I Can Bring Home the Bacon….

WhatsHisFace linked me an article earlier today where a UK radical feminist (Sheila Jeffreys) talks about her latest book. * Here’s a short excerpt from the interview:

She became a lesbian in 1973 because she felt it contradictory to give “her most precious energies to a man” when she was thoroughly committed to a women’s revolution. Six years later, she went further and wrote, with others, a pamphlet entitled Love Your Enemy? The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism And Political Lesbianism. In it, feminists who sleep with men are described as collaborating with the enemy. It caused a huge ruction in the women’s movement, and is still cited as an example of early separatists “going way too far”.

All I could say? I collaborate with the enemy at least several times a week. (nudge nudge wink wink knowwhatImean? knowwhatImean?)

Here’s the link to the entire article for as long as it’s up.

I hope you get to read the whole article. While most of what Jeffreys says marks her as a someone I would consider a nutbar, at least one of the things she talks about in the interview is something I’ve also experienced:

She says she distinctly remembers the moment she realized, during a conversation about politics with a man, that he was seeing her merely as a woman, and therefore inferior. “I was furious. He actually said I had the brain of a man, and while in the past I would have been flattered, a dam had burst and everything became clear.”

While I’ve never gone to the next level the way Jeffreys did (she seems to have gone from there to “all men are EVIL” and therefore I must become a Lesbian), my attitude about experiences like these has shifted as I got older. When I was younger, having a man discount me purely because I was a woman made me try harder to get through to him. These days, I consider it his loss. When a man tells me something similar to Jeffreys’ brain of a man comment, I also used to be flattered. These days, I’m coming around to the realization that those comments irritate me. Of course, no one has said exactly those words to me. It’s usually comments about me being more logical or rational than they expected since I am a woman. It says so much about a man’s perception of women that he’d even say that.

For the most part, every other opinion ascribed to Jeffreys in the linked article grates on me. Perhaps I’m being naive, but I refuse to believe that I’m anywhere near as powerless in my life as she would make me out to be just because I was born a woman. I also claim the right to make my own decisions about beauty standards and make-up instead of taking her ideas on the subject as my sole guidance. She seems to have the idea that going in the exact opposite direction as the accepted societal norm (dictated by men to keep women in a state of subordination to maintain their power according to Jeffreys) is the only way to put forth our independence and equality. If you accept her supposition that the societal norm is a form of male oppression (which my gut reaction is to vehemently disagree, I’ll have to digest it though before I can come up with a reasoned opinion), then doing the exact opposite doesn’t free you from the oppression. The only thing that accomplishes is to allow them to force your behavior in a different direction. We’d still be reacting to and because of male influences. To free ourselves, we’d need to make our minds up independent of men/society.

Basically though, things like this article make me treasure the men in my life who treat me like an equal. It’s hard for me to get too radical when I have guys like that around me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some conspiring to do.

* – Yes, I know that this whole subject is likely to cause a few readers’ blood pressure to sky rocket. Can’t be helped, as I have a bee in my bonnet about the subject. WhatsHisFace cried Uncle on IM about it, but all you guys can do is refuse to read. Muhahahaha….. wait……

I Meant To Post This Last Week

Go read this post/story.

I have a friend that but-for-the-grace-of-the-Alimighty, this could have been her. She’s intelligent, but lonely. So when she met a guy on one of those internet friendship places and he said he was going to be in town, she agreed to meet him. She chose a public place, but when she arrived, he’d already ordered a drink for her. It had gotten to the table before her, and she drank it. Thankfully, it was alright. But things like this are becoming more common.

Be careful, but don’t live in fear. That’s when they win.

And when the hurt comes there’s an argument, A fight to save a smile

I’ve been reading a new-to-me blog (Fluttercrafts). Some of her posts gut me and her journey through therapy keeps poking me in the back of the head. One of the things that comes up when I start down that lonely road is something I don’t know how to classify. Until recently, I couldn’t think about it for very long. My mind would skitter away to something else. Anything else.

But for the past few days, my mind has been drawn to it. And for whatever reason this time (I’m sure the psychiatrists/psychologist/therapists out there could explain that one), I’m not backing away from it.

Since I don’t know how to classify it, what box it belongs in, I’m just going to tell the story. Although I will intersperse some lyrics to this song because they seem to fit. (It’s a gut thing, no intellectual idea why.)

Drilled A Wire Through My Cheek, Blue October

I try to stay on top of you
To hold your body down
Your shaking seems to hinder
Every grasp that I had found

My parents have never had many friends outside of my mother’s siblings. When I was young, my dad had one good friend that he’d spend time with. I’ll call him D to try and preserve some anonymity. D lived across the street from us with his wife and young son. When Dad spent time with D, well I could tell there was a joy there that was missing when he spent time with any of my uncles. And before you derail, D was a wonderful guy. He was sweet and thoughtful and kind to everyone.

D’s son J though, he was a different story. He is four years older than me, and was odd even as a small kid. I think I was around 4 or 5 when it started, but I’m not all that sure. I was pretty young and I’ve never asked my parents about the dates.

The first memories are of J holding me down. He’d pretend he was tickling me whenever anyone came running at my calls for help. But eventually, people stopped coming. I think at first, when we were very young, J was content with just holding me powerless until something outside of us would force him to stop.

I’m sure that to the adults, we just looked like typical kids doing the normal fight thing. The other kids near J’s age though, they knew something wasn’t right. But you can only safeguard the little girl next door for so long before you get distracted.

It’s proof to show I’d bleed for this
I cut myself to shame
To get to know this masochist
Who’s stolen my first name

I don’t think I knew enough back then to go to an adult about what was happening. And when it changed, well by then I’d realized that D was Dad’s only friend. I had this idea. I felt like I had to protect that friendship by not making a big deal of anything.

Luckily for me, D and his family got some sort of windfall that let them move up a little. They traded our semi-ghetto (okay, just lower class tract housing, but folks in our semi-small town considered it the second worse neighborhood in town) for the new money neighborhood in another school area.

Pretending he’s a teacher
Holding all my weight at ease
But the teacher seems to split in two
Destroying both his knees

After they moved, I only saw J maybe once a month. That was the good news. But that meant that when I saw him, it was at their house. Inside the house. I tried my best to stay in the living room adjacent to the adults, but we were kids – the folks eventually got tired and shooed us away. Back in those days, who would have thought something was going on that needed to be watched? J would have been tempting me with toys in his room the whole time I was in the living room, and eventually, either Mom or Dad would tell me to go play there.

And now crawling I position myself
Below your broken wings
I lift your feathered left arm
Where you hide your heart from me

J would turn the music on really loud which meant that the adults would tell us to shut the door. I did my best to turn it down before they did, but that always prompted a “wrestling” session. He always won, and eventually the door would close.

I’m not sure I can even tell you what happened, because it’s mostly still blanked out. It’s odd. I know that it’s all still there, but it’s like it’s behind a closed door. I do know that the worst did not happen. I know that because of how/when it ended.

I didn’t think to bring a washcloth
Or to rub away the dirt
Myself & I we share
This barely beating heart of hurt

In his bedroom, J was somewhat contained in that one of the adults could/would come in every once in a while to check on us. And they could still hear me yelling for him to get off me or stop between the songs. He wasn’t dumb/smart enough to lock the door, so things had to be mostly inconspicuous. Or at the least, explainable. I think he went with the wrestling excuse as we got older.

That was the way things went until I was around 12-13. That’s about the time J got his driver’s license and bought a junked out car with his paper route money. I remember that day like it was yesterday. We were out one weekend and dropped by D’s house. It had been a few weeks or even a few months since we’d seen them. The big news was J’s new license and car. We’d only stopped by for a few minutes while they made plans for a real night.

And when the hurt comes there’s an argument
A fight to save a smile
A small attack on human tears
To dry them for a while

J was so very excited about everything. He kept inviting me for a drive to show off the car. I tried to beg off by saying we weren’t going to be long. But Dad and D kept pushing. I think Dad thought I was being rude, but I couldn’t tell you for sure. All I do know is that I got very upset, told them all I wouldn’t go, and got into the back seat of our car. Dad looked embarrassed and was trying to smooth things over with D and his family by saying I’d go for a ride next time. Mom though, she got it. When she got in the car with me, she asked if I was afraid of being alone with J. Just that, nothing more. She was very careful in how she asked the question, and I answered just as carefully, “Yes.” Nothing more, because I don’t think she wanted to know.

I was terrified. I knew that all the holding measures I had managed up to that point would be swept away in that car. I knew that I’d be at J’s mercy and that I couldn’t do anything to stop him once I was there. I still believe that the measure of his excitement was for exactly that reason.

A dream we all should count on
Yeah a vision I believe
And where confidence is found
Attached to wires on a sleeve

I’m not sure what Mom said to Dad, but I didn’t have to go for a ride. That was pretty much the last time we spent any time over there. D would stop by our house every once in a while to catch up, but even that stopped after a year or two. I have always blamed myself for the ending of that friendship, but as an adult, I can see that things were tapering off before I drove the final nail in the coffin.

After I graduated, Mom told me a little about what was happening to J. He’d graduated with bad grades and no trade, so he eventually went to work as a janitor at a local mental hospital. (See where this is going? Yeah.) The last that I heard, he’d gotten one of the severely mentally handicapped young girls pregnant. Her parents were furious. His parents were humiliated. And J was losing his job.

And where loneliness is history
Told to pack his shit and leave
And where guidance is a fortune
Told to help in time of need

As for me? Well, I can’t handle being tickled. I tend to freak out a little bit whenever I’m constrained by someone or something. WhatsHisFace is somewhat perturbed that he can’t tickle me at all, and lifting me off the ground makes me pretty much spaz.

And where crying isn’t secret
It’s the art of how we grieve
And lessons are the key
To every goal I will achieve, I will achieve

I don’t blame either my parents or D and his wife. By the time I was old enough to know that something was wrong, I was steeped in the idea that you didn’t talk about things like that. You endured and you minimized and you tried to contain things as best you could. But I’m thinking now that blaming myself is probably not healthy. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten.

PS – I fought with what to title this one, because several of the lines speak to me. In the end, I chose the one that seems to fit the best. I picked the one that sums me up exactly. I sometimes win the fight, but sometimes….

Guess What I Did Yesterday

What was that? What is this “act your age” that you all speak of?

Check back with me in a week or two when it’s faded to either orange or pink. Schweet….

Guess What I Did Yesterday

What was that? What is this “act your age” that you all speak of?

Check back with me in a week or two when it’s faded to either orange or pink. Schweet….

So, Yeah…. I Didn’t Succeed In Trying To Kill Myself

Isn’t she so pretty? All shiny blue purple burple and chrome and black and new leather bags? WhatsHisFace had her all put back together and running sweet in time for us to go on a ride Saturday morning.

Then the saddlebags showed up, and we did a little more maintenance on Sunday. I got all “RAH RAH, me biker chick, hear me roar!” about installing the helmet lock on the throttle hand grip by myself. (Seriously, I shooed WhatsHisFace away when he tried to help. He was adorably insulted that I wasn’t having him do it.)

I mean, I’m riding it and it’s mine. I should do some of the maintenance on it, right? And what’s to go wrong with putting a helmet lock on the end of the hand grip? (Yeah, here’s where the trying to kill myself part fits in.)

I noticed that the screws on the original end plate were kind of loose when I took it off. So I make sure to tighten them up when I put the helmet lock on – cause that’s a good thing, right? I wouldn’t want the thing to fall off when I’m tooling down the road someday never to be seen again. Or you know, coming off while I’m riding and startle me causing me to careen off the side of the road into the only huge oak tree in the state of Colorado ending in my fiery burning death. (I kid, I kid. Jasmine, stop hyperventilating.)

So we get everything installed and it looks fantastic. WhatsHisFace (who thinks that working on my bike will be his personal version of hell just because everything is a 3-trip for supplies plus “where the hell is the right metric allen wrench”, jeesh – wait, where was I?) Anyway, WhatsHisFace is suitably relieved that the project list for my bike is done and he can reclaim his garage.

Then I start it up to take it for a spin around the block. And the throttle sticks wide open. ($%^&!) So of course, I got all girly and let the Man take over.

To recap:

Too loose screws on the original end cap + measuring for throttle placement on the new handlebar + tightening the screws properly = me screwed

PS – we MacGyvered it into all good, but so much for my biker chick resolve. *sigh*

So, Yeah…. I Didn’t Succeed In Trying To Kill Myself

Isn’t she so pretty? All shiny blue purple burple and chrome and black and new leather bags? WhatsHisFace had her all put back together and running sweet in time for us to go on a ride Saturday morning.

Then the saddlebags showed up, and we did a little more maintenance on Sunday. I got all “RAH RAH, me biker chick, hear me roar!” about installing the helmet lock on the throttle hand grip by myself. (Seriously, I shooed WhatsHisFace away when he tried to help. He was adorably insulted that I wasn’t having him do it.)

I mean, I’m riding it and it’s mine. I should do some of the maintenance on it, right? And what’s to go wrong with putting a helmet lock on the end of the hand grip? (Yeah, here’s where the trying to kill myself part fits in.)

I noticed that the screws on the original end plate were kind of loose when I took it off. So I make sure to tighten them up when I put the helmet lock on – cause that’s a good thing, right? I wouldn’t want the thing to fall off when I’m tooling down the road someday never to be seen again. Or you know, coming off while I’m riding and startle me causing me to careen off the side of the road into the only huge oak tree in the state of Colorado ending in my fiery burning death. (I kid, I kid. Jasmine, stop hyperventilating.)

So we get everything installed and it looks fantastic. WhatsHisFace (who thinks that working on my bike will be his personal version of hell just because everything is a 3-trip for supplies plus “where the hell is the right metric allen wrench”, jeesh – wait, where was I?) Anyway, WhatsHisFace is suitably relieved that the project list for my bike is done and he can reclaim his garage.

Then I start it up to take it for a spin around the block. And the throttle sticks wide open. ($%^&!) So of course, I got all girly and let the Man take over.

To recap:

Too loose screws on the original end cap + measuring for throttle placement on the new handlebar + tightening the screws properly = me screwed

PS – we MacGyvered it into all good, but so much for my biker chick resolve. *sigh*

Steal This Post

I’m doing something today that I never thought I’d do. I’m plagiarizing. I lifted the post below whole-cloth with not a change made. Just stole the whole damn thing. And I encourage anybody reading to do the same thing. Send a comment or email to Whymommy if you do so she can add you do the list. If you want.

Read it here or follow the links to read her story. It’s heartbreaking, touching, scary, and above all, hopeful.

Inflammatory breast cancer

Monday July 23rd 2007, 3:11 pm
Filed under: About Us / Favorites, breast cancer

We hear a lot about breast cancer these days. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes, and there are millions living with it in the U.S. today alone. But did you know that there is more than one type of breast cancer?

I didn’t. I thought that breast cancer was all the same. I figured that if I did my monthly breast self-exams, and found no lump, I’d be fine.

Oops. It turns out that you don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer. Six weeks ago, I went to my OB/GYN because my breast felt funny. It was red, hot, inflamed, and the skin looked…funny. But there was no lump, so I wasn’t worried. I should have been. After a round of antibiotics didn’t clear up the inflammation, my doctor sent me to a breast specialist and did a skin punch biopsy. That test showed that I have inflammatory breast cancer, a very aggressive cancer that can be deadly.

