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.

Romney’s Logic, or lack thereof

15 Nov

I’m having a very hard time today.  Sometimes I feel like there is this thing called logic, and then all of a sudden something happens and I think that maybe my logic isn’t the right logic afterall because someone who is someone in the grand scheme of things, and not just in a little corner of the internet, says something that is so contrary to my logic that it’s like, wait, what?  Confused?  Let me explain.

I just read this article in the Times that has been going around in different forms about a conference call that Mitt Romney had with his donors and fund-raisers.  In this conference call he accused Obama of winning the election by giving “gifts” to different minority groups.  Okay, so when I see the word “gifts” I think Christmas, Channuka, birthdays!  Last year for my birthday I got this amazing new lamp shade* from Anthropologie (don’t mock me) and a great cherry red stock pot from Le Creuset.  So, did Obama run around giving people fancy new home accent pieces?  Perhaps some useful, and colorful!, kitchen items?  Maybe a sweet new pair of kicks?  No.  Here’s what Obama “gifted” the “minorities”** of this country:

“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift,” Mr. Romney said. “Free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people.”

And then there’s this.  Romney was very concerned that the president used his healthcare plan as a tool in mobilizing black and Hispanic voters:

“You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity — I mean, this is huge,” Mr. Romney said. “Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals,*** the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.”

So now I am going to think back to when Bush did that stimulus plan.  Remember that?  When all of a sudden we all got a check for some money that we were then supposed to spend out in the world to stimulate the economy?****  A lot of people thought that was  good idea.  A lot of people might have called that a gift.  Same goes, I think, for the money a family is “gifted” through access to healthcare.  All of a sudden here is this money not being spent on incredibly costly healthcare that can be repurposed.  It can go towards buying a car, saving to send a child to college, starting a business, or any other number of things.  Or! That family that now has been “gifted” healthcare has healthcare for the first time and is able to seek preemptive medical care rather than relying on emergency room visits or costly procedures to take care of something that could have been avoided.  Now people who previously had to suffer unnecessarily with treatable ailments can get the needed, and widely available, treatment.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

All sarcasm aside.  Here’s the thing about all of this.  I find Romney’s comments to be amazingly condescending and rude not only to the man that bested him in the election, but to all of us who voted for that man.  By using the word “gifts” Romney was intentionally playing into an understanding of the word within the political realm as equivalent to a bribe.  There were no bribes involved.  Romney lost the election because while he was yammering on about non-specifics concerning job creation, foreign policy and military strategy, Obama was listening to people and trying to figure out what would actually make this country a more reasonable place to live.  Lack of equal access to birth control and concerns about unwanted pregnancies?  Here, free contraception (not to mention a continuation of Roe v Wade).  Concerns about pre-existing conditions and sky-rocketing healthcare costs?  Here, the Affordable Care Act.  Children of undocumented immigrants not getting a fair shake at the American Dream?  Here, the Dream Act (co-written by Republican Orin Hatch, by the way).  What Obama did was present himself as a man capable of leading this country.  What he did was he listened to the people, and he came up with, or supported, feasible solutions.  That’s not called giving people gifts, Romney, it’s called governing.

