloon Juice are enthralled with him, but I find that he’s much too conservative for me.  And, he’s going to be on Olbermann tonight, damn it.  He was an ass on Maher, and I don’t expect any differently from him on Olbermann.  Let’s face it.  He’s a privileged white guy who, if he were not gay, would never have questioned being a conservative or the conservative party.  He is against universal healthcare because of the Brit system, and he is against progressive taxes.  

At any rate, I find his reasoning above specious, but he is obviously very comfortable hanging out in moral superiority.  Next, is Mr. Schaeffer, who used to be a rightwingnut and now is a kinder, gentler, centrist.  He apologizes for his role in the Tiller murder, which is commendable.  However, he slips in the following paragraph, which incensed me;

“ But the reason this issue will never go away is that the Roe ruling was an over broad court decision that makes abortion legal even in the last weeks of pregnancy. Take away the pictures of all those dead late term fetuses and everything changes emotionally. Democracy and civil debate is messy but if abortion had been argued state-by-state abortion would be legal in almost all our states today and probably the laws would be written more like those of Europe, where late-term abortions (of the kind Dr. Tiller specialized in performing) are illegal and/or highly discouraged.”

 
See what he did there?  Oh, if we didn’t have the kind of abortions that Dr. Tiller provided, then he wouldn’t be dead because the right is so reasonable on other kinds of abortions.  Yeah, right.  Oh, if only they were illegal and/or highly discouraged, these late-term abortions.  You know what?  They are highly discouraged, and functionally illegal in many states.  

I was told, on Washington Monthly, by a troll that I was “naive” if I believed that Dr. Tiller performed all of his late-term abortions to save the life of the mother.  As I wrote yesterday, he also performed them for women (or girls) who found out they were pregnant much too lat and for women (or girls) who had been raped and didn’t have earlier access to a doctor.  However, you read the story I just linked and tell me, does that sound like the woman just woke up and said, “Gee, I’m 27 weeks preggers and it’s ruining my figure.  I think I’ll go get me one of them quick ‘n easy abortions!  Just in time for bikini season.”

Look, assholes, I’m going to make this simple for you.  Anyone who gets an abortion in the third trimester is making a gut-wrenching, horrific decision that is one she would much, much, much rather not be making.  You think the right answer is to FORCE her to have the baby so you can be easy in your morality?  Well, fuck you.

I’m about to get personal here.  I don’t want kids.  I never have, and I don’t think I ever will.  I also have a history of serious depression.  I have been suicidal, and it’s only because of supreme inertia (thanks to said depression) that I have not offed myself.  So.  Let’s say I were to get pregnant when I was in one of my depressive abysses, and I didn’t realize it for some reason until the third trimester.  I am very erratic in menstruating, so it’s possible.  Moral men like Sully and Frank Schaeffer (and, indeed, many men who consider themselves feminists) would have me have the baby because of the potential of said baby.

Now, I’ve never been pregnant, but I have heard from pregnant women that your body is not your own when you are pregnant.  There is another being inside that takes over.  Men such as O’Reilly sneer at the idea that a woman might have an abortion because she’s “depressed” or a little blue, but as control is a very big thing with me, I would go slowly out of my mind if I had something inside of me that I didn’t want, and I was forced to carry it to term.  Then, I would most likely kill myself and the baby, anyway.

You want to know why I am not a parent?  One big reason is because I know I am capable of abusing a child.  Well, the biggest reason is because I don’t want them, but the capacity to inflict great pain on a smaller being is another reason.  I am not comfortable stating this, but I know it to be true.  So.  These men would force me to have the child because of their moral squeamishness at abortion, and then what?  Well, there is no life after birth, is there?  Because, as I said, Sully is not for universal healthcare, and we have some of the shittiest child death rates in the world.

Plus, I can’t get over the fact that most of these men just shrug at the idea of a woman dying in childbirth.  People, it’s real.  It happens.  So why doesn’t the mother’s life count as much as the fetus’s?  Oh, and if the mother dies, the baby will most likely die, too.  If not, often times, it lives in excruciating pain for a few days or weeks or months and dies, anyway.  In addition, why then, do these very same people not give a shit once the baby is born?  Most rightwingnutters (Christian in name only) don’t believe in social safety nets or anything like that.  

