Criss writes...

Some thoughts on the Penn State thing: educators and administrators reporting abuse (or not)

2011-11-11T19:01:00.001-06:00

I used to get my news via Twitter, but even that got too depressing. I've been taking a hiatus, enjoying that whole Mom thing, focusing my energies on that.

I still hear about crap that happens in the news. Like this whole Penn State thing.

When I taught (K-12, in Texas), every year we had to sit through at least one in-service meeting about reporting child abuse. If you see something, if you hear something, if you think there's abuse going on, you have to report it. It's the law to report it. if you don't, you can be sued, go to jail, etc.

This, really, should all be a given.

But, as I hear more about the Penn State thing (a graduate assistant saw it, he reported it to his supervisor, nobody did anything), I remembered the addendum to the in-service that we were told at the elementary school where I worked.

The training said we HAD to report the abuse. They gave us the number to call. The administration, and the counselor, were there to help us, if we wanted someone to be there when we made the call to Child Protective Services (in case we were nervous about the questions they would ask, or intimidated, or whatever).

But, somehow, "the administration is there to help you make the report" somehow turned into "if you think there is something to report, you have to go to the administration first, and they'll make the call for you." We were not allowed to call CPS directly -- we HAD to go to the administration, and/or the counselor, and they would make the call for us, I guess with us in the room. But the call had to be made by the person in authority, the school principal. Not the lowly teacher.

I was concerned about a student once, and I went to the principal. I can't remember the details, because this was years ago, but the gist is I was told not to call. The administration was familiar with the situation, they knew the family, and they were sure nothing "bad" was going on. They would "keep an eye on it," though, and if there was anything to be concerned about, they would call CPS.

Now, I went to them because I was concerned about some things the parent had said (one comment that still stands clear in my mind: "If child abuse were legal, I'm telling you, I would abuse her!", said because the girl was so "difficult" and headstrong... well, if you're saying crap like that, you're probably abusing her already, love...) and some things the girl said in class. I had no "evidence," and what I had could easily be dismissed as "parenting choice." I went to the counselor about it because she knew the family (the girl and her brothers, and the older half-sister who was now in junior high), and had known them for years. This was my first year at the school, and my first year working in elementary (which is quite different from high school).

And, yeah, calling CPS was a little intimidating. Especially when all you have to say is, "The mom is a b!tch and I don't like her. And the daughter dresses too sexy for her age, which I don't like either."

So I went to my supervisors. And they told me to not worry my pretty little head about it, just look the other way and go on about my business.

What happened at Penn State is not new. Nor is it unusual (erm, hello, Catholic Church, anyone?) It happened to be really big, and involving prominent players (fancy, well-known coach; popular football team). But, now that I think about it, the very same thing could have happened at the cozy little elementary school where I worked. Maybe it has happened, but since none of the people who work there are famous (and the parents and the district have enough money to cover it up, probably, or keep it relatively quiet), no one has found out about it.

What if a substitute teacher, or a teaching aide, or a first-year teacher actually witnessed abuse? The elementary school has students from kinder to sixth grade. What if a sixth-grader were molesting a kindergartner? The sub, or aide, or teacher would go to the administration, as she had been told. Plus, that's a pretty traumatic thing to witness, I would want to have someone "in control," someone to help me cope. Someone to hold my hand.

And then the principal does what he did to me. "Thanks for telling us. We'll take care of it."

Because they don't want to upset the parents (that was a pretty strong theme at that school). They don't want to risk a lawsuit, accusing someone of something that probably didn't happen. They don't want the negative publicity the school would get, if this got on the news. The sub/aide/teacher probably misinterpreted the situation, anyway...

So they don't call. Maybe they tell the sub/aide/teacher that they did call, maybe they tell her it's been "handled;" maybe they tell her to forget about it, or, if she asks again, even threaten her, telling her she needs to move on, forget about what she thinks she saw.

What's the policy where you work?

What's the policy where your children go to school?

What's the written, official policy, and what's the "informal" policy the administration tells the teachers?

Motherhood Changes You

2011-08-24T19:11:00.002-05:00

Motherhood (and parenting) changes you.

One big difference I've noticed is, since the pregnancy, I crave chocolate. I know that this is nothing new, stereotypically; I've always had a sweet tooth (several, actually, and they match my collection of root canals), but I've always been much more into sweet, fruity candy (cherry Pull-n-Peel Twizzlers and gummy bears and Skittles and such) than into chocolate... but since the pregnancy, I've been in dire need of dark chocolate. And not so much the fruity candy.

The pregnancy somehow changed my genetