asshat of the week: Idaho (joining a growing group of patriarchal f*ckers)

ThinkProgress » Idaho Rejects Rape Exception In Abortion Bill Because ‘The Hand Of The Almighty’ Was At Work:

The disgusting number of women-hating pieces of legislation being pushed through various state legislatures is astounding.

But I think the Idaho bill is particularly galling: even if you were the victim of sexual assault or family sexual abuse you would be forced to keep the pregnancy.

It's a double assault against a woman's body and mind.

These fucking men seem to have a real problem with women having an independent will.
You know, like men have.

I had a conservative guy respond to one of my tweets today and he seemed to imply that simply having a reproductive system automatically obligated a woman to use it to reproduce. Whether or not she wanted to.

If we take all these bills together, women aren't going to be allowed to make decisions about anything on our own:
We can't buy contraception.
We can't terminate a pregnancy if we are raped.
We can't terminate a pregnancy if we aren't.
Our exes get to sue us if we get an abortion.
We can't say no to an ultrasound.
We can't rely on our own religious (or irreligious) counselors.
We have to wait for an abortion.
We can't get an abortion in our own state.
We can't use our money (or the State's money) to pay for abortion.

What can we do, in this world these women-hating men want to create?

Oh, get pregnant, get raped, and stay pregnant.

I want to smash some testicles.

protecting government from religion

Wonk Room » Pawlenty: U.S. Should Not Be Governed By Religious Law — Unless It’s Christianity:

"During a recent address to the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, Pawlenty proclaimed, “The Constitution was designed to protect people of faith from government, not to protect government from people of faith.” He added, “we need to be a country that turns toward God, not a country that turns away from God.”

Uh, no.

I mean, sure, folks should turn to God. (If that is their wont.)
But there is no way I want my government basing its laws on the Bible.

Government, by all means, should be protected from religion.

People (typically men) who get excited by the idea of turning the Bible into some freaky rubric for everyone to follow always choose the weird stuff: 

no sex, stoning women, biology being destiny; the poor being with you 'always,' men being in charge of everything, no gays, daughters staying under the authority of their fathers, owning slaves; proselytizing/killing folks who don't give a shit what you think about their faith (or lack thereof), righteous war, exploiting the land and all that smiting nonsense.

They never pick the cool stuff: 

mutual kindness; minding your own business; helping your neighbor; the Good Samaritan; shaking the dust off your feet; rich men getting into heaven like camels through the eyes of needles; the last shall be first and first, last; Peter being told to stop being such an asshole bigot.

If they did, they wouldn't be called Christians; they'd be ... Scandinavian or something. Socialists, in any case.

Religious blowhards with giant, rutting, pink hard-ons for patriarchy and control always choose the rules in the Bible more likely to be illegal, oppressive or otherwise problematic in a democratic, secular and pluralistic society.

Why is that?

If you're going to call about HR3: a script via Sady Doyle

With a crappy piece of legislation like this - where the hate and cruelty are almost too much to bear - it helps to have a script when you're calling. Luckily, Sady Doyle provides one:

Sady Doyle - Script for Calling the Democrats Who Support HR3

I think it's still a little too long (staffers appreciate brevity) so I would cut it a little shorter, after you ask for the staffer who handles healthcare or women's issues:

1. Mention the bill # right away so it's at the top of the message: Hi, I'm calling to leave a comment about HR 3.

2. Tell the staffer what you want the Rep to do (again, so it's at the top of the message): Please oppose HR3.

3. Then boil it down to your top 3 bullets so they can summarize it for the legislator or the main staffer on this issue:

Going beyond Hyde, in an unprecedented way, HR 3 strips current rights from rape survivors, women and girls who need abortions.

HR 3 redefines rape to mean only sexual assault involving 'force' will be covered, contradicting existing statutes that already defines sexual assault. Sexual assault statistics and rape victim advocates show that 70% of rapes aren’t “forcible.”

HR3 also makes it much harder for women to purchase private insurance that may include abortion services, harder for companies to cover women who need abortions, and strengthens “conscience” clauses, which means doctors can refuse to provide critical reproductive medical care to women at any time. It is discriminatory.

4. Then give your contact information and let them know you expect a response: I look forward to hearing from the Congressman on this matter.