So here’s maybe an idea, rather than trying to make up ludicrous, and inaccurate, excuses for why you lost the election, why don’t you look actually at why you lost.  You lost because you were non-specific about things that mattered.  You lost because you listened to the party establishment and aligned yourself with the uber-conservatives rather than the majority of the country.  You lost because you failed to realize that things have changed and you have to convince more than just the white men of your ability to lead.  You lost because you erroneously believed that the person who raised the most money would win the biggest prize.  You lost because you dismissed so many of us.  It sucks, Romney, because like John McCain pre-2008 I always thought you were one of the good guys.  One of the listening guys.  I don’t know, maybe my logic is all wrong.  To me, the logical thing to do would be to bow out gracefully and go back to the drawing board.  Rather than calling sound policy ideas gifts, why don’t you and your party think about how to answer the people’s needs using sound conservative principles.  The Republican party, as far as I know, isn’t about hanging people out to dry.  It’s about a much needed alternative to the Democratic approach to governing.  Although I am a lifelong liberal, I honestly believe that the only way to make this country work better is having a healthy debate.  It’s like an athlete.  An athlete uses the talent, drive and abilities of her biggest opponent in order to become better.  For the Democratic, or Republican, party to live up to expectations and possibilities, for this country to live up to expectations and possibilities, there needs to be drive.  The Democratic party can only be its best incarnation when it is striving to be a better alternative to the best incarnation of the Republican party.  The opposite is just as true.  Unless we have two (more would be better) healthy and functioning parties, we can not have the best governing strategy possible.  For this country to get on a better road, we need some good debate and some healthy competition, not a bunch of blamers and a party-wide abandonment of the needs of the majority of the country.  It’s called logic, Romney.  You should try using it.

*My lamp shade looks sort of like this only significantly more awesome.

**Sometimes use of the word minorities annoys me because it’s not accurate.  Rather than an explanation of numerical fact, it’s more like a forced state of being.  I, as a female, am not actually a member of a group that makes up a minority of the population but am still considered a minority.  Why don’t we call a spade a spade.  We “minorities” are not necessarily the “minority.”  We are the oppressed.  The overlooked.  The intentionally ignored.  The annoyance.

***I despise, I mean despise, the term “illegals.”

****This girl totally took that check and put it straight in her savings account.  Totally against the rules.

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Protected: One Lawyer, One Gym Goer, Both Assholes.

13 Nov

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Let the freak out attacks continue

8 Nov

I feel compelled, in this blog post, to acknowledge that I know that I am freaking out about things much less BIG than not having heat and electricity, or having my house washed away or burned down, or not having access to food, or having lost friends or loved ones. I am sitting here in my lit and warm apartment, my cats meowing hungrily (they are totally thrown off by the time change and subsequent early darkness and think it is time to eat, it isn’t), and with home-cooked food in the fridge.  All that being said, I am freaking out.

I have just recently articulated to myself, and now to all of you, the fact that I am completely and totally self-sabotaging.  Not to the point where I am incapable of being a reasonable human being in the world, but to the point where if I don’t do something I will be bartending forever… not that there is anything wrong with that but it just isn’t for me.  For example, I am really bad at applying for things.  Like, really bad.  I will find a job or an internship or a program and be like

Yea!  That is perfect for me!  Wow!

And then I will go for a run and have an imagination adventure where I get that job or internship, or get accepted into that program, and I am so super awesome at it that the head promotes me, or moves me somewhere really cool, or tells her friends about me and then all of a sudden I am this really fantastic and successful person with this job that I love and everything is great.  Only then I look at the qualifications and see that I need relevant experience.  Don’t have it.  Unless they need someone to shake some cocktails.  And then I look at the recommendations and I fall short.  Who would want to write me one?  What professor would I ask?  What professor would even be willing to write it?  Would they even remember me?  Do they know enough about me to make it work?  Do I even like them?  Does a recommendation from my boss at the bar count as a professional reference?  And then I sit there and stare at the computer and then I decide,

Okay, maybe I will do it tomorrow.  I will send out the necessary emails and put myself out there.  Can’t hurt to try, right?

But then tomorrow comes and goes and then the deadline is past and, voila!, I have not applied and there I am imagining what could have been rather than what could be.  Or, another example!  One of my friends will be like

Oh!  Hey!  This is perfect for you and I know someone who would hook you up and you should so totally email them and drop my name!

