Womanhood 2012

It's a scary time to be a woman in the United States these days. It's been scary for women for an agonizingly long time in the Congo, Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt and India... many places equal rights are a dream, sexual assault is often justified and almost expected in many instances, and where you're reduced to/exploited for your ability to procreate, and otherwise ordered to close your legs.

But American women, who won their freedom to choose their own reproductive path decades ago have been watching their rights erode over the past few years. How far can Republicans go to restrict women and take them back to a time where their fetuses and embryos had more rights than their mothers? Well, read here. And thankfully this link is the President's reaction, which should offer some semblance of sanity in an insane situation.

In Canada, there are nuts out there who are seeking to re-criminalize abortion by asserting the personhood of fetuses. Now, I do think it's a shame when a pregnancy occurs to an unwilling party. It's sad because no one goes through life hoping that will happen. I mean, "unwanted pregnancy" pretty well outlines this is undesired. And it's undesired because all the options available suck.

Abortion? Well, I know of no woman who dreams of having one of those. But the other options require you to endure a pregnancy, which is no small matter, plus a delivery (Also a massively huge deal) and a recovery process, which can take a long time. And if you're unprepared for parenting, you have to consider whether you'd be capable of going through all of this and then giving your baby away, a baby every hormone in your body is urging you to love and keep. Adoption is not so cut and dry as many would like you to think. All you have to do is empathize and you can see how impossible it would be for most women. Those who can do it, kudos. But most cannot and should not be put down for that.

So, in light of these sensible understandings of human nature, why does anyone wish to mess with a woman's right to choose? Who else but her can understand her mind and body better?

I've been getting deeply upset with the anti-choice commercials I've seen on TV lately, the ones with the missing children on milk cartons, that talk about all the lost children due to abortion in Canada. I see red every single time. I mean, there are women who have had abortions seeing this. Why do they deserve to be shamed for making a decision about their bodies and future that they thought was right? It is a legal entitlement to defer or prevent motherhood if you find yourself unexpectedly pregnant.

Luckily, as ass-backwards as our current political party is, our Prime Minister recognizes that the climate in Canada is in favour of leaving people to make their own medical decisions. As many people who are morally opposed to abortion, they don't want to send doctors or women to jail for private choices. Trudeau said the government had no place in the bedrooms of the nation, and that's become a cultural belief.

But still. I don't feel entirely protected. There's a massive push against abortion right now and I don't know what conclusion will eventually be drawn. I will never understand why this is happening.

The Abortion Diaries

I recently watched this video: The Abortion Diaries. With the war on women going on, and yes, there is a war, especially in the United States, I think it's important to tell women's stories.

It's about 30 minutes and it's worth watching. The pro-life (Anti-choice) crowd is getting so much more air time these days. We can't allow ourselves to grow lax. We can't allow the uninformed to choose for us. We can't allow men to decide if we become mothers before we're ready. We must remain vigilant that our rights and our lives are considered more important than the potential lives we may carry.

And people out there are asking the right questions. Take a look at this video when a man asks pro-lifers to think deeper about their stance about abortions being made illegal.

When I was a girl, I thought sexism was over. I thought my mother and grandmother fought that fight for me. No. They fought their fight. There will always be misogynists biding their time, waiting for a new generation of unsuspecting women, ready to push back on hard-won rights, wanting them out of the high paying jobs, not enjoying sex on their terms and having plenty of babies to keep them busy at home.

Why? I have no fucking clue. Hating a massive group of people tends to stem from not really seeing them as people. Or a lack of empathy. Or greed because you want more resources or opportunities for yourself. Or you just really have a superiority complex that must be fed. I don't know.

And why are women pro-life? Lack of empathy, again. Lack of compassion. Lacking sense of sisterhood with other women (not just people you know, but women everywhere). Lack of plain bad luck in life, leading to belief all problems are avoidable. Lack of imagination to conceive of situations abortion would be best. Lack of education of what abortion is and the stages of pregnancy. Fear of social stigma in community. Misplaced sense of self-righteousness.

