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Yes, Skeevy Cycler, That was Me who Called you an Asshole in the Park Today

25 Mar

So there I was blissfully* running during the late March weather event when, after topping the Prospect Park Hill (which I maintain is much harder than Cat Hill that all the Central Park runners are always griping about), I heard two men behind me, rapidly approaching.  I figured they must be on bikes.  I figured correctly.  Given that it was windy, and they were on the move, some of what they were saying was a little garbled but what I heard was something along the lines of

…blah, blah, blah…I would love that ass for Christmas…blah, blah, blah…so hot.

Obviously, I was annoyed.  Also, my ass happened to be the only ass in their line of vision and it was, at that moment, safely nestled inside a pair of CW-X compression pants.**   Anyway, it was only for a split second that I thought they might have been addressing their comments my way.  More than likely, they were just talking bullshit (albeit offensive bullshit) and my presence was completely coincidental.  Either way, I wasn’t planning on saying  anything at all and instead had resigned myself to just rolling my eyes aggressively and angrily mumbling to myself when I saw who one of the cyclers was.  It was the Skeezy Cycler.  I have intended to write about this guy forever because he has been pissing me off for years, literally.  I bet other women who make a habit of running in Prospect Park know who I am talking about.  He rides around with big groups of other cyclers, wears a red and black tri-suit, has longish brown-grey hair and looks to me like he might be Argentinian, of the Italian variety.  Skeezy Cycler checks out nearly every female runner he sees looping the park, multiple times if you are out there long enough and he happens to lap you.  He has been doing this to me for-fucking-ever and I have been holding a grudge.  Well, when I noticed that one of the dudes was none other than Skeezy Cycler (which I knew because he obviously checked me out for the millionth time), I literally could not help myself.  My mouth went off before I knew what was happening and I said, somewhat loudly,

You guys are assholes.

They then slowed down their bikes, looked over at me and exchanged a perplexed

What did she just say? Did you hear that?

and then, thankfully, rode on.  I was not really up for an altercation right then seeing as how it was snowing and I was cold, but I would have finished what I started had it been necessary.  Anyway, once it became clear they weren’t coming back I came to the realization that the man who had secretly been my nemesis for like half a decade, was now actually my real life nemesis, like, out in the open.  And he would know it was me in the future because I, like him, am hard to miss.  I am not distinguished by my leering but, instead, by the hair that goes down to my ass. Not common.  So I thought to myself why not go stealth and get a hair cut?  But then I was like, why let the Skeezy Cycler win?  Don’t cut your hair to hide from the likes of him.  But then I thought, yeah but what if he calls me a bitch next time he sees me.  Or, worse yet, what if he spits on my when he passes me by!  This might seem an outlandish fear except that it has happened to me before.  Not by him but still. Once you’ve been spit on (twice, in my case, and by the same guy) you are never really the same.  Anyway, ultimately I decided, no, maybe he would be an adult about it and ride up alongside me and say, kindly,

Was that you who called me an asshole the other day?

And then I would say the following:

Yes, it was me who called you an asshole the other day and here’s why.  I have been seeing you for years around the park and I have noticed that you skeezily check out most female runners as you ride by and you know what?  That is not flattering.  That is rude.  We are not out here to impress you.  We are out here clearing our minds, getting in shape, training for a race.  We are working hard on our bodies to feel good and to look good, mostly for ourselves but also for our partners.  Maybe you think it is harmless what you are doing, over and over again, but let me tell you it isn’t.  Some women might not notice, but for others of us, it pisses is off and insults us and makes us feel slightly less human.  We deal with it out on the streets all day, every day, so let us have the park as a zone of safety.  So yes, that was me that called you an asshole and I meant it, I just feel a little bad I caught your buddy in the crossfire.  So, next time you see me, you can wave, or say “hey Rebekah” or “nice pace” or whatever encouraging comment you come up with and I will wave back and return the favor, but for crying out loud stop making me refer to you in my non-running life as the Skeezy Cycler.  Stop making me dread seeing you.  In short, stop being such a dick.  For crying out loud, stop staring.  Staring is rude.

*Actually, it was hailing so not-so-blissfully

**That picture is provided so you can understand why I might have felt slightly uncomfortable about their comments. Furthermore, at this time I would like to point out that I bought my pair of these pants on sale and they were worth every penny.  I would even pay full price for them!  To be honest, I used look sideways at people who wore them but they are oh so awesome for cold weather running.

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At which point I am (not) surprised that we will continue to not ban assault weapons

21 Mar

Sometimes I am left wondering about the overall sanity of this country.

I just read an article in The New York Times about the ongoing attempts of California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is pretty much my hero, to reinstate the ban on assault weapons that W. let expire in 2004.  Her journey, according to the article, ended on Monday when she stormed from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office after he informed her that the ban would not be included in a gun-regulation measure that is to hit the Senate floor in April.  The conversation surrounding this ban catapulted into mainstream conversation after the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut this past December that left 20 young kids dead along with 6 staff members as well as the killer, Adam Lanza.  You can watch a rather moving report about recent information that was released concerning the mass shooting here, presented by Rachel Maddow.  Beware.  This is not happy-making.

Anyway, the point of all this is that this bill on assault weapons had basically no chance of passing.  None whatsoever.  Despite support by both President Obama and Vice President Biden.  Honestly, I just don’t understand what the big deal is.  Banning assault rifles does not mean people can’t hunt.  It does not mean people can’t protect themselves and their families.  It does not mean people can’t collect some of the other hundreds (thousands?) or kinds of available weaponry.  It simply means that people won’t be able to legally purchase a gun that would then allow them to walk into an elementary school (or a movie theater, or a mall, or a high school) and kill dozens of people in mere minutes.  I mean, to me, and maybe I am just being crazy here, that doesn’t seem like such a big thing to give up.  Like, at all.  So here are a couple of arguments (okay, maybe just the same argument) that I read a lot and hear a lot and that I think are stupid.  So I am going to talk about them.

Argument:  It’s our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Answer:  Okay, so, the first thing is, and I know we have all heard this a kajillion times and so probably I am wasting my breath, but when that was initially written into the Constitution I am pretty sure that “arms” basically ended at things like muskets, and cannons, and bayonets, and the flintlock pistol (which I had never heard of but then I Googled “weapons used during the American Revolution” and there it was).  People used to fight in formation, for crying out loud.  So, back then when it was written, it made sense, given the recent history, to write a provision into the Constitution to address the legitimate concern of the people that they might have to protect themselves from their own government and also that they actually stood a chance of winning.  But now, here in 2013, even if there was a legitimate concern that we would have to protect ourselves from our own government, we would most certainly lose.  Because you know what? Even with all the assault rifles we still would not be as well trained, or as well armed, as the United States military.  In 2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States spent $711 billion, or 4.7% of GDP, on defense.  A lot of that money was spent on, you got it, weaponry.  So, honestly, if People with Unnecessary Guns were to decide that they were going to stand up to the United States government in an attempt to topple it or whatever the fuck, those People with Unnecessary Guns would not stand a snowball’s chance in hell.  They would be blown to smithereens, and a Bushmaster .223 would do nothing to save them.

Argument:  It’s our Second Amendment right to have guns!

Answer:  I know, I already said that.  I know that’s not the only argument (it can’t be, right?!) but it seems to be the only one I ever hear).  But, I have another response!  How about people’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  I am pretty sure that more often than not you get none of those things after you have been shot in the head multiple times.  I just don’t understand how this argument that people have a right to guns seems to always trump the argument that people have the right to actually live.  Because, last time I checked, you do need to actually be alive to even be able to appreciate your right to have guns, am I right?  It just seems like when someone who is unbalanced, or vengeful, or whatever gets some crazy scary, fast-shooting, so many bullets gun and goes into some venue full of people and shoots them all, we hear from all these people who are all

“No!  But if someone had a gun then none of this ever would have happened!”

which is patently false because, most of the time, when people have guns in circumstances like these, they don’t use them because they are afraid of being identified as the killer, or shooting someone by accident, or maybe they are too busy protecting themselves or others using their bodies or whatever else to really think about it.  That’s why usually these things end in the killer killing himself, not being killed by a potential victim. Anyway, we also hear about how scary it is, and sad, and unnecessary.  What we don’t hear enough of is that, because people can get guns, powerful guns, with such ease and in such great quantity, other people, sometimes even children, are stripped of their right to life.  To me, life seems like the trump card.  The right to life should just win.

You want your Bushmaster?  Well, guess what?  I want my breath, and the use of my legs, and a full functioning brain.  Settle for a fucking handgun.

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Private Prison Companies and University Stadiums Should Not Mix

14 Mar

I have to start off by apologizing for my blatant plagiarism in this post.  I just spent the past 45 minutes trying to figure out how to install a plug-in to allow me to provide footnotes but apparently there is a difference between a WordPress site and a WordPress.com site and since I have the later there are no plug-ins available and I therefore am forced to either link articles or steal content.  So, either the articles have been linked, or else the information came straight from a document put out by the Seattle University School of Law and to find it just go to “Voices from Detention.”  So, please nobody sue me.

I know that maybe this is slightly old news, but I am going to weigh in on it anyway, nearly a month after I was initially pissed off by the small article I saw in The Times.  The issue is the decision by Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, to rename is football field GEO Group Stadium after a private prison corporation.  The CEO of GEO (ha!), Dr. George Zoley is an alumnus of Florida Atlantic University.  He secured the naming rights to this stadium through the largest charitable donation to the university in its history — a $6 million gift paid out over 12 years that the administration says will go to pay for athletic operations, scholarships, the stadium and “academic priorities,” whatever the hell that means.  Mary Jane Saunders, the president of the university, said that because the school doesn’t take any state money to run its athletic program, it is “important for us to use our naming rights to fund the stadium and fund scholarships.” Scholarships are all well and good but how about, um, promoting good ethics and not associating yourself with a corporation that has been investigated by the ACLU for human rights abuses?  Seems like dirty money to me.

I would first like to make the point that not only is GEO a private prison company with facilities all over the world, but it also runs a number of immigration detention centers.  One of those centers, the Northwest Detention Center located in Tacoma, Washington, is a 1,575-bed facility, making it one of the largest detention centers in the country.  By those working in United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it is known as a “COCO,” which stands for a contractor-owned/contractor-operated facility.  Which means, to me, that much like with companies such as Blackwater, there is limited government oversight and either limited ability, or limited desire, for the state to get involved in the day-to-day running of the operations or hold the companies that own these facilities to reasonable standards of treatment of detainees.  The ACLU, it seems, came to similar conclusions (albeit with less use of assumption and more use of fact).  In May 2007, the ACLU reported to the United Nations Special Rapporteur that the US “failed to promulgate binding minimum standards for the conditions of confinement for detained immigrants” and also that the US “failed to ensure that detention facilities comply with the nonbinding standards that exist.”  The ACLU went further to say that the management of immigration detention is “further marred by ineffective oversight, lack of accountability and lack of transparency.” (Italics mine.)

The running of these facilities as “COCOs” also means that this is a for-profit endeavor, indicating to me that the more detainees the center houses, the more money the center makes, and, furthermore, that if there is no oversight, then mistreatment and poor living conditions can go unchecked by any regulatory agency.  (I would imagine that not having enough beds, for example, would be cheaper than having enough beds and therefore more money!)  In fact, the Seattle University School of Law’s 65-page report, “Voices From Detention,” cited physical and physiological abuse of detainees at the Tacoma center.  One of the most oft-cited examples of poor treatment involved an outbreak of food-poisoning in 2007 that impacted 300 out of the then 1,000 detainees at the site resulting from food not cooked to the necessary temperature to kill bacteria.  Apparently thermometers are too expensive for GEO.

Here’s another thing.  According to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), since 2002 the US has  maintained the highest rate of incarceration in the entire world.  According to a report by the Bureau of Justice cited in the PRB report, the United States incarcerates 500 people per 100,000, a rate about 5 times that of other similar countries.  What is interesting, and perhaps most relevant here, is that the South incarcerates 552 per 100,000, whereas the West has a rate of 418, the Midwest 389, and the Northeast 296.  So here we are, naming a stadium after a prison company in the region with the highest incarceration rates within a country that locks up more people than any other in the world.  Doesn’t that seem a little off to you?  Doesn’t it seem like maybe we should have standards for these sorts of things?

