prisonblogs.net

Like their tagline says:

Because every voice deserves to be heard.

Weird sound bite?

I just Stumbled this.

I guess a Boston, MA talk radio show is broadcasting a semi-fabricated audio file of Obama's response to an abortion question.

Here is the original:



And here is the version from the radio station:



As the site warns, the files are VERY quiet, so you'll really have to turn up your volume to hear them.

The difference isn't as stark as I expected. They took out the qualifier he made to his statement, and left in/added a bunch of stammering.

His response sucks, either way, of course, but. This is still some pretty shitty journalism.

Thoughts?

How I Became A Feminist

It occurred to me, recently, that while I have posts discussing who I was before feminism, and posts discussing who I am now that I have feminism, I have not yet written a post explaining how I got from A to B.

Let's begin.

As of this writing (fall 2008), I have been alive for just over 21 years. Prior to the fall of 2005 (i.e. my freshman year of college) I had, effectively, no political consciousness.

I thought I did, of course. But in retrospect...not so much. Given that my "politics" have done an effective 180 since then, one might be inclined to accuse me of simply bashing my young self's conservative leanings. That's not the case. I knew nothing. My privilege and relative ease of growing up allowed me to imagine that people with problems were just whiners. This was enough to cause me to self-identify as conservative. I never did research. I didn't watch the news. I barely listened to my parents - and when I did, I just parroted their words.

Trust me. I had no political consciousness.

So then I got to college. At my school, all first-year students (with some exceptions for AP credit that I wasn't able to apply for one reason or another, despite having the credit... I'm still bitter, can you tell? ^_^) are required to take a course called, simply, "Perspectives." There are approximately 40-50 sections of this course, each taught by a different professor, on the topic of their choice. They teach about this topic from...you guessed it...different perspectives. :)

My course was called "The U.S. and Iraq: What's Going On?" We watched a variety of documentaries, had one of the ROTC captains on campus who'd been to Iraq come talk to us, read a TON of primary sources, etc, in addition to the requisite background in what Islam actually is, Iraq's history, and so forth.

It was basically the first time I'd ever been asked to think critically about current events. My position on the Iraq war, which had previously been something to the effect of, "But Saddam is evil, so it is good that we're deposing him," began to come around to, "Holy shit, we're a bunch of bastards for doing this."

Anyway. Political consciousness development is put on hold until the following spring. Then something really shitty happens.

Every year, the campus pride group, Keweenaw Pride, puts on a Pride Week (which is separate from the national one, so as to fall during the academic year). Part of their publicity for the event is to make sidewalk chalk adverts of all their events - they go up all over campus and are very colorful and fun and the group members have a great time making them. Well, the last night of Pride Week, someone or a group of someones decided it would be a really good idea to go around in the dead of night and make their own chalkings.

I don't want to repeat the words. If you want to see the hatred, venom, and death threats that were found all over campus the next morning, you can view them here at the KP website.

The university president sent an announcement via email to the student body with some of the pictures included, asking for help in finding the perpetrators (they were never caught).

I got back from my last class on Friday. We'd just finished watching a movie that had made me very emotional (some war movie set in Australia starring Mel Gibson. Of course the sweet, innocent young dude who is Mel's "mate" is the one who dies in the war - ARGH. Private Rice, I hope you and Beloved both come home).

I opened my email and, for the first time in my sheltered life, was confronted with the true hatred that oppressed groups experience. I was floored and shocked and physically sickened. I sobbed into my then-boyfriend's shoulder for a good five or ten minutes. I couldn't believe it. That same afternoon, I joined Safe Place:

The GLBT Safe Place Program strives to reduce homophobia and heterosexism on Michigan Tech's campus. Through education, advocacy, and awareness, the program contributes to an open campus climate that is safe and accepting of all members of the University community.
What is the Safe Place Program?

The Safe Place Program is a campus-wide program that offers a visible message of inclusion, acceptance and support to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people in the University community.

And then, once I'd joined and received my membership materials and the sticker for the door to show that my room was a bonafide Safe Place, my political consciousness was again put on hold. School ended, I worked at a bank for the summer, came back to school, got all eco-conscious for a while (failing miserably to live a lifestyle even remotely adherent to the ideals - go me for hypocrisy). Nothing happened for me until the spring of 2007.

The writing help center on campus was giving away a bunch of old books. In the pile on the floor outside the center, one old green book caught my eye.

Man Made Language, by Dale Spender.

Despite choosing to go into physics, I've always had a connection with and soft spot for grammar/language/words/spelling. So I picked the book up and started flipping through it. And I brought it home with me.

I kept reading. And reading. I felt, amidst the skepticism and grammarphile-joy, a growing sense of shock. And anger. Righteous anger.

A sense of, "Hey, yeah, I'd totally noticed that guys DO talk a lot. Why the hell did I fall for the women-talk-too-much trope?"

Shortly thereafter, from out of the blue, a friend referred me to the Girls Read Comics - And They're Pissed Bingo Card, complete with handy-dandy links to really freaking well-done explanations of the problems with the "phallacies."

That was my "click" moment.

I exploded. I spent the whole summer just devouring the feminist blogosphere. I moved from Girl Wonder to the All Girl Army, to Feministing and Feministe. From there to Pandagon, and then I Blame The Patriarchy!

A year later, I am in charge of a feminist newsletter, a regular obsessive reader of Shakesville, Shapely Prose, The Angry Black Woman, and everyone else you see over there in my sidebar.

Feminism changed my life.

It was a long journey to get here. All those seemingly disparate events adding up to prepare my mind for feminism. For a set of concepts - privilege, oppression, influence of societal pressure and how to analyze it - that, without that sequence of events, I would have never registered. I would have put my fingers in my ears and said, "La la la! I can't hear you!"

Because this shit ain't easy.

It takes thought and passion and active participation.

I am an angry feminist.

Fuck yeah.

Twist-tastic Update

I am glad I wrote that post a couple days ago confessing that I'd stopped reading Twisty.

Not only did I realize that I'd been agonizing needlessly, but I became motivated to go back.

And, holy cow! Twisty is VLOGGING! And she wears a cowboy hat and has an accent!

*swoon*

I realize that "Austin" describes a fairly large area. Especially if you include "and surroundings." But...man! I was THERE for THREE WEEKS!

My Twisty-love has been renewed. Now if I can just stop beating myself up over my heteronormative relationship decisions, I should be good. :)

I Am Privileged.

I finally wrote my privilege reflection/apology at Jiggly Bits.

Please read.

Hands Held High

Update: My abled privilege let me forget about those of us who have difficulty viewing visual media. I've added the lyrics.

This song makes me feel so big, like I can do anything. It makes me feel small, too - what can I do on my own?

It gives me hope and makes me cry and chills run down my spine.



My hands are held high, towards the sky so blue.

Hands Held High - Lyrics

Turn my mike up louder I got to say something
Light weights step to the side when we come in

Feel it in your chest the syllables get pumping
People on the street they panic and start running

Words on loose leaf sheet complete coming
I jump in my mind and summon the rhyme, I'm dumping

Healing the blind I promise to let the sun in
Sick of the dark ways we march to the drum and

Jump when they tell us that they wanna see jumping
Fuck that I wanna see some fists pumping

Risk something, take back what's yours
Say something that you know they might attack you for

Cause I'm sick of being treated like I have before
Like it's stupid standing for what I'm standing for

Like this war's really just a different brand of war
Like it doesn't cater the rich and abandon poor

Like they understand you in the back of the jet
When you can't put gas in your tank

These fuckers are laughing their way to the bank and cashing the cheque
Asking you to have compassion and have some respect

For a leader so nervous in an obvious way
Stuttering and mumbling for nightly news to replay

And the rest of the world watching at the end of the day
In their living room laughing like "what did he say?"

[Chorus:]
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen

In my living room watching but I am not laughing
Cause when it gets tense I know what might happen

World is cold the bold men take action
Have to react or get blown into fractions

Ten years old it's something to see
Another kid my age drugged under a jeep

Taken and bound and found later under a tree
I wonder if he had thought the next one could be me

Do you see the soldiers they're out today
They brush the dust from bullet proof vests away

It's ironic at times like this you pray
But a bomb blew the mosque up yesterday

There's bombs in the buses, bikes, roads
Inside your market, your shops, your clothes

My dad he's got a lot of fear I know
But enough pride inside not to let that show

My brother had a book he would hold with pride
A little red cover with a broken spine

On the back, he hand-wrote a quote inside
When the rich wage war it's the poor who die

Meanwhile, the leader just talks away
Stuttering and mumbling for nightly news to replay

And the rest of the world watching at the end of the day
both scared and angry like "what did he say?"

