let's face it

I recently turned 24. When I was 16 I wasn't sure I'd make it this far! Hell, when I was 23 I wasn't sure I'd make it this far.

Shit's still happening in my life that makes me feel helpless and unstable, but instead of turning my anger inward I'm turning it outward, exploring curses and shit. In a book that has sections titled "The Homewrecker: [for when] you want to destroy a marriage." The first sentence below that is, "Do you really?"

Do I really. Is it a marriage or just marriage that I want to end? To be sure it's one in particular, because the people involved in this particular marriage really fucked me over and I am angry. It's hard to know what to do with that kind of energy. A friend recommended that I make pretty things while thinking about the friend who got married and then moved away and then fucked me over, so that I would be able to move on. But I'm less convinced that I can make pretty things at all, and I'm not convinced at all that I was ever able to sublimate my anger into anything productive.

This girl, my friend, she got married to this creep. I will tell you what kind of a creep he is. He's one of those dominant dudes, like BDSM dominant. Did I ever tell you I give those kind of dudes a wide berth? They're fucking creepy. Something about dudes, especially white dudes, wanting to own women, control them. Explicitly, like it's part of their sexual identities that they've put a lot of thought and consideration into. (And BDSM isn't something that freaks me out or that I think is necessarily antifeminist or whatever. By the way.) How do these dudes not understand what the fuck it is they're saying and what kind of ideas they're promulgating?

I thought about all of this and I lost hope. I lost hope in women, I lost hope in men. I lost hope in friendship. I lost hope in love. I lost hope in kink. I lost hope in feminism. I lost hope in philosophy. None of these things will work because they don't make women stick together. As long as a woman is content to remain, psychologically, twelve years old, to abandon friends who care fiercely for her for a man who cares for her as long as she remains his property, it's all for nothing.

She told me before she left. She was afraid that she was going to lose something. She liked the person she'd become over the summer while she was hanging out with me. Something clicked for her, I guess, because I had never heard her say anything that even remotely suggested she liked herself. So I didn't want to let go of her and I tried to keep in touch with her. I didn't care if I was the one trying to call her and the one trying to hang out with her when she was in town. I made her promise to stay in touch with me before she left. A couple facebook messages, a couple posts on twitter and that was that. I started demanding she pay me the money she owed me and then nothing at all anymore.

What makes women do this?

I'm not a feminist anymore. I can't claim a label like that. Gender parity? I don't believe in it, because it doesn't exist, because we'll never get there. Not as long as women keep themselves under these structures. Not as long as they're willing to let dudes separate them from everything just for a little taste of approbation.

I don't want to change anything in this society. I just want to take a few women and get the fuck out because I am tired. There is nothing here for us anymore. There is no progress. We're just regressing, and not just along gendered lines, either. It's all lines. Somehow the powerful are just gaining more power. We got a black president here in the U.S. I think we've peaked. Somehow in a strongly Democratic, supposedly liberal executive and legislative branch we got campaign finance reform which basically said the pantomime is over. The rich have won. Arizona isn't the end of the immigration reforms that say let me see your papers. So the whites have won too.

And let's face it. The men have always been winning.

Pessimistic? Sure. But what exactly do I have to be optimistic about? The HRC has bought Harvey Milk's camera shop and now they're planning on selling mouse pads with his face on them, with the proceeds going to HRC, of course. Never mind the fact that when he was still alive they didn't exactly get along. Slow change and all that. Never mind that there could be a crisis center for gay kids there. It's much more important that the HRC inflate its wallet so they can more effectively fight for white, wealthy gay folks.

See? The same shit keeps getting kicked around. The same people keep getting kicked around. Back in October all we could think about was young white gay men killing themselves. But this months it's back to basics. DADT and marriage.

It's sure good to be back where we were.

A woman's ability is not adversely affected by how many babies will/have pass(ed) through her vagina.

Hell. Yes.:


Spain's defense minister Carme Chacon reviews troops in Madrid, Monday April 14, 2008. (via Shakesville)

Chacon, who was housing minister in the last government, wore heels, a black pant suit and white maternity blouse as she reviewed troops Monday at a ceremony in which she officially took over her post. Her husband is Miguel Barroso, who in the past has worked in Zapatero's press office.

She called the troops to attention, ordered them to join her in saying "Long live Spain, long live the King," and gave a brief speech in which she said her appointment was a sign of progress.

Look at that shot! That woman looks bad. ass. All business and absolutely in her element. (Psst: I think I have a crush.)

This came just a few hours after I read this article from Scotsman.com, entitled "Pregnancy risk puts employers off women." (via Feministing) Fun fact: 52% of bosses will "weigh up the chances of a candidate getting pregnant" when considering women for employment - specifically, it's women at "risk" for pregnancy (hint: that means young and/or recently-married women. 'Cause, y'know, all young and/or recently married want babies!) who are getting shafted. Brilliant:

Only five per cent of bosses have employed someone knowing the candidate is pregnant and a total of 76 per cent said they would not take on a new recruit if they knew they were going to become pregnant within six months of starting.