I get it, the sports teams need money to continue paying for equipment, for the salaries of coaches and, hopefully, the scholarships of kids who otherwise might not be able to attend college.  But let’s look at it this way.  Education offers kids opportunity to go out in the world and make something of themselves.  Maybe they come from a family of college graduates, maybe they are the first one.  Maybe they come from a family of law-abiding citizens, or maybe they come from a family that has been affected by the legal system, be it due to their own misdeed or due to the increase in arrests of people for petty drug crimes and the blatant racism inherent in our criminal justice system.  Maybe this is their big break.  So what does it say when we link together our educational system, a system that offers opportunity, with the private-prison system, a system that strips people of opportunity, that forever links their name with some crime, be it serious or not.  What it says, to me, is that we in the United States have absolutely no shame.  When we are willing to take donations from, and worse still name highly visible structures after, an organization like GEO that makes its money off of the unnecessary suffering of individuals, the institutionalization of fear and racism, and obvious injustice associated with the privatization of the prison system, we have hit rock bottom.  Or else I hope we have.

I am appalled not only by GEO and what it does and how it runs its business, but by Mary Jane Saunders and Florida Atlantic University’s decision to take this gift.  Let’s hope that the move by the ACLU to obtain records on this deal goes through and that the organization can prove that Saunders and FAU knew about the activities of GEO before accepting this deal.  If it doesn’t get honored, then this country is even more fucked up than I thought because about 5 minutes spent researching GEO Group’s activities reveal some rather questionable information.  I would imagine FAU spent more than 5 minutes on this task and just relied on the apathy of the population of the United States, and its student body, to just grin and bear it.  Well, let’s hope FAU is wrong.  Let’s not allow the private-prison industry to buy access to our education system, the students of the United States, and of Florida Atlantic University, deserve much better.

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A Certain Word I’d Like to See Die a Quick and Public Death

5 Mar

As regular readers of my blog might have gleaned from my past three posts, I spent about a week in New Orleans visiting friends, doing thesis research, running a half marathon and running amok (totally didn’t know that’s how you spelled that word…learning!).  As a result, I had to switch around a few shifts both before and after to help not burden my coworkers or my financial situation.  One of the shifts I picked up on a trade was a Monday day.  It was a shift I worked for years and a shift that was, shall we say, not my favorite.  The main problem was that we have free wings on Mondays starting at 5pm (did you hear that?  Free wings!  Come one, come all!) and, to me, there is almost nothing more disgusting than chicken wings.  Well, maybe ribs.  Yea, ribs are more disgusting.  But really, anything on a bone that has to be gnawed off by whomever is eating it is really more than I can handle.  That is the reason, in fact, that I originally became a vegetarian.  When I was little I was never a huge fan of meat (well, except for my mom’s bolognese sauce, holy hell was that good).  I had a rather short-lived relationship with steak because, at age 8 or so, I was totally grossed out by the blood that pooled in that little moat around the outside of the cutting board that we had and simply couldn’t eat the stuff.  And then there was chicken.  And the gnawing.  Yea, so Monday’s are not my favorite.  I have to be in a room that smells like wings and then I have to pick up little pile of gnawed-upon bones off the bar because people are animals and seem unable to clean up after themselves.  Oh, and also, they eat the wings with their hands and then pick up their glasses to wash the food down without first wiping the grease off their hands and then the grease is smeared all over the glass and when I pick it up I get chicken yuck all over my hands and I want to hurl.

But I digress.  The point is, I picked up a Monday.  It was a very, very cold Monday.  Cold to the point that I was wearing my scarf and hat and dragged the space heater behind the bar with me so I could sit on it, figuring if my ass was warm the rest was soon to follow.  That, as it turned out, was faulty logic but live and learn, ya know?  Anyway, for the first two hours of the shift I was all by myself.  In the cold.  Sitting on the space heater.  I decided to entertain myself by watching CNN.  On this particular episode they had a few lawyers debating an upcoming death penalty case in Georgia involving a developmentally disabled man.  (Well, it’s no longer actually upcoming since this was over two weeks ago but at the time it was upcoming so we will just go with that.)  The basic issues of the case were as follows:

Warren Lee Hill was originally in jail for murdering his girlfriend and then, while in prison, beat another inmate to death with a 2×4 studded with nails.  How he got said 2×4 and said nails is really beyond me, but whatever.  Anyway, so as a result of the murder in prison he was sentenced to die by lethal injection.  Hill, however, has an IQ of 70 which puts him square within the range of someone considered to be mentally handicapped.  The Supreme Court, in the early aughts (2002?*), in Atkins v Virginia ruled it unconstitutional to execute someone with a significant mental handicap.  But, the Supreme Court left it up to individual states to designate what is considered a mental handicap and therefore who is legally able to be executed and who is not.  In Georgia, the state where this execution was to take place, an IQ of 70 places Hill in a class of people who cannot be executed in that state.  And yet, they were planning on executing him.  Totally fucked.  I mean, capital punishment is fucked anyway but this is just a class all in its own.

Anyway, the details of the case are not the most important part of what I am writing about here although it is absolutely rage-worthy so please, feel free to rage away.  I have been privately doing that for weeks now.  The particular segment that I was watching was one of those ones where you have the newscaster and then two expert people, usually with opposing opinions but not always, and they debate a number of topics.  So in this one, the newscaster was asking these two men, both lawyers, what they thought about this case.  The men both agreed that, given the law of the land, Hill should not be executed the following day (he wasn’t, for those who are curious) although one of the men seemed saddened by the law, all but saying he thinks that the law is crap and that this man who presumably cannot understand the difference between right and wrong and/or has limited impulse control and/or other possible things that I can’t think of right now because I actually know very little about the specifics of different types of mental handicaps and also I have a They Might Be Giants song stuck in my head and it is making me crazy and also sort of stupid, should actually be executed.  I did not like that man.  But the thing that made me dislike him even more than his rather, to put it lightly, tasteless opinion on the matter was his absolute insistence on using the word “retarded” over and over and over again.  It was a nationally broadcast news segment and this fucking guy was using a word that really makes me cringe.  A word that maybe when he was born in like 1882 was acceptable but which has become absolutely not acceptable in the century and a half since.  I was shocked.  And I wanted to write about it but I didn’t know what to say exactly other then to call my mom and be all,

Can you believe this fucking guy?  CNN is gonna get letters!  So, so many letters!

But really, I think what the problem is for me is that the R-word has become a slang that people just toss around.  Sometimes it is used to denote something positive, as in “that was ______ly fun,” but more often that not it is used as an insult.  What the word means to people now, and what it originally was intended to mean, have diverged significantly. It is no longer a descriptor of a condition, it is a way to other someone, to deride them, to question their intelligence.  I don’t think that when people normally throw it around they are actually thinking about mentally disabled people in a literal sense.  I don’t think they are aware, oftentimes, of the fact that before this word morphed into commonly used slang it actually meant something and that, as a result, it still means something.  Regardless of whether it has gotten miles away from its intended meaning it still has that meaning somewhere in its web, meaning that when it is used it is necessarily hurting someone, someone who does not deserve it, someone who is simply living his or her life. To use that word not only hurts its intended target, the one it is hurled at, but it also hurts those who, at some time, fell within its scope in simply a clinical way.  And that’s not fair.  It’s more than that, it is mean and thoughtless.