And I’m like sweet.  So I look into it and it seems great and then, guess what?  Don’t reach out.  Think about how cool it would be.  Then get nervous about not being a good fit.  Or doing something stupid and having it reflect badly on my friend.  Or I worry that I won’t interview well and that I own absolutely zero business/business casual clothing.  And then I’m like,

Well, let me sleep on it and email them tomorrow

And then guess what? Tomorrow comes and goes and I don’t do it.  I sit there and feel bad about how I’m not doing it but I still don’t do it. And then I realize my friend has put herself out there by offering to put me in touch with someone and I am the asshole who doesn’t follow through.

Or!  This!  I am like inches away from getting my master’s degree and all I need to do is write one thesis (70 pages) and one final paper (20-25 pages) both very manageable and both things I can do, and what happens?  I get so distracted by learning all of the things that I fall into this black hole of information, most of which is not relevant to what I am theoretically working on.  And then I have piles and piles of papers that I have mostly read and lots of blank pages.  Or!  Lots of pages that are written but may or may not be connected to the other pages or the overall theme of whatever project I am working on.  This is a problem I have never had before.  Usually, if nothing else, I can sit on my ass for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week and knock out whatever it is I need to knock out.  But now?  No.  And then I am like

Great, here I am with almost this degree that will make me feel, if not be, more qualified to do something other than pour a pint of beer and what am I doing?  Obsessing over farmer’s rights, downloading Ever Note so I can save everything that ever seems interesting and read it later (but really I read it right away) and downloading real crime books on my Nook (okay, that last part only happened once, about 15 minutes ago).

But then I think

Okay.  How about this?  How about I just finish my thesis and then I travel and try and get my head on straight.  And then I realize I don’t like to travel alone and basically all of my friends are doing things and therefore can’t fuck off for a few months.  And also, I get very stressed out about money and I have to pay off the loans I took out to finish this degree I can’t seem to finish but has to be finished in 5 years otherwise all my work was for naught.

And so now it has been 30 minutes and rather than working on an application for a really cool language program in India, or a conference in Switzerland, or a scholarship to do research, I am writing this blog about how I am incapable of doing anything.  And now I am going to publish this blog, read my newly downloaded nonfiction crime book, and occasionally stress about how I am not doing anything productive.  And then I will go to work until 4am.  Maybe I’ll see you there.

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Basically the most awkward shift EVER

5 Nov

In honor of my favorite day of the year, Marathon Day (basically a national holiday in Rebekah-land) I switched my normal Sunday day shift for the evening so I could stand on my corner in the cold, screaming my voice raw and clapping my hands so hard I bruise them.  Man, I love Marathon Day.  But this year there was no Marathon Day.  No waking up in the morning like it’s Christmas, jumping up and down on the bed screaming “Marathon Day! Marathon Day! Marathon Day!”  No frantic run for coffee before the elite runners fly by.  No crazy costumes.  Instead, I woke up a little late, played around the house, went for a run and did the laundry.  Then I went to work, or tried to anyway.  Besides all the other effects of Sandy, the F train is running a little…er…slow.  I waited on the elevated train platform for 40 minutes, arriving at work at 8:30 for my shift that was supposed to start at 8.  Damn.  I finally got there and the bar was dead.  Like, dead dead.  We’re talking crickets.  I figured it would eventually pick up.  It didn’t.  What did happen was probably the most torturous, awkward and uncomfortable shift I have ever worked.  Curious?  Read on.

At approximately 11PM a tall brunette walked into the bar, ordered a Guinness and took a seat.  She sat right in front of my dish washing sink which, as events unfolded, became problematic.*  About 10 minutes later, a shorter blonde woman came in and walked right up to the brunette.  This is what happened (names changed because I think that’s what people do in situations like these):

Blonde:  Morgan?

Brunette:  Yes.

Blonde:  I’m Allison.

Morgan (awkward silence): Do you want to chat?

At this point, readers, I figured this was an internet date.  I mean, why else would two people who clearly did not previously know each other have this sort of awkward introduction at a bar?  Well, I will tell you.

Allison:  Chat?   About what?!?  You ruined my life.