I worry about American women, who are losing their right to reproductive freedom week by week. Soldiers are cheered as "fighting for our freedom," when in fact there are no invading threats to American freedom from outside the country. Sure, there are terrorist groups, but they're incapable of sustaining such a coup as to take down the country. But there is a threat to American freedom, to the pursuit of happiness. It's coming from within the ranks of governments across the land and it's attacking the freedom of half the population.

I'm a Canadian, so I'm out of the American political conversation and voting. But I feel the sisterhood. I want better for American women. I want them stand up and cry foul. I want men to say this is crazy; we need to stop doing this to our mothers and daughters and sisters and nieces and wives. I want everyone to stop fussing over what is unborn and start giving a massive shit about those who are actually here.

I also don't want this bullshit crossing the border.

FML

Okay, so thanks to friend and fellow blogger at roaminginthenight.blogspot.ca I'm totally into FMListings. If you're so over Toronto real estate prices, this blog is amazing. I mean, I saw crap post-war bungalows for sale in the neighbourhood of $600,000 and thought to myself, the hell? In my hometown, such a hole would be $120,000, pretty much for the land value if it's spacious enough.

Here though? Practically nothing is worth everything. Jesus Murphy. And this blogger is calling everyone on it. Preach it, sister.

And that brings me to an unexpected grievance. I knew off the bat this blog was written by a woman. It was smart and witty, which is not exclusively the feminine domain, but there was a somethin'-somethin' about it that made me certain the author was female. Her blog reminded me of other funny and clever blogs out there written by women. There was that chick flavour to it. And I was right.

But then I read this: A Toronto homebuyer takes his frustrations to the blogosphere. Call me overly sensitive, but the male default people have is something that bothers me. It's similar to the White Assumption that is also prevalent in our society. If you don't know the race, it must be white. Unknown sex? Must be male. STFU Conservatives actually dealt with this issue. It irritated her because she never mentioned her sex, but got tired of being called "he".

I've seen this play out on a small handful of well-written non-sex-related anonymous blogs. Writers are assumed male until revealed to be otherwise. Do we assume women don't write well? Aren't interested in real estate or politics or finance? Only write sex or mommy blogs (which have their place, but are not the full scope of what women do in this world)?

This is about a 3/10 on the sexism scale, on par with the common mistake of saying "he" when referring to a doctor or boss of an unknown sex. But it needs to be pointed out. High profile journalists and publications shouldn't be sexist-sloppy. If you don't know the sex of a writer, say, "him or her," "he or she," "s/he," or even the less grammatically correct but colloquial "they".

As sure as I was the writer was female I wouldn't have written so unless I knew for sure. Heh, for one thing, as soon as you label someone or something female you have to explain how you know this. Because male is the default. That is something that needs to change, if for no other reason than that it's annoying and frequently inaccurate.

Musings

Sometimes I think about the world we live in and I get scared. I mean, not scared in the way you get if you live in the wrong part of Los Angeles. I don't fear I'll die or be mugged at gunpoint.

I'm scared about where we're headed as a species and as a civilization.

We're overpopulated. There's only so much space for humans to live, for agriculture to feed us, and for all the other deserving species of animal and plant to grow and thrive. And we've hit that mark. I want a child and I feel significant guilt about it because I don't want to inflate the numbers even a little.

We're whipping through petroleum, which is responsible for, frankly, our entire way of life, which has been unevenly distributed for the past 100 years, and now we're running out and there seems to be no contingency plan. I mean, there's finite resources and we're burning through them. And economists are calling for growth! Growth! Growth! Why? What about maintenance? Maintenance! Maintenance!

We're overpopulated and powerful influences like the Catholic church are warring against contraception, despite the fact nearly all Catholics use it. American politicians are doing all they can to remove a woman's right to choose, to actually declare an embryo a person.