I don’t know if that made sense.  If not, then this article in the New York Times should make it a whole lot clearer.  It’s short.  And good.  You should read it.  But if you don’t read it, which would be a real shame, I will summarize it here.  Essentially, what author Lawrence Downes says is that words are mere “vessels for meaning,” and that the word “retarded,” has moved away from a clinical diagnosis and has become a “weapon of derision.” (I think maybe I just said that but it sounds way better coming from him.)  He then quoted an op/ed piece written by John Franklin Stephens, a man with Down syndrome from Virginia who is a “global messenger” for the Special Olympics.  Stephens wrote,

“The hardest thing about having an intellectual disability is the loneliness.  We are aware when all the rest of you stop and just look at us. We are aware when you look at us and just say, ‘unh huh,’ and then move on, talking to each other. You mean no harm, but you have no idea how alone we feel even when we are with you.  So, what’s wrong with ‘retard’?  I can only tell you what it means to me and people like me when we hear it. It means that the rest of you are excluding us from your group. We are something that is not like you and something that none of you would ever want to be. We are something outside the ‘in’ group. We are someone that is not your kind.”

I have read that passage about 12 times and every time it makes me teary eyed and gives me chills.  It is a perspective that I had never thought of before and one that is incredibly important.  This is a piece that, if I had the presence of mind to write down the name of the man on that CNN segment, I would have found it in full and sent it to him again, and again, and again until I was sure he had caved and read it.  I want this word to go the way of the N-word and the C-word.  I want this word to illicit anger and outrage when it is used, relatively unchecked, on a national news show.  And I want someone to give Stephens a lifetime supply of whatever is his favorite thing (I would want mangoes but that’s just me) for this amazing take-down of an Ann Coulter tweet:

Alien-Spawn Coulter on election night:  “I highly approve of Romney’s decision to be kind and gentle to the retard”

Stephens: After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me.  You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV.  I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash. Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor.

You can read his full letter here and you should because it is fucking awesome and maybe will make you, make all of us, take pause before using the R-word again.

*I just guessed 2002 because I was too lazy to search on the intertubes and I was right!  My super-smart law student friend told me so!

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Because the Opinion of Fortune 500 Companies Matters More than Yours

1 Mar

Sometimes people make me really crazy.  Right now I am sitting in a coffee shop in The Treme neighborhood of New Orleans, reading my morning news and (theoretically) working on my thesis.  Really, I am gchatting with my friend and it just took me about a half an hour to read one article on the New York Times website.  The article I read, which I am now going to write about a little bit, is called “Refusing to Arrive Late on Same-Sex Marriage” and can be read here.

So first of all, I am a little put off by the title of this article.  The full title of the article, if my knowledge of common English sayings serves me correctly, which I am 100% certain that it does, is “Refusing to Arrive Late to the Same-Sex Marriage Party.”  In the idealistic and naive part of my brain this sounds great!  It’s like, yea! A party celebrating marriage-equality??  I wouldn’t want to be late to that either!  In fact, I would probably be EARLY because, in fact, I have been outside the venue waiting for this party for years now.  But the thing is, this is an article about businesses and so the “party” that this article is alluding to is not the happiness surrounding the fact that this country is finally en route to doing the right goddamn thing already, but instead that supporting gay marriage is a good business decision.  And that’s what kind of gets me about this whole thing.  It gets me that businesses and corporations, while legally they are treated like people just like the rest of us, which is a whole other issue that is all kinds of fucked up, are only doing the right thing because they will potentially reap financial benefit from doing so.  Not simply because treating all people equally is right.  Not simply because who are they, or anyone really, to tell people how they can and cannot celebrate their love and who they can and cannot include on their health insurance policy and who they can and cannot allow to have visitation rights and make end-of life decisions.  They are supporting it because now, in 2013, they don’t see it as a feasible business model to systematically discriminate against a whole group of people.  Because finally businesses have come around to realize that gay people aren’t only some small little proportion of the population who live on an island and have absolutely no impact on the economy whatsoever.  Gay people have money!  And that means that now, finally, they have power.  Or, better yet, that the power that they have had forever, because they are people, has finally been recognized because they have some green.  Businesses can say something now partially because they can’t afford not to.

I know that maybe I am being unfair.  I know that it is a good thing that companies like Goldman Sachs (who was ahead of the curve and whose chairman and chief executive Lloyd Blankfein participated in a commercial in support of same-sex marriage 5 whole years ago! Wow!), Estee Lauder, Abercrombie, Nike, Google, etc. are coming out in support.  That they are lending economic credibility to the movement, that they are making the legalization of same-sex marriage almost (thankfully) unavoidable.  But the movement was credible before.  It is 2013 for crying out loud and it is only recently that we are seriously addressing a disgusting, systematic form of discrimination.  It is only recently that people with money, people that control huge companies, feel brave enough to step up and speak their mind in support of their friends, family members, co-workers, customers.  What took so long and why does it take money to make it happen?  What is wrong with us?

And this other thing.  At the end of the article there is a quote by the Family Research Council which, obviously, filed a brief against gay marriage and blamed a “a corporate environment dictated by wealthy, pro-homosexual activists” for the business movement towards support of the issue.  The Council then went on to applaud Exxon-Mobile, which is the world’s largest company by market capitalization, for not taking a stance on the issue.  The Council said,

“We applaud Exxon Mobil for refusing to cede the moral high ground to the special interests of the left.”

Cede the moral high ground?  Treating people as your equal is ceding the moral high ground?! Special interests?  Seriously, how does someone wake up in the morning, with a brain that thinks these things and actually believes them to be right, look himself in the mirror and think,

“yea, I am an awesome person who deserves to be here and treated with respect.”

Cuz to that person I want to be like,

“No, dude, you’re just a bigoted asshole. Go suck a lemon.”

This spokesman for the Family Research Council thinks the business reasons behind supporting marriage equality are “trivial” and that the companies signing the briefs were “motivated by political correctness, pure and simple.”  You know what?  Maybe they were motivated by “political correctness” and if that is the case, then yea, that sucks.  They should be motivated by “correctness,” plain and simple.  They should be motivated by the fact that we all deserve all the same rights and opportunities, regardless of religion, color, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, and everything else.

