CRANKY

Today I am the crankiest. I do not know why. I woke up with a sneer and it’s just sort of stayed there. I am trying to breathe, trying not to grasp, trying to be centered and aware, and all I find at my center of awareness is CRANKY. Which, okay, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe that’s okay. I’ve been trying to locate what is tight inside me, what I’m grasping at, and let it go. I’ve been assuming that it’s the grasping at something that’s making me cranky. But maybe cranky is just there, and okay, and grasping at YOU SHOULDN’T BE CRANKY STOP IT is what’s making it worse.

Okay, I think I know what some of it is. I have recently gotten some news of a friend of mine who I had to stop being friends with. She was in a very abusive relationship (with my ex’s best friend), and things were getting too chaotic, dangerous, and unhealthy for me to be able to stay in her life as long as she had abuse in it. I got some gross-feeling news about how her relationship with him is going. Still married, still together. She has expressed a desire NOT to have biological children (they’re poor, he beats her, she has a genetic disease that will pretty much 100% doom any child of hers to dying young, and she was adopted and wants to adopt herself). He expresses a demand that HE MUST HAVE BIOLOGICAL CHILDREN, and furthermore, they must be boys (her genetic disease has a 50% chance of affecting any girls she has, and a 100% chance of affecting boys, which, I guess, he just doesn’t care about).

The last I heard, she was pregnant, which made me sad. Just recently I heard she miscarried, which made me sad for her, but also truthfully very happy, and hopeful that it could be a life event that opens her eyes a bit. Most recently, I’ve heard that he keeps knocking her up, and she keeps miscarrying. She goes in for infertility tests and treatments, and he refuses (she’s been pregnant before, and due to a high drug intake, this is a man who most assuredly has weak sperm creating non-viable zygotes). He keeps knocking her up, she keeps losing them, and he keeps blaming and beating her for not giving him a son. The whole thing makes me veer wildly between GO HELP THAT POOR GIRL and JESUS CHRIST GET THIS SHIT AWAY FROM ME. It’s enough to make me never want to make friends again, because I don’t think I’ve ever had one that didn’t end up a drug addict, a rape victim, or a rapist. And that makes me CRANKY.

I don’t really want to say anything more about that.

What I do want to do is unload my goddamn reader, finally. Here, have a news round-up.

Reproductive Rights

An open letter to Sarah Palin (Some Other Vagina), concerning her reproductive rights.

A new blog:

An inspirng (horrifying?) acceptance speech from an abortion provider receiving the Order of Canada, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

More from the same blog, about military wives seeking abortions. Please to be noting, when we say SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, none of that extends to their families, who get less reproductive rights than a woman whose husband does not serve the country.

A very long post with lots of good stuff.

The abortion underground

Just how easy is it to get Plan B?

Rape

Palin. More on that.

Military rapists.

Rape in American indigenous communities.

I have found a new blog that I like a thousand times over. I would like to post everything, EVERYTHING. I may as well just tell you to read the whole thing. In fact, I will. READ THE WHOLE THING. In the meantime, I will link to several of the posts I have been liking the best. And below, I will quote some of what caught me the most.

According to RAINN 73% of sexual assaults were perpetrated by a non-stranger. Yet for many people learning that the alleged rapist isn’t a stranger causes them make baseless negative assumptions about the validity of the allegation unless the crime is so brutal that the victim is dead or maimed.

These people can think of multiple motivations for the alleged victim to lie, but cannot think of a single motivation for the alleged rapist to rape and then lie about having committed rape

What stands out to me in this case versus other rape cases against teenage girls I’ve read about is:

1) Her rape in particular was “horrific.”

2) She was accompanied by a male friend.

3) She was raped before 9 pm.

4) She wasn’t grabbed in an isolated or otherwise “dangerous” location.

5) Because an accomplice stayed with the victim’s friend this was clearly a premeditated sex crime.

6) It is noted that this victim was traumatized.

