Poor, poor baby. Let me organize a pity party for you.

A few years ago, anonymous sex-blogger Girl With A One Track Mind, Abby Lee, was outed by British newspaper The Sunday Times. Backlash from the blogosphere was swift, virulent, vicious, and according to a recent article in the same paper by the same writer, Anna Mikhailova, career ruining.

Mikhailova ruined Abby Lee's film career - she worked in production, not as an actress - and now has the utter brass cajones to whine about Abby's readers ruining her "reputation" and by virtue of that reputation-ruining, her career as a bottom-feeding journalist is just not thriving. Awww. Honey. I'm so sorry.

I have a vested interest in this not just for reasons of anonymity; I believe that Abby would not have been vilified for her sexual escapades had she been male, so there's the feminist angle as well as the fact that I myself write under a pseudonym. My reasons for doing that are my own. Abby's were as well.

When does "the public interest" or "the right to know" trump privacy? When there is something illegal going on, certainly. But if I'm writing about my own private Idaho over here, and you read it and like it, why does it matter if I'm the woman in the office next to you or if I live three time zones away?

Of course, the automatic comeback to my argument is that if I wanted to remain anonymous, I wouldn't be writing on teh interweb, I'd have a journal that I kept under lock and key. Guess what. I do. Writing is part of who I am, not just something I do for fun. Publishing my struggles with depression has been both about my own recovery and about the hope that someone, somewhere, reads what I've written and decides to seek help for their own issues. De-stigmatizing mental illness is a goal of my blog.

Writing here about politics, the abortion debate, my silly little inconsequential life, is something that I enjoy doing. I believe that I have the right to do that under a pen name. And so I do not feel sorry for Anna Mikhailova. The line for the pity party forms to the left, please. Right there, that sign that says "Exit"!!

Seeded

I went to Church earlier this year. Now before you go gettin' all excited about my return to Christianity, this was a familial obligation. My niece had her First Communion, which the Catholic Church is starting to call First Eucharist. The title change annoys me, but then, there isn't much about the Church that DOESN'T bug me.

I won't go into the details of the family dynamics of the event, except to say that some of that side of the fam is Catholic and some isn't, so there's the usual back-and-forth Catholic vs. Protestant bullshit. Tangentially, I always wonder about the crappola that goes on between the different sects of Christianity. If they're all following the path of righteousness, where do they get off bashing one another's forms of Christianity? But I digress.

My niece is 7. First Communion (I flat out refuse to call it First Eucharist, its too cumbersome and strange-sounding to my ears.) at that age is about the pretty dress, the presents, and the little veil that you get to wear. The significance of accepting the body and blood of Christ, as Catholics believe the communion bread and wine are transformed during the blessing from bread and wine to body and blood, is largely lost on your average 7 year-old. Trust me. Been there, done that, have the pictures to prove it.

I haven't been to Church since my nephew's first communion, two years ago. At that Mass, I enjoyed myself hugely, but not for reasons of faith. Firstly, because DH was not raised Catholic as I was, and the subtle cues that indicate to the congregation when to stand, when to kneel, and when to sit are lost on anyone who doesn't have that doggerel pounded into their heads from birth. So he's half a beat behind, and each time the congregation moves, he rolls his eyes at me, as if to say, "What? Again? Why can't you people just SIT STILL?" So that makes it hard not to giggle through the Mass. A benefit of being with someone for nearly half of your life is the ability to telepathically communicate with them. 

Secondly, at my nephew's first communion, the priest had all of the children come up to the altar and sit down on the dais. He joined them, in his vestments, sitting down on the floor with them, and giving the homily to them. He ignored the rest of us, just having a conversation with the kids. I know it made them feel special and involved in the Mass, unlike every other Mass they'd ever been to in their lives.

The priest made an effort at this Mass as well to bring it to the kid's level. Might have even been the same priest, I'm not sure.

The communion song was about growing; a part of the refrain was

Seed scattered and sown
Wheat gathered and grown

I was thinking about English, and a few of the other words in English that sound like seeded; seated, ceded. As these words swirled around in my head, I was remembering so much of the dogma of my childhood. The Nicene Creed, a recitation of Catholic beliefs. At the end, it talks about Jesus seated at the right hand of of the Father. I can't tell you how many homilies I heard over the years about growing and gardening, seeds, seated....and how I've refused to cede my viewpoint that the Catholic Church wants women to be barefoot and pregnant, or nuns.  According to Pope John Paul II, the only two acceptable vocations for women:  wife AND mother (The two are NOT mutually exclusive; to be one is to be the other.) OR a nun.

Ladies, isn't that wonderful?  You can choose to become a member of a religious order, or you can get married and start popping out kids.  Y'all have fun with that....I'm not allowing them to plant those "seeds" in my head.

On Friend Requests

I'm a participant in a completely ridiculous number of social networking websites, fan forums, and various other places that *ahem* need my commentary. Obviously.

MySpace and Facebook are the tips of the iceberg. MySpace is where I geek out over fandom; Facebook I joined because my Swedish family all belongs, and thus I can much more easily keep tabs on them by being a member myself. Here's an unintended consequence of that; I have friend requests on both sites from people that a) I don't know b) I don't remember or c) I never liked. What to do about this? Thus far, I've simply ignored the requests, and that will remain my course of action for the foreseeable future.

It seems both odd and incongruous, to me, anyway, to request a friending by someone you were never friends with in the real world, or that you come across their name and say, "Dude. I oughta friend them." Maybe that's because I remember a world before teh interweb; maybe it is because I am more sane and normal than I think I am.

Online friends is one thing; I've got a passel of 'em from fandom that I've never met in real life, but we share a common ground. (Mainly a rabid fascination with a television show, but hey, we're normal. What? We are!) The people that I know in the world inside the computer obviously were strangers at one point, so my argument here is mostly self-defeating, but....

I'm not doing a great job of explaining the problem.

In clear, simple language, then, here it is. I have a friend request on one site from someone that I know attended the same high school as I did. We were not in the same graduating class. We never once, in the 10 years I attended that school system, had a class together. We weren't friends. That's harsh, but it is true. We aren't friends. I vaguely recognized the name, but know nothing else about this person, and truthfully, I don't care to. High school was two years of absolute hell for me, and mostly, I don't look back on my time in high school with fond memories. Times when we weren't actually IN the school building are another story, I have great memories of huge amounts of silly teen-aged things we did. Phrases that mean nothing to anyone else ("It was a six-foot chicken, officer!') reduce me to laughing so hard I'm gasping for breath. School itself, however, is an experience that you could not pay me to repeat. Ever. So why the living hell would I want to re-hash any of that with someone who went to the same school district, and that I was never friends with? Answer: I would rather not, if it is all the same to you, thanks.

One of the other odd friend requests is from someone who shares DH's last name, but when I showed him the profile and the picture, this wasn't someone he is related to, even in the very distant second-cousin-twice-removed kind of way. This person lives in a state roughly a thousand miles from my own, and we have no friends in common. Sorry, but I sure as hell ain't gonna click the "friend me" button when I don't know who in the world you are.

A third one is from someone that I exchanged e-mails with, two years ago, when I was running the non-profit. We're talking about maybe 4 e-mails. And then I never heard from them again. So we should be friends....why, exactly? I can't come up with anything.


All of this really makes me sound as if I'm quite the self-centered bitch. I can live with that label, if that's the appellation I'm stuck with for this attitude. But I really don't think I am. If these were friend requests from people that I was friends with once upon a time, awesome. If they're folks that I've lost touch with over the years and always wondered where they ended up, cool. Old pen pals? That would be really neat, I had one pen pal who was from Scotland and another from the Midlands in England. I'd love to hear from either of them. Someone that I run into at the store who I've known my whole life who mentions that they blog? Sweet! Random people who recognize my real name, or just like Lucy's profile picture? Not so much. That sorta weirds me out, quite truthfully.

My attitude about all of this changes 180 degrees when we're talking about bands, authors, or other celebrities who have chosen to put themselves on these sites and grant admirers access to their private lives. But that's a story for another day.

Clicking the buttons on any of the sites that say 'decline' seem unduly rude, and thus I've chosen the do-nothing course of action.

Women are socialized to "be nice." We're told, "Nice girls don't do that. Nice girls share. Nice girls blah, blah, blah, blah." When I first entered the professional workforce, at the ripe old age of.....um, I think I was 21 when I went to work for Ye Olde Evile Bank...I came across a book called Hardball for Women: Winning at the Game of Business. It completely changed the way I thought about acting in the workplace, and how to get noticed and get advanced in the business world. Unfortunately, you have to be 'one of the guys' to get along. I didn't say that I made up the rules, or that I liked them. I just understand that you need to follow them. The author, Pat Heim, talked about how no one tells the boys growing up to "be nice" nor does anyone tell the boys that they need to go along to get along.

So I wonder: if I was male, would I have clicked the "decline" button long since and forgotten about this?

Reticene

I am a gabby girl. Talkative isn't really the word, although it comes close. I'm gabby in my writing, too, notice how often I wander from topic to topic. You don't always see it, as sometimes when I'm editing, I'll realize how far off track I wandered, or that the length of the post is guaranteed to put the casual reader to sleep, so I shorten it up and say less than I originally intended.

Online, sometimes I am more brutally honest than I would be in real life. The perceived anonymity of the 'net leading me to say more than I ought. Outside of the computer, I've learned a few really tough lessons about over-sharing.

Once upon a time, in the Dark Ages, when I worked for Ye Olde Evile Bank, I joined an international women's organization that strives to better each community it exists in. That'd be a no-brainer for someone like me, you would think. One night, at a regular monthly meeting, after an abysmal day at Ye Olde Savings & Trust, I shared a few of the details of my horrible day with the group of "ladies" (I'm using that term as sarcastically as possible here) I sat with at a large round table.

I had been working on an estate with a large funeral bill, and the attorney for the estate had called me with a total number for the dollar amount on the check. The law firm promised to fax an invoice later, and assured me that the dollar amount they gave me verbally was the correct amount for the bill. Accordingly, I cut the check and sent it off through Ye Olde's back office operations.

Of course it was incorrect. And of course, it was too late in the day to get the check back from the processors who were in another city when the law firm called me to say, "oops!" (Ye Olde relied very heavily on a courier service.) And who looks like the asshole in that situation? Me. No one likes to be made to look like an idiot, and I was very upset over the whole situation, and angry with the law firm's lackeys.

From those details above, could you figure out who the stiff was? Who the legal firm was? What city or state the dead person lived in? No. No, you can't. And yet, some 'lady' from that table of women I sat with that evening proceeded to call not my boss, and not his boss, but one step above that, and tell the big honcho that I had broken banking secrecy laws. As you can imagine, working for a department that had the word "Private" in its official name, breaking banking secrecy laws was taken extremely seriously.

What, you thought my old department really called itself the Stiffs Division?

Anyway, I got hauled in to the head honcho's office and read the riot act. For a good hour. The honcho told me that the only reason this meeting was not to announce to me that I was fired was because this sort of behavior was not typical of me.

In my head during this meeting, my inner monologue sounded something like this:

Let me get this straight. You're believing some phone call from some random person about my public behavior over me? I've worked here for seven years. I can't believe that you're taking the word of some yahoo over me.

Or at least, that was part of the inner monologue. The rest of it wasn't as civil as that. Not surprisingly, Ye Olde wouldn't tell me who the caller had been, but as I sat around a table of 8 women the previous evening, and only one had the most tenuous connection to Ye Olde (she was in the financial services industry, and had met the honcho the year before) I wonder who it might have been. Gee. I dunno. Maybe the only one who knew the director? Wow, maybe, possibly, perhaps.

When I got back to my desk, shaken, angry, bitterly disappointed, nearly with smoke pouring out of ears, the first thing I did was draft a letter of resignation from the women's organization. Pounding the keys with all of the frustration I couldn't manifest in a cube farm, (like screaming "MOTHERFUCKER!" at the top of my lungs) the first draft of the letter was a bit less than polite. Eventually, I calmed down enough after I got home that night to hand write a very polite and prosaic letter, simply stating that the time required to belong to the organization presented a conflict with my current employment, and that I hoped at some future point to be able to work with them again. Warm regards, yada yada yada. The only thing that might have betrayed my irritation in that letter was the fact that the fountain pen I use for such missives made a nice FIRM indentation on the paper, so if you had turned the letter over, and you could decipher written words by touch, there was plenty of detail for you to feel. No, I didn't tear the paper, but it came awful darn close.

The truth of the matter was that Ye Olde's honcho who drug me into the office strongly suggested that I resign. An employer can't fire you for belonging to an innocuous charitable organization on your time off, but they sure can (and sometimes do) look for any excuse to let you go if you're doing something they don't approve of with your time off. I suspected at the time, and still suspect, that had I not resigned, my tenure at the bank would ended sooner than I intended, and not by my own personal choice.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me as far as Ye Olde was concerned. I had been hunting for another job, just not with vigor and purpose up to that point. After that day, I focused my efforts on getting the hell out of there before they made me into an old and bitter harpy.

A few months later, I handed in my notice when I got the non-profit job. My direct supervisor, who was a wonderful person, knew that the dust-up with my volunteerism had a lot to do with my quitting, but I was careful to not vocalize it to anyone, lest it bite me in the ass one day. Because it was only one out of literally hundreds of reasons I wanted the hell away from the bank.

A difficult lesson. On many levels. It taught me a bitter truth about working with women; sometimes we work even harder than the boys do at dragging each other down, which is a dammed shame. It also made me more reluctant to trust, and a bit more reserved in social situations for a good long while. Eventually, that wore off, and today I'm just as boisterous in a social situation as I always have been. I'm just usually more circumspect about what I say. I keep my venting about miserable days to a trusted few friends, people who I know would never work behind the scenes to get me fired.

It has also left me with a mystery that I suspect I will never solve, until and unless I ever confront the perpetrator. Which would, in a town this small, be social suicide. What on earth did she hope to gain? Was she after my miserable nineteen thousand dollar a year job? I find that nearly impossible to believe. Did she hope to curry favor with the honcho? I really can't imagine what favor the honcho would ever show her, given the negativity of this event. Even people who thrive on the misery of others don't remember events that were awkward and difficult for them with relish, and lemme tell ya, AWK-WARD isn't even close to the tension that was in the honcho's office that day.

I have made a new friend through my current job, a nice woman who has a wicked sense of humor to match mine, and shares some of my complaints about the place, but I've had to obfuscate and be less than 100% truthful with her in conversations I've had with her, because I'm afraid that she'll run to the employer and tell them how serious my job hunting is.

And isn't it sad that an event that happened more than four years ago still affects me that way? As women, we need to stick together and look out for one another. The powers that be at the top of almost any business are men, and even in this day and age, as a professional woman, I've run into more bozos than I can count who think that women belong at home, barefoot and pregnant, or if they are in the office, they certainly shouldn't be in positions of power, being the fragile and emotional things that we are. If I live to be a thousand, I'll never understand chauvinism, or what makes certain people tick.

On the other hand, what a dull world it would be if we were all 100% alike.