And one last thing and then I am done.  I am really sickened by the fact that people are willing to go on the record and say hateful things about other people and think that it is okay because there are a lot of people who agree with them.  That makes me sad.  It makes me sad for all of us that people go out into the world every day somehow believing that they are more entitled to being treated like a human being than somebody else.  I look forward to the day when marriage-equality is just the norm.  When we look back on that the way we look back on the women’s liberation movement and say, god, can you believe there was a time that marriage equality wasn’t a given?  I really do but until then, I am going to continue to be disappointed no, livid, that it is taking us this damn long.  And I am going to continue to be pissed off that, as with everything else, it takes a person, or corporation, with economic power speaking out to really get this done.  When will people just do things because it is the right thing, the only possible thing, rather than when it makes sense from an economic standpoint.

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Hey Random Dude Talking to Me at the Bar: My Body Language is Intentional

14 Feb

Over the lifetime of this blog I have written quite a number of times about being a girl out in the world.  I wrote about my feelings on street harassment here, and about this guy who spit on me a few times here, and then about this time when I got aggressively poked in the face by one of my customers and it was really scary here.  I have never, however, written about being a female customer in a bar and so that is what I am going to do right now.

I am sure that some of you, dear readers, are going to think that I am overreacting.  But what I talk about here is symptomatic of a larger issue which is that, as a woman, I feel as though some people think that I exist for public consumption.  That me being somewhere is an invitation for someone to enter my personal space.  That if I am alone in a bar or a cafe, that clearly I want someone to talk to me, that I am asking for someone to approach me, that I cannot possibly want to be sitting by myself.  But the thing is that I am a strong, independent woman and I don’t need a man by my side at all times to demonstrate that.  I don’t need a protective buffer.  My body language and facial expressions, which I know from experience speak loud and clear, should deter someone from approaching me at certain times unless, of course, they are so full of themselves and entitled to think that their presence in my world is necessarily a positive, and welcome, thing.  Okay.

Recently I realized that it is really difficult to go straight from spending all day in the study center of my school reading about urban agriculture to the drunken mess that is Thursday nights at work without being a little shell shocked and irritable.  So, the past few weeks I have left the study center 45 minutes early to head to a small bar near my work to unwind with a glass of wine and my beloved New Yorker.  I have no intentions of talking to anyone other the bartender and even she I only want to politely order from and then be safely on my way to “alone,” unwinding time.   Would it be nice if I could actually be alone?  Sure.  But sometimes we have to take what we can get.  The first week I did this the bar was pretty crowded and I was sitting alone somewhere in the middle of it, scarf wrapped around my shoulders (it was one of those super-cold nights and I just couldn’t shake the chill) nose deeply in magazine.  I was not looking up or around.  I was not making eye-contact with anyone other than whatever cartoon happened to be on the page I was reading and I am pretty certain those cartoons weren’t looking back at me.*  Anyway, some dude that I guess was sitting at the end of the bar closest to the door whom I hadn’t noticed because, as I just said, I was not looking around, walked by me and, as he passed said quietly

“You’re looking very elegant tonight.”

I muttered a quick ‘thank you,’ thinking it possible that I knew this man from my bar seeing as how I work only a few blocks away.  I looked up and caught his eye when he did one of those “look back over the shoulder to see if I had heard him and then wink in a super awkward way that makes me think he thinks he is way sexier than he is.”**  I definitely did not know him.  I tried my best to look uninterested and went back to reading.  (Also, in my mind a scarf wrapped around my shoulders over a teal sweatshirt is not exactly what I would call elegant but whatever, to each his own I suppose.)  When it came time to leave, I packed up all my things and could sense him looking at me from the end of the bar, awaiting the chance to talk to me again as I inevitably walked past him out the door.  I resolved myself to look straight ahead and avoid eye contact, in hopes that if he was a regular at this bar that he wouldn’t take a brief conversation now as an invitation for more conversation later.  He said a quick and quiet “good night” and I returned the pleasantry with the accompanying smile that I reserve for people that I feel I should be polite to but really would rather ignore.  I didn’t slow my steps and walked out into the chilly evening, en route to a night of work and forced socializing.

The following week I decided to give the same bar another shot figuring, hey, that guy wasn’t really that bad.  I mean, he wasn’t pushy or anything.  He didn’t know that I wasn’t interested in talking.  I walked into the bar and walked straight towards the end of the bar that was completely empty.  There was no one within 5 stools of me.  Perfect!  I opened my magazine, pulled my glass of wine and my water in close, and got to reading.  In the middle of the article I realized oh, hey, I just read like three paragraphs and retained absolutely none of it due to brain over-saturation so I directed my attention to the bookshelf directly in front of me and started looking at the items on the shelf.  I then looked back down at my magazine and just at that moment I felt a hand on my shoulder (why?!) and I heard someone say, quietly,

You look sad.

I looked over and there he was.  The same man from last week.  Maybe.  They all sort of look the same at some point.  Touching my shoulder.  I looked at him and said, in a way that I hoped came across as partially light-hearted but mostly bitchy and authoritative,

This is what I look like when I’m happy.

He looked a little shocked so I smiled a half smile and added

I am just decompressing after a long day before work.  I’m fine.

I looked back down at my magazine, hoping he would get the picture, but no.  He started asking me what I was decompressing from.  What I had been doing all day.  Where I had to be that I started work so late in the evening.  None of this conversation is particularly interesting so I will not recount it here but I do want to ask a few questions.  Why in the world was this guy talking to me?  Why was he touching my shoulder?  What about my posture, about my face in a magazine, about me staring directly in front of my seat making eye contact with no one was inviting of conversation?

Okay, so here’s the thing.  If I go to the bar by myself and I sit there, no reading, looking around, smiling at people then yes, sure, come over and say hi.  There would be something about my body language that would be inviting, that would say that maybe I felt like meeting people.  And this guy doesn’t know me.  He doesn’t know that I don’t go into a bar to have a glass of wine and meet someone new.  I go there to be alone because most of the time I am surrounded by people that I have to interact with and it’s nice to sometimes be surrounded by people all doing their own thing.  Sometimes its nice to be alone in public.  For those reasons I try to make it abundantly clear by my body language and behavior exactly what I want and what I want is to be left alone.  What I do not want is someone who does not know me at all to tell me what mood I look like I am in. That’s basically as bad as walking down the street and having a stranger say “smile princess” or “come on, sweetie, it’s not so bad.”  You know what?  Maybe it IS so bad.  Maybe I just got really bad news.  Maybe I have a tooth ache.  Maybe I am deep in thought.  Maybe I don’t want to be condescended to on my way to buy a box of tampons.  Maybe I am not here for your enjoyment.  Maybe I do not owe you a god damn thing, including a smile.  You didn’t do anything to deserve it.  What I also don’t want is someone who I don’t know touching me unless it is a warning touch like “you are about to get hit by a car.”