[Chorus x6]

[x6]
With hands held high into the sky so blue,
As the ocean opens up to swallow you.

ARGH, SPIDERS!

This post has absolutely zip, zilch, zero, nada to do with anything.

It is 5:34am, my time, and I am not planning to sleep anymore tonight.

Just before crawling into bed shortly after midnight, I spied the largest spider that I, personally, have ever seen, over yonder on the wall.

I despise spiders.

I proceeded to fall into three or four hours of fitful sleeping, during which I dared not poke any appendages out of the blankets and dreamt of the Shakesville comment threads - they were talking about the size of my spider and whether or not it was affecting their Internet connection. Yes.

I woke up at 3:30 or 3:45 ish, sweating because of the hoodie I wore to bed, but unwilling to expose enough flesh to take the damn thing off. Eventually I worked up the guts to turn on the lamp, looked around feverishly for the spider (it would have been better if it'd been in the same spot it was when I went to sleep, but instead it is nowhere to be seen), and got up.

I thought I'd try to sleep in my car, but the door is deadbolted and sticks in the frame and I don't want to wake up any housemates - or freak them out that a burglar is breaking in.

So now I'm writing, as something to do.

Spiders creep the FUCK out of me.

I have wanted to write, all day, but could not think of anything meaningful or useful to say. Now it is 5:45am and I just don't fucking care. :)

My Voice Against New HHS Crap

Via Cara's post at Feministe, my version of the Planned Parenthood letter that you can submit after donating (the first two paragraphs are the form, the rest I added personally):

I am writing to oppose the so-called "conscience" rule recently submitted by Secretary Leavitt. This regulation poses a serious threat to women's health care by limiting the rights of patients to receive complete and accurate health information and services.

At a time when more and more families are uninsured and under economic assault, we find our health care system is in crisis and our president taking steps to deny access to basic care. Women's ability to manage their own health care is at risk of being compromised by politics and ideology.

As a college student in northern Michigan, my ability to access health care is extremely limited. In the town where I attend school, I have one place to go. If this were taken away from me due to "conscience," the next nearest place I could go would be two hours away - prohibitively expensive, in terms of gas. The situation is even worse for other students who are not able to afford a vehicle at all.

This proposal ignores the plight of men, women, and children whose funds are limited. Many of them can barely afford birth control and minimum women's health care as it is. To risk removing their local access to it is nothing short of criminal.

Please add your voice. I am also going to send this comment to the official comment email address that Cara posted.

UPDATE 2: To comment on the regulation, write to consciencecomment@hhs.gov. Specify the subject as “provider conscience regulation.” Know that all comments will be available for public viewing in their entirety. Here is the full content of the proposed regulation (pdf) — for other methods of comment, see page 2. (Thank you, MB!)

Confession

I have to admit something.

I stopped reading Twisty because the things she said made me uncomfortable.

Yeah. Not cool, I know.

Twisty is hardcore. She stopped eating meat because in good conscience she could not support the meat industry. She is not married, nor will she be, because the institution is fundamentally flawed, anti-woman, heternormative, etc. Twisty is...everything I wish I could be, and am not brave enough to be.

Twisty rejects the Dudeocracy in as much of its entirety as she is able.

I do not, and so I don't read her blog anymore.

I give in, a lot. I am going to get married, at some point. I am still eating meat, and my finances are such that I don't worry too much about where it comes from. I do not like making compromises with the patriarchy. But I do. Sometimes I have to, because of money, and sometimes I do it because it is easier, and sometimes I do it for patriarchally-influenced love.

I know that most of the feminists I read would tell me that it is okay, we do what we are comfortable with, fight the battles that we have the mental and financial energy to fight.