5. Thank them and hang up.

Pass it on.

the patriarch has no vision

In the vivid fantasy in my brain, I am dressed in a well-fitted black suit with marvelous shoes and my asshat brother in law is being ripped apart in family court by my keen legal mind as my sister looks on, joint custody about to be given. As I lead him down a path that will expose him for the evil homophobic asshat that he is, I am cool, unrelenting and when I'm finished, not only does my sister have joint custody, the judge has recommended my asshat brother in law (MABIL) undergo serious psychological counseling for his anger issues and reliance on 17th century catholic codes of behavior.

In reality, I'm sourcing queer family custody lawyers for my sister, gritting my teeth, and refraining from sending MABIL the most incendiary email in the history of the interwebs.

Because what is a big sister supposed to do when a man is trying to make your sister look mentally unstable, counting on the hope that the world is still so sexist and woman-hating that a court would strip her of her ability to mother her children; when a man is hating your sister so much he'll stand in front of their children and slowly taunt her with, 'You are soooo craaaazy, you're craaaaaazy,' full well knowing my sister can't fight back or he'll use it against her?

So since I can't fly to Los Angeles and punch MABIL in his testicles and superglue his fingers up his ass, I will do everything I can - call every well-connected friend, find a pro bono queer lawyer, read up on California statute - to prepare my sister for the custody fight of her life.

After years of being a very distant big sister perhaps I should take this opportunity to thank MABIL for bringing us closer than we have ever been; for the first time, without her so-called perfect marriage sitting between us like a stinking turd to intimidate me and oppress her, we speak about real things and treat the other like a real person. There is real intimacy between us. I love her more than I ever have. And now we actually say it.

(Though she needs to get off her high horse about having a drivers license. I will have one -- soon! You'll see!)

As a feminist I have to chuckle at reading MABIL's 'plan' so clearly. Oh, I don't underestimate it. I know that our culture can easily strip a gay woman (or any woman) of her rights as a parent simply because she has a life that somehow doesn't match a 1950s stereotype. But I sneer at his puny thinking.  A man's word does not carry the legal weight it used to.  Thank god. What a man wants is no longer what a man gets, necessarily. The frustration and anger MABIL feels in the face of my sister's rebellion is the product of feminism and I couldn't be more pleased.

Feel that hot rush of heat to your face every time you see my sister at the soccer game trying to cheer on her kids even though you won't let her near them, MABIL?

Welcome to women's lib, asshat.

the road less traveled: iowa

Yesterday, I sent a message to my office: 'Delia will be on the road tomorrow to Iowa for a barn wedding. See you all on Monday!'

In other offices, my message would get some kind of snarky response: 'say hi to the corn for me!' or something like that.

This new office? Suddenly it's all 'Ooh! How fabulous! Bring back pics from the sustainable farm tour!'

So that's different.
...
When I think about how M- and I divide the labor of our relationship I think of two captains jockeying to steer a ship. He's used to steering his ship and I'm used to steering mine; together, we're in the wheelhouse, scuffling for control.

Like my dad, M- is convinced his way is always right. And, sometimes he's right. Except when it comes to wedding planning - even if it's a friend's wedding.

When it comes to that, I think of details that he hasn't: are there enough rooms in the hotel block? Are we really guaranteed a room (for some reason he thought we were but had never confirmed that)? What's the deadline for hotel reservations? What time is check in? What's their late check in policy? And what time is the wedding on Saturday? What are the events that we're invited to and not? (This is really important!)

I bet he's had one question in his head: am I going to be able to set up my DJ equipment on time and will the gig go well?

Once, I tried to ask these questions and he said, 'Don't worry about these things, baby. Everything will work out.'

And it's infuriating to hear because I instantly flash back to my mom and dad, standing in a restaurant lobby being told they can't be seated because Dad didn't make a reservation and my mom is humiliated and angry. All he had to do was think about How Things Are Done and make the damn reservation.  But no. He thought his manly brain exluded him from certain rules and expectations. And so we go back to the car, drive to Carl's Jr. and eat our burgers in silence.

So, I waited for everything to work out. And I was right. We weren't guaranteed a room, the main hotel was full and now we had to look for a room at a frakking Super 8 Motel. So I quickly made the reservations, paid for it and sent him the confirmation.