Inflammatory breast cancer is often misdiagnosed as mastitis because many doctors have never seen it before and consider it rare. “Rare” or not, there are over 100,000 women in the U.S. with this cancer right now; only half will survive five years. Please call your OB/GYN if you experience several of the following symptoms in your breast, or any unusual changes: redness, rapid increase in size of one breast, persistent itching of breast or nipple, thickening of breast tissue, stabbing pain, soreness, swelling under the arm, dimpling or ridging (for example, when you take your bra off, the bra marks stay – for a while), flattening or retracting of the nipple, or a texture that looks or feels like an orange (called peau d’orange). Ask if your GYN is familiar with inflammatory breast cancer, and tell her that you’re concerned and want to come in to rule it out.

There is more than one kind of breast cancer. Inflammatory breast cancer is the most aggressive form of breast cancer out there, and early detection is critical. It’s not usually detected by mammogram. It does not usually present with a lump. It may be overlooked with all of the changes that our breasts undergo during the years when we’re pregnant and/or nursing our little ones. It’s important not to miss this one.

Inflammatory breast cancer is detected by women and their doctors who notice a change in one of their breasts. If you notice a change, call your doctor today. Tell her about it. Tell her that you have a friend with this disease, and it’s trying to kill her. Now you know what I wish I had known before six weeks ago.

You don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer.

P.S. Feel free to steal this post too. I’d be happy for anyone in the blogosphere to take it and put it on their site, no questions asked. Dress it up, dress it down, let it run around the place barefoot. I don’t care. But I want the word to get out. I don’t want another young mom — or old man — or anyone in between — to have to stare at this thing on their chest and wonder, is it mastitis? Is it a rash? Am I overreacting? This cancer moves FAST, and early detection and treatment is critical for survival.

Thank you.

Steal This Post

I’m doing something today that I never thought I’d do. I’m plagiarizing. I lifted the post below whole-cloth with not a change made. Just stole the whole damn thing. And I encourage anybody reading to do the same thing. Send a comment or email to Whymommy if you do so she can add you do the list. If you want.

Read it here or follow the links to read her story. It’s heartbreaking, touching, scary, and above all, hopeful.

Inflammatory breast cancer

Monday July 23rd 2007, 3:11 pm
Filed under: About Us / Favorites, breast cancer

We hear a lot about breast cancer these days. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes, and there are millions living with it in the U.S. today alone. But did you know that there is more than one type of breast cancer?

I didn’t. I thought that breast cancer was all the same. I figured that if I did my monthly breast self-exams, and found no lump, I’d be fine.

Oops. It turns out that you don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer. Six weeks ago, I went to my OB/GYN because my breast felt funny. It was red, hot, inflamed, and the skin looked…funny. But there was no lump, so I wasn’t worried. I should have been. After a round of antibiotics didn’t clear up the inflammation, my doctor sent me to a breast specialist and did a skin punch biopsy. That test showed that I have inflammatory breast cancer, a very aggressive cancer that can be deadly.

Inflammatory breast cancer is often misdiagnosed as mastitis because many doctors have never seen it before and consider it rare. “Rare” or not, there are over 100,000 women in the U.S. with this cancer right now; only half will survive five years. Please call your OB/GYN if you experience several of the following symptoms in your breast, or any unusual changes: redness, rapid increase in size of one breast, persistent itching of breast or nipple, thickening of breast tissue, stabbing pain, soreness, swelling under the arm, dimpling or ridging (for example, when you take your bra off, the bra marks stay – for a while), flattening or retracting of the nipple, or a texture that looks or feels like an orange (called peau d’orange). Ask if your GYN is familiar with inflammatory breast cancer, and tell her that you’re concerned and want to come in to rule it out.

There is more than one kind of breast cancer. Inflammatory breast cancer is the most aggressive form of breast cancer out there, and early detection is critical. It’s not usually detected by mammogram. It does not usually present with a lump. It may be overlooked with all of the changes that our breasts undergo during the years when we’re pregnant and/or nursing our little ones. It’s important not to miss this one.