Um.  Okay.  So now my interest was piqued.  Having done all the dishes trying to figure out whether these two ladies were on a date, I had no other reason to hang out right in front of where they were sitting.  (Why did you fail me, dishes?!  In my one time of need!)  I positioned myself slightly down the bar, standing near my only two other customers who also happened to be the only other customers in the bar for the rest of the night and who also happened to leave me about 10 minutes later.  Alone.  In what I can only imagine is something akin to hell.  I eavesdropped on the next bit of the conversation.  From the bits and pieces I got, Allison’s husband was sleeping with Morgan.  Not only was he sleeping with Morgan, but Allison had gone on a business trip only to come back and find out that (1) Morgan was basically living in her house while she was gone and (2) at some point during the stay Allison’s 7-month old baby was in the bed with her husband and his side piece.  The two women then sat there talking for about 30 more minutes, with Allison trying to explain to Morgan why what she was doing was wrong but how Allison doesn’t really blame Morgan but instead blames her lying sack of shit husband (not a direct quote) and Morgan saying that part of the problem was that Allison wasn’t having sex with her husband and that’s probably why he looked elsewhere.  Allison then told Morgan that the reason they hadn’t been having sex was that Allison had given birth to 2 children in the previous 3 years and was basically either pregnant or breast feeding at all times.  Also, she was tired.  At this point, dear readers, I would like to interject two points.  One, I was very unclear as to why Allison was sharing with Morgan any details at all of her sex life (or any other portion of her life, for that matter) with the woman her husband is banging and two, if I ever found myself in that position I would take the opportunity to live out a dream of mine:  pouring my drink over someone’s head in a public place and storming out.  The conversation was painful to hear.  And then, it got worse.

Enter the lying sack of shit husband.**  So just to be clear, we now have the husband, his wife, and the woman that the husband has been sleeping with behind the wife’s back.  And me.  Alone.  At the end of the bar with wine and disbelief.

The conversation then devolved into the weirdest thing I have ever witnessed.  And it went on and on and on.  And then on some more.  The husband, Brad, called Allison a crazy bitch, accused her of raping him, accused her of slitting her wrists and then pulling her sleeves up to show Morgan the scars.  There were none.  Apparently, or according to Allison anyway, this had all happened in the middle of a drug-related melt down on the part of Brad.  Morgan spent most of the time laughing nervously while Allison kept saying “this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, why are you laughing?!”  Morgan then talked about the number of people she was sleeping with at the same time she was sleeping with Brad which then sent Allison into a rage about whether or not they used protection which Morgan “wasn’t sure about” but Brad assured her they were.  I am fairly certain Allison got tested for everything today.  I know I would have.  I kid you not, this went on for 2 hours.  Two fucking hours.  I was sitting at the far end of the bar, staring at a full glass of wine with my hood up, whispering to myself in a lame attempt to cover up the awkwardness.  Brad noticed and yelled down the bar “to” me in a bullshit attempt to acknowledge the horrible scene I was witnessing.

Brad:  Ugh, she’s wearing a hood!

Me:  I am trying to block everything out.  Just pretend I’m not here.

Brad:  No, you should hear this.  It’s hilarious.

Me: (silence…scowl) Um, yea.  Not so much funny from where I’m sitting.  I think I’ll get some fresh air.

I only lasted outside in the cold for like 3 minutes. I came back in.  It was still going on.  Eventually, Allison stormed out but only after she had paid for all of their drinks.  Brad then turned to me and said

Brad:  Well, she should pay for them, she’s been pulling all the money out of my checking account.  $40,000 this week!

Me:  I do not feel bad for you.

The adulterous couple then stayed for another bit, rehashing the evening with Morgan claiming that she wasn’t really sleeping with a million other people, including an Australian for those who care, and Brad making sure that his crazy bitch of a wife hadn’t ruined his awesome new relationship.  At 5 minutes to 2 I finally kicked them out.  I was secretly wishing they would ask me for my opinion so that I could look at them dead in the eyes and say “I think you two are possibly the worst human beings I have ever had the misfortune of sharing a space with” but they never did.  Assholes.  And they were lousy tippers.