The reason I'm thinking about this today? I've been invited to join the organization again, and I'm wondering if I should jump at the chance, for the major networking benefits it offers, or if I should walk away, seeing as last time around it nearly cost me my job. I'm reluctant on one hand, and excited about the possibilities on the other. A bunch of cliche`s, useless and unhelpful, keep running through my head. Once bitten, twice shy. Everyone deserves a second chance. You don't shit where you live. Make hay while the sun shines. Hard work is its own reward.

None of which is helping me make up my mind. Welcome to the street where I live: Indecisive Way!

C (from a different perspective)

I made a pilgrimage to the eye doctor's recently, because my eyesight is diminishing, and reading "cheater" glasses just aren't doing the trick anymore.

The doc is one that I've seen before; someone I communicate well with. The vision problem that I've been having is that I can't see (well, duh, bright girl, call yourself a writer? Let's try that again.) Unless I really make an effort to focus, everything's gone all blurry. But I've had a hard time explaining that to anyone. I've always had good vision, not a problem seeing anything, near or far. So verbalizing what's wrong has been tough. Fortunately, the doc understood right away, and I've got a fun, funky pair of glasses ordered. In the meantime, he gave me contacts to wear so that I can see on a daily basis.

I hate them.

They're a pain in the ass to put in my eyes, and then I can feel that there's something that doesn't belong in my eye. I can't wait until the glasses get here so I can ditch the damn things. It is nice to see again, though. I'd been unable to spend much time on the computer, especially when I was tired, without the whole world going fuzzy.

On the way home from the doctor's office, I was listening to NPR as usual, and my local NPR affiliate is airing something called "Newslink" which is an English-language program produced in Bonn, Germany by Deutsche Welle Radio. They had a story on about Nicolas Sarkozy (the current French PM, in case you're clueless), or more accurately, the piece was about his current girlfriend, Carla Bruni.

The perspective of the piece was one that just infuriated me; by listing the entirety of Madame Bruni's conquests, the reporter managed to all but come out and say that "the lady is a tramp". I was gnashing my teeth about 3o seconds in to it, and it was made worse by the fact that he was oh-so-careful to point out that the legacy of the male leaders of France have been judged often by their virility or lack thereof; French PM's are just about expected to have a mistress or 3.

Urgh.

How is that just, reasonable? Obviously, unless you don't have more than 3 brain cells to rub together, it is dammed unreasonable. But it seems that it is perfectly acceptable to still bash a woman for the number of her conquests while venerating a man for the same. Are we still in the 1560s?

The really interesting thing, in the end, though, is the vastly different attitude (perspective) that the Europeans have about the whole thing; Sarkozy isn't being bashed for breaking up with his wife, he's being ridiculed mostly for taking up with a woman who has been around. Here, though, on this side of the pond, the problem would be that he had a mistress at all.

Ahh, humanity. Nutbags, the lot of 'em.

Contraception Day

It isn't often that I write more than one post in a day. Something has to happen or catch my attention or really piss me off for me to come back to the computer and finish another post. I start more than one a day, usually, but they sit in my queue for a few days until I get them finished.

Today, it is something that has me pissed and feeling confrontational and like I've been left in the dark. I get news feeds from NOW (National Organization for Women), the ACLU, and NARAL, so I'm surprised that this didn't hit my radar screen before the actual day. I heard it on the BBC's World Today, which my local NPR affiliate carries. I love listening to the Beeb. I love to hear the voices of the Brits...mmmm, those accents. But I digress.

I turned the radio on when leaving Pilates, and caught about 15 minutes of the programme. If you're a regular reader, maybe you've been wondering why I haven't been doing Current Events or politics lately, and the answer is that I'm depressed enough without focusing on the constant stream of bad news. Every time I tune in to NPR or CNN, I hear and see things that make me sad and angry, leave me feeling impotent and powerless in the face of a giant patriarchal Republican conspiracy. Now I know that point of view is both radical and a weee bit unfounded, part of my natural paranoia, but I can't help feeling like the bad news from Iraq combined with radical religious right hysteria and the erosion of our civil rights by things like the USA PATRIOT ACT all weigh me down, make my depression worse. Therefore, I haven't been focusing on that so much lately.

But then I'll hear something that snaps me back to a reality that I'm not happy about. Today was World Contraceptive Day, and I didn't even know it. Contraceptives are a woman's issue, solely because no one has bothered to try to invent a male version of The Pill. Don't get me started on that one.

Being raised Catholic, you know that I was taught from an early age that contraceptives of any type are wrong. It goes without saying that I never agreed with that idea, in fact it mystified me from the very first time I ever heard it. I'm not alone in that; many Catholics use every type of contraception available, because no one really wants 21 children. Who can afford that in this day and age? The Church's stance on contraception began when the Church wanted lots of new followers, and when the infant mortality rate for the entire known world was very, very high. Outdated? Yep, you could say that.

I've written before about the things that Pope John Paul II had to say about "appropriate" roles for women; the duality of motherhood and wife should be enough for them, according to his late Holiness's 1988 letter to women. I don't have much use for Benedictine XVI, his writings before he became pontiff as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger are enough to make me hunt for the nearest vomitorium.

The Beeb had 3 people on the program to talk about Contraception Day; one was a Catholic professor, a woman, who opposes any contraception. One was a scientist who has researched contraceptives extensively in developing nations, and one was a spokesperson for a Brit organization called Marie Stopes. The scientist and the Marie Stopes bloke were both well-reasoned and sane. The professor is a whole 'nother story.

The professor started her comments off by noting that she's opposed to contraception not as a Catholic, but as a woman. Contraceptions are bad for women, y'all. Who knew? I always thought that bringing a child into the world should be a reasoned, measured decision, one not undertaken lightly, one that you should make when you are emotionally, physically and financially able to care for another human being. Wow, guess I really missed the boat there. Apparently, I shouldn't use contraceptions because they're unhealthy. Riiiiight.

Turns out that the Church does support one type of contraception: Natural Family Planning. But then again, the Church doesn't allow for sexual intercourse of any type outside of the marriage bed, for the sole purpose of procreation. What does it say about your sexuality if you allow it to be controlled by people who are (theoretically) abstinent their whole lives?

But anyway. I won't let this post become a diatribe about sexuality. I won't let this post become a diatribe about sexuality. I won't let this post become a diatribe about sexuality. Sorry, back to the point.

World Contraception Day is about bringing attention to the fact that many women around the world do not have access to birth control of any sort, even when they want it. Additionally, it calls attention to the fact that by 2050, there will be two billion (that's billion with a B) more people on this planet than there are today. If we don't start paying attention to population control, we're going to out grow the planet before the end of the 21st century. Scary.

Further proof, as if I needed it, of Ohio's Red-Stated-ness.

Many, many, many thanks to Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy for bringing this horrible bit of news to my attention.

I usually spend a lot of time listening to NPR, reading news websites, checking up on NOW and NARAL, but since I've lost my job and it has been summer and I've been fighting the terrible demons of depression, I haven't been plugged in to the news. So it is with stomach-churning disgust that I tell you about a new Ohio law that is a blow to any woman with a brain, pro-choice or not, this has got to be one of the worst bits of ick I've heard in a while.

Ohio legislators, in their divine wisdom, have decided that "there oughta be a law" that requires, REQUIRES, mind you, a woman to GET WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE POTENTIAL FATHER OF HER UNBORN CHILD BEFORE SHE CAN GET AN ABORTION.

I know what you're thinking. "Oh, no, Lucy, you must have misunderstood. The state of Ohio could not be so stupid to think that a woman does not have the right to do with her own body what she chooses without the permission (permission? are you fucking kidding me?) of her 'owner,' oops, I meant her partner."

And unfortunately, I've got to say that yes, dear reader, that is exactly what the state of Ohio thinks. Read the legislation for yourself. And just in case you think you might slide under the radar and get a male friend to sign something for you, that becomes a misdemeanor under the new law. Do it twice, and it is a felony.