These contrasts seem to highlight how other sexual assault victims aren’t viewed as being blameless and their rapes are neither horrifying nor traumatic. What this does is fault the 2 men involved not for being involved in a sexual assault, but for where and how they committed this type of crime.

This victim-centric demand for responsibility goes back to the mythology that most of those accused of rape were only reacting to bad decisions on the part of their victims.

Pavlov’s rapists who wouldn’t rape if women would just stop ringing their bells.

If a man buys a woman a drink all that means is that a man bought a woman a drink. If a girl or woman drank alcohol all that means is that a girl or woman drank alcohol. If a girl or woman who has been drinking flirts all that means is that a girl or woman is flirting. If it’s the third date all that means is it’s the third date. If a girl or woman consented to kissing all that means is she consented to kissing. If a girl or woman goes to a guy’s place all that means is she went to his place.

When any of these items are used as proof of consent that only shows how a rapist rationalized rape. And when any of these items are accepted as proof of consent that only show how so many rapists get away with rape and where they get support for their dangerous rationalizations.

It is these pervasive rationalizations which pose the greatest danger not women drinking.

It’s simple. What’s complicated is keeping up with all the ways rapists are excused or encouraged.

When someone says, “drunken consent is still consent,” the reality behind that statement is, “drunkenness is a valid substitute for genuine consent.”

Misogyny/Sexism

An advertisement? Advertising what now?

The business of PMS.

Interstitial Politics (that is, somewhere in between)

White Feminists and Michelle Obama

Germaine Greer says some racist shit

Obama and the end of Civil Rights politics

Race

A documentary I would much rather see: White in America

Are we born racist?

Non-White kids get kidnapped, too

Hatin’ on China

Interracial dating isn’t necessarily anti-racist dating

Biracial identity and “the right” to speak about racism

African-Americans and the assumption of Anti-Intellectualism

Goddamn Tasers

Politics

RNC/DNC protests

White privilege and protestors

So, I have finally given up and decided I will vote for Obama. I don’t want to. I like Obama well enough, really. If it was all about voting for a candidate, I’d vote for Obama. Or maybe I’d write in Shirley Chisholm. But it’s not. It’s about voting for a system that I think is broken, and that doesn’t address some things I need addressed (can I have the right to my own body please? No? Well, I guess I’ll settle for maybe not being raped as hard). It’s about voting for a party I have no faith in, because they’re not as evil as another party I have no faith in. It’s about voting for what is now a team of two people, and I care nothing for Biden whatsoever. In fact, I think he’s a goddamn sleazebag, and I like Obama a lot less for picking him for VP.

It’s also about this question: if you won’t vote for Obama, who will you vote for? Really, there are no other alternatives. And that is why I was pretty well happy not to vote, or write in “Some Other Crook” as my candidate. Because a democracy where that question is really the basis of your decision, well, that’s a broken democracy.

BUT, Planned Parenthood endorsed Obama. And Planned Parenthood almost never endorses a presidential candidate. So for PP to endorse, they must think this is crucial. Do I think Obama will make a difference? No, I do not. Do I think women will have the right to their reproductive parts anytime soon? Or the right to say no to sex? Or the ability to have a job and children at the same presumptive time? Do I think women will be able to get the jobs that pay them what they’re worth? Do I think children will stop being segregated in public schools? Do I think cities will stop being segregated? Do I think we’ll replace the War on Drugs with a War on Poverty? No, I do not. I do not believe that at all. I do not believe we can vote our way out of being property. I think we are too overly invested in bread and circuses for that to happen anytime soon; our society would collapse were we to rip out the exploitative underpinnings, so we most certainly will not. But I will vote for Obama because I have faith in Planned Parenthood, in their beliefs, in their ethics, and in their dedication to women, much more than I have faith in politicians or our democracy.

On that note, here is a blog entry that reflects my ambivalence

Holy shit, my reader is down to 20 unread articles. That hasn’t happened in months.