Which would make miscarriages a homicide investigation. You could arrest a pregnant woman for drinking. Plan B would be illegal, as well as in-vitro-fertilization. They're already forcing women to undergo ultrasounds, whether the doctor deems it necessary or not, and the doctors have to describe the fetus. There was a bill mandating a vaginal probe ultrasound prior to getting an abortion, never mind what the doctor thinks is needed, just to punish the woman, basically.

We have all these human beings in the world who can't eat, who have inadequate care, and they're trying to ensure all possible pregnancies result in babies, whether the mother in question wants to or not? One fucker wants to mandate women carry dead fetuses until their wombs expel the remains, because that's what livestock does. Because women are livestock.

I always knew these types didn't look at women as people, but it's less common that you get such flagrant evidence of it.

The world is totally different than it was when I was a kid. So in 20 more years, it should be totally different yet again. I'm not a doomsayer, but I can't help but feel a sense of impending calamity. Toronto was warm and snowless this winter. In the last 65 years it's never been so dry and warm. It's unnatural. Between what feels like a collapsing understanding of rights for women, overpopulation becoming a problem, growth depleting our resources and the climate altering into god knows what, I'm feeling nervous.

Maybe this is why The Walking Dead is popular right now. It's like everyone else is feeling a sense of the end of an era of time. When I was a kid, the United States was the world superpower, I grew up in the affluent '90s, and snow covered the ground. Things are changing. People are more aware of that, too, I think thanks to the internet.

I know I'm not alone here.

The End of the Stick

I've been doing a lot of thinking about privilege. Who in our society has it? Who doesn't? Who has more? Race and gender privileges is what I've been doing the most thinking about, and I've been reading up on these matters to broaden my mind on the subject.

I've come across a privilege checklist on a blog that I'd like to share, a compilation list developed over time. Sometimes it's so hard to explain to men that they enjoy privilege that I do not. Often it turns into some sort of misunderstanding that I believe these privileges give men a free ride. I don't. But I think it's important to realize that whatever issues men face, women are getting the shorter end of the stick.

And as a white woman, it behooves me to recognize that I experience privilege that people of colour do not. One of the big privileges is being able to ignore that fact I have it.

The Male Privilege Checklist
If I'm a man...
7. If I’m a teen or adult, and if I can stay out of prison, my odds of being raped are relatively low.
8. On average, I am taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces much less than my female counterparts are.
14. My elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true.
17. As a child, I could choose from an almost infinite variety of children’s media featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of my own sex. I never had to look for it; male protagonists were (and are) the default.
25. I do not have to worry about the message my wardrobe sends about my sexual availability.
27. The grooming regimen expected of me is relatively cheap and consumes little time.
29. If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore.
32. I can be confident that the ordinary language of day-to-day existence will always include my sex. “All men are created equal,” mailman, chairman, freshman, he.
34. I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name.
41. Assuming I am heterosexual, magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media is filled with images of scantily-clad women intended to appeal to me sexually. Such images of men exist, but are rarer.
44. Complete strangers generally do not walk up to me on the street and tell me to “smile.”
45. Sexual harassment on the street virtually never happens to me. I do not need to plot my movements through public space in order to avoid being sexually harassed, or to mitigate sexual harassment.
46. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.

White Privilege:
Because I'm white...
1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.
41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

I think it behooves us all to be aware of privilege. It's not acceptable to pretend like it's not there, or to brush it off because we all have our own problems. When a person is born into this world and bestowed automatic exemptions from certain bullshit or immediately in a low risk group for certain harms, and others are thrust into it due to the luck of the draw in their DNA, that's something we all need to see.

If you don't or won't see it, it can't be fixed. Pretending you don't have a mouse in your house doesn't mean you don't have an infestation. I can only take a backseat to stories of racism and listen and try to learn. But I can speak of sexism because as a woman I live it. I truly believe in in the end it hurts everybody, not just women.

When men are taught to devalue women, they then dissociate with them as human beings. If you can't let yourself be feminine ever for fear of the lurking inferiority it will bestow on you, you can't be in touch with your emotions. You can't truly experience affection and love. You can't be a good parent. You can't be a fully realized person.

It's all connected and it all starts with acknowledging there is a problem, then seeing the problem and then working to fight the problem.

If as a man you need guidance as to how to do that, I direct you here, written by a smart man, the author of Critical Masculinities.

Lady in Red

My red dress came in the mail today. I love it and hate it at the same time. Mostly I hate it because I need to alter it and 90+ of the reviews of the dress say the damn thing fits like a glove. Once it's tailored and hemmed, it'll be a showstopper. As for right now, it makes me look like a little girl playing dress-up in mommy's clothes. The main issues are my height and my bust, and the lack of both.

I have a complicated relationship with the girls. Generally, I like them. They're small enough I don't actually need a bra for support. I only wear it for shape and modesty. Sometimes I don't bother. I can buy the cute bras without worrying about said support or lift. They're not going anywhere. They're as high as they were when I was 20. I like the shape of 'em. No complaints, right?

When you're a small chested woman, you don't feel terribly womanly. Even with all these advantages (bralessness or cute bras and no sagging) you still miss out on things like cleavage, and more importantly... feeling truly like a woman. Men don't look at you as much, you feel inadequate when you can't fill out a special top or dress, and all around you larger chests are celebrated and praised and considered the ideal.

90% of the time I don't let it bother me. Most of the time I focus on what's good about my breasts. I happily think about how they won't be acquainted with my navel when I'm 60. But I'm not 60. I'm 27 and I'm missing out on something fun.

And for all the larger chested women I know who've talked about it, I can tell for all the complaints, they wouldn't trade places with me. I can hear a ring of the pride in their voices. Because there's something inherently sexy about even the most inconveniently large breasts. I see the DD+ club comparing complaints over who has it worse, but under it all it's a pissing contest. When those comments are made in my direction, I know the question is really, "Aren't my breasts big?" I know some women who genuinely want a reduction and have even gone through with it. When you get dents in your shoulders, you have a legit complaint. But I can tell the difference between that and trying to coy about boobie bragging.

There's a woman at my dance class who's often mentioning how much support she needs, and to me. It's like complaining you don't know which vacation house you should summer at this year to someone who rents out a room to live in. I don't understand. Clearly I can't relate. I'm happy for her that she enjoys such bounty up there, but do I really need converse with her about it? I have nothing to offer on the subject. So I reply that I don't need support and only wear bras for aesthetic reasons. (I find that acknowledging my tininess makes these types of women uncomfortable. I don't feel bad about it. Unfortunately, since acquiring this response, it's hard to turn off.)

The kicker is how many women with big breasts like to talk to me about it. Some have gone out of their way to mention it for no apparent reason. Almost like preempting my assumed envy and saying, "It's alright, it's not really all that great." Or maybe it's a way of being smug. Sometimes it feels smug, particularly when the boobs in question are not overly enormous and cannot really be such a nuisance, not when the owner loves showing them off so much.

Sometimes I feel sad when I know women have gotten breast implants. It's like publicly acknowledging an A or B cup's inferiority that had to be corrected. Like there was no way they could be beautiful and this woman just couldn't live like that. We live in a world that sends this message. All my bras save two have padding. And this hasn't been a necessarily conscious effort. They come that way. 9 bras out of 10 have padding, at least they do in the A and B range. Every time I put one on I'm reminded an industry and a culture thinks I'm inadequate the way I am, and by buying and wearing the bra, seems I've decided to agree with them.

I think sometimes to a conversation I had with a close friend of mine in a La Senza, who was shocked to see all the padding in an A-cup bra. "Can't we all just be ourselves?" she asked. Quickly, I replied, "No." And it's true. We can't. Women are walking lies.

We get up in the morning. Our legs and underarms are shaved, our eyebrows tweezed because we're all too hairy. Some women even remove hair from their holiest of holies because nature doesn't know best. We put on makeup because our skin isn't beautiful enough, our lips not red enough, our lashes not long enough. We get our hair coloured because our hair colour isn't right. We put on heels to alter our height and silhouette because it's sexier than being comfortable on flat ground. We put on perfume to mask our natural scent. We wear bras that change the size, shape and lift of our breasts. And then we go shopping and look for things that'll fit our unique body shape and feel like we are the ones who have failed when we don't conform to the shape of a dispensable piece of clothing.

And this is after the feminist revolution and the corset and the girdle.

I posed nude for an art class once. No makeup. No bras, no perfume, no heels, nothing. Just me. For the first time since I started my period, I was just fine the way I was. I got to keep a drawing of myself and I never looked so beautiful or so goddamned free. For the evening, I was liberated.

Monday I take the dress to a tailor.

Rock the Gala

The gala, the gala, the gala. I love the gala.

I had a great time, exposed my belly and of course looked chubby in the tummy in most of the photos that were taken, but what can you do? I still danced my best, looked my best and felt awesome about it. And now I feel ready to move up to the first intermediate level. Two years of dancing and I really feel like I'm a dancer now. Not a great dancer, but a dancer. I claim it as part of my identity and that makes me happy.

The day following the gala, I went to a cupcake/tea party. It's about as fun as it sounds, which is basically loads of fun. It was at McPal's boyfriend's apartment and it ran for about nine hours. We drank tea and ate sandwiches, made and ate cupcakes, had pizza, good conversation. It was exactly the sort of party I like to attend.

I woke up this morning still full and with a belly that looks as though it's quit on me. There's also about six cupcakes in the kitchen, begging to be eaten. Four of them are Sesame Street cupcakes: Cookie monster, Oscar the grouch, Grover and Bert. Oh yes. A few of us got creative. It was, after all, a meeting of the craft club. I don't know how I'll be able to eat those, though. I mean, how do you take a bite out of Grover's face? I'm sure the Dude will find a way.

Before I go, here's something I read recently that really struck a chord with me. I'm still on a feminist rampage of important causes and want to share this item from one of my favourite blogs.

In the now

My last rant garnered a lot of attention and some thoughtful discussion. And that makes me happy. The Dude and I watched this yesterday. It's called Dreamworld 3, and it's a documentary piece on music videos and the way they influence our ideas about masculinity, femininity and sexuality. It was very thought-provoking.

Speaking of femininity, my belly dance gala is tonight. This is the first time I've felt ready to not just dance, but smile. I feel confident tonight. I feel comfortable. I'm going to go out there and enjoy it, not just freak out inside and wait for the high to come after I'm done. I'm hoping to be more in the moment.

I find it can be hard to do that on a regular basis, be in the moment. So often I'm either reflecting on the past, what did and didn't happen. Or I'm thinking ahead, about the life I want and what I need to do to get there. I so rarely just live what is happening in the now. I get lost in my head and think forwards or backwards.

So tonight I'm going to try and do just that. Be present on stage, be me, dance, enjoy it, rather than just trying to get through it without screwing it up.

Wish me luck.

Status Quo

Every now and then I get on my feminism horse and go for a gallop. It's a horse that needs frequent exercise and not enough women ride it.

I've been following a number of blogs (Obviously). I've posted the funny ones, the STFU ones, but more seriously, I actively read Rabble Pro-Choice, Feministing and Slut Had It Coming.

In particular, today on SHIC, I read this passage about abortion:

If you believe abortion is OK in instances of rape but not in cases of consensual sex, ask yourself: Why? Am I really all that concerned about the “unborn”—because remember, it’s not that fetus’s fault if the woman carrying it was raped—or am I making a moral judgment about the behavior of the woman involved and whether or not I think she “deserves” the right to an abortion based on her behavior? If the latter, what you’re indulging in is misogyny (yes, even if you’re a woman) and slut-shaming, and there’s nothing admirable, fair, or right about that.

And that really spoke to me. I felt that way when I was a teenager, before I became a real person (i.e. a thinking person). But really, if you think abortion is murder, rape or incest should not matter because the fetus is a person. To be consistent, you'd truly have to disregard all circumstances of the fetus' conception. And of course, that would make you a douche utterly lacking in compassion.

