What Isn't Owed, Actually...

 Just a friendly reminder that we are allowed to be depressed.  We are allowed to make space for our feelings.

We don't owe the world perfection while we glue ourselves back together.

So, ya know, give yourself time.  Nothing in nature blooms all of the time.  Be patient.

What makes you think...

 I think it is a uniquely feminine problem, exacerbated by social media and this perception that people may *always* be available, that men think they are entitled to women's time.  

What on Earth makes you think I want to be your Facebook pen-pal?!

I understand that you lonely old boomers are bored sitting on your piles of money and easily won prestige (it's a lot easier to compete when whole swaths of society are marginalized), but in what world do you think I have the time or inclination to carry on some "friendly chat" with someone I've never met!?

Fuck all of the ways off.

All of them.

This sense of entitlement, that you are entitles to the time of a woman because you find her compelling, even in a seemingly innocent way, is wholly toxic because it ignores the reality that she may have no time for you.  No interest in chatting with you.  My dear, I have enough friends.  I'm sorry your wife dies 14 years ago.  I hope you find some other poor sap to listen to your meadering stories and thinly veiled pleas for pity and attention.  I would rather work, or write, or talk to people I am actually interested in.  Or fucking sleep, frankly.  Watch TV?  Play Sudoku?  Yup.  Those all sound more fun.  Those are things I actually choose to do.

Talking to random men on the internet is not something I choose to do.  It is not my fault that toxic masculinity means you've never learned how to form emotional ties with another man and now seek out female friends to help you deal with your mountains of repressed emotions.  I am actively working to destroy the hetero-normative cis-gendered racist capitalist ableist patriarchy that made you, I do not also have time for you.  I have my own damaged men to deal with.

So please, kindly, fuck off.

Baseball

 The other day my roommate said to me, "I had no idea you were so in to baseball."

Growing up in the Bay Area in the 1980s, baseball felt like an inevitability.  Wasn't everyone this into baseball? It felt like part of the fabric of daily life.  T-ball, Giants games at Candlestick, A's games with Grandma Kate.  Will Clark and the way he wound himself up when he really took it out of a ball, Jose Canseco and his legendary attitude.  The Bash Brothers.  The Battle of the Bay.  My Grandma Kate and my dad had a friendly rivalry as an A's fan and Giant's fan, respectively, and that felt like the only real rivalry in the world, to the point where I barely registered the betrayal when I moved to Los Angeles and started attending Dodgers games.  I remember even after the Giants moved, and I moved, going back to South San Francisco felt special because that was where Candlestick park was, and that was a special place.  

Moving to Indiana in the summer of 1993 meant going to Wrigley for the first time and watching our beloved Giants play the Cubs.  Learning that my dad could also be a Cubs fan, and watching him slowly disown our Giants felt like a parallel story to the one we were living; trading the Bay Area in for the Midwest, learning to see my father as a much more complicated person with desires that might be contrary to my own, or to our family's. 

I remember going to so many minor league games over the summer in Indiana, usually coupled with blues music and barbecue.  The baseball felt like a thin string connecting the past to the present, to some bright future I would have to imagine.  I did not always enjoy these games; triple A ball felt like a cheat, like a trick my dad was using to make things seem normal when they weren't.  It felt like having an off-brand Disney character show up to your birthday party.  But now I look back on those games with fondness, treasuring the idea that you could always see good baseball at great prices if you could find a minor league game.

When I moved to Arcata for college, discovering the Humboldt Crabs felt like a revelation.  It was minor league ball with all of the things I loved, was learning to love as an independent, individuated person.  Cheap tickets, cheap hot dogs and beer, loud local crowds and a rowdy band.  If felt like home on those aluminum bleachers.  The Crabs were an easy symbol of what made Humboldt County feel special to me; the quaint small town feelings wrapped up in hippie-dippie nonsense at a price I could actually afford.

When I started going to Dodgers games, it had been a few years since I'd been to a ball game.  I was responsible for teaching my immigrant husband all about the sport of baseball, why it mattered and how it was played.  He latched on to some of my favorite elements, the camaraderie found between neighbors, the bitter sweet of the overpriced beer, and the thrill of shouting at the great plays and terrible calls.  Dodgers games became part of our Summer tour for visitors, and I watched him teach his little sister about the game a few years later.

Last Friday I went to my first baseball game in 2 years.  I'd watched half of a Crabs game two summers ago, and it had been years before that.  But We got great seats at Oracle park and watched the Cubbies play the Giants in the chill of a San Francisco summer night.  I felt alive.  It felt like it was for me.  After the first few innings I barely paid any attention to Chris, because he didn't seem to care enough about the game and one thing I know from being a sports fan is that you have to care.  It's bad luck not to.  It felt good, like a homecoming.  The city has changed a lot, and I have spent a lot of very different times there under very different circumstances over the years, but it felt like I was where I was supposed to be.  And that's a good feeling.

I guess, in a way, that is my point.  Sometimes that's the way a good baseball game makes you feel.  It makes you feel like you're at home.  I don't get that 'home' feeling a lot, so I treasure it when it floats to the surface.

Things I would Post if I had a Finsta

•  I have decided to start making two breakfasts every morning.  It's more work, but it's worth it.  I've realized I no longer really know how to feed myself, just make elaborate feel-better meals and eat the leftovers from what I made my kid.  And I guess it's time to start feeding myself again.
  