Also, this experience was SO MUCH WORSE than I could ever capture here.  There was so much more awkwardness.  So much more horrible.  Oh, like when Morgan decided to tell Allison that on her and Brad’s 15th anniversary when Brad said he was working late he was actually screwing her.  Oh, and also when Morgan recounted a dream she had about Allison and how she had given Allison a hug and then they were friends and it was great and can’t they be friends in real life too?  And also the time Brad told Allison he married the wrong woman and she poisoned everything she touched.  And when Morgan assured Allison she would be fine because “she’s still young and attractive and has nice clothes.”  Nice clothes.  Seriously.  Okay, I’m done.

*You see, non-bartender readers, I have to spend a lot of time at the dish washing sink because I have to spend a lot of time washing dishes.  Even if there are only 3 people in the bar I somehow manage to rack up dozens of dirty glasses.  I think we have a poltergeist.  This means that if there is an annoying person or an incident of some kind in front of my dish washing sink, there is no way for me to avoid it.  I have to stare at it all will I dip my hands into scalding hot chemical water.

**When he walked into the bar I literally almost yelled “this guy?  All this hubbub over this guy?!” but I restrained myself.

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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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One Year Blogiversary!

25 Oct

Hooray.  I did it.  One full year of blogging.  I had initially intended on going through all the search terms that got people to my blog and listing the most amusing ones here, but, instead, I will recap a conversation I had with my mom yesterday.  Enjoy.

……ring ring……

Mom:  Hello?

Me:  Hi, mom!

Mom:  How’s my Bekah?

Me:  Oh, I’m good.  I actually called to ask you for some advice but first, guess what tomorrow is?

Mom:  What??

Me:  My one year blogiversary!

Mom:  Really?  Happy blogiversary, my Bekah!

Me:  Speaking of ‘versarys, happy anniversary Mom!

Mom:  Your blogiversay.  Congratulations!

Me:  Mom?  Um…isn’t today your wedding anniversary?  It is October 24th, right?

Mom:  (Silence.)  You know what?  It is!!  Your father is going to play cards with friends and I am going to dinner with the ladies!

Hysterical laughter.

Me:  (Between giggles.) Hey Mom.  Remember that time I called you and wished you a happy birthday and you didn’t even remember it was your birthday?!?

Mom:  (More laughter.)  I do!

Me:  That was funny.

And this, dear readers, is why my Mom and Dad are awesome.  And also why I have a hard time remembering anyone’s birthday.  So when I forget yours, don’t be insulted.  I come by it naturally.

So, happy (one day belated) anniversary, Mom and Dad.  And happy blogiversary to you, blog.  You’re cool.

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A Beefcake Ruined my Workout

24 Oct

Today was the first day of my training for the New Orleans marathon which is exactly 4 months from today, on February 24th.  The plan I downloaded suggested that I run 5 miles at a 9:02 pace.  Okay, that’s not bad.  I decided to head to the gym and run on the treadmill because the idea of running the better part of a mile uphill to run a loop of the park (involving another hill) was just too much to handle.  I was feeling runner-lazy.  Obviously I am taking this process very seriously.  My goals are to make it to the start line prepared and injury-free and to complete the full 26.2 miles in under 3:45.  I think it’s possible.*

After my run, I decided to try and get into the groove of lifting weights, something I know is necessary but I hate with the strength of a thousand suns. (Did I get that saying right?)  I headed over to that weird dip thing and did some leg lifts.  Then I decided to do squats.  As I was walking towards the area with the body bars, dumbbells, and kettle bells I saw this rather beefy guy looking at me.  I half smiled at him in what I hoped was a dismissive yet friendly way, turned my music up, and grabbed a body bar to commence the squatting.  I could see him watching me in the mirror.  Then I saw it.  A little condescending smirk and a slight shake of the head, and then he motioned for me to take off my headphones.  I pretended I didn’t see him.  He did it again, this time in a more obvious manner.  I couldn’t ignore him.  I could have just shook my head “no” and went about my workout but I hate to be rude when I’m not (a) working and faced with some drunken asshole who I have to handle or (b) on the move, thereby escaping from the look of shock upon my response to the offensive cat calling or, my favorite, the “god bless you” whisper, I had to endure.  Shudder.  The conversation went as follows:

Beefcake: What do you do?  Run?

