Too busy

My job is having its annual (GENERIC HUGE WORK EVENT) at the end of this month, and it is some big kind of crazy. I have been utterly and sincerely nose to the grindstone every moment of every day at work, and don’t care to be on the computer when I get home. So, no blogging.

I’ve also just been informed that I will be presenting at the (GENERIC HUGE WORK EVENT), which is some kinda news to me. Normally this wouldn’t happen, but our first presenter begged off, and our substitute presenter got sick, so now it’s me, program assistant with no background or training, to the rescue. I’ll be talking about a program my work runs that provides support and assistance to transracial families. Our work event is going to be in Canada, which is a whole world away as far as child welfare is concerned, and because of a long story about non-federalized programs, Canada has A LOT of transracial/international adoptions. Which means my session will be one of the LARGEST.

I illustrated for my bear the noise I made when they asked me if I would be willing to present, and he characterized it as an alien queen protecting her pods.

In any case, I won’t be doing it alone. Our ED will be there, too, and he’s a friendly, affable, knowledgeable guy, so he’ll handle the thousand of questions I can’t answer. My job, apparently, is to talk about our programming, and show the website I made. If they had told me when I had made that website (with, I might add, absolutely ZERO experience aside from, like, geocities when I was thirteen) that I would be posturing before it like Vanna White at a VERY IMPORTANT EVENT… well, I probably would have made that alien noise again, but from the new vantage of hiding under my desk.

SO! I am rather busy. I want to be writing a lot of posts right now, because I have, rather unhealthily, gotten back into politics and blogs. John Irving is right, reading about politics is the intellectual equivalent of fast food and ice cream all day, every day. And, too, it feels like playing one of those arcade games they put out when I was a kid, where the entire sequence was animated, and you were supposed to make key decisions at certain points. Shit would flash on the screen — push the joystick to the left! — and I’d jam that fucker to the left, while the flashing would get more intense — Left! Left! FOR GOD’S SAKE LEFT — and then Dirk would fall out the castle window and die while the game sighed sadly and told me I hadn’t pushed the joystick to the left. I veer incessantly between politics being intensely engrossing and all-consuming and interesting, and it being an exercise of massive futility and fantasy. Because, really, even if I could make the thing GO TO THE FUCKING LEFT, I’d just get the next pre-programmed sequence of action, the next pre-designated set of decisions: left, right, or quit.

Anyway, I wanted to share the things that have been obsessing me lately.

blog reports on the HHS regulations Bush is ramming through, which would force hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies to maintain on staff employees who, basically, refuse to participate in anything reproductive whatsoever. The new regulations are notable for a few reasons: 1) there’s that whole “pharmacist gets to make your health decisions for you” bugaboo, 2) this would also apply to rape victims in hospital emergency rooms, 3) these regulations would allow pharmacists to counsel patients with their own personal beliefs (“are you aware of the side effects of birth control, such as breast cancer, abortion, sterility, damnation, ten pounds on your hips, and generally becoming ugly and unlovable?”), 4) and number 3 would occur because the new regulations broaden the definition of any medicine associated with a woman’s reproductive system to… well, to anything. The new regulations state that pharmacists shall not fear being fired for whatever they believe about birth control and abortion (which they shouldn’t be), and that they shall not fear being fired for refusing to dispense birth control for their beliefs (which they should be), and they shall not fear being fired for explaining these beliefs as medical fact to women (which they SHOULD BE). The new regulations also state that it is an abortion when an unfertilized egg is not implanted, and also that just about any medicine a woman could possibly take will cause said “abortion.” Not only is that NOT the standard of abortion used by the AMA or even the anti-choice doctors who counsel the anti-choice movement, not only does this standard of abortion include very normal biological functions that occur to most women (most of us have probably shed a fertilized egg before it implanted without knowing it), not only does this standard operate with an enforced and entitled ignorance of how birth control works (birth control keeps you from ovulating in the first place, leaving no egg to be fertilized), but this creates a situation where no woman can ever prove she is not pregnant. All pregnancy tests are designed to detect a specific hormone that gets released from the ovaries when an egg is implanted, a hormone that helps assist growth of the zygote. There is absolutely no way to detect a floating fertilized egg, primarily because your own body doesn’t even recognize it. So there is absolutely no medication a woman can be dispensed without it possibly causing an “abortion,” because we are now always pregnant.

Do you remember when pro-choice organizations tried to tell you, this isn’t just about abortion? When they talked about a slippery slope? When they said, these laws aren’t pro-life, they’re anti-women? Well. Well well well.

A study about the reasons, motivations, and factors behind teen pregnancy, with some things every women’s studies major knows, but somehow, the rest of the population doesn’t. Such as: 1) when teenage girls get pregnant, it’s by and large by adult men, and 2) for poor teenage girls, there are actually significant advantages to becoming pregnant younger, and significant disadvantages to putting off childbirth.

A post about what, exactly, anti-women means to me, and why I say things like, no matter who I vote for, or if I vote, or what changes as a result, I don’t believe it’s ever going to change the fact that in this country (and most of the world), my body is fundamentally property. I care about a wide berth of issues. But it is hard to pretend that they are the most important issues to me ever when I know that just about anybody, anywhere can force me to have sex with them and get away with it. It’s a bit of a Maslow’s hierarchy sort of thing. There are a lot of things I could care about much harder if I didn’t have to wonder whether I am inviting myself to be raped by riding my bike to work without carrying a gun.

An excellent excellent excellent post explaining why violence against women is a continuum, and something every woman has experienced.

On that note, you have heard about LaVena Johnson, haven’t you? Oh, you haven’t? Well, join the rest of the fucking country, and your elected representatives, to boot.

Left left, I’m jamming the joystick left, THE JOYSTICK IS GOING LEFT why isn’t he moving left oh FUCK IT.