• My kid is low key spoiled.  Every morning I get up early and make him a lovely balanced breakfast and leave it by his bed before I shower and get dressed for work.  It's an example of the little things I do to try to make him feel special and cared for, and it makes my morning a bit easier.  If I had more than one kid, I might not be able to do these things with the same level of care and thought, and while I am sure it would be fine, it would bum me out.  My son's father chose addiction over being his parent, so I need him to know every day that I am still here, consistently picking him.  Hopefully that at least gives him the chance of blaming his dad instead of himself.
• There will always be a part of me that wants a big house filled with lots of loud, laughing kids.  Desperately.  The other day my son ran off with some other children, and I waved the parents off to go corral the mini posse, and it gave me joy to laugh and play children of all different ages and stages.  That doesn't mean I will ever change my mind about my decision to only have one child.  It just means that somewhere, out in the multiverse, there's a different me with that life, and she is so, so happy.  But every once in a while she sits along with just one baby and thinks of what that would be like, or gets a night alone and wishes she had more opportunities for that.
• If you don't get the vaccine, or choose to ignore climate science or other generally accepted science, you should have to give up other technological advancements, too.  No more antibiotics for you, no more iPhone.  No more fancy fermented kombucha.  Go live with the Amish (who *are* getting vaccinated!) if that's how you want to live your life.
  
• My man.  Running off to appease my child at the second cry of "mommy",  he came back undaunted a minute later when he couldn't solve it on his own.  "Pacifier?  He can't see you, but what should I do?"  That's the biggest everything energy.  I know I can't do it all, but help me take it of you plate with out fucking things up for kiddo too much.  That's a real man.   That's some mother's day shit.  Leaving the fully packed pipe as he left didn't hurt.
• Several times a week I can't find my keys/cellphone/glasses/other essential item because my purse has too many tiny trucks and snacks in it.
• I have an idea for a game.  I'd call it "Kid, Dog, or Lover" and it would be people saying different things with the phrase "big boy" in it, and you have to guess if hte preson is talking to a kid, a dog, or a lover.
  

Post-2020, But Not All the Way

 How do you go through everything we went through, and not want to do everything possible to kept it at bay.

I don't know how anyone can have gone through any version of the last year and not want to do everything in ones own power to get the fuck back to normal.

The pandemic and the entire year have brought so much death and pain and struggle and torturous survival.  I watched children commit suicide, adults overdose, students drop out of school, get sick, and complete assignments between funerals.  We watched our children de-socialize, we de-socialized.  We gave up holidays, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, and who knows what else.  Said goodbye to movies, concerts, sports....

And I don't get it.

How do you come through that *more* selfish?!?!  Less willing to work towards a world where all of that fades to black.  How on Earth is anyone saying no to a vaccine that can save lives and give us normal back.  I cannot tell what kind of human being would give up life, love, and freedom, health, the sanity of friends, family and strangers.

  Who the fuck is so selfish as to duck a shot and refuse the world that?  Risk that, leave that up to chance.

I am sorry, I don't want to be friends with those people.  If you don't get the shot stay the entire fuck away from me.

I'd Like to Speeak to the Manager of Patriarchy...

A (white, female) friend of mine recently posted something on social media about how it's strange there is such a backlash against white women "calling the manager" on BIPOC [Black & Indigenous People of Color] when most women are still unable to get fair/equal pay, benefit, medical treatment, etc...
Which naturally got me thinking about overlapping systems of oppression and the role white women play in the patriarchy. 
But before we get started you need to get on board with a basic concept that might sound radical at first; people really love to hate women.  Love it.  It's basically a national pass time.
Think about the vitriol female politicians face.  Think about popular culture, the popularity of hate-watching real housewives shows (there is no male equivalent...).  I think, sometimes, about the unpopularity Anna Gunn faced while playing Walter White's wife Skyler on Breaking Bad.  People hated her for playing a wife who was mad at her husband for making meth and ruining their lives....crazy no?  Don't believe me?  Check this out.  Women are easy to hate because they often form stand-ins for the nagging, cranky, buzz-kill, frigid, rule-enforcing, angry women we hate in our own lives.  Which is a huge part of my whole theory regarding the electability of women and why women seem so cranky, angry, frigid... but that's an entirely different conversation.

For now, take me at my word that culturally, Americans and lost of people generally find it easier to hate women (Peg Bundy, Lorena Bobbitt, Carol Baskins, Skyler White, Hilary Clinton, Ann Coulter, Kim Kardashian) than men.  Seriously, how was Al Bundy *more* likeable??

Now consider the roles of race and gender in patriarchy and white supremacy.  Sex and gender have been used throughout history to create and maintain racial divides, from the practice of raping male slaves to "break them" ("buck breaking") during slave trade, to using white female sexual virtue as an excuse to lynch black men in the Jim Crow era, the the mythology of black hyper sexuality that persists largely today.  The intersections of male power over women, sexual power, physical power, political and financial power, and power and privilege white people enjoy of over people of color.  This means that where we all stand, in terms of privilege is complicated by the many dimensions of our selves and the way others perceive us.

So taking these ideas all together why is society so mad at white women, why are white women the current embodiment of white privilege and racial oppression. Yes, of course white women enjoy white privilege, and the women calling the cops on innocent black people are heinous and weaponizing their whiteness and, honestly, female victim hood to police the spaces black people occupy.   But if we are being honest with ourselves, white women are rarely the architects of the systemic racial oppression that makes it possible for those "Karen" phone calls to have any effect.  Rich, white, cisgendered and able-bodied  men, historically are the architects of the capitalist system of white supremacist patriarchy that pits marginalized people against each other.  And that feels like a part of what's happening here.  By targeting white women as the personification of the evil of systemic racism, we are missing the point, and aiming at a lesser target.  It's shooting at the messenger without dismantling the message. 
If we really want change, we need to not only stop these women from weaponizing systemic racism but also dismantle the white supremacist patriarchy that gives these woman the power to keep BIPOC out of traditionally white spaces.

All My Friends Are Metalheads

A friend of mine got married a few weeks ago.
Not a big deal, I know, but it feels like a big deal, because we were kids together.
Not 'kids' like we were young and grew up together.  I mean, we were young when we met, but 18 or 19.  Not that young.  We were kids together in the sense that we were emotionally stunted outcasts rejecting the normal trappings of growing up together.  We were weirdos together. 
And now so many of us are getting little bits and pieces of normal, and it warms my heart.  We are having children, and successful careers, emotional growth and meaningful relationships.  We are still ourselves, but there is something so optimistic and hopefully about seeing the people who were so weird with you, who saw you when you were your most outlandish and nonconforming, and went along with you for the ride, finally find their acceptable bits of whatever version of happiness and dream life suits them.

It makes it all seem possible, without immense compromise.  Like I can do it, too, with just a bit of maturity and patience.

The people about ten years younger than me are going through this strange phase, where everyone is getting married and having babies as they begin to exit their late twenties, and I really never experienced that.  I mean, there were a lot of weddings, I suppose in the years that bookended my thirtieth birthday, but nothing on the scale I am watching others experience.  I am sure part of it is grad school, but I also feel like the misfits I clung to and came up with needed a bit more time to settle down.  And now that they are doing it, it is coming in such interesting and exciting packages.

I'll be frank and say there are not many things that inspire optimism in my these days, especially in the realm of romance and love.  But this does.  This makes me feel like doodling hearts on note paper, makes me feel like there's still time for anyone willing to make an honest go of it.

Even me, maybe.

Five Month Post-Break-Up

I am a good person.
I am worthy of love
I am a good person
I am worth of joy.
I am stronger than I remember and I am going to be okay.

I write the words over and over, trying to inoculate myself against pain, doubt, sorrow, weakness, and suffering that keeps washing up against my feet, chilling me and dragging me down...

I am worthy of love
I am worthy of good love
I want love, and I see myself as worthy...
maybe not all the time,
but often enough
to know
The tears on my cheeks and my desk and smeared across the backs of my hands will dry.
Because I deserve my fair measure of joy.
Not more than my share, just enough.  Just enough to love the sunrise again, and delight in the little things again.

Just enough to feel the warm waves of hope at my feet again.
Instead of these cold waves of loneliness, doubt, and hopelessness.

When Doves Cry...I guess.

Mourning Doves always remind me of my grandmother.  My paternal grandmother, my dad’s mother, did not really like people much.  She preferred animals and kept a variety of them in large quantities in her home all of the time I knew her.  On the balcony off her bedroom (which was later converted to a room for her literal hundreds of mice) was a cage of mourning doves, and the sound of them calling always makes me think of her, makes me feel like I might be six years old and in awe of everything again.  I feel light shining through dirty glass windows, I feel warm and that magical nothing-can-be-that-wrong feeling you only have when you are very young and innocent. 

It took me a long time to realize that they are mourning doves, not morning doves, and I actually like that so much better.  

Sitting now, in my father's house, as he and I both age and with my grandmother long gone, I listen for the sound of my little boy, listen for him stirring from his afternoon nap.  I hear the doves calling in through the windows, and it strikes me suddenly, that they sound just like my little boy when he first wakes up, when he's entertaining himself and speaking garbled half words to himself.  He sounds like summer light shining through glass, like the magical innocence of youth and possibility.

He sounds like love.

Solace in the Forest.

There are times when life, and the problems that come with it, feel too big.  Much too big.  Too big to manage.
It is comforting, though, that in these times, the scale of nature can be so reassuring. When life is too big, the ocean is always bigger.  A proper forest filled with redwoods growing over their fallen brethren is bigger.  The life outside my head is bigger.

That has been a huge part of the solace I've found in running away to the North Coast in the last few weeks; immersing myself in nature is a balm to my tattered soul, letting me feel healed, even for a moment.  Letting the scope of my view expand so far beyond my own troubles that they seem manageable.  Letting my eyes rest on unreachable horizons, wander unknowable labyrinths of ferns and wildflowers.  Letting the cool air blow through my dark head, refreshing my thoughts, even if only for a moment.

In dark, heavy times, nature is salve.  It can feel like the only salve.

For the Fisrt Time in Forever...

It took me a while to put my finger on it, to actual find the words to describe the feeling of meeting someone new.  There's an enthusiasm and optimism that can be difficult to place, but I think what it comes down to is hope.
When you meet someone new, and there is some kind of connection, there is the flash of hope that this might be one of those rare gemstones of a person who might see you, who might understand you.  And that is thrilling.

I feel like most of life is spent walking around partitioned; you have a work self and a family, maybe different versions of your self you share with different friend groups.  But there are those special folks who see the whole person,the light and the dark, the silly and the serious, and can make one truly feel seen.  Like, Seen, with a capital S.

And I believe that is one of the goals of life, one of the touchstones of a life well lived.  I think we are all wandering around hoping to find someone who looks at us and says, "Yes, that is incongruent and confusing, but cool.  Show me more."  I read somewhere once that the point of falling in love and sharing your life with someone was to have someone to bear witness to your life, so that you could have that one shred of evidence that life was not being lived completely alone.  Actually, it was in a  movie and I'm trying to sound smart, but the point remains.  That rings true like a thousand bulky church bells in my heart, and I don't think it's just romantic love that can give us that sense of being seen, of existing in a world with understanding rather than in the cold, indifferent vacuum of casual acquaintances and lost friends.  We all want to be seen, have witness borne, have our trivial triumphs and minor disasters dissected by someone willing to take our side, see it from our perspective.