No 'told you so's'. No blame.

But goddammit. Next time, frak being nice and doing the 'managing up' crap. I'm just going to go ahead and make the plans because dudes may be able to move carriers around the globe but can't interpret a frakking wedding invitation correctly. I understand my role this weekend is to be the Pretty Girlfriend. I get that. I'm so brain dead, that's fine. But I really hate it when dudes ignore what I'm saying.

This mouth isn't just for giving blow jobs.

if only men read women's literature

[Note: These opinions are my own. I don't consult with others before having them and I don't ask permission before sharing them. This is my prerogative as the owner and writer of this space. Do I really need to say this?]

If only more men read more feminist literature the vast unknown-ness of their wives would be laid bare and life would be less confusing.

During the various ups and downs of watching my family 'find themselves' I'm struck at how hard it is for a woman to break free of social expectations. Like Lucy Honeychurch, my sister is bucking all the expectations of her class, gender, mothering status and perceived orientation and, in the process, making everyone around her freak out. Even I am stunned, watching my sister go through a process that makes me think of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own or Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

Her defiant refusal to remain in her marriage has apparently broken the rules of her little social community. In this community obligation to family (including friends) and church supercedes anything else, no matter if you're dying inside. But now, suddenly, relationships and identities are thrown into upheaval, children are endangered and all of morality has been upended and requires defense. Justifications must be made, core motivations must be plumbed and Someone needs to give a public accounting of how one has Betrayed Everyone.

Certainly, there was a betrayal. But which comes first? The betrayal of vows, or the desperate scramble for air that prompts the betrayal of vows? My brother in law asked me if I thought it was 'ok' that my sister did what she did. But I don't think in those terms. I try to put myself in her shoes and imagine what could have been done to facilitate the most immediate break in a marriage, deliver the greatest shock and bring things to an inevitable, and irreparable, conclusion. And then my sister's actions make sense.

But it doesn't make sense to the male members of her community. Their reactions are interesting. I think hysteria is accurate. There's also a degree of anger, seen especially in their demand for my sister to 'explain herself.'

All because a woman decided she wasn't happy.

What happens when men aren't happy? They can pull a Tiger, flaming out in a collection of hostesses and sleazy text messages. Or they can pull a Pastor C-, pushing everything down, only to release the unhappiness in bursts of furtive vacations. What do women do? We suck it up. We swallow our unhappiness until it turns us into the woman from The Yellow Wallpaper. Or we kill ourselves like Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary.

Again, I don't think men read a lot of 19th century domestic fiction. If they did, women's unhappiness would make a lot more sense.

A patriarchal society always inhibits a woman's autonomy and refuses to see her as an agent with a value system of her own. Her freedom, her independence doesn't exist unless some man authorizes it. And this is what I see. Men (very nice ones) demanding that my sister give an accounting of her actions because they're not satisfied with any of the answers they've received. These aren't bad men - they're just men. In defense of one of their own, they want to reassert control of a situation that she has set in motion.

For this, her journals have been secretly dissected, in an effort to find these answers when the woman herself is standing in front of them, repeating, "I wasn't happy. This wasn't me. I lied from the start. I never wanted any of this - wife, marriage. I was only that other person for everyone else."

Let's go back to literature (where all answers can be found, actually. At least humanist ones.) At the end of A Room With a View, Lucy Honeychurch is living in Florence with George Emerson, isolated from her family, even from her staunchest supporters like Rev. Beebe, because that is the price a woman pays when she betrays all expectations of her.

When a woman has defined for herself what her freedom entails, and she dares to take it, she finds herself cast outside of the castle walls. Imagine the Disney castle gone dark and quiet. The moat is filled and the drawbridge pulled up.

The only thing she has in front of her is the open world.

And it's worth it.

Tips on Informational Interviewing with Delia Christina

Lately, I’ve been fielding calls from recent college grads (or their family friends) for informational interviews and I don’t quite know how to feel about it. Ambivalent about my own professional standing and trajectory, I don’t quite know what insights I’m supposed to give these young people. Sure, I have a solid list of contacts (not as fabulous as some, but it’s still a good one); but informational interviewing should be about more than just a polite way to demand names. I see it as a mini-mentoring opportunity.