Inflammatory breast cancer is detected by women and their doctors who notice a change in one of their breasts. If you notice a change, call your doctor today. Tell her about it. Tell her that you have a friend with this disease, and it’s trying to kill her. Now you know what I wish I had known before six weeks ago.

You don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer.

P.S. Feel free to steal this post too. I’d be happy for anyone in the blogosphere to take it and put it on their site, no questions asked. Dress it up, dress it down, let it run around the place barefoot. I don’t care. But I want the word to get out. I don’t want another young mom — or old man — or anyone in between — to have to stare at this thing on their chest and wonder, is it mastitis? Is it a rash? Am I overreacting? This cancer moves FAST, and early detection and treatment is critical for survival.

Thank you.

Gender Pay Gap

************* Warning: mostly incoherent rambling below *************

I ranted * a little about this subject back on Blog Against Sexism Day, but didn’t really get much past my own observations. Then the coverage on the study put out Monday brought it all up again.

The Rush Limbaugh Show had a guest host on April 24th, Paul W. Smith. ** Smith discussed the study for part of the show that day, and had on a female guest. I don’t know the name of his guest because we were in the car while it was on and I refuse to give that man money just so I can look up it up. *** Ahem… Anyway. The bit that I heard had a female caller and the female guest discussing the study mostly amongst themselves with some facilitation by Smith. The two women were making various points, mostly intelligent and insightful, about the study and the current state of things for women. And then Smith chimed in with a statement about how most of the time bringing up the pay disparity between men and women is done to put men on the defensive and make them feel guilty. I’m paraphrasing here again because I don’t have a transcript.

The women on the show for the most part ignored that and continued on with what they had been talking about. I on the other hand was yelling responding quietly to the radio in the car: talking about the subject is an attempt to fix the problem, not some vast conspiracy to make men’s lives harder. Staying silent on the issue is a tacit approval of the status quo.

Oh, and before anybody gets all up in arms – Smith had insightful and intelligent comments on the subject as well. He’s the one who mentioned that managers use single versus married as a deciding factor in pay and raise decisions for men. I just took exception to the point mentioned above.

I understand why Smith and other men out there might feel like it was an attack when the subject is broached. WhatsHisFace was treading carefully when we began discussing the show and the issue later that afternoon. And that’s a shame. I don’t blame men as a whole, and I don’t even blame business owners or managers. It’s a fact of life that it’s the manager’s responsibility to pay as little as (s)he can for an employee and an employee’s responsibility to make sure they’re paid as much as they can get for their skills. Unfortunately, it’s also a fact that women are being paid less than their male counterparts. As employees, we appear to have a problem with that last part. But why?

Is it an issue of women not being confident enough in their skills? Or that women have a hard time pushing against authority figures? Or is it that the value placed on a set of skills is less when the person displaying those skills is a woman instead of a man? Is it a perception problem on the part of management? Is it a possibly outdated idea of head of the household giving men more of an appearance of need? Or is it a little bit of all of that?

It’s a complex and troubling issue. I agree with the guest in that I don’t think that legislation is the answer to the problem. Legislating the issue would be like using a sledgehammer to perform surgery. It seems to me that this is an issue that’s only going to be solved through knowledge and education. Women currently in the workforce need to be aware of the problem so they can take steps to counteract it. As a culture, we should be teaching children that aptitude is the deciding factor in choosing a job and evaluating performance. Race, gender, social class, and sexual orientation should have no bearing on either. I know it’s easier said than done. Gender roles seem to creep into everything in the most seemingly harmless ways.

It’s pie in the sky to think that this is going to be solved tomorrow. But raising awareness of the problem and provoking conversation and debate is a way to get things started.

* – In a pretty unspectacular way, even if I do say so myself
** – It usually gives me hives to listen to the Limbaugh show. Or provokes red faced, spittle flying tirades at the radio which doesn’t make the rest of the folks driving around me very comfortable – so I tend to not listen to it if I can help it. WhatsHisFace was driving at the time which means he controlled the radio.
*** – That man being Rush Limbaugh. You can get transcripts of the show if you join his club.