Basically what it boils down to is this:  I was alone.  I was not near anyone else.  I was minding my own business.  I tried to make it clear through my behavior that I wanted it that way.  That is why I sat as far away from everyone else as possible.  It wasn’t so we could have a private area to have an extra secret conversation, it was so that we wouldn’t have a conversation at all.  Take a hint.  Be aware.  My presence somewhere is not an invitation.  And just because I responded to your compliment with a terse “thank you” last week does not mean we are friends.

Also, to the guy the other night who tried to draw my while my friend was outside having a cigarette, no.  That’s weird.  Also, I took a peak at the other “drawings” on the page and I’m pretty sure they were all stick figures.  I’m pretty sure I could do that, too.

* I am thankful for this realization because if I thought they were looking back at me I would have a whole other post to write.  Mostly, it would be elucidating my experience in the psych ward.

** In reality he really wasn’t sexy at all.  I’m pretty sure he was about 25 years older than me.  Thanks but no thanks.

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Dog Shit Doesn’t Melt and Other Observations

11 Feb

I remember when I was little growing up in New Jersey whenever it snowed my best friend and I would each lie awake in bed, awaiting that early morning phone call and the tired voice of the class parent reporting

“No school today.”

We loved it so much, in fact, that to this day whenever there is a snow event we send each other text messages with the beloved phrase, partially for laughs and partially wishing that life were still like that, that a snow day meant a day free from responsibilities and open to sledding, snow angels and igloos. She is a teacher now so for her the snow day still holds a little magic and allure but for me, there is no such thing as a snow day. Just frustrating white powder all over the ground that is only magical until the first dog pees in it. I do not like snow in the city. Part of the reason why I do not like snow in the city is because people are assholes. Let me explain.

It is commonly held knowledge that snow, when the temperature rises above freezing, will begin to melt. It might leave puddles in its wake but the cold white substance that used to litter the ground will be no more. What seems to not be commonly held knowledge, unfortunately, is that just because snow melts, and just because you can leave things in the snow, does not mean that those things also melt. In fact, they do not melt. They may change shape or structure, but they still remain. Your hamburger? Still there. Cigarette butt? Still there. Dog crap? Yup, also still there.

Okay, so in my mind one of the things that you agree to when you decide to get a dog is that you have to follow that dog around with little bags and pick its poop up off the floor so that some unsuspecting person doesn’t step in it. You do not then tie the bag and drop it on the floor like some people do (I have never understood this). No, you tie the bag up and you deposit it and its contents in the closest garbage can to be properly disposed of, far away from the sneakers and sandals of your neighbors. Another thing you agree to is that you have to take that dog out in all kinds of weather unless of course you have one of those small stupid dogs that craps on a pad in your bathroom in which case you might as well just get a cat, at least they go in a covered box.  On a normal sunny day, people in my neighborhood tend to be relatively good about cleaning up after their dog, save the errant pile here and there.  (Oh, and to the person on my street whose dog has the runs all the time, I have two things to say: (1) take that dog to the vet, there is obviously something wrong with it and don’t bitch about it being inconvenient because there is a vet at the bottom of the street and (2) just because the shit is runny doesn’t mean you don’t have to pick it up.  As far as I can tell the bags will protect your precious hands from both runny and solid poo.)  During the snow, however, people constantly leave dog poo behind, perched atop the mounds of snow littering the sidewalks.  People, that dog shit does not melt.  As the snow melts away, the dog shit just sort of moves around, breaks down, and becomes these exceedingly unsavory brown stains with chunks here and there.  And you know what?  Despite the fact that the shit is not a neat little pile like it once was, it still stinks.  And you know what else?  It is actually easier to step in now that it has spread across the entire sidewalk.  And you know who inevitably steps in it?  Me.  I do.  Every fucking time.  So please, people, I am begging you.  Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night should stay you from cleaning up after your goddamn canine.

And now for some more, slightly less involved, observations and pieces of advise:

1. Rain boots with holes in the bottom are not good to wear in inclement weather.  You know what is better?  Basically any other shoe, preferably water proof, without holes in the bottom.

2. It is very important to actually know your gym lock code before you close all your belongings inside a small locker and go take a shower, returning with only the small, hand-towel sized piece of fabric to cover your entire body.  Because you know what is not awesome?  Crouching down on the floor entering in every possible combination of numbers you can remember in a frantic effort to free your clothes.  Also, not awesome?  Having to send the cleaning lady (who is incredibly nice and accommodating and only sort of laughs at you) from the locker room up to the front desk to get a young women who can’t weigh more than 105 pounds to try and break your lock with a giant pair of pliers because, as it turns out, she is not strong enough to break the lock open.  You know what is awesome and not awesome at the same time?  Having your lock magically pop open from the pressure, resulting in a moment of happiness and also a moment of worry that you are either (a) stupid and actually managed to get the code right but just didn’t pull the lock down hard enough to open it or (b) have been trusting a faulty lock with the protection of your computer which has all of your school work, including the beginnings of you thesis, saved on it.  Not that any of this happened to me this morning.

3. If you notice a feather sticking out of your down coat, don’t pull it out.  There are only more feathers behind it that will also begin to stick through the ever-growing hole that you are making in your coat by yanking on the feathers and before you know it there are feathers everywhere.  As it turns out, and this is something I never would have thought,  people on the train and on the train platform do not appreciate having feathers fly all through the air and then land on their clothes and in their hair.  They think it is weird and kind of gross and they give you dirty looks.

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Breast is Best Fundamentalism, Take 1

21 Nov

I read this article at work this past Saturday about a topic that has been bothering me on and off for the past 6 months or so:  the so-called “Breast is Best” movement.  I am going to treat this as the first of a series of posts on this topic with the hope that I come back to it on other occasions.  No promises.  Also, I get there, as usual, via a rather winding road so bear with me.  Okay, here goes.