Me: Yup.

Beefcake:  Mind if I give you a few tips about that squat?

Me:  (Yes) Um…I guess not.

He then, without getting up, began instructing me on the proper approach to the squat which, I have to say, was exactly the opposite of how everyone else ever in the history of me has told me is the proper way to do it.  Whatever, I indulged him.  I just wanted him to stop talking to me.  He then proceeded to lecture me about the importance of working out my abs and back to make me a stronger runner.  I tried to explain to him that I already know all this, that I just hate the gym but that I am working on it but he was on a roll and wouldn’t really let me get a word in edgewise.  I figured it better to just let him run out of steam and move on.  And then,

Beefcake: I’m a trainer here, that’s why I was giving you tips

Me:  Yea, I figured.

Beefcake:  I’m really good with faces.  I haven’t seen you here in awhile.  You been going somewhere else?

Me:  A little I guess. I just really hate the gym.

Beefcake:  Really?  Why?

Me:  (Because I am stuck talking to people like you?) I don’t know.  It smells.

Beefcake:  Oh, well, do you remember seeing me?

Me:  No.  I don’t pay attention to people in the gym.  I just workout and leave and don’t look at anybody or talk to anybody. (Meaningful stare.)

I guess he got the picture because he walked away.  But then I was too self-conscious to do the rest of my squats because he was nearby, doing all his fancy pull-ups and shit and I knew he was watching and would swoop in and correct me at any moment.  And here’s the thing, I guess I wouldn’t have minded some tips if it weren’t for the following two things.  One, that smirk.  That cocky, rude smirk and that little dismissive head shake that communicated to me not concern for a possible knee injury, but a “you silly girl, let me show you how it’s done.”  And two, the obvious lie that he told me when he noticed me doing my squats ‘wrong.’  I saw him see me walking over from the dip machine, which is located behind a pillar.  He was just watching, and waiting.  I could have done a toe-raiser and he would have corrected me.  So, Beefcake at the gym, I write you this letter:

Dear Beefcake,

If you want to help someone out with something, kindly be a little less condescending and a little less of a liar.  You ruined my workout.  Please never talk to me again.  Ever.

From

The Runner with the Long Hair

*Just a little side note.  I will not, going forward, subject you, dear readers, to the ins and outs of my marathon training.  I might make reference to it here and there, but that’s about it.  So, worry not, details of my Yasso 800s will not take the place of my ranting about peeping toms, people making shitty comparisons to Hitler, or Donald Trump, who easily makes my top 5 least favorite people list.

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Money > People

23 Oct

If you haven’t yet noticed through reading this blog, or if you don’t already know about this through knowing me personally, I work in parallels.  I read things, I get upset about things, but sometimes the only way for me to make sense of it all is to compare the thing I am upset about — but that I lack the language to work through — to something else seemingly unconnected to it and draw a line between the two.  I guess I like to create an equal playing field within my mind and hold dissimilar things to similar standards.  That’s how I got from domestic violence within a human rights framework to trade agreements.  Onward.

This past week I had the pleasure of leaving Brooklyn and traveling, via Bolt Bus, to Washington, DC to visit a very good friend of mine who just recently started law school.  The timing couldn’t have been better.  She was on fall break and needed a small brain vacation from the stresses of the first year of law school which, as I understand it, is a torturous experience.  I needed a vacation from the stresses associated with the ridiculous amount of guilt I feel about avoiding my thesis.  It’s basically become a full-time job.  Anyway, one of the things we did while I was down there was attend a super interesting talk about the idea of domestic violence within the international human rights framework.  Yea, I didn’t really understand how that worked either.  So here is my very basic explanation of the things we learned about, lacking probably crucial details, because my memory just ain’t what it used to be.