And since I’m big on mentoring folks who look like me, I was doubly ambivalent when the two people I spoke with this week didn’t look like me. Their accumulated gender, race and class privilege outweighed any contacts or leads I could give them in a lifetime.

The bitchy thought crossed my mind, “Shit, why should I waste my time and so-called insight on these two when I could be giving them to another woman of color?”

But I tamped down my impatience and made the appointments with them – because that’s what you do when you’re a professional. You realize that the job search is a dance and these sorts of interviews are part of the choreography. Also, there was no way I was going to look bad in front of the people who referred them to me. So on Monday, I met with a very nice college grad who’s earnestly interested in women’s advocacy – or law school – and today I met with a guy who’s been interning at our org at a long-term research position.

The recent grad was a dream. She was prepared. She came with a list of orgs she was interested in; she had already met with a couple other advocates I knew and she had a couple of career trajectories in mind by the time she sat down with me. We spent 30 minutes talking about the non profit sector, women’s advocacy and why direct service in Illinois is not likely to be a good bet for the next 10 years. I gave her a few names of other women to reach out to and shook hands with her on the way out. What a nice girl, I thought.

Then I met with PolicyDude. Unprepared, vague about his plans, unable to say what he wanted or why, he made my head hurt.

“PolicyDude,” I said. “Here’s a tip. When someone asks you what you’re interested in, saying ‘social justice and progressive movements’ isn’t going to cut it. It’s too vague. That could mean anything and everything. You need to be specific enough so that I know how best to recommend you to someone.”

He scribbled in his pad.

“So…let me hear it. Give me your 5 minute pitch: why do you want to be in policy and where do you want to end up?”

“Um…is that really necessary?”

Tip Number 2: When you’re asking someone to help you find a job, don’t be bitchy.

“Ok…who has the job now that you envision having?” In the past, I had always found this exercise to be helpful in focusing me on my own professional ambitions; I thought this would work for him, too. But, no.

He looked at the ceiling. “Um, well….policy think tanks…social movements for women…maybe an international organization…”

Sigh. “What about title? Who has the title you want?”

“Um, well…maybe Director of …policy?” Never let it be said that men don’t dream big.

Tip Number 3: For the love of god, be prepared ... and brief.

We spent an hour trying to eke out what it was he really wanted. Did he want to stay in Chicago or go elsewhere? Did he want to try women’s advocacy or poverty work? Did he want to stay in non profit or had he thought about the private sector? (I gave him the name of a blue chip consulting firm in Chicago with a non profit practice and, swear to god – if he finds a job with them, I will lose my shit.) Which foundations or research orgs was he thinking about? Why was he interested in this work? What did he want to do? How could I refer him to anyone I knew (and foist this disaster on them) when he couldn’t answer any of these questions?

Before you chastise me for losing my patience, I have to say that this guy is a grownup and should know better – in his 30s with a solid academic background, married to a med school student, already thinking about raising kids. He had already done some little work in the field but basically expected me to open my contact list and read off a bunch of names and emails for him.

Tip Number 4: Don’t be so overtly greedy.

When I reviewed his resume, I discovered that this guy had never gone through a traditional job process. Through the kindness of teachers and friends, he’d jumped from this random post to that.

“So you’ve never formally interviewed for any job before? You’ve never had to compete for a job?”

“Not really. Isn’t it …um…all about who you know?” Somehow, he managed to maintain a puzzled look of cluelessness as he said this.

Tip Number 5: Don’t let your white male privilege hit your ass on your way out my office.

...
Note: Though I was mentally over this conversation halfway through, I stuck with it and gave him some tips on being a little more strategic about his interviewing: stop mumbling, rewrite your resume, have your pitch ready and ask your contact for more than who they know. I gave him some homework and we’ll talk again in two weeks. But jesus on the cross – really??