In the article, titled “After Hurricane Sandy, Helping Hands Also Expose a New York Divide,” author Sarah Maslin Nir discusses the post-Sandy emergence (or really highlighting), of a racial and financial divide between those largely seeking help and those providing it.  In Nir’s own words,

Hurricane Sandy, the cliché of the moment goes, created a city of haves and have-nots; those New Yorkers with power and heat and the many other assurances of modern life, and those without. But the storm simply made plain the dividing lines in a city long fractured by class, race, ethnicity, geography and culture.

We are a diverse city.  We are a city that has come a very long way.  But we are no means existing in some utopia I have heard people describe as a “post-racial society.”  So here we are, a few weeks out of Sandy, looking at who needs help and who is in a position to provide it.  Help.  It’s an interesting conundrum and one worth thinking about.  I remember taking a class in high school that talked a lot about aid and charity and wondering why, if we have it we can’t just give it.  Why should donating my time and money be such a weighted issue?  Why can’t it just be easy?  As I got older I started thinking about all the different nuances of help.  What’s the difference — racially, culturally, geographically, financially, historically — between those who need and those who provide?  I started realizing that I have to put the idea of help into a much larger conversation, one about race and class, about access and opportunity, about history.  I also realized I had to start thinking about motives.  For some, donating time and money might just be about responding to the obvious.  It might be about acknowledging a need and addressing it.  For others, though, it’s all about what helping says about you, how it can help you, what you can gain from it.  For some, it’s about some sort of incredibly problematic curiosity.  Again, in Nir’s words:

Those coming to (the volunteers) for relief worry that their helpers are taking some voyeuristic interest in their plight, treating it as an exotic weekend outing, “like we’re in a zoo,” said one resident of a Rockaway project — echoing a complaint often heard in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina — as volunteers snapped iPhone photos of her as she waited in line for donated food and clothing.

I honestly can’t even talk about this paragraph.  Okay, I sort of will.  First of all, who does that?  And what do those people do, run back to their friends and show them pictures of those “poor, poor people?”  Then they talk about how, “oh, it was just so awful how those people are forced to live but I mean, look at the lines in her face?  Isn’t it also sort of beautiful?”  I just made myself throw up in my mouth a little.  Sometimes I think that in this world of technology and smart phones and Instagram and whatever else we all just think we are observers rather than active participants.  Or that when we are looking at our phone, when we are doing things in our personal internet space, that we are no longer visible to others, that our actions no longer impact those around us.  Well, I can tell you that just because you are looking at someone through the lens of your camera phone does not mean they cannot see you.  They see you and they think you are an asshole.  You’re there to supposedly help, not to help yourself to images of people’s lives.  Get a clue.

Anyway, I got off topic.  To the point! So, this:

As she gave out diapers and cases of infant formula to storm victims, Bethany Yarrow, 41, a folk singer from Williamsburg who has been volunteering with other parents from the private school her children attend, said she was shocked by the many poor mothers in the Arverne section of the Rockaways who did not breast feed. The group, she said, was working on bringing in a lactation consultant.

“So that it’s not just ‘Here are some diapers and then go back to your misery,’ ” she said. (Bold text mine.)

(Deep breathing exercises.)  I want to start by saying the following thing:  fuck you, Bethany Yarrow.  Seriously.  Bethany Yarrow, you have no idea what you are talking about.  How dare you presume to know anything about how the residents of the Rockaways live.  How dare you assume that, without your help and your “lactation consultant” that they live in “misery.”  That sort of thinking is exactly the problem.  Let me just travel down here in my big, fancy SUV and wave my magic milk wand and make your lives like mine, which is so wonderful and blessed.

So there are a few things.  Women, in general, are smart.  IQ smart or not, there is a desire, within most parents I would say, for their children to do well, to have all the possible opportunities available, to be happy and healthy.   Women care about their children and they want the best for them.  That means that they make the best decisions for them based off of their lives, their information, their opportunities.  To assume that poor women do not consider different options is simply incorrect.  But also, to assume they have the same abilities and constraints to come to the same conclusions as their financially wealthy peers is also incorrect, woefully so.  Bethany Yarrow is a folk singer.  I imagine that in her specific career, for the most part, she is able to make her own schedule, meaning the ability to be around to breast feed her children when they are hungry.  If she isn’t able to be around, I imagine that she is able to pump.  Good for Bethany Yarrow.  The conversation about breast feeding is contingent on other things than simply personal preference.  It exists within a bigger context.  (Let’s put aside the women who are unable to produce enough milk to sufficiently feed their children.)  A lot of women have to work in order to provide for their families.  A lot of jobs don’t provide maternity leave, pumping rooms, child care.  So is it your belief, Bethany Yarrow, that women should forgo their paycheck in order to breast feed their children?  That doesn’t seem like a particularly realistic solution.  Is your lactation consultant somehow going to change the perception of women in the workplace?  Not only is the system not set up for women generally, but it is not set up for poor women and it is certainly not set up for pregnant and nursing women.  Being the giver of life gets in the way of productivity and efficiency.

I am going to make a maybe unpopular comparison.  When all of us talk about a woman’s right to choose in the abortion context we are operating under a certain set of assumptions.  We are assuming that women are capable of making important decisions.  We are assuming that women know what is best for them, their bodies, their families.  We are assuming that women have access to clinics, for the making of a decision to even be possible.  Those assumptions should hold true regardless the topic at hand across the board, no matter the color of skin, the god(s) worshiped or not believed in, the economic position.  That means that all women, yes, even poor women of color Bethany Yarrow, are capable of making a decision about whether they want to breast feed and, perhaps more importantly, whether it is even possible for them.  Maybe they, like women living in North Dakota with its lack of abortion clinics, aren’t in a position to even make a choice about their own bodies because the resources they need to make those choices are not available to them.  I just don’t see how women being condescending and forcing their own values on other women in the sphere of breast feeding is any different, on an intellectual level, from male politicians forcing their pro-life agenda on all of us.  It takes away control over our own lives and bodies and it ignores realities of the world.

So, Bethany Yarrow and friends, think before you decide to help.  Think before you assume that your lactation consultant is either welcome or appropriate.  Maybe use your “good intentions” to advance the conversation about requiring break rooms for breast feeding women, protecting the rights of women working in minimum and hourly-wage jobs, and listening to those around you.  Your approach to parenting might be the best for you, but it isn’t the best, or even possible, for everyone.  Look around yourself and figure it out.  Because, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The day I beat an ambulance by foot

1 Nov

On Tuesday evening, the day after Hurricane Sandy hit, I went for a run.  The subways were still out and I was dying to see Lower Manhattan without lights.  I hoofed the 3 miles over to the Brooklyn waterfront, seeing downed trees and scattered debris on every side street.  I reached as close to the water as the Parks Department would allow, stood on a big block, and just looked.  What a strange sight it was. The city that never sleeps, dark.