Meanwhile Spain is not fucking around:

The surprise appointment of Carme Chacon, age 37 and with no military experience, is the boldest statement yet from a Socialist government that has made gender equality one of its top priorities.

... Chacon is now one of the most visible members of a government that has enacted sweeping social legislation designed to rid traditionally male-dominated Spain of gender discrimination.

It legalized gay marriage, streamlined divorce procedures, forced political parties to field more female candidates and passed a law designed to promote women in the workplace and pressure companies to put more of them in their boardrooms.

This time Zapatero even created a new department, the Equality Ministry, to press these goals. The portfolio went to a 31-year-old woman, Bibiana Aido.

Oh, hell yes. Spain is sounding better and better.

And did we mention RON PAUL?

You'd think Ron Paul was the hero of my fucking generation. At least with college-age dudes who:

1. feel shafted by feminism
2. beat off while reading Maddox's "Greatest Page in the Universe".

His supporters remind me a lot of Paul himself, what with all of the yelling. Paul doesn't yell, of course, but I notice that he's near-hysterical about taxes, the mere existence of any kind of U.S. foreign policy at all, and is terrified of the federal regulation of anything.

And all of his supporters are dudes.


Via Shakesville.

Well, maybe not. But in the video, James Kotecki of Politico.com finds the lone woman in an entire group of perhaps fifty Ron Paul supporters (who are strongly reminiscent of sports fans, really, repeating Paul's name, and only Paul's name, over and over again. That's very persuasive/manly, boys! Keep it up!). "It's just kind of a message that [women] don't really resonate with, I don't know, I'm not sure why," she says in response to being the only woman present.

Maybe it's got something to do with Paul's self-proclaimed status as "an unshakable foe of abortion". Or perhaps women give a shit about things like federal assistance for lower-income families and affordable health care. You know, issues that affect women, but not, typically, white college-aged men who are stuffed to the brim with privilege. Duh.

Moral Panic and You: Trying to Cope With Being a Fatty in an Obesity Epidemic

Once on a livejournal community I read an entry wherein the poster detailed a moral conflict sie experienced during hir workday at a fast food restaurant.

Said conflict involved the poster’s heartbreak over the fat people who came into the restaurant and ordered whatever they god damned pleased. Should the poster inform those poor fatties that they were, in fact, overweight, and that eating fatty foods would just make them fatter?

As if it was hir business. As if those fat people did not know they were fat in a culture where they are being constantly reminded, in everything from advertisements to television shows and movies and music, that they are huge and that they are disgusting, and that their size is intrinsically tied to their value in society.

(Incidentally, I hope the person posting that livejournal entry did remind a fat person they were fat in that same nauseatingly sanctimonious tone, and I hope that fat person promptly put them in their fucking place, hopefully by having a chat with the manager.)

I hate my body. Which just extends naturally into hating myself.

I hate eating in public, because I get nervous that the people across the cafeteria or restaurant are laughing at me: an anxiety I developed in elementary and middle school and have never been able to shake—I am twenty years old and I still worry people are laughing at me for being fat.

I hate the unsolicited medical advice from my family. Everything from eating less bread/cheese/milk/tacos/etc. to buying ‘healthy’ groceries for me (low sodium/fat free/low carb blah blah blah, most of which doesn’t reduce the sodium/fat/calories/carbs by much at all) without any input from me. The first time my mother suggested I consider weight loss surgery was when I was seventeen years old, and it’s rare for me to go a day without actually considering it.

And of course I know I'm not the only fat person who hates her body and who thinks about weight loss surgery and crash dieting and Alli and all the shit we're supposed to think about, as fat people (women). And it's not just fat women who feel like shit about their bodies, judging by the types of bodies I see in ads for everything from Weight Watchers to Slimfast to cereal that helps you lose weight (as long as you replace two meals a day with a bowl of Special K/Total/whatever), for god's sake.

And there's sometimes when I say screw it, when I look at studies like this, which tells me what I knew all through middle and high school: fat teenagers exhibit the same disordered eating habits that thin teenagers do; they just aren't stick figures. (Lending more credence to the hypothesis, by the way, that that diet pills/starving yourself/puking after every meal/etc. doesn't work anyway, so thanks very much to the people who tell me that all I have to is eat less to lose weight.)

And then I find projects like Shapely Prose, Kate Harding's blog which is all about fatness and the lies that the media feeds us. And then I stick around long enough for her BMI Illustrated project.

And I really wonder why I still think about inviting a surgeon to slice me up and make me thin and pretty.

On that note, you should really check out adipositivity. It takes a lot of courage for a fat woman to take off her clothes. Particularly in front of a camera. It almost makes me not mind being fat.