So basically what I learned was that being a woman is a lot of times terrible.  And, not surprisingly, this is no different within the legal framework.  The professor and guest lecturer went over a number of cases over the past few decades within the United States that basically eroded the ability of victims of domestic violence (generally women and children) to bring charges against the state for negligence.  When someone takes out a restraining order, the idea is not that the state is in that person’s house, intervening at the first sign of trouble.  Instead, the police (or so I thought) have an obligation to enforce a restraining order if the holder of it calls them, reporting that the order has been broken in some way.  I learned that although one would think that a mandatory restraining order means that the police, an agent of the state by the way (until they are inevitably privatized which scares the shit out of me), are required to protect the holder of the order of protection from the person she took it out against.  That, oddly enough, is not exactly the case.  Mandatory, in this case, doesn’t actually mean mandatory.  The state is under no legal obligation to protect a victim from her victimizer even if she has gone through the appropriate mechanisms to seek guaranteed safety.  There were a few different legal avenues a woman could previously take to bring charges against the state for negligence.  All of those avenues have been systematically eroded, now leaving a victim without means to sue the state if, say, her children are murdered at the hands of her violent ex-husband from whom she is supposedly protected.  Scary, right?  So what is the next step?

This is where international human rights enters.  Human rights, or at least the way that I think about them, are based upon this moral and ethical understanding that all people are equal.  I know that is super simplistic.  What has happened in the US in terms of DV is that the state apparatus is protecting itself from the whims of its citizens.  Part of human rights is that they protect individuals from the whims of the state.  So, the next step could be that women, who have exhausted all domestic options in terms of holding someone accountable for the actions, or lack thereof, of the state or an actor of the state, bring their tale of violated rights to an international human rights body.    That body, in the case we heard about it was the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which then looks at the facts, looks at the legislative trail and comes to a decision as to whether or not an individual’s human rights have been violated and then sends that finding to the offending state, allowing the state in question to respond.  In the case of the US who, obviously if you know anything about our record on this sort of thing,* has not ratified whatever it needs to ratify to be held accountable by this organization and so whatever the IACHR might find in the case of the US basically holds no water.  It is an embarrassment to the US, sure, but there is nothing that the IACHR can do.  It has no power.

Part of the reason for this is that the United States, in all its exceptionalism and all its talk about holding other countries accountable for human rights violations, does not want to be held accountable for its own.  It does not want to give any other body jurisdiction over the affairs within its borders.  It’s like human rights isolationism.  So aside from a strongly worded letter, a victim has absolutely no recourse.  No wait while I blow your mind even more.

I just recently (as in about 20 minutes ago when I decided to write this blog) read this article in Salon by Matt Stoller.  It’s worth a read and contains a whole lot more about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) than what I am about to say.  Basically, the TPP, along with NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, gives foreign companies the rights to impact US law.  The WTO, for example, can put sanctions on the US if its domestic environmental, financial and social interest laws are too restrictive of foreign products.  Have you noticed that all tuna cans no longer have huge labels pronouncing that product dolphin-free?  That’s because it was negatively impacting companies exporting tuna to the US.  When we are dealing at an international level without standardization in regards to manufacturing and product safety, this is not something we can really afford.  And yet we do it.  Somehow it is reasonable to amend our laws to permit the sale of candy-flavored cigarettes but not to guarantee state-sanctioned protection of a domestic violence victim.  Abiding by international trade laws is more important than human rights norms.  Placating trade partners is more important than protecting our citizens.  Money is more important than people.

* The US has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child or the landmine ban, among other things.  I leave you to imagine why that might be.

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