Note: What’s Tip Number 1? Don’t be lazy!

on the unintended consequences of bad policy and parental notifications

I don't think anything I write this year will compare to this post at Fugitivus:

Laws restricting access to medical services are laws restricting access to medical services. They are not laws creating family talks, better worlds, or moral teenagers. They are laws creating restrictions to medical services, which people do not seek unless they need them. Laws creating restrictions to medical services are laws creating restrictions to services people need and need desperately. You can argue that the lawmakers had some kind of noble intentions in mind — I will not buy it, but you can argue that. But you cannot argue that once the law has been in effect and created an inability to comply, and yet remained unchanged. If this was a law about notifying parents, it would have addressed how to notify parents. If this was a law about how to seek a bypass, it would have addressed how to seek a bypass. Since it didn’t address either of those things, this is obviously a law about something else. You only get one guess about what that something else is.

The whole post is long but powerful (especially her memory of what it's like to be on the street and needing to come up with plans b/c/d/e & f.  This section is almost enough to convince me that most policy discussions/solutions need to start with/come from the people who are actually experiencing what others are trying to legislate or control.  Everything else is just academic or intellectual bullshit meddling.)

Because of my job I've become aware that most legislators don't actually read finer points of policy implications for a new piece of legislation; they want the bullet points.  So we give it to them, probably to the detriment of thoughtful policy development.  Some of them ask for clarification but they appear to rely on instinct, some electoral soothe-saying, and a smattering of hope that the nit-picky administrative details will be resolved in committee while all they have to do is jump on as sponsor and then vote on it when it's called.

Well, unfortunately, the devil is in those very details they are likely to overlook.

We rely on our elected officials to take care of the public's trust but they are often too 'busy' (see how I give them the benefit of the doubt there?) to actually do it critically, or thoroughly.

Illinois' parental notification law survived a legal challenge and will be in place as of this year.  At least, that's what they tell us.  Think our bankrupt, overtaxed and janky state system will have a firm enough hand to enforce this badly constructed law?  I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, the anti-woman/anti-choice faction has succeeded in building a wall separating young women in crisis from their legal access to a needed legal, medically-approved procedure.

Golf clap, frakkers.

asshat of the day: National Review’s John Derbyshire

When you think the congenitally stupid nostalgia these people indulge in couldn't be any more ... well, stupid, there's this:

DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.
COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?
DERBYSHIRE: Probably. Don’t you think so?
COLMES: No, I do not think so whatsoever.
DERBYSHIRE: Come on Alan. Come clean here [laughing].
COLMES: We would be a better country? John Derbyshire making the statement, we would be a better country if women did not vote.
DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, probably.

In addition to repealing women's suffrage, he wants to get rid of the Civil Rights Act because, well, you can't force people to be good. (So, let's just indulge everyone's self-interest and see what kind of country we have then, right? Frakking idiot.)

What year do these people want to live in? Someone should ask them.

And they'd probably say the 18th or early 19th century.

Think Progress » National Review’s John Derbyshire: Women Should Not Have The Right To Vote:

one more relationship epiphane

where did august go?
it's like it left the house to buy a pack of cigarettes then got waylaid by a floozy, never to be heard from again.

i was going to write a whole snarky post on nearing 40 and growing carnal appetites that are slow to be met but i'll take a page from a more discreet life and just say that it is ... unfortunate that men and women are such different sexual trajectories. what's the biological imperative in this difference?

my mom didn't have a chance to tell me this. (and i don't think my dad ever noticed, and if he did he certainly wouldn't choose that as a topic of conversation to have with his daughters. though he has no problem telling me about his prostate issues.)

mom also didn't tell me about the various sexual anxieties men have. this is sort of a surprise to me. once again, the horribly inaccurate picture i have in my head of the clueless, confident Modern Man has led me down a path of assumptions that was about to set me off on a diatribe about 'getting the job done' instead of actually, you know, thinking about the other person as a person.

it's weird. i've rarely ever thought of men as people. (there are exceptions.) women are people. people are complex, complicated; they are onions to be peeled; they have layers. men don't have layers. they have...behaviors that have been programmed by a sexist and patriarchal culture and such behaviors are to be controlled and/or avoided for the benefit of one's personal safety. most of their layers have been erased by the time they are 20; the layers remaining are labeled Sport, Sex and Collectibles.

well, glad to say i'm on my way to correcting my thinking. yes, i can begin to admit that, indeed, men are people. i was wrong: they have anxieties, worries, insecurities, fears and the whole shebang of layer-itude that women have.

whaddya know. men are like women.

how...bizarre.