But I still kinda feel like a failure. It would not be hard, really, for me to stop supporting the meat industry. But that would take effort in terms of time, and a LOT of effort in terms of standing up to Beloved. He may be very supportive of my feminism, but there is a lot that he does not yet understand/accept/know (of course this holds true for me, just about different things ^_^).

Argh.

So that is my confession. I'll be back next Sunday. ;)

A Daydream

I dreamt:

Beloved is about to board his plane home, tour over. From out of nowhere, a native woman runs up to him, and presses into his arms a baby girl. In broken English, she asks him, "Please, take to America. School, hope for my daughter." And she runs away without another word, tears running down her face.

Beloved stands, dumbfounded for a moment, but - for any number of reasons - reaches into his backpack and pulls out a blanket and wraps up the little girl. He carries her onto the plane, and together they make their way back to America.

Everyone is confused by the bundle in his arms as he disembarks. He tells me the story of what happened. Together we decide that there is nothing for it but to grant the parting wish of her mother. We'll raise this little girl, and send her to school, and teach her to be proud of herself, and her mother. We'll give her love and care and an education and strength.

I reach through a network of international students at my college, and find someone who can give us a name for the girl from her own heritage that means, literally or figuratively, Hope.

-----------------------------
I am aware that this is utterly unreasonable for a number of reasons, firstly because any native running wildly at a group of soldiers in Afghanistan would be shot on site - suicide bombers, ya know.

But in the second and a half it took me to have this daydream, I was filled with an intense desire to raise that little girl. I have never really been interested in bearing children of my own. Whenever I envision raising them, I see them less as people and more as...templates. Creatures to be trained in awesomeness, to show off as better than all the other little kids, and to be insanely progressive and aware. Not as people. Which is why, as of right now, I don't intend to become a mother. As long as my attitude is like this, I shouldn't try to bear my own children. It would be selfish.

But I didn't feel anything like that when I envisioned this hypothetical girl. I wonder if maybe my calling is to adopt.

In the daydream, she had to be an infant, for cinematic purposes, so that she wouldn't cry when her mother handed her over to a stranger, and be too big to be held for lots of plane rides.

But in reality, I've always kinda wanted to adopt older children. The ones whose "chances" of finding a family are lower. To give them a chance at personhood. Somehow, when I'm imagining those hypothetical children, I never try to impose my own goals on them. I set goals for myself: let them be their own person, try to be understanding, etc. (I know next to nothing about adopting, so my goals are, of necessity, vague.)

Hmm. I wonder what Beloved would think of these musings. :)

Anniversary. Kinda.

I'm not so great with dates. So. It's been about a year, ish, since I became a feminist.

Yay!

I am kinda shocked. My life has changed so radically in this one year. I am sitting here, trying to think of a way to type out even a smidgen of all the changes, and I am just overwhelmed. And also overwhelmed by how much further I have to go.

A year ago, I tanned in secret, so that my boyfriend would still find me attractive but my family wouldn't be able to call me on my hypocrisy as I scolded them for inviting skin cancer.

A year ago, I did situps and leg stretches and other exercises in the bathroom before I showered, because the little bit of pudge on my stomach and the shake of my thighs were gross, and I needed to be hot for my boyfriend.

A year ago, I would have said, "I'm not a feminist, but..."

A year ago, I wouldn't have given affirmative action the time of day.

A year ago, I would have stayed silent when I heard someone say, "There are no girls at Tech!" despite my (decidedly female) presence.

A year ago, I would have told my confidante and best friend, Chrissy, to exercise because fat is unhealthy.

A year ago, I would have said, "I don't like women. They're too catty."

But today!

Today, I am alive!

Today, I am passionate, angry, thriving, ready to fight for the dignity of humans.

Today, I am the president of my university's feminist newsletter.

Today, I keep an amateur blog about feminism.

Today, I actively seek out stories of oppression, and try, if nothing else, to learn from them.

Today, I don't have a panic attack when I forget to shave my underarms while wearing a tank top.

Today, I have a boyfriend who actively works against the patriarchy with me.

Today, I finally have the short hair I always wanted to try.

Today, I wrote the first draft of a post for All My Jiggly Bits, trying to unpack my body privilege.