And that's the optimistic euphoria that bubbles up when you first meet someone and wonder, holy shit, is this someone who might actually be interested in my mundane existence?

It's The End of the World....Again

Not much more than 5 years after my divorce from my secret husband, whom I loved very much but was also a narcissist who more or less tried to separate me from my family and sense of self to fully engulf me in his world, I am at another cross roads.
and not the drinking-game movie with Britney Spears

My boyfriend...of almost five years, with whom I have an amazing child, is leaving me.  Someday.
Until then he is drinking again, after struggling to get sober 4 months ago, hurling insults at me, and generally trying to prove how much better he is than me by absolving himself of responsibility.

and the usual thoughts creep in.

What is wrong with me that this is happening again?!

Today, at work, while trying desperately to compartmentalize so that I could lecture a bunch of twenty-somethings about product safety, I thought of Friends, and Ross Geller.  Three divorces.

I don't know it I am grateful to not have to claim another divorce, or frustrated that the words I have to describe my situations are so disappointing.
My boyfriend is breaking up with me.  My son's father is moving out.  My baby daddy is over it?  I'm going through a split up?
I don't know.  It doesn't feel like any of those appropriate phrases explain it properly.  They guy I was planning a future with, after my last future blew up, is yelling insults at me.  The thing I was working on, working towards for the last couple of years is garbage.  Break-up doesn't quite cover it.

But to be fair, rarely do the names of things truly fit the size and scope of the situation.  Realistically, words can't be expected to capture the nuance and the gravity of massive life events.

I try to comfort myself by reminding myself that disentangling from my ex-husband seemed impossible, and now he's not a part of my life in any real way.  I know this process will be so painful and complicated, and I know I will survive.  But it is so much more complicated and painful now.  Because of my amazing child.  If anything, I hoped I could save him from some of the trauma I endured as a child, and now I know he will have a much more complicated, painful life.  I am so ashamed, frustrated, and worried.
I just don't know what to do next.

My Sweet Boy

There is a lot going on these days. 

You could argue that at any point in time, I am sure, but it certainly feels like we're living in exceptional times.  Like things are becoming a little bit extra unhinged.  Like the world might end tomorrow because of climate change, or the rise of terrorism, or white supremacy will rebrand itself yet again as a drive through burger place so good people shrug and eat it up, like we already do with Amazon.

And now I'm a mom to a sweet, tender little boy, so when I think about all the fucked up things in the world, I think about how he'll slowly enter that world more and more, and have to negotiate and navigate more and more of it.  It is terrifying to think that slowly he will become a full fledged human who will have to negotiate some of the shit I've had to navigate.  It terrifies the shit out of me.

I have known many sweet, tender men.  I still do, but it is hard growing up a sweet, tender young man in our world.  It's changing, slowly, but we still expect our boys to be a certain way, to certain things.  We still have a society that punishes little boys who speak softly, or care deeply, or stand out int he wrong way.  And I worry about my little boy being on of those guys.  Just like I worry about him *not* being one of those guys.

Today, at breakfast, my little guys started shouting about a bug on the table, pointing excitedly and smiling at his discovery.  He loves bugs.  I tried to tell him it wasn't a bug, just a black crumb, but he was unswayed.  He looked at me seriously and said, "bug nigh nigh!"  It is not a crumb, mom, it is a bug, but it is just sleeping.  He made cooing sounds and sang to the 'bug' before making snoring sounds.  he kept his finger next to the bug the whole time, affectionately.  It was so sweet it broke my heart.

How am I supposed to trust the world with a boy that sweet?  My baby boy, who gives strangers hugs  and sings made-up songs to sleeping pretend-bugs.  I have seen what the world can do to sweet, tender hearts.  and there is nothing in the world that scares me more than my little boy growing more and more into that world, more and more out of my protection.

There is nothing on earth scarier than being a parent.

Bolidy Integrity

There are some words, phrases, and ideas I love.  I love them because they fit in my mind like a key in a lock I've had for years, finally putting words to a soft and shapeless idea I couldn't name.
Operationalize is one of them.  I love that word.

Bodily Autonomy (or bodily integrity) is another.
I first read the phrase bodily autonomy (or integrity...it was probably integrity, but my brain likes to say autonomy more) in a twitter rant about abortion rights.  This smart and well informed individual was making an argument for bodily integrity, that we have laws protecting bodily integrity of one person over the well-being of another.  For example, you cannot be compelled against your will to donate blood to save someone's life.  Or to donate a kidney, or a piece of your liver. Because that would be insane, right?  To force someone against their will and by law to donate a kidney to another person, a stranger or a family member, just because it could save their life.  We don't do that in the United States because we value freedom above all else.

If you aren't a woman with a uterus.

Because if you are a woman with a uterus, you do not have the right to bodily autonomy.  I mean, you do, sort of, right now.  But it really depends on the state you live in, how much money you have, what your docto's religious beliefs are, who is on the supreme court and what judges and lawmakers in your area think.  Because if you are a woman, and you happen to let a sperm past your complicated, expensive, and onerous system of reproductive defenses, you can lose your bodily autonomy to a pulsing packet of cells.
Forever.
I have already ranted and raved to everyone who will listen about the physical and psychological tolls of pregnancy, delivery, and do not get me started on the cost of what I hope is effective parenting.  So let's look at the other side of my new proposal:

I refuse to listen to any pro-life person who has not already donated a kidney.
If you are truly pro-life, if you truly believe in saving lives, and have two functioning healthy kidneys, why on earth are you torturing some poor soul on dialysis when you could save a life?

Don't worry, I'll wait.

Because nephrectomy is major surgery?  Sure.  But it is a major surgery with minimal risks and less than 1% chance of future kidney failure according to the Mayo Clinic.  The risks associated with the Cesarean section that saved my baby and I from complications carries far more risks than a routine kidney transplant.  This is especially true in the United States, where we have a rising rate of maternal mortality, the worst record in the developed world.  
So childbirth is potentially deadly, and pregnancy requires 9 months of life-altering preparation as your organs and bones shift to accommodate a human, then a painful delivery and recovery that is life-threatening in this country, followed by weeks of recovery and months of your organs, bones, and skin slowly shifting back into place.  Also, you have to raise a human being.  Or put them into the complicated system of foster care or adoption, where many kids go their whole lives without ever having a stable family.
But that's another rant, titled "If you are so pro-life, you better foster and/or adopt some of those children you forced to be born!"

By any measure, kidney donation is far easier, less impactful that childbirth.  But we do not mandate kidney donation.  Or life-saving bone marrow donation.  Or even life-saving blood donation (which everyone should do, because it saves lives, is easy, you get a free cookie, and donation rates are dropping in the US).  But we do not mandate that people give up their bodily integrity in any of these cases, and I can't figure out why.  Are the 5-year-old children with bone cancer not as cute as a 10-week or fetus?  Was my uncle who died because dialysis was too painful to endure not as important or worthwhile a person as a clump of pulsing cells?  Or is it just that men have bone marrow, blood, and kidneys, and they don't want to give up their bodily autonomy?

This does not even touch on the number of abortions given to women who need them for medical reasons, who make the heart breaking choice to end a wanted pregnancy to save their own life, or prevent the suffering of their child.  But you pro-life assholes don't want to talk about forcing mothers of wanted babies to slowly bleed to death and die of sepsis while their beloved child dies inside of them, do they.
Fucking assholes.

So, until we make blood donation, kidney donation, bone marrow donation, and liver donation mandatory in life-saving cases, every single pro-life politician can go fuck themselves all the way to the moon, and then suffocate silently in the cold darkness of space and leave the rest of us in peace.
/rant

I'm done.

I am so done with men this week.
Okay, not actually men, just patriarchy. 
White supremacist, hetero-normative, ableist, cis-gendered capitalist patriarchy.
That fucking shit.
I am *so* done with it all.

This week, I had to walk a young female student and her friend to their car because a guy has been stalking her; waiting for her outside of her class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.   After eight weeks she finally asked for help.
And I get it.  I have had the same problem, and when subtly taking out work or checking emails doesn't work, I resorted to ducking the guy by going out different doors, leaving at different times.  Plus, my annoying guy was much less persistent.  One of the benefits of entering my late thirties and growing a mom-bod is that far fewer people want to bone me, so I can move through the world with less friction.  To say it is a bittersweet victory would be understating it.

But I remember those days well, and they still happen often enough to remind me that as women, we are the emotional laborers of this society.  It reminds me of a philosophy professor who suggested, as an exercise, that we assume that gravity is created by tiny creatures shooting arrows with rope attached to things to keep them from flying off the face of the earth.  I pictured a version of the gremlin that used to haunt Bugs Bunny, hundreds of thousands of them under the surface, keeping the machinery of the world functioning as we know it.

That's the emotional labor of women.  We are walking around all the time, being patient with a frustrated colleague, listening to the feelings of a stranger, letting a guy hit on us when we would much rather be sitting in silence.  But most of us, most of the time let it happen, make the emotional space for the guy in the situation so we don't have to find out what would happen if we don't.
Even when we don't articulate it to ourselves, that's why we do it.  That's why we are nice, or patient, or don't argue, or give out a fake number, or lie about a fake boyfriend or husband or appointment, or wear headphones or bring a book or walk with friends to mix up our route or keep our route the same and therefore familiar and safe.  We put in all that extra work to protect the feelings of the men around us, strangers, family, friends, and peers, so we don't have to find out if this is the kind of guy who will snap.  Or the situation that will make this guy snap.  The anger and violence and ego of men is the fuel that drives us to do all of this emotional labor.  We do not want to do it, even if we have tricked ourselves into believeing we don't mind.  No one wants to work for free. 
But we all do.  We all do all this emotional labor of patiently making some guy's feelings or concerns more important than ours, more important than our precious time, because you never know when or where or which guy is going to snap and hit you or yell at you or threaten you or stab you or rape you or dehumanize you in some way because you made the mistake of asserting your autonomy, your humanity in the face of their own.
As if you were an equal.

And, how dumb would that be?

The Emotional Labor of a Nation

If you haven't heard of Gina Haspel, there might be a very good reason. I mean, she was a spy for most of her career.  I'm sorry, a highly decorated agent in the clandestine services.  By all accounts she has spent the majority of her professional life as a measured, capable, smart member of elite people who sacrifice some level of normalcy to gather an utilize intelligence about international goings-on.  Then the current president, who goes through staff faster than I go through cheese, needed a new director of the CIA.  The first female director, which is great,e specially because she is, by all accounts, great at her job.  Experiences, level headed etc.

But.  For a week during the Bush administration she over saw a Bangkok black site where a man was waterboarded three times.  Later, against the recommendation of some, she penned a memo for her boss directing the tapes of some waterboarding to be destroyed.