As Twisty rightly points out, this is a part of the 'men's right's' movement. I have a lot to say about that, but it boils down to this.... Ha. And: What-the-fuck-ever. As if men need someone to fight for their rights. Fellas, you run the world and by and large control what goes on over the entire planet. Gimme a break. Mostly, until you can give birth, you don't get a choice or much of a say in the matter. Sorry, but them's the breaks, boyos.

Permission. Wow. We've just taken about 45,000 steps backwards in women's rights. Thanks so much to the legislators who are supporting this bill for making 2007 seem more like 1307. If you are one of my Ohio readers, PLEASE, PLEASE take a second to send your local rep an e-mail urging them to not vote for this piece of crap legislation.

I could go on and on about how it seems more and more like we're living in a totalitarian state, or about how the last time I checked, until someone other than me is paying my bills, they don't have the right to boss me around, or about what incredible bullshit this is, but you've heard it all before.

Until women everywhere stand up and say "NO!" to this type of misguided legislating, it is going to continue. Make your voice heard.

Red State

I was chatting online with a few fellow fangirls a few days ago and we were talking about obnoxious t-shirts I bought from Cafe Press, one of which says, "Don't fear feminists. We just want our turn on top." I think that the shirt is hilarious. I needed new t-shirts for the gym, my old ones are too large, so I wear it there. I picked up a few other shirts as well, each of them more obnoxious than that one. I told my friends about all of them.

One of them blatantly declares that I am pro-gay rights, and yes, I *do* wear it to the gym as well. Did I mention that my gym is a YMCA? A Young Men's Christian Association? So I'm waiting for someone to say something to me about the t-shirts, especially the gay rights one. Or waiting for the Y to just toss me, for the shirt alone.

One friend said, "Is Ohio really that red? Or is it just where you live?"

I responded, "Are you KIDDING me? We passed a defense of marriage act. Homophobic misogynistic bullshit."

Another friend chimed in, "Uh-oh. Lucy's getting fired up. Quick, someone change the subject."


They know me too well.


But I do get fired up about gay rights. What makes you so special, Mr. and Mrs. Straight America, that you can deny the rights of someone who isn't straight?

My parents live in a resort-style community. Gated, on a lake, in the summertime it is just about "party central." The 'rents have a fire pit, which becomes a gathering place on fair summer evenings. People from around the development carry their coolers from home and settle around the fire, and talk about everything from politics to how the wake boarding was on the lake that day.

A few nights ago, I listened as a few of my parent's neighbors talked about a man who is looking to buy in the development. (The community is "gossip central" too.) Turns out that the man might be gay and you should have heard the derogatory horrible things several 30-something guys were saying. So terrible that even potty-mouthed me won't relay the conversation to you, I find it that offensive.

I will tell you to your face if you are offending me, no problem. Have done it about a million times before. DH was sitting next to me as this horrible bit of stunning bigotry was taking place, and he put his hand on my shoulder and didn't say a word, but he didn't have to. I knew what he was thinking. "God, don't start!"

So I didn't. I did open my mouth to say a few things, but most of them were under my breath and I know that if they heard me, they weren't paying any heed to me. There was quite a lot of liquor there, so yet again I learned the lesson of In Vino, Veritas.

Thumbing their noses at the Vatican (and I'm downright gleeful!)

I took a small road trip yesterday to visit a friend and had some time alone in the car. On Saturdays, my local NPR affiliate plays a whole bunch of interesting programs, among them Car Talk, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and Weekend America. I don't get to listen to all of them, usually, but that does not mean that I don't enjoy them.

Weekend America had a story about a movement in the Catholic Church to ordain women. I'm thrilled to my fingertips about this. The fact that the Church does not recognize the ordinations matters little to me.

Change within the Catholic Church could be best categorized as having a glacial pace, so I'm unsurprised that the Vatican excommunicated the first women to be ordained. For heaven's sake, the Church only admitted in 1992 that maybe they ought not to have excommunicated Galileo in 1633. "Glacial" is perhaps too kind a word for the pace of change.

Pope John Paul II had plenty to say about female ordination in letters dated 1988 and 1995. Through all that woman-hating waffle (should you bother to read it, as I did) the basic message is: "Hey, ladies. We hear you. Be patient. Be faithful. Listen to the priests and bishops. Be a nun if you want to serve. Obedience to cannon law is paramount. Barefoot and pregnant is the best condition for you."

Here's a couple of direct quotes from the 1988 letter, offensive in the extreme: We must now focus our meditation on virginity and motherhood as two particular dimensions of the fulfillment of the female personality." How's THAT for a gem? Add it to this piece of nonsense: "In the name of liberation from male "domination", women must not appropriate to themselves male characteristics contrary to their own feminine "originality". There is a well-founded fear that if they take this path, women will not "reach fulfilment", but instead will deform and lose what constitutes their essential richness."

The bold emphasis is mine, of course.

Being a feminist, you see, is inherently evil in the eyes of the Church. Women should be wives, fulfilling their 'duty' to be fruitful and multiply, or they should be nuns. It is that whole virgin/whore debate all over again; either you are a virgin, pure, holy, obedient, or you're a whore, plain and simple. What a load of sanctimonious bullshit.

I'm sure that Pope Pious XII will have plenty to say on this issue as well, since women continue to defy Vatican prescriptions for their behavior. Especially since Pious is even more conservative, more of a right-wing nut job than his predecessor was.

By not behaving, being disobedient, the women who have been ordained are taking their place in history as feminists, ground-breakers, and leaders.

I had a conversation with my father about this whole issue; he himself was excommunicated for marrying my mother, a Protestant. The fact that Mum converted to Catholicism and raised the sibs and I Catholic has no bearing whatsoever on Dad's excommunication. And yes, this happened in America in the 1960s, amazing enough in itself. So he's got his own axe to grind with the Church, but by and large he and I disagree about almost the whole religion issue. He still believes in much of his childhood teachings, whereas I do not.

"Why would the Church's stance on this surprise you?" He asked me, in all seriousness.

"Well," I said, "Because I was raised as a red-blooded American woman, who believes that she's got the same rights as any man...remember 'we hold these truths to be self-evident?' and the whole feminist stance I have?"

"But the Church has never played by the same rules as the government," he reminded me, "and the chances of the Church changing anytime soon are slim and none."

This issue for me is more about equality than religion, in the end. So perhaps he's right. But I refuse to accept that just because we don't have penises that we can't be priests.

Ripples in a pond

When you toss a stone into a body of water, ripples of water spread out, touching things that your small stone never did. The big evil bank that I used to work for talked about "spheres of influence" when pushing us to sell bank services to clients. A program that one of my sisters has worked for has a slogan about everything being connected.

Likewise, in the blogosphere, there are many bloggers who have encouraged me, motivated me, whose writing has touched my own even though I've never met them.

One of those bloggers is Abby Lee, Girl With a One Track Mind. An anonymous blogger like me, although her subject matter is a far more interesting than mine will ever be. More entertaining, too. Or at least she was anonymous until a year ago, August 6, 2006, when Abby was outed by the British newspaper, The Sunday Times. What happened next is the stuff of an anon-blogger's nightmares. She lost her job, and suddenly every single person in the UK knew her real name and where she lived.

Since she blogs about her sexual exploits, and is a woman and unashamed of herself, she has spent a lot of the past year dealing with the male establishment verbally beating her up for her liberal views. Abby's brand of feminism is fearless and inspiring. A man writing the same blog would have been venerated, the subject of much "attaboy" back-slapping encouragement. That makes me incredibly sad.

Her writing, combined with one or two others, (notably Dooce and Abbypants) has encouraged me to be more open in my own blogging, given me the courage to write frankly about my battle with major depressive disorder.

When I started Well Behaved Women, it was a cry in the wilderness of the reddest of the red states, a way to protest the Idiot (Bush) Administration, a place where I could freely worry about the state of women's rights in America and talk about the tenuous thread that a woman's right to choose hangs by. It was rare in the beginning that I would talk about my own personal life. Politics, more politics, with a dose of politics tossed in was what I was writing about.

Somewhere along the way, that focus changed, and I began mentioning things in my life from time to time. And then in the last six months, it has been my life with a bit of politics on the side. I get more responses/comments, more hits on the blog when I'm writing about my own life, when I'm being deeply personal and baring things that I wouldn't talk about with a roomful of strangers than I do when I'm ranting about something stupid that President Idiot has done or said, or the Supreme Court further restricting civil rights. Writing about the depression, or trying to analyze something that has happened to me generates more interest than the government trying to look at your library records.

I'm going to refrain from commenting much on how that apathy also makes me sad, and how incredibly strange I think it is that random strangers are interested in the goings-on of a lunatic 30-something Ohioan, and get back to my point.

Without ground breakers like Dooce and Abby Lee, I wouldn't be here in the corner detailing my struggle to stay out of a ward. The ripples that spread out from blogs like theirs reach worldwide. Ideas sparked by a post written halfway around the world fill me with wonder at technology and the incredible age that we're living in. Unless I'm incredibly lucky, I will probably never meet Abby Lee. She has changed my life for the better, and while I'm deeply sorry for the pain that she's been through in the past year, her amazing writing has made me aspire to be a better writer. I am supremely grateful for that. So thanks, Abby. I feel privileged to have witnessed your journey, and can't wait to see what you do next.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

I wouldn't believe the name of this piece of legislation (Adobe required) had I not read it on NOW's website. Just sounds like something a comedian would come up with.

Regardless, turns out that even the Democratically controlled Congress can barely get it right; this legislation passed 225-199, meaning that nearly 200 Congressional Representatives voted AGAINST a woman's right to fair pay. Un-fucking-believable, really.

Ohio voted against it, with 7 yea and 11 nay votes, but I'm pleased and surprised that the rep from my district voted for it. You can check who voted which way from your state here.

Equal pay for equal work has been one of feminism's biggest historical battles. The Equal Rights Amendment has yet to be passed. Women, on average, make about 21% less than men in the same job. If we're all equal under the Constitution, seems to me that when it comes to pay scales, to paraphrase George Orwell, some are more equal than others.

Back to my (blogging) roots.

I have not been writing massive missives on the Idiot Administration lately. Likewise, I've avoided diatribes filled with dire warnings about the dismal state of women's rights in America. Since I have so much time on my hands, what with being unemployed and all, I've been instead looking inward, and amusing myself with writing about things that are fermenting in my head.

And then today I checked out Twisty, on I Blame The Patriarchy, a woman who I admire greatly. Twisty's a far, far better writer than I will ever be, her style is much more scholarly and I envy what I perceive as the incredible ease with which her posts flow. Maybe she agonizes over every sentence as I do, I'll never know. Today her post is about a woman in India whose case is equal parts tragedy and something else....what word do you use for something that makes you so angry you can't see straight? Infuriating? How about equal parts tragedy and resignation, that the state of women's rights all over the world will never improve enough, enough so that it no longer needs to be a battle?

Twisty's last sentence, particularly, "Violence against women is a fucking global humanitarian crisis, yo." made me sit up, scowl at the computer, and say, "Damn!" And "Wow!" Because I never really thought about it on such a large scale. I frame my feminist ideals mostly around what needs to be changed here, things like equal pay for equal work, access for all women to abortion rights, the things that hit my radar because that's MY backyard. I don't often think about women forced into arranged marriages, girls forced into prostitution in Asia, simply because I don't think about them. There's no excuse, just kind of a benign apathy. That apathy is so dangerous. Because until we all pay attention and do something about it, it won't change.

When will it change? To quote another idol, U2's Bono, "How long? How long must we sing this song?"

I am enough of a geek that I will read all the comments people write on blogs like Twisty's. So one of her commenters left a link to an Amnesty International report that I would like to share. I'm also adding another "sticker" on the right hand side of the blog, where people can link directly to Amnesty's campaign.


ACTION!

Lexicon

I really should stay away from the whole "Lad Mag" genre. Really, really. Things like Details, Maxim, FHM, all of those. Trouble is, that I like men's fashion, and each of those publications usually has someone interesting on the cover. I'm also into pop culture, and often there's bits and pieces that I read in the lad mags that keep me plugged into that loop. So I get sucked in by whoever they're featuring and then inside the mag I'll come across an article that is so offensive that it makes me see red.

May's edition of Details is no exception. Orlando Bloom is on the cover, looking rugged and his hair slightly mussed, as if someone had just been running their fingers through it. Niiiice. And inside the magazine is an article about the insult that guys (and women too, I'll admit) sling at one another, one of the nastiest things you can say to someone. "Douchebag". Oh, all right, there are perhaps worse things that you can call someone, but isn't it interesting that the insulting things guys say to one another are all about womanhood? "Douchebag" "Pussy"?

The article's author, Simon Dumenco, does a good job of tracing the word's entomology, and use through the 1930s until today. But he's talking about how most guys dread becoming 'that guy' in the bar, you know, the douchebag.

This unthinking offensiveness, the ease with which we all (men, and women too, I'll admit) sling this word around is to me a statement about women's place in society. Foul language in English, things not fit for polite society but not necessarily curse words, all are about women. "slut" "whore" "bitch". There are no equivalents for the men; calling a guy a slut isn't an insult.

I like curse words as much as the next girl. Perhaps even more so than the next girl. In real life, I have quite the potty mouth. When I list English words that I like, the f-word is on that list, nestled in with things like 'coagulate' and 'prognosticator'. The little thrill you get when you say or do something illicit. So yes, I'm guilty of it too.

I can even curse in several other languages. Italian, French, Spanish, Swedish, German...and each tongue has its own set of words that aren't polite. When you meet someone that speaks another language, what's one of the first things you ask them to teach you? How to swear.

The only society that I am able to compare contemporary America with is Sweden, since I've only lived in those two countries. And while my writing frequently posits Sweden as utopia, I do know that it isn't. I lived there when I was 17, young, naive, and of course I thought it was perfect. But Sweden IS one of the most equal societies that I've ever encountered, women's rights being not a struggle but an assumed prerogative there. So it is interesting to me that curse words in Swedish have lots more to do with hell and the devil than any particular gender. A reflection on the status of women? Perhaps.

The women's movement has made strides in taking ownership of the word "bitch" in recent years. When someone calls me a bitch, the response they usually get goes something like this, "Thanks!! My momma always said 'don't let anybody walk all over you' and I don't!" Much like gay rights activists have urged the homosexual community to take back the word 'faggot'. I see that as a positive, a very positive, thing.

But why is it that words like 'douchebag' remain popular? I was talking to a friend the other day who said she'd noticed a resurgence in the use of the word in popular culture. We were talking about how internet speak has become de rigeur, how each of the forums that she and I belong to have their own forms of acronyms and slang. At a site where she spends a lot of time, she's noticed over the past two years people using douchebag quite a lot. It has wormed its way from the internet into popular usage, you see it used on Entourage, which I think is a look into that quintessential guy world, and even on network TV shows.

If that's the most insulting thing that one man can say to another, what do they both think of women? Not much, is all I can imagine.

WOW!

Many, many, many thanks to Mischa at Church Made Me Stupid for writing a post about this, which caught my attention. Rarely if ever do I do more than one blog post in a day, but this is important enough to warrant a dual post.