So.  We have come full circle to my point of framing the debate.  The pro-life people have called us pro-abortion for years and have called us murderers, baby-killers and much worse.  They demand to be called pro-life, but from the comments I’ve seen concerning Dr. Tiller’s murder, they have no right to the label.  Well, ok, some of the more sane ones do, but I’m referring to the hardcore ones who don’t see anything wrong with gunning down a doctor in church.

So.  From hence on, I will call them one of the following:  

Anti-choice.  Because they are.

Anti-abortion.  Because they are.

Pro-birth.  Because they don’t give a shit what happens afterwards.

Pro-forced-birth.  Because, really, what is the antithesis of choice?

In addition, I would like to say that it’s pretty disturbing to listen to rightwingnuts talk about a woman being punished for not keeping her legs shut.  Seriously.  The way they talk ominously about slutty, out-of-control women who should just not have sex until they are ready to have children (saw that one on Balloon Juice today) makes me ill.  Not only are they grossly oversimplifying the complex issue of abortion, they are viewing children as a punishment for perceived sins.  Nice.

This started as on open letter, but now I’m ending with a warning.  This shit has got to stop.  Enough is enough with your misogynistic crap.  I am so fucking tired of your sense of religious righteousness.  I am awakening and emerging from the cocoon in which I’ve been hiding for the last fifteen years.  I am a staunch pacifist, but I am an angry one.  You need to be very afraid.  I will do what it takes, short of violence, to put an end to this culture war once and for all.

Now, Obama has actually made his pick, and it’s Sonia Sotomayor.  Predictably, the reaction on the right has been, “She’s an affirmative action pick!  She’s an activist judge!”  The more egregious quotes are of the, “here’s hoping she can get past her gender, racial, class issues and judge impartially” variety.  The chief idiot of the global climate change deniers, Senator James Inhofe, says that he hopes she can get past the gender, racial thing.  So do other Republicans.  Because, as we know, white men are never influenced by their race or gender, oh no.  Or their political ideologies–nope nope.  In fact, for any conservative who wants to natter on the objectivity of the Supreme Court, I have one thing to say to you, “Gore v. Bush!”  Suck on that.  That ruling was so flawed, even the SCOTUS said, “Hey, man, don’t base any future court rulings on this decision.”  

A commenter at Balloon Juice asked rather plaintively what Sonia Sotomayor would have to do to be considered legitimate.  In the eyes of the GOP?  Nothing.  There is no way they would consider her legitimate–oh, unless she was GOP presidentially-approved.  In the mind of the Southern old, crotchety white men party, there is nothing a person of color or a woman or a queer or someone who is disabled or an atheist or, really, anybody other than their narrow definition of pure ‘Publican base can do to be legitimate, unless the member of said discounted classes renounce their true selves and start spewing the Republican line.  See, Malkin, Michelle for a good example of that.  See, Keyes, Alan as well.   That is why I never considered being a Republican, not for a minute.  I don’t hate myself that much.

By the way, John fucking Yoo wrote an op-ed railing against Sonia Sotomayor.  Really, John?  Mr. Torture Memos who says the president has the right to crush a child’s testicles if need be?  Who clerked for and praised Clarence Thomas for his, wait for it, empathy?  So did Republican Congress people, just FYI.  See, that’s another thing that pissed me off.  All the shit the right is saying now contradicts the shit they said when it was their people they wanted to set into place, like Alberto Gonzalez.  

That is neither here nor there.  What is here or there is that Sonia Sotomayor will most likely be confirmed after a long, drawn-out battle.  There really is very little for the Republicans to do other than to fillibuster her, and that would be detrimental to their already-tarnished image.   However, that is not going to stop them.  The epitome of their stupidity is this guy (not going to link to it.  Gonna link to a link making fun of it, and then you can click on the actual link if you like.  Read the section called, Pronunciation Guide).  He doesn’t want to pronounce her last name the way she pronounces it because it’s so dang foreign to him.  They should have to assimilate to us.  And what’s his name?  Mark Krikorian.  Sounds pretty damn foreign to me.  I’m going to call him Mark Smith from now on.  