Today, I don't feel like I have to defend my choice not to wear makeup, nor do I have to impose that choice on others.

Today, I am afraid that my birth control will be redefined as abortion. I like not having to trust solely in condoms, and knowing when my next period will come.

I also know that I have a lot farther to go. Sometimes I feel like I've been doing this my whole life. Then I realize it has only been a year, and I know I have so much farther to go, so much left to learn, so much left to do. I don't even know where I will be living, a year from now, let alone how much more I will have learned about activism, or what I will have done in the fight against oppression.

A year from now, I hope I will be a lot better at unpacking my various knapsacks of privilege. I have white privilege, able-bodied, thin, class, hetero, cis privilege. I have so much privilge I had to go look up another list to make sure I got them all. It's gonna take more than one year to learn how not to make an ass of myself. :)

A year from now, I hope that the newsletter group here on my campus will be safe and soundly re-established.

A year from now, I hope I can come to some kind of comfortable resolution for myself about shaving.

A year from now, I hope my boyfriend comes back from Afghanistan still alive, so that we can fight the patriarchy together.

A year from now, I hope this blog has some regular readers! ;)

A year from now, I hope I have done more volunteer work.

A year from now, I hope my campus has moved closer to a 50/50 male/female population ratio.

A year from now, I hope that I still have hope, that I still want to fight, that I'm still angry, and passionate, and alive.

There. Now if that wasn't an exercise in self-gratification, I don't know what is! ^_^

Random Geekery

I Am A: Lawful Neutral Human Wizard (1st Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-12

Dexterity-10

Constitution-11

Intelligence-15

Wisdom-13

Charisma-13


Alignment:
Lawful Neutral A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs him. Order and organization are paramount to him. He may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or he may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government. Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot. However, lawful neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it seeks to eliminate all freedom, choice, and diversity in society.


Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.


Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Vive La Revolution

Economic factors included:

* [The leader] fought many wars, bringing [the country] to the verge of bankruptcy, and [he] supported [the wars of other countries], exacerbating the precarious financial condition of the government. The national debt amounted to [unprecedented numbers]. The social burdens caused by war included the huge war debt, made worse by the [government's] military failures and ineptitude, and the lack of social services for war veterans.
* An inefficient and antiquated financial system unable to manage the national debt, both caused and exacerbated by the burden of a grossly inequitable system of taxation.
* The continued conspicuous consumption of the [upper] class, especially [those in positions of political power], despite the financial burden on the populace.
* High unemployment and high [food] prices, causing more money to be spent on food and less in other areas of the economy.

There were also social and political factors [...]:

* Resentment of [political] absolutism.
* Resentment by the ambitious professional and mercantile classes towards [upper class] privileges and dominance in public life, many of whom were familiar with the lives of their peers in commercial cities in [neighboring countries].
* Resentment by [the poor, working class, and middle class] toward the traditional seigneurial privileges possessed by [the upper class].

Finally, perhaps above all, was the almost total failure of [the leader] and his advisors to deal effectively with any of these problems.

If I hadn't edited it to eliminate specifics, you'd never know that wasn't a critique of today's America. That is in fact from Wikipedia's entry on the French Revolution.

It's coming. Let's hope it gets here before I lose all hope, yah?

The Truth

Okay, well...just so long as you don't move the standard I think I can... Hey! Wait, come back here with that!

...

*headdesk*

Double Whammy

I Stumbled this link today. Entitled "Susan Smith and Robert Latimer: A Tale of Two Murders," it describes two murder cases.

In the former, a mother killed her two sons "to spare them the pain of a broken family and being separated from their dear mother," and she was ostracized by her country and community after confessing.

In the latter, a father killed his disabled daughter, but "his friends and neighbors have taken up a collection to defend him for a 'mercy-killing.'"

The analysis at the link discusses the value of life placed upon disabled children. People were outraged when the healthy, able sons were killed. They were not outraged at the murder of the daughter who suffered from severe cerebral palsy.

The analysis is, of course, spot on.

I couldn't help but notice the gendering, though, too. Mother kills sons? Stone her! Father kills daughter? An act of "mercy," and "anyone who believes in this charge is a torture monger."

Ugly. All around.

Sigh.