Please direct your mouse over to Feministe, and read about an attempted bombing at an abortion clinic in Austin, Texas. What, you didn't catch that in the national media? Oh, that's because "terrorism doesn’t count if it’s directed against women and their health care providers"

Dual standards for everything else in the whole wide world, not just male and female public behavior, but even for the safety of providers for women's health. Good Goddess, what is the world coming to?

Hef

NPR's Morning Edition is doing a series called "The Long View" and since I missed the intro to the piece I'm going to talk about, I'm not sure yet if it is specifically about sex and sexuality, but that's part of what Renee Montagne and Hugh Hefner talked about in the interview that aired this morning. Tomorrow they're talking to Dr. Ruth (Westhenimer), so perhaps I'm correct that it is a series about sexuality. Or maybe it is about folks who have reached a certain age. Whichever, I listened with interest as they talked about the bad relationship between the women's movement and Playboy.

Hef said that when the women's movement first started squalling about him and Playboy, he was astonished, that he thought Playboy was all about women's rights. Which is soooooo typical male bewildered behavior that I'm not even going to comment on it. But he went on to say that he thought the women's movement had partially grown out of the sexual revolution that Playboy was a big part of, and guess what, he's not wrong.

Mainstream availability of blue magazines and films allowed women to speak up and speak out about things that had long been taboo. A more open society allows debate of a wider range of issues, leading to public conversations about topics that were once the subject of whispers, out there on the edge.

Pornography has always been a tricky subject for me. On the one hand, you have freedom of speech, of expressing yourself, that everyone has the right to produce whatever they like, say whatever they like. A sacred right, one that I hold very dear. You must protect the speech that you don't like as vociferously, or more so, than the speech that you do like, lest the evil persons unknown censor anything. Censorship is wrong, plain and simple. On the other hand, you have the fact that porn IS degrading to women, most of it catering to ridiculous male fantasies, perpetuating the myth that to be sexy you must be blonde, tall, leggy, white, and have huge, basketball sized breasts.

Please note that when I'm saying pornography, I am referring to what could be called 'mainstream porn', not child pornography, not snuff films. I'm talking about the things that can easily be purchased at any newsstand, or rented from the back room of your neighborhood video store.

I've heard the argument that getting rid of porn would solve many of the world's evils. I don't buy it. If you make it illegal, you simply force it to the further edges of society. Or, rather, out even further than it currently is, which would make it more dangerous. Porn is always going to be there. Even the Greeks and Romans had their own versions of pornography, you can easily find examples of Grecian urns with pornographic imagery. I first heard about that aspect of porn's long history in a college class, where Reign of the Phallus; Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens was required reading. So outlawing it isn't the answer, because there will always be a market for it, and there will always be those that produce it for the pull of the money.

Does pornography offend me? Not really. Am I fan? No. So what do I do about it? I don't purchase it, for one. Remember Salt-n-Pepa? Some of the first female rappers? They had a song in the early 90s called "Let's Talk About Sex" which caused a huge stir when it was released. The song is really about safer sex, talking with your potential partners ahead of time about using protection, keeping the lines of communication about sex open. But there's a line in that song that I'll point to as what I think is a good way to think about pornography.

Those who think its dirty have a choice;

Pick up the needle

Press pause


Or turn the radio off

Will that stop us, Pep?

I doubt it.

If it offends you, don't buy it. Don't look at it. But know that someone, somewhere is going to produce it and someone else is going to buy it. Live and let live, essentially. Lobby to keep it out of your kid's face, absolutely. However, what happens between consenting adults shouldn't be the subject of the debate.

When I posted a diatribe a few weeks ago about rude public behavior, a comment from another blogger got me thinking about the rise of female raunch culture, which is a topic far afield from where I started today. While I agree with the premise that women who star in pornographic publications are objectifying themselves, allowing the objectification of women to continue, I also think that it certainly is within each woman's rights to choose to be in a porn film or racy magazine.

And then turn it around to another angle; women are certainly no less guilty of objectifying men, but that's a much more recent development. Not until long after the sexual revolution did you find PlayGIRL. There's a much, much smaller segment of the porn industry that produces porn for women. I don't purchase that, either. My non-support of the industry extends over the whole of the industry.

I'd like to say that when men are objectified that they ought to be flattered, but realize how incredibly chauvinist that is of me. How horrified I would be if a man suggested that to me. I don't know if men could ever understand why being objectified is such a problem for women. Why we aren't flattered. Being looked at as purely a sexual object can indeed be a thrill, but you can also end up feeling like you're worthless, because no one cares about who you are outside the fantastic body. I think that's the piece that's missing from Hef's brain when he talks about how crazy he thinks the feminists are.

I don't think that Hugh Hefner is the devil incarnate. I think he's a pretty clever fella who figured out how to make millions off of taking pictures of naked people. And I know about 3 million men who wish they were in his shoes. He's going to be 81 soon. Should I live that long (and I'm not at all certain that I wish to), I hope that I'm as healthy and active as he is at that age. He certainly is proof that there's some truth to the saying that growing older is inevitable, growing UP is optional.

Listening to: Anna Molly, Incubus

Action!

I'm still reeling over yesterday's Supreme Court decision. I've been checking the news wires to see where public opinion falls, and I read a statement that has me thinking. I've read about a dozen wire articles and have a few to link, but first, this quote from Ralph Naes is dead on.

"The reaction to this decision could help educate many Americans who, quite frankly, have grown complacent about a constitutional right to reproductive health," said Ralph Neas of People for the American Way. (via ABC)

And he's not wrong. Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, a year and a little more before I was even born. I've grown to adulthood with the right to choose an accepted norm. It is only recently, within the past two years, that I've come to understand just how tenuous a right that is. It has hung by a fraying thread for a long time, and I firmly believe that yesterday's decision will cause that thread to break. Which terrifies the hell out of me, the idea that we could push women's rights back into the stone-age era of back alley abortions performed with coat hangers. Do you know how many women ended up dying from unsanitary conditions, from botched procedures?

I want the government to stay the heck out of this issue. Legislating moral issues like this hasn't worked well for us in the past...you need only to look to Prohibition for proof positive of that.

Unfortunately, that's not going to happen, President Idiot and his merry band of zealots will continue to push for a society that is ruled according to their narrow religious beliefs. W has said that he wants people on the federal benches who share his views. Because only people on the right should be allowed to make decisions about women's health. Remember separation of church and state? Anyone? Anyone remember their civics lessons, about a balanced government? Grr, I'm so angry.

Let's move along to some of the news wire articles that piqued my interest this morning before I give myself a heart attack.

Abortion Ruling Emboldens Opponents M live.com

Abortion Fight Coming Newsday.com

Ruling Draws Lawmakers Toward Political Minefield Washington Post.com

Then, of course, there are the wise words of two of my old favorite standbys when it comes to women's issues. NARAL has this article, pointing out the complete lack of regard that the idiot administration has for women. NOW's statement from Kim Gandy is a wonderful bit of language, "Not since Bush v. Gore has the Supreme Court made such a political decision, or one that so completely distorts the law and disregards the U.S. Constitution."

The time is now for action, to get involved. Make your voice heard. Write to your legislators and let them know that you don't support any abortion restrictions. Get involved, get out there, DO SOMETHING so that the right to choose is protected for us, our daughters, our granddaughters.

Listening to: my favorite protest song, "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy

Beginning of the END

A severe blow was dealt to all women in the United States today when the Supreme Court handed down a 5-to-4 ruling, upholding the so-called partial birth abortion ban.

I TOLD YOU SO!