And most people are compassionate. So they say in the event of rape or incest, let the poor woman abort, so long as she feels bad about it. But if she actually, liked the sex, slut better be having that baby, yo. And that's fucked up.

Sometimes (often) I get fed up by other people's expectations and projections of what a woman should be, or what a woman must be if she deviates from these pre-conceived ideas. I tried to show some family my belly dance moves and it was implied I did it for dollar bills and I was asked to sit down. I won't lie, that really hurt my feelings. I also felt misunderstood, and was baffled that an expression of my femininity must thus be a ploy to attract and extrapolate attentions and money from men. I couldn't enjoy the movements of my body and dance for me. It had to be a sexual thing. Because I'm a woman.

This is a common belief. Have you ever heard of the Bechdel Test? It's what you ask yourself before you watch a movie:
1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man

And you know what? Those are effing rare. I actually can't think of very many movies I've ever seen that fit this criteria. They're out there, but try to come up with 10. See how long that takes. Movies with two or more men who talk to each other about something other than women are easy to find. Try to come up with 20. It'll take you less time.

In fact, most of our childhoods were pretty much consumed with this problem: The Smurfette Principle. And it starts on Sesame Street. Sesame Street fails the test. A show supposedly gender neutral for children fails the test. It's the first damn thing kids see and half the population is not catered to. Why? Because males are considered some sort of default for human kind and females are secondary.

So what do you wind up with? You wind up with women, who are perceived as weaker versions of men, whose lives revolve around men and attracting men. You have women-centred plots and female leads considered as for women only, and male leads considered for everybody. You have those female stories frequently being driven by the relationship the women have with men and that's pretty much it. You have girls growing into women with few truly female stories to call their own.


You know how if a man admits to liking something feminine he has to be embarrassed and apologize? And if a women likes masculine things, she can brag about it? Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Even when it comes to homosexuals, gay men get shortchanged because they're identified as more feminine, whereas lesbians though still prejudiced against, get a male seal of approval because it's sexy (and being considered masculine at the very least suggests power or intellect).

So no, women are not considered by many as having the right to choose because they're not considered strong or independent from male imput, and this is not only bred into us from an early age, it's perpetuated on an hourly basis all our lives. It's all connected. It all stems from thinking women either aren't as smart as men, aren't as relateable as human beings, are here for the pleasure of men, and essentially are a variation of men as people rather than people in their own right.

We have women trying to garner respect by rejecting femininity because they believe having a feminine side is bad. It's like the black girl saying the white doll is better and sadly hesitating before admitting she looks like the black doll. It's crap.

I don't need to hear "Sex And The City is actually a pretty good show," as though it's surprising that a story about women could be good. I'm tired of men being embarrassed to admit to liking feminine things. The only reason behind it is the inferiority we associate with femininity, as though it's actually shameful to be that way, as though femininity is something to apologize for.

I mean, even the word feminist has a bad rap as "man hating". You know, because women thinking of themselves as people, and deserving of opportunities is still so foreign a concept that it has to be steered back to women and the way they feel about men. I love men, but it's not all about them. To hell with the status quo.

End rant. For now.

We will choose

I read a lot of blogs. I've mentioned this before. The subject of abortion never fails to capture my attention and interest. I'm a pro choice woman. I don't leave any doubt about that when the topic arises. I don't know how I feel about abortion, as a moral stance, other than that I feel is best left up to the consciences and hearts of the women who face that prospect.

I've had one pregnancy scare and I've taken two pregnancy tests in my life. Once was when I was 19 and the other was last year. The more recent one I was 95% sure I was not pregnant, but I wanted confirmation. When I was 19 I was more nervous. I was young, inexperienced in adult life, in college and living in a family's basement.

And while I was worrying, I realized then that I considered abortion a valid option. Not one I was ready to commit to, but one to consider strongly. I was on the pill, but in my whole history of taking it, I never got the hang of keeping it to a strict schedule.

I remember crying in bed, praying (I was still a Catholic in my heart in those days, if not a practicing one) and asking God to forgive me if I had to abort. I went home and while at my father's I went to the local drug store, bought a test, took it home, and disposed of it in the trash can at the neighbourhood park. It was negative and I had my life back.

I never forgot the fear, though. And knowing a taste of that fear, which I only truly experienced in the hypothetical, has stayed with me. I don't look at abortion as right or wrong, but rather if it's the right or wrong choice for a woman as an individual.

I came across this today, which broke my heart and spurned me again to touch on this topic. It's a tragic story involving a woman's choice, and one can only imagine the further grief she would have endured had her right to choose not been available to her. I think we as women, along with being born able to make babies, are born with an innate ability to choose and make the right choice. We have this gift because we need it. Even a very pro-life woman who gives birth to an unwanted baby has made a choice.

Without choice, our bodies aren't our own. Without lawful choice, our bodies belong to the governments that regulate us. We are not our uteri. We, as gatekeepers of all human life that enters this world, will decide when the time is right. Not our governments, not religious leaders, not men, not lobbyists. Us. It's a grave responsibility to bring a new person into the world, but it's not an obligation.

Abortion

Lately I've been reading a lot of feminist research, literature and articles. As time has gone on I've felt a subtle push against women's rights and freedoms, perhaps as a backlash of the feminist movement which changed the Western world and ruffled many feathers. I think maybe also with gay rights now in the forefront gaining more and more recognition, the same sorts of people who either hate change or can't empathize with people who aren't just like them are tightening their holds elsewhere.

Abortion laws, in particular. The Stupak amendment, which although won't affect me or my fellow country women in Canada, is pretty much on of the emerging great tragedies to women's healthcare of the new millennium. Seriously. No funding for abortion? None?

Here in Canada it's federally funded. Women have the right to choose and choose they do. Of course there are organizations like The Back Porch, located in where else but Alberta, who more or less work against Planned Parenthood and counsel women to continue their pregnancies. Which, I have to say is pretty unethical. I've been doing a lot of reading about this group. Their goal is to talk to "abortion-minded" women. This translates to mean "we actively talk women out of the choices they've decided to make." And they don't advertise this. So women with an unwanted pregnancy and are looking to explore their options can find themselves in the hands of these pro-lifers whose concern is not for the woman herself, but her fetus.

And this rather pisses me off. Yes, a fetus does eventually become a baby. But until it's actually of this world and a separate entity from its mother, it's not a person. It's certainly reasonable for an individual to feel differently about that and consider a fetus a person if they choose. But it's no longer reasonable to enforce that feeling into either law or another person's decision making.

Consider: The risk of an abortion is 13 times less likely to result in complications/death than giving birth. The risk of severe mental anguish is distinctly higher for women undergoing adoption than abortion. In countries where abortion is illegal, a total of over 70,000 women die from unsafe abortion practices each year.

So who are we going to care about? Whose life should matter? A full-grown woman with a life, dreams, responsibilities? Or a grouping of cells which have yet to form into full person and is engaged in a parasitic relationship with its host? Yes, the wording is harsh, but pregnancy while important and beautiful is also a reckless force of nature that if imposed on a woman without her consent is cruel to her body and mind. I object to laws and movements which treat women like vessels. It's not a woman's fault she was born with a uterus and she is not under any obligation to give birth at any time.

But going back to the adoption path... if there's one thing that strikes me as terribly painful, it's continuing a pregnancy to term, giving birth and then giving my baby away just as all the chemicals kick in to create a devoted attachment to it. Then to recover from the birth, breasts leaking milk that no one drinks, hormones dropping and causing mood swings with no recourse to feel better because every day forward will be a day you're not with or raising the baby your entire being is calling to. This is a deeply personal decision that no woman should feel compelled to make due to another person or people's agenda, any more than a woman should be compelled to have an abortion for reasons that are not her own.

There have been people in the pro-life movement who claim something called Post Abortion Syndrome, citing high risk of depression, self loathing and suicidal thoughts. However, the American Psychological Association has studied this issue and has concluded: "Although there may be sensations of regret, sadness, or guilt, the weight of the evidence from scientific studies indicates that legal abortion of an unwanted pregnancy in the first trimester does not pose a psychological hazard for most women." Women coerced into an abortion from family or unsupportive partners are more likely to experience these negative feelings, which only highlights the importance of allowing a woman to examine her own feelings and needs and make the right decision for her.

I could rant on and on about this, I really could. Whether a single mother of two needs an abortion in her second trimester because the child is going to be severely disabled and she cannot care for it without detriment to her existing children, or a woman in an abusive relationship can't bring a child into violence, or any woman with a new or current health condition makes pregnancy dangerous or fatal, or her necessary medications will critically damage her fetus, or she was raped or requires a D&C after a miscarriage (Which still counts as an abortion, even though the fetus is dead and D&C prevents infection or infertility), the choice must be hers.

I'll leave this rant with a cartoon which depicts how I feel about the direction the United States is going with their healthcare.


Jerry's condition is unchanged at this point, and if it remains so, my next rant may have to with birth control access, which of course is directly related to this post.

No shrinking violet

Today is the final dance class before the gala. I'm mildly freaking out. I don't exactly have the choreography memorized. I know what moves go to what segments of music. I don't remember the order of the music segments, so after each one is done I have to pause to hear it. This is not good. 

I've been practicing in the living room like on of those joggers who jog on the spot, only with belly dance. I also stayed up all night last night to correct what has been becoming a growing problem. Staying up just a wee bit later and sleeping in a little bit longer, over the course of time. 

This Sunday the Dude and I slept in until 1:00. It was unprecedented. I haven't done that since... actually I can't remember, though I know I often pulled it off in my teens. I spent a large portion of the evening doing this. Oh yes. It's so nerdy I could die. But due to practice I can now name 150 countries out of 195. Have you heard of Benin? Slovenia? Nauru? Well, now I have too. 

 

I spend the rest of the evening making excellent headway on When Everything Changed. Seriously, holy shit. Now, I've always considered myself a feminist. I know it's not fashionable to call oneself that, but I don't care and I've never cared. A feminist is someone who believes in equal opportunities and rights for women. I've found it very difficult to understand why any woman would not openly express solidarity with that. 

 

And reading this book and seeing in black and white the history of it all actually makes me mad that today's women don't want to own this title of feminist. It somehow seems like a way to appear more demure for the benefit of men. Because what woman in her right man would not be in favour of the rights she enjoys due to feminism? 

1960: 

Women cannot obtain credit without a male cosigner. 

Women cannot obtain mortgage or apartment lease without male cosigner. 

Women can legally be fired for getting married or pregnant. 

Child support and alimony are not enforced laws. 

Employers can legally pay women a fraction of what they pay men on the basis that they're not the breadwinner, even if they're widowed mothers or divorcees with children. 

Employers can legally sexually harass their female employees. 

Women can be denied entry to university programs for medicine, law, engineering and business. 

Employers can post help wanted - male and legally discriminate against hiring women. 

Funded sports programs in school for women don't exist. 

Dress codes required girdles and high heels in many jobs that were female friendly, such as teaching and nursing. (I own a girdle, which I occasionally wear. They're wildly uncomfortable.) 

Rape cases can be considered invalid if the woman was not a virgin prior to the assault. 

And due to a strong fight for decades to bring about change, these are no longer our realities. I'm 27 and cohabiting, a college graduate, childless and working in a career I enjoy. I've obtained my own credit card, signed my own lease, wear what I want, have a sex life and practice birth control outside of marriage. I've been able to make these choices independently, based on my own ideas of what will bring me happiness and where I want my life to go. 

Thanks to my mother's generation of amazing women. You're damn right I am a feminist. And with that rant, I'm going to get back to practice my choreography-- which is a dance that would never have been available to me to learn without feminism opening the doors for female expression of their own sensuality. 

PS: Latvia, Tonga, Lithuania, Malta.