Newt is railing against Judge Sotomayor.  Rush is railing against her.  The new meme is that she is a reverse racist because she said this:

“ I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life. ”

Now, taking out of context, I can see how there might be a barely perceptible hint of racial…ok, no, I can’t.  However, I can see how someone who is of the majority can see how this looks like reverse racism.  Rush used this one quote to go on a rant about how Judge Sotomayor is such a racist.  The thing is, she was giving a speech on being a Latina judge.  The text for the whole speech is here.    She was not saying that a Latina is smarter or better than a white man.   She is saying that someone’s background shapes how she sees the world.  This is only breaking news if you’ve never had to question your background as you view the world.  Here are two breakdowns of this meme and why it is so fucking wrong.  More yet, it’s stupid for the right to use this as their attacking point because they are already losing the votes of people who are, quite frankly, not old, white, rich and super-religious.  

I could list her resume and point out all the reasons that she is an exceptional woman.  It doesn’t matter to the GOP (and to some of the Dems, I dare say.  Yes, bitter PUMAs, I’m looking at you).  That is why I am trying not to get too upset over the squawkers–they’re dying out.  There will always be racism and intolerance and sexism and homophobia (I bet the next meme will be that she’s a closet lesbian), but they are all slowly ebbing away.

The sad thing is that with all this focus on her identity, there is very little real vetting about her decisions.  The SCOTUS blog helps remedy that a bit by going over some of her legal opinions.  The other thing that hasn’t got much play is the fact that she will be the sixth Catholic on the Supreme Court.  That is the one detail about her that bothers me.  I would love to see a person with no religious affiliation on the SCOTUS, but I think we will have an openly queer judge before an atheistic or agnostic one.

In the end, though, I am going to wait and see.  I will read up more on her and decide for myself whether or not she will be a good–oh, wait.  One more interesting factor at play here.  She’s a very warm person.  When I saw her talk, I immediately noticed a vibrancy around her.  I think it’s the New Yorker in her.  It’s going to be interesting to see how she shakes up the Supreme Court.  

In the end, my discouragement is based on the fact that white male privilege is still hanging on in American society.   The very idea that a Latina might be as competent if not more so than a white male shouldn’t cause such an outrage.  The fact that it does disappoints me and tells me that we still have so much work to do on these issues.  The people on the right look at Sonia Sotomayor and think the only reason she’s been picked is because of her race (it was widely assumed that the next SCOTUS would be female, so we’ve made some headway on that issue).   Hopefully, it’s just one more reason the GOP will be in the wilderness for some time to come.

Update:  After re-reading this entry, I realized that I was even more disjointed than I had thought.  I added a segue paragraph in the middle.

This is a continuation of the last post.   There is something I’ve noticed about being female that has really come to fruition with the advent of the inter-webs.  See, society doesn’t like uppity women.  I can get into a whole diatribe about how the pressure for women to look like twelve-year old boys is a way to keep women from banding together and dismantling the patriarchy which has given us the Wall Street fiasco and Mike Doogan outing AKM.

Focus, Minna, focus.  Ok.  Society doesn’t like uppity women.  That was my thesis, and I am going to support it in a totally subjective, personal way.  If you want to throw facts at me, go ahead.  I will then be forced to throw facts back at you, and I really don’t want to have to do that.  So, let’s accept the premise that this blog entry is not empirical, but that it can be verified to a certain extent if need be.  Ok?  Ok!

Anyway, this isn’t just about uppity women; this is about men and entitlement.  Especially older white men.  Which, if you’ve noticed, Mike Doogan is.  As I said in my last post, Gryphen from The Immoral Minority (I don’t want to over-link so just re-read the last post) pretty much hit the nail on the head when he said that Doogan was jealous of AKM because she had achieved a world-wide fame as a writer that he could only dream about while deep in REM sleep.  Apparently, he was a journalist once upon a time, and he is now a mystery writer (that’s one mystery writer whom I will never read), and he is worried about the disappearance of traditional media with the emergence of blogs.

Gryphen’s entry is excellent (go read it already), but it’s incomplete.   See, what he doesn’t address is the fact that Doogan, as an older, white male who has presumably never known what it’s like to feel less than, even though he’s a Democrat in Alaska.  He is like the AIG execs in that he operates on a different level of reality than do I.  I have blogged about this several times, but it’s worth reiterating.  I have never expected to be treated as an equal.  I have been fully aware since my early twenties that for many reasons, I am considered less than.  Therefore, I have to do twice as well to be  considered half as good–kind of like our new prez.