For many years now, this has been one of my greatest fears. That the door would be opened to the anti-choice folks, who are no doubt popping Champagne corks as I type. Any restriction on a woman's right to choose is too much restriction. Any ban on any type of abortion procedure is egregious. It is a slippery slope, which will end in the termination of YOUR right to end any unwanted pregnancy.

I'm not sure if abortion is "right" or "wrong", but what I do know is that I don't want a bunch of old, white men deciding for me if I am allowed to make decisions about my body.

Damn, Sandra Day O'Connor, couldn't you have waited to retire? Damn, Chief Justice Rehnquist, why did you have to die? Those two events were the catalysts that allowed today's decision to happen. President Idiot, who unsurprisingly, praised today's decision, appointed two conservative justices to replace the two who left, and you could hear the religious and fanatical right drooling when he did.

Supreme Court Justices are dangerous people, because they, more than any branch of the government, can have an impact on our lives for a very long time. Supreme Court Justices are appointed for LIFE. So to get a Supreme Court vacancy, someone has to die or retire, and the two vacancies that occurred in 2005 are remarkable for their rarity. Justices can, theoretically, sit for 40 years or more. They are the nine people who review laws passed by Congress, they are the arbiters of what is, and what is not, Constitutional.

In today's decision, the majority opined that the complete lack of any exception whatsoever in the ban for the sake of the mother's health does not preclude a woman's Constitutional right to an abortion. I'd like to know just how the fuck they got to that decision. Because to my understanding, even if a woman's life is at stake, this procedure cannot be performed under any circumstances.

Take note, American Woman. That's how important you are to this administration. That's how much you matter. Your life has that much meaning.

Don't you feel precious?

Empowered. Empowerment. Strength. Brought to you by a Christina Aguilera video.

I was on the treadmill today, as usual, and watching MTV or VH1 without any sound, as I do each morning. It entertains me a great deal to be watching a video for, say, Nellie Furtado while I'm listening to The Beastie Boys. Or listening to The Angel while bubblegum pop is on the TV screen. Disconcerting, and funny as hell. Oh, and the mystery of when does MTV really play music videos? Solved. At 05.30 in the morning, they're playing top 20 stuff.

Christina Aguilera's "Candyman" came on, and I watched the whole video, something I rarely do. I'm usually looking around, or if I'm running, my eyes are unfocused and I'm concentrating on my breathing, trying to keep the asthma monster at bay. But I love this video. Christina looks fabulous. The video makes me think of several things, all tied to female empowerment (I know, if you've seen it you're thinking....WHAT? With the WHAT?) and the inherent strength in femininity.

The song, if you haven't heard it, is reminiscent of that bugle boy song from the 40's, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. I love swing and jazz, and big band sounds too, so every time swing makes a resurgence, I'm happy about it. When I watch this video, I think of the women of my grandmother's generation, who went to work while 'the boys' were overseas in WWII, paving the way for the women's movement of the 60s and 70s. The art director, or costuming folks, did a good job of choosing wardrobe for her, especially when they've got her in a pair of capri-length jeans and button down shirt, with her hair wrapped in a kerchief. Somewhere in my family archives is a pic of my paternal grandmother in a very similar outfit, from about 1940.

So why does something intended to be so incredibly sexy, and overtly sexual, make me think of female empowerment? Because I think that Christina is one very smart lady. Who knows that sex sells, and she's done an amazing job making men want her and women want to be her. Even though each character she plays in the vid is being objectified through what she's got on, or how she's dancing, she's in control. She's in charge. Every single eye in the room is on her. That's power.

A while back, on another feminist's blog, I left a comment talking about 'owning the pink', much like taking back the word 'bitch', I think we ought to take ownership of the pretty pink boxes that the world would like us to fit into. There's a dress that Christina wears in the video that looks like maybe it is made out of pink cashmere, but a cashmere skirt wouldn't flare the way that one does, so I have no idea what it is made of. Anyway, she's got on this cute, very short, very pink dress, and she's rocking it like no one's business. She's also got on one sweet pair of bad-ass Mary-Janes, you know, catholic school girl shoes? These are spiky and high heeled, and I want a pair. A look around the net for them finds me stunned to discover that they're nearly $900 a pair. So much for that. I may spend silly amounts of money on shoes, but that's out of my reach for a single pair.

Sidetracked! That happens with me and shoes. Regardless, I was talking about the contrast between the shoes and the dress. The shoes are like a great "screw you" contrast to the uber-pink dress.

I know that I'm probably attributing much more thought than what actually went into a three minute music video, but I know that Christina knows she's a role model for young girls everywhere, and I think that by being strong, sexual, provocative, and even a lot flirtatious, she's showing that you can be pink & pretty and be powerful at the same time.

I remember an interview with Madonna, years and years ago, when Dick Clark asked her what her ambitions were, where she wanted to go from AT40 fame, what she wanted to do with her career. She chuckled a little bit and said, "To rule the world."

Watching this particular video makes ME feel strong, makes ME feel like I can get out there and rule the world, and that's powerful stuff. Dare I say it? Empowering.

Are you kidding me?

I was watching CNN at the gym yesterday evening, while running on the treadmill, without sound. So what I'm about to say may be completely wrong, but here goes.

It looked like they were talking about the British sailors who got to go back home....and the news story was more about what they were WEARING than the homecoming? Seriously. Dude. WTF? Let's talk about if they were injured, how lucky they are to be home, not about what they've got on. Don't ask me why that disgusted me so much, because I don't have an answer. Next!

And then I heard this on NPR. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is burning, bombing, destroying girl's schools. Why? Well, women aren't worth educating, according to these extremists. I'm beyond distressed about it. They're killing teachers, harassing students, forcing the closure of more than 200 schools nationwide.

I'm pretty sure I've told this story before, but it bears repeating. On September 11, 2001, I worked in one of the tallest buildings in a small city in Ohio. The plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, was in contact for a brief while with a traffic control center near us. The powers that be evacuated our building that day, sending us home around 11 am. I began making phone calls to friends and family across the country to ensure that they were safe. Towards the end of the day, I called over to Europe, to talk to family there as well. Since I don't talk to them every day, they never know from one day to the next if I'm traveling or not, so I wanted to reassure them that I was OK, my family was OK.

When I got my mamman on the phone, she asked me, "Lucy, do you think it will come to war?" Her voice was so sad, so forlorn, so disheartened. The Swedes have been a neutral country for so long that it is a deeply ingrained part of their psyche, the radical idea that violence ought to be the last answer.

And I responded, "Mama, 'we', the United States, can not just 'do nothing'. You know that." It made me sad, too, but I knew even on that day that our government would want to do something, no matter what it was, as an answer for so many deaths. And if you'll recall, even in the confusion that was that actual day, the talking heads on the news were already blathering on about striking Afghanistan.

I'll never forget what she said to me next. "But it won't solve anything. It won't bring back the people who died today. It won't change the people who hate."

She's so right. It hasn't changed or solved anything. Is the world a less dangerous place without Saddam Hussein leading Iraq? Sure. Has life improved for the average Afghani? I wouldn't give that a resounding yes. Are we foolish for being involved in wars on two fronts? Uh. Yeah.

Before the US began bombing the hell out of Afghanistan, I remember getting e-mails from various feminist listservs about life in Afghanistan for women, about the no education rule, the wearing of the burka, the way that they couldn't travel without the permission of a male relative. There was also fuss and complaining from other quarters, about the Taliban not allowing the practice of other religions, and the fact that opium poppies were/are a huge part of the agricultural infrastructure. Do you remember the worldwide uproar over this, when the Taliban blew up a sacred Buddhist statue in early 2001?

So did the Taliban need replacing? That I'll give a resounding YES to, but it seems to me that strides forward are not so quick in coming.