There is a lot in those two sentences, a lot to unpack.  Waterboarding is torture, and torture is wrong.  Bad.  Problematic.  A lose-lose.  Most experts agree that torture does not get useful information, and is against the Geneva Conventions.  It is a violation of human dignity.
That being said, when Gina Haspel was in Bangkok, we had a president and an administration who considered waterboarding okay.  They called it 'enhanced interrogation' to skirt the law, and they said it was necessary to prevent a mushroom cloud in Manhattan or something.  Before Gina Haspel arrive at the Thai facility she briefly oversaw, another detainee was waterboarded more than 80 times.  That poor man lost consciousness and actually died, and had to be resuscitated.  The descriptions are horrifying.  Haspel took over, briefly, over saw the same horrific act conducted 3 times, and then shut the site down and moved on with her career. 

I am not here to assuage her guilt, or defend water boarding.  But I can't help but feel like holding this woman, who over saw a tiny fraction of the horrific acts done in the name of U.S. national security and actually worked toward stopping it but shutting the Bangkok facility down, is misguided.  We had a president who supported it 2002, and we have a president who claims we should do more than water board suspects now, and no one is questioning either of those men.  Nor is anyone bothering to speak to the man who was in charge of Gina Haspel's conduct, who placed her in Thailand for those weeks in 2002.  Nor is anyone questioning the individual who actually did the actual water boarding.  Or who actually destroyed the tapes. 
We are questioning, haranguing, the woman in the middle, between the men with all the power and the men who follow orders, and holding her responsible.  To me, that seems like we are asking Gina Haspel to answer for our national sins, our election of these presidents and their appointed cabinets, because we still can't. 
Talk about emotional labor. 
Seriously.  I understand that she is being elevated to a high position, that deserves a high degree of scrutiny.  But can we all agree that she didn't decide to waterboard anyone?  Why is no one asking any of these tough questions of our current or past president, both of whom rationalized and excused torture when it was convenient, and sacrificed the humanity of others to stay in power, to look strong.
It is so much easier to rest it all on the shoulders of Ms. Haspel, because even though she neither gave the orders nor took the action, she is the woman we can all turn to and ask if it is ever going to happen again.

I mean, do we all need a national mommy that bad?  Maybe we should elect one, then.

#MomLife

10:45 pm  Baby is crying.  Bring water, pacifier.  Snuggle him back to sleep, then stumble back to bed
12:45 am  repeat
1:55 am  repeat
3:50 am  Baby is crying.  Approach with water and search for pacifier blindly only to find pacifier is sitting in pool of chunky vomit.  Wipe hand on own pajamas, and reach for child, who is only damp with vomit.  Move child to clean, dry area.  Replace his pajamas, wipe vomit off of face, hair, and hands.  Give child cup of water to occupy himself.  Remove bed sheets, mop up vomit, throw offending items in a pile in the bathroom.  Lay a clean rag over the stain because you are too lazy to put clean sheets on the bed when there is only one more hour of sleep to look forward to anyway.  Bring child, sippy cup of water, favorite stuffed animal, and favorite blanket into bed with you and sleeping, snoring partner.
4:15 - 4:50 am  Baby rolls around in the bed, pretending to be sleepy while poking and kicking.
4:51 am Baby sits up to drink water
4:52 am Baby begins to throw up water.  Grab still-vomiting baby and try unsuccessfully to catch vomit in your hands, pajamas, anything but beloved stuffed animal or bed sheets.  Carry gathered bed clothes, pajamas, and vomit-y baby back into baby's room, wipe up vomit, change pajamas.  Sleepy partner puts clean sheets on mostly clean crib.  Snuggle now clean baby back to sleep, tuck in, close door.  Change out of own vomit-covered pajamas into new pajamas.
5:20 am Baby is asleep, you are awake but already behind schedule.  Make coffee, prepare alternate baby breakfast of simple oatmeal in anticipation of further tummy trouble.  Shower, and dress in robe.
6:15 am  Baby is crying.  Again.  The room smells like poop.  Baby is damp and smells like poop.  I lay baby down, then think better of it and grab a baby blanket to lay baby on.  Begin process of pulling wet, shit covered pajama pants off of resistant baby.  Baby cries more as I wipe feet, thighs, and mop poop into a pile.  I grab another towel upon which to lay the shit soaked pajama pants, nearly useless diaper and growing pile of wipes.  Being stripping poop soaked pajama shirt off of baby, trying to keep poop out of face and hair.  Realize poop traveled up back and into armpits, and begin mopping up poo.
Baby is clean, dry, and crying.  Dress him in optimistically chosen day care outfit, substituting sweat pants for shorts after imagining next wave of vomit or diarrhea streaming down bear baby legs.  Groggy partner takes baby to our bed to snuggle, possibly sleep.  Change crib sheets, begin washing large chunks of vomit and poop out of collected laundry, and start a washing machine load with lots of detergent and bleach.  Wash hands, thoroughly.  Smell robe for poop and add to laundry pile.
6:45 am  Baby is quiet.  Partner is quiet.  Pour coffee into cup, sit down at desk and begin answering work emails.  Text daycare back ups for availability. 
7:30 am  Baby is up, but not crying!  Timidly offer baby special breakfast of oatmeal and blueberries.  Baby eats four bites and then insists on more exotic fare.  Feed baby whatever he wants.  Bemoan options with partner; is he too sick for daycare or not?  Baby's temperature is take multiple ways for accuracy.  Nothing is learned.  Partner agrees to stay home with baby, I agree to come home early.  Day care rejoices.  Move laundry from washer to dryer.
8:30 am Finally dress for work.  Baby is crying, partner puts him down for a nap.  He cries, demonstrating a strong will, and then falls asleep.  Apply make up, arrange hair in what I assume is the style of a person who slept more than I did.
8:55 am Reheat leftover fast food burrito and eat it for breakfast while standing in the kitchen, debating making another cup of coffee.  Remind self to feel lucky for a schedule that allows for such a leisurely morning.  Remind self to be grateful for blessed child, despite his inability to keep partially digested food in his body.  Remind self to be grateful for leftover burrito, which is better than the granola bar under the front seat of the car.