Someone like Doogan expects to be treated as an equal.  From what I’ve read by him and of him, he expects to be treated deferentially.  He has a sense of entitlement that many white men, especially those of his generation have.  The fact that some whippersnapper would use his own words to demonstrate his deficiencies enraged him beyond belief.  He became obsessed with ferreting out the person known as AKM.

Now, here is where the other side of the equation enters the picture.  If men consider themselves to be the standard by which all is to be measured, then to be challenged by a mere woman has to be even more galling.  Now, Doogan may not have known that AKM was a woman when he first started stalking her, but I would hazard a guess that he thought she was a woman all along.

My tai chi teacher told me that female bloggers can expect to be harrassed, and I have found that to be true.  My own little experience with it is that I posted a review I had written years ago of a movie containing my favorite actor, Alan Rickman.  It was a thousand-word entry explaining what I liked and didn’t like about the film.  I used approximately two hundred of those words to applaud equal opportunity fully-frontal nakedness.  I write it that way because I do not want to start the skirmish all over again.  Anyway, I simply said that one thing I liked about British films is that they didn’t shy away from showing a penis when the situation warranted.

Innocuous, right?  No.  This review is what garnered me my first comment by someone I didn’t know.  This guy went off about how there have been sooo many penii (yes, not a word, but still funny) in mainstream media in the past year.  He went on to say that if I were really concerned about the issue, I should be concerned about the overexposure of the penii (ha!).  He then added that since I was a woman, I probably didn’t care since women only cared about equality when it suited them.

I posted his comment and replied.  Friends jumped in with their two cents’ worth.  That was that, I thought.  A few weeks later, I got a post from another guy (I have to approve the first comment by someone before it gets posted to my blog) who went off the rails on the evils of teh vagina and how we were demon spawn (basically).  He demanded, too, that women help out men.  I didn’t post his comment because he was fucking crazy.  First guy posted again, twice, and I let it go at that.

It bothered me that these guys wanted to dictate what I can and can’t write about and that they wanted to excoriate all women on my blog.  They demanded that I help out the poor men with their overexposed penii (not my agenda in the first place) and claimed that I was selfish if I didn’t want to help them with their causes.

See what happened there?  It’s the same thing that happened over Prop. 8.  Many LGBT folk were furious with blacks for voting for Prop. 8, but I highly doubt that these same LGBT folk (white men for the most part) have done anything to help black people.  In addition, as I have mentioned ad nauseam, “my people” (Asians) were the group to vote against Prop. 8 in the highest numbers, but no one mentioned that.

People in the minority are expected to cater to the whims of the majority.  In the case of the blogosphere, women are the minority–especially uppity women.  In the political arena, the overwhelming number of political blogs are run by men.  As for sex, well, women are still not supposed to talk or write about it, apparently.   So, when a woman dares to enter into the sacred male arenas, they must be punished.  When a woman like AKM rises to such lofty heights, she has to be taken down.

One of the male bloggers who did an entry about AKM  (again, I can’t remember which one) touched on the fact that females are more conscious of the dangers associated with blogging under their own names.  Celtic Diva can certainly attest to what happens to female bloggers who dare to get uppity.  So can Amanda Terkel from Think Progress.  I know O’Reilly has ambushed other people, but there is something particularly sick about him sending his henchmen to follow her for two hours across state lines in response to her calling him out on his remarks on rape victims.

Sexism is still rampant in certain aspects of our society, and the internet enables this virulent strain to flourish.  It’s easy to let your frustrations out on a female blogger because, ironically, you can post anonymously.  All the shit that makes a man fear women can be focused on one particular female blogger.  She becomes a stand-in for all the women he thinks have fucked him over.  It’s much easier to cyber-stalk than to really stalk.   Of course, all it takes is one person posting the blogger’s personal info on the ‘net, and it’s a hop, skip, jump from cyber-stalking to real-life stalking.  This is just one of the reasons why it’s safer for a woman to blog with a pseudonym or anonymous than to use her own name.

Oh, and I think if women were to rule the world, we’d be just as fucked because it’s the system that needs to be changed.  For a woman to make it to a position of power, she has to be twice as corrupt, venal, and abhorrent as any man.  Just look at Sarah Palin.

In conclusion of this second rambling entry, I leave you with my favorite Margaret Cho video.  I have posted it before, but it is pertinent to today’s topic.  Start about five minutes in.

P.S.  The picture is of Ida Tarbell, our foremother in muckraking.