I don't understand why a body politic would want fully half of the population illiterate. Nor do I understand why on earth you would follow anyone who would suggest that women are less, simply for being female. But then, I am very fond of the bumper sticker that says, "Hate is not a family value." Which is usually a reference the deeply offensive idiots who claim that 'God hates f**s', but it works well here too.

So, what to do about the problems with the schools in Afghanistan? There are several organizations that could use your support. HASCO, Help Afghan School Children.Org, Help Afghan Women. Com, Women for Afghan Women.

Activism, in my ever so humble, is the best thing that we can do. Remember this quote...

"Never doubt that a small goup of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

~Margaret Mead

Not having had a religious experience, ever.

I think long and hard about these Tuesday Brain Dump posts, often writing them several days in advance of when they're posted, going back and revising, re-thinking, OK, really, obsessing over it. And I was initially going to write about obsession today, (not specifically my Jensen Ackles - Dean Winchester obsession) obsessions in general, with music, with an idea, with a movie that I'll watch over and over, a particular issue, you get the idea. The genesis of that comes from my sister giving me a stern talking-to whilst I was in New York about being insanely hooked on a fictional character. I needed that talk! And I think it was helpful. But then our conversation meandered from my insanity into religion, and that's a much better topic, having the potential for far more controversy.

Thesister identifies herself as an atheist. I identify as an agnostic. Not to split hairs, but there is a difference. Atheists do not believe in any god, any higher power, any spiritual being. At least, that's how thesister defines it. Agnostics, under my own personal definition, would like to believe that there IS some higher power. Cause it would be nice, wouldn't it? I see miracles in small things, a perfect blossom, a sunrise, a tree covered in snow after a heavy snowfall, and I'd like to believe that there's some higher power, some grand design, some thing beyond my ken that is a Creator. I'd like to believe. But I lost what little faith I had when my cousin died in 2005.

Before we get to that, let's talk about the way I was raised, and how that has an impact on who I am and what I believe today. The 'rents raised both sisters and I Catholic. I had no idea how controversial that was with my mother's family until very recently, when Mum informed me that my maternal grandparents had not come to my baptism. What?!? Why not?!? How on earth could you not come to a baby's baptism as a protest? Turns out that my maternal grandparents (who are both gone now, or believe me, I'd have a conversation with them about this, because I'd like to understand) were plenty pissed that mum decided to baptize me Catholic. When mum and I talked about this, I was stunned, because I remember them coming to both thesister and babysis's baptisms. "Guess they got over it by then," Mum told me. Huh.

We went to church sporadically while I was growing up, but I went to CCD every Wednesday (while school was in session) from first grade all the way through eighth grade. CCD stands for Confraternity of Catholic Doctrine, and was a roughly hour-long weekly religion class for Catholic kids who weren't (heaven forbid) going to Catholic school. Thank whatever powers that be that the 'rents DIDN'T send us to Catholic school...CCD was bad enough. I was taught in CCD classes that Catholicism is the only true Christian faith. (Really. No, really. I promise.) CCD was taught by lay people, not the nuns, and each one of my CCD teachers had their own 'issues'. I'm not sure what the screening process the Church went through to find these people, but whatever it was, it wasn't enough. Cause some of them, as I recall, were downright nuts.

It was their difficult job, in one hour a week, to prepare all the good little boys and girls to participate in each of the seven holy sacraments that make up part of the Catholic faith that needed to be accomplished by all 'good' Catholics. In no real order, the Sacraments are Baptism, First Communion, Confession, Confirmation, Marriage, Holy Orders, and Last Rites. Baptism is usually done when someone is an infant, so that wasn't part of CCD. First Communion takes place around the second grade, so that is the first thing they force you to study and understand. Confession and Confirmation vary from Church to Church, but at my hometown parish, Confession was 4th grade and Confirmation was your junior year of high school. Holy Orders are only if you plan to become a priest or a nun, and I think Marriage and Last Rites are pretty self explanatory.

I drank the kool-aide, believing everything that they taught us, and was a good little Catholic girl until about high school. At that time, I joined a Christian youth group and stopped participating in any Catholic anything. The youth group was a non-denominational born-again, very conservative, brainwashing society. And I drank the kool-aide there too. I began listening to Christian Rock, jettisoning anything in my music collection (only for a brief while) that glorified sex and drinking. To this day, I have no idea why my parents allowed me to do this, join this youth group that wasn't Catholic, because I didn't join any church to substitute for the Catholic church. I did spend time only with other youth group members and spouted off biblical quotes to anyone who would listen. And I spent a lot of time reading the bible, going to Christian rock concerts, hanging with other members of the group. Maybe they had no idea how deep I was into the group, or thought it was better than me hanging with the local stoners, I don't know.

At any rate, after two years of this youth group, I left the US, my school, and my brainwashed society behind and went to Sweden to be an exchange student for a year. The only book in English I took with me? The NIV Bible. Once separated from the youth group, however, I began to question the ideals instilled in me by the group, and by the Church. My host family is also Catholic, but were sporadic churchgoers like my own family back home, and I found plenty of other things to take up my time in Sweden.

My Swedish friends viewed my religion as something kind of odd, a curiosity much like being double-jointed. I spent so much time in the first few months in Sweden trying to learn the language, and my religious fervor slipped away bit by bit until it was gone. And when I realized it was gone, not only did I not miss it, but I felt as if a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. When I thought about faith and religion through the rest of that year, which wasn't often, I began to form my own set of beliefs about what was right and what was wrong, my own code to live by.

In college, I took some Women's Studies classes, and began to understand that the Church was man's creation, and that while not perhaps evil, churches weren't perfect. And that maybe, just maybe, the men who were in charge didn't have the best interests of women at heart.

Time passes, as it always does, and when DH asked me to marry him, I decided that I wanted the whole princess wedding, big church, big dress, big party. For better or worse, Catholicism was still my faith, and as silly as this sounds, I've always felt that other Christian weddings aren't long enough. Because the Catholics? Can't do anything in less than an hour. So I got married in the Catholic church in a ceremony that was both beautiful and long, lasting an hour and 20 minutes. Years of indoctrination by the Church meant that I had no problem reciting all the prayers and responses in the appropriate places.

I still believed in God, although by then, I was having more and more problems believing everything that the Church taught, as the clergy sex scandals were beginning to come to light by that time. And I've NEVER gone along with the Church's stance on women since I was old enough to understand it. We can be nuns? But not preach? No birth control, of any kind? We have no say in how the Church is governed, run, operated? Are you fucking kidding me?

As the clergy sex scandals unfolded, I lost all respect that I'd ever had for the Catholic church, and began to think that maybe all organized religions were as fucked up as Catholicism is. Investigations into several other Christian faiths made me decide that organized religion was bunk, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

And then J died. Several of my high school classmates had passed away before my cousin did, so this wasn't my first experience with the death of a young person, but it was the first experience that I'd had that made me question absolutely everything I believed in.

If there is a higher power, what purpose did it serve for J to be taken from her kids? From the rest of her family, aunts, uncles, cousins, the rest of her community, neighbors, students, co-workers? A benevolent and omniscient being couldn't possibly think that it would be a good thing for her daughters to grow up without their mother. Can you imagine the pain that those children will feel every day for the rest of their lives? Unless you've lost a parent at a very young age, I don't think that you can. And J's husband, his pain in losing not just his partner, but also the mother of his children. A higher power wants us to feel this pain? I reject that.

As I've read more and more feminist philosophy, I now think that all organized religions are a way for the menfolk to control the women, to control what we think, what we do, who and how we are. My personal code, established first when I was 17, still serves me much better than any set of tenets laid down for me by the male Judea-Christian god.

As any code, law, or set of rules goes, it undergoes revisions from time to time. But it starts here: YOU ain't the boss of ME, baby!