9:08 am Leave for work, late.  Arrive at work, find decent parking space magically available.

Spend the rest of the day wondering if I missed a spot of vomit or poop, still somewhere on my body.  Or maybe in my hair?

Thoughts While Driving to Work

"How well did I wash my hands?"
That was the thought that occurred to me as I nibbled bits of bran muffin from underneath my finger nails and drove my son to day care.  How well did I wash my hands?  Because, about twenty minutes earlier, I was cleaning poo off his bottom.  And his thighs.  And his shirt and pants.  And his changing pad.  And his junk.  Oh why is it so hard to get bits of baby poop out of the tiny creases of baby testicles?!  It is the worst. 
And I washed my hands, but I was also keenly aware that the clock was ticking and I had about 70 minutes to finish up with the Poop-Apocalypse, get a clean and dressed kiddo into the car, and make the 50 minute round trip drive to drop him off and get to work on time.  Since breakfast time had been replaced by an early nap wake up and a surprise poo-splosion, I grabbed a bran muffin after cleaning up everything to the minimum level of acceptable hygiene and threw the kiddo and I into the car.
Finally in the medium-chill place of knowing that I was at least on the road and moving towards my goal I started scarfing my muffin down, savoring every crumb, including the ones under my finger nails until it occurred to me that it might not have been wise to both skimp on hand washing time and go after *every* crumb.

Oh well.

It's too late now.

And by too late, I mean both that the poo/crumbs are in my tummy now, and that I am late to work.

Aziz Ansari and Other 'Regular Guys'

So, the thing about waves is, the aren't exactly the most controlled of forces.  The ocean does not care what you had planned, and waves will wash over everything in their paths.  Waves will over reach.  What I'm trying to say is, it was inevitable that we would get to this point, where we'd have to have a reckoning between the folks who said, "yes, obviously, Harvey is a monster, but.." and the folks for whom there is no but.
And I think we're here.

Stuff is continuing to come about about less egregious forms of sexual assault, harassment, and dysfunction.  Grey areas are being wadded into, uncomfortable truths are emerging, and everything has gotten a whole lot more convoluted.  Most recently, or not, since I am by no means the most up to date, Aziz Ansari and James Franco have been pulled in for somewhat more complicated offenses.

And, to me, the crux of the issue comes back to a favorite winter song, Baby It's Cold Outside.  If you've never heard the song, hop on to youtube for the original, or any of the many, many, many, updates and remakes of the classic song.  I'll wait.  It's a lovely, controversial, date-rape-y song.  Recently, I was online in the midst of kitten videos etc. when I stumbled onto a more uplifting take on the song's origin.  The argument was that the song was not, in fact, date rape-y, but a woman making excuses to stay the night with a man she liked.  See, in the not-so-good-old-days, women lacked the freedom to make sexual choices on their own.  They were the brakes, and men were the gas (and everything was hetero-normative as hell....sorry about that).  Women were responsible for maintaining their chastity against the hoard of sex hungry, uncontrollable men that were their friends and neighbors.  Essentially, we pretended that everyone had the sexual norms of cave dwellers, but in snappy 1940s and 50s attire.  And we didn't talk about it.

But people are people, and sexual appetites vary, and some women, even back then, just wanted to get laid or fool around with the guy they liked, so they'd have to come up with a guise of being too drunk to go home, to play the part of unwilling but unable to fight prey, so that they could maintain their social standing to some extent.  Basically, the argument is, Baby It's Cold Outside is actually a ladies' anthem for repressed sexuality; she's playing the game with him, making excuses so she can spend the night.  Which is a much more pleasant subject for a song.

BUT.
Here's the problem. 
We don't know if that's true, because she never gets to say, "hey, by the way, I want to stay, I am just playing this dumb game."  Because she's not allowed to because of social constraints on female sexuality.  Social constraints that persist to this day.  And this is the real problem we are all struggling with now.

Without women and men (and people of all genders) growing up in a nonjudgmental space of sexual expression and enthusiastic "Yes!" and "No!" responses to sexual advances, we can't even really know our partner's take on our own sexual encounters.  Women (at least from my not-that-long-ago, born in 1980+ generation) are still growing up with the idea that sex is something inherently gendered with roles on predator and prey.  I know I grew up with potent images of the romanticism of sexual dominance and violence, to the point where i fantasized about it with my friends as a child.  If you think you didn't grow up with the same images imposed upon you, thing about everyone's hero, Harrison Ford, who makes his way through Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises kissing women by force, against their will, until they submit, admitting it was all an act.

How the fuck are we supposed to learn about consent from that?

We didn't.  And Harrison Ford is just an easy target; think back to other movies, whether women say no when they mean yes, how violence is portrayed around sexuality.  One of my favorite dumb movies, Mr. and Mrs Smith, starts out with a battle to the death between spouses, and ends in a bloody sex scene.  Complicated.  I find myself searching media now, for signs that the people being kissed, trust upon, are actually into it.  It is a disheartening exercise. 