The following day I decided to take a different route.  I was interested to see what kind of damage had been done to Prospect Park, a place I have run through countless times in all kinds of weather.  My boyfriend pointed out that running through the park, what with all the severed branches and uprooted trees, was probably not the safest thing.  What if the wind blew and a branch fell?  What if a tree, already dangerously leaning, lost its last bit of support from the soil and toppled over?  I decided to run alongside it, glancing in every now and again to see how different it looked.  So, I set out.  I ran towards Atlantic Avenue, made a turn on Flatbush and started running uphill towards the park, dodging walkers and trick-or-treaters along the way.  The traffic was insane.  I had seen photographs of highways turned parking lots all over the East Coast.  I had, myself, taken a photograph near my house with cars lined up for miles in the middle of the day.  Who knows how long the rush hour drivers on Flatbush had been trying to get where ever they were going but I’m sure it was hours.  Then I heard it:  a siren.  I looked over my shoulder and saw an ambulance for New York Methodist hospital trying to make its way through the mess.  I kept running, expecting the ambulance to overtake me any second.  I figured people would pull their cars to the side, allowing space for the ambulance to get through.  Only, people didn’t.  I stopped and looked, the ambulance wasn’t really getting anywhere.  People were just sitting, stubbornly, not willing to give up their hard-earned space on the road, ignorant to the existence not only of the ambulance, but of the person requiring immediate medical care.  There was nothing for me to do, I kept running.  I got a few blocks further and realized that, again, the ambulance had not overtaken me.  A man driving a Senior Care ambulance turned on his lights, got out of his vehicle, and directed the Methodist ambulance through a busy intersection.  The ambulance, finally, passed me.  I started running again and quickly overtook it.  This happened several more times.  Me stopping at a light, the ambulance passing me, me getting the okay to go again, running up the hill, and easily passing the ambulance by foot.  It was heart breaking.  I could only imagine the frustration of the EMTs trying to get to their destination, and the anguish being felt by the family of whoever it was that needed such urgent care.  I couldn’t believe that, after what this city has been through, people were so concerned with getting where they were going that they were able and yet completely unwilling to allow the ambulance to pass.  It was crazy. I stood on a corner next to another woman, in shock.  We looked at one another and just shook our heads, she couldn’t believe it either.  I thought about whether there was anything I could do, tried to imagine myself directing traffic.  Every scenario I thought up ended in disaster, an even bigger traffic jam and me squashed in the middle of the road being cursed by angry drivers.  I continued on.   As I finished my run up Flatbush and saw the ambulance pass, only to get stuck in the mess that is Grand Army Plaza, I quietly voiced the hope that it could get where it was going on time and that none of my loved ones need urgent care over the next few days…they might not be able to get it.

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Friedman’s Not-So-Novel Idea

29 Oct

Yesterday in the middle of my work day I received a text from one of my really good friends. It read as follows:

The Friedman column is fucking pissing me off. Why would I expect him not to fucking pretend that what he is writing is nothing feminism has been saying for YEARS!

I could feel the anger pulsing through my cell phone. Obviously, I had to read it immediately if not sooner.  I checked up and down the bar to see the status of all my customers drinks and got to reading.  The premise of the article is basically that Friedman is “pro-life” but not in the way we all talk about being pro-life, as in the opposite of pro-choice.  He is pro “respect for the sanctity of life.”  Friedman has seen the light.  This paragraph basically says it all:

In my world, you don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and be against common-sense gun control — like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children. You can call yourself a “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative.” I will never refer to someone who pickets Planned Parenthood but lobbies against common-sense gun laws as “pro-life.”

Friedman makes a good point.  Read the article.  But the thing is, just like what my friend said to me in her enraged text, he is making the point feminism, the point women have been making for years.  Being in support of a woman’s right to choose is not only an end, but it is a means to other ends.  Allowing women to choose is part of a bigger conversation about quality of life, about freedoms, about capabilities, about possibilities, about empowerment. In the mainstream acceptance of the terms “pro-life” (or “anti-choice” as many of my ilk refer to it) and “pro-choice” I think of the former as an exclusionary opinion and the latter as inclusionary.  Pro-choice people are not requiring women to terminate a pregnancy.  Some of us might not even be comfortable with the idea  of abortion for ourselves.  I think all of us would love it if there didn’t have to be any abortions at all.  There is room in the pro-choice movement for everyone to do exactly with their bodies as they think is appropriate for themselves and their lives, be that terminate a pregnancy or carry a pregnancy through to term.  Pro-life takes that choice away, that legal and safe choice, and makes the decision for someone.  Either carry the fetus to term or endure a possibly life-threatening, illegal, unregulated procedure.  There is not room in that school of thought for everyone.  There is not room for me.

I guess this is a topic that I have been having a hard time with.  While I want to include men in the conversation about women’s rights and bodies, while I want more male allies, I don’t want men dictating the parameters of a conversation that women have been having for decades.  Let us spearhead this one, guys.  Listen to us.  Talk to us.  Take us seriously.  This is an important issue all the time and not only when you decide to give it a minute of your time.  This has been mattering to us for-fucking-ever, and not just every four years.  We’ve been talking about it.  We’ve been educating one another.  Where have you been, Friedman?

But I’ve gotten off topic.  Friedman’s point is an important one for sure.  But as a woman, it is incredibly, incredibly frustrating and angering to see that a point that feminists have been making for years and years does not get mainstream space until it is said by a right-leaning white man acting like he came up with it all on his own.  I’ve seen my friends sharing the link to the article on Facebook and, though I’m glad the point is making its rounds in the interwebs, I am frustrated that as women we have become so accustomed to our opinions being ignored and then, years later, being co-opted and taken seriously only through the medium of a male voice that we don’t even notice it any more.  It’s part of life.  It’s like, “wow!  Friedman!  What a great and original idea!” without the follow through of “wait, didn’t I talk to my mom about this very same idea when I first started learning about abortion clinic bombings and assassinations of abortion providers?  Hasn’t this term ‘pro-life’ always seemed somewhat misleading?”   It’s like that old saying, “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”  Only I’m gonna change it.  “If an opinion is voiced by a woman and no one talks about it, did that opinion ever actually get shared?”

And to my friend who sent me the text in the first place, I am thankful for you.  You help keep me sane.

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