Herein lies the problem.  We have completed trained ourselves to not expect female consent.  All of us.  I feel like this piece of writing articulates the complication of it all very well.  And maybe it's changing, but these things take time.  Aziz and James are close to my age, so I assume they grew up with something similar to my cultural milieu, and I can tell you I've had tons of sex I didn't really want.  Bad sex, unpleasant sex.  Sex I had because I thought I was proving something to someone, or because I thought it meant something.  But for a very long time I had a lot of bad sex because I thought, truly, that I *should* say yes to every offer that came my way.  I was never cool, I never considered myself pretty, but I was funny and had big boobs, so I would attract some guys some times.  It took me a while to put my finger on it, but I didn't always feel like I had the right to say no, because who was I?  Who was I to turn these guys down, who were cool, or bought me beers, or seemed funny at first, or didn't care that I was on my period.  Who was I to say no?

If you've read the New Yorker piece Cat Person, you know what I'm talking about.  There are so many fine, grey lines in between what we all want for everyone, which is joyfully consented to enthusiastic sex, and what we are used to expecting.  I might be alone in the way I valued myself in my early twenties, but I know I am not alone in what I am seeing echoed throughout the world lately.  Scores of women have had sex they didn't want.  Sometimes, because they were forced, coerced, drugged, tricked.  And that is rape.  Sometimes, they had sex they didn't want because they felt it had gone too far to stop, or they didn't no how to say no, or their partner didn't think to seek an enthusiastic yes.  Sometimes someone screams no in their head, but smiles, and goes along with it, because that's what you do.  Because if you say no, it could go from a bad sex story to a terrible rape story, to a beating, to some other more heinous act that you can already imagine.  At least if you don't say no, you are holding on to some facet of control in the face of the looming culture that demands that women be the source and substance of sexual gratification for all, without necessarily taking too much of it for themselves.

What I'm trying to say is, it is complicated.  And we are all to blame.  If I had said no when I meant it, I would have brought the world a little closer to the enthusiastic yes that I believe we all deserve.  That is SEXY AS HELL.  But it took me a few years to learn that I was worth the no and the yes, and that both were part of my feminism and my sexuality.  As a society I see more enthusiastic "Yes!" moments in movies and tv, which is important. We learn a lot from media.  We need to teach ourselves and the next generation that sex is great for those who want it, and great to not have for those who don't want it.  That it is a complicated mismatch of flesh and feelings, and that respecting the other person you engage in it with is the most important thing.  We need to find a way to talk about this without jumping on each others' perceptions and experiences, and come at some of these situations with some empathy.

And we are talking about it, so that's a start.  We need to keep talking, and listening, and questioning.  Especially things that make us uncomfortable.  That's how we get out of this quagmire of grey.

#imho

It's Not You...It's All Of Us

We're having something of a moment of reckoning right now; people are coming forward in droves, telling the stories of their sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, and sexual assault.  And they are actually (sometimes) being believed!  And the accused are actually (sometimes) admitting their wrongdoing, and ever apologizing!  And even (sometimes) facing consequences!

It feels like a scary, shifting zeitgeist moment of cultural awakening and accountability.  And it also sometimes feels like it is spiraling out of control.   Someone posted somewhere on social media that in 2016, every time a celebrity's name was trending, we had to worry they were dead, but in 2017 a trending celebrity name likely implies new allegations of sexual misconduct.  And that feels pretty true.

So where will this roller coaster of accusations and accountability stop?  Hard to say, but I am reminded of the once great 'Your Fav is Problematic'.  For the uninitiated, it basically spent time pointing out how every beloved cultural icon and celebrity had done or said something shitty to some marginalized group at some time.  Everything you love, it boasted, is problematic.  I loved that, because it was true, and it's good (and challenging) to face our own biases and shortcomings.  But it is a bummer to find out how flawed everyone is.

THIS IS THE SAME THING.

By which I mean that if we keep searching for guilt, we will end up pointing fingers at everyone to some degree or another, because we are all complicit.  You will probably have to face the fact that your fav actor/writer/business owner did something fucked up to someone else because they could.  Because that's how power dynamics and misogyny and toxic masculinity work.  That's how rape culture works, and we are all complicit in some way because we are all part of this system.  Even those of us fighting to dismantle the cis-normative, white supremacist, hetro-normative, capitalist abelist patriarchy were at some time not completely sure of ourselves and made some mistakes.  Because that's what being young is, especially in this culture.  Any time you told your friends you really didn't want to talk about rape culture at a party, you helped keep it in place.  We all did.

I know I have made mistakes.  I've been a bad ally to other women, to other victims.  I've held on to a bunch of internalized misogyny that was harmful in was I am certain I don't fully understand.  And I have made moral compromises to save myself.  I am part of this system, and when I wasn't fighting it, it was in me, working to maintain its self like the virus that it is.

So.  Where do we go from here?  Forward, of course!!

We are all to blame in some way, which means we can stop being outraged.  We do not need to stop holding people accountable, but if there is anything the #metoo campaign taught us, it is that this was happening all the time, to everyone, everywhere.  So, to some degree we were all involved.** 

So let's hold people accountable.  Let's change the way we view power and sexuality and sexual violence.  Let's make sure that there is diversity at every level of everything, so that diverse perspectives view these problems at every level.  Let's make sure there are consequences, and let's work to hear and believe victims, and take actions against perpetrators.  Let's appreciate those who come forward with honest and forthright recognition of what they have done, and hold to the highest level of accountability those who try to pass their shit off or blame someone else.  Let's change fucking power dynamic and the fucking culture.  Let's finally get together to dismantle this shit.




**I do not mean to imply that victims are to blame for their assault/harassment etc.  I mean only to imply that as a society we are all complicit in some small way.  No victim is ever to blame for being assaulted.  If I walk down the street with a $20 bill hanging out of my pocket, the decent person will tell me, not just take it.  There is NEVER an excuse to commit harassment or assault, sexual or otherwise.  I'm just trying to articulate the larger way in which society systemically creates space for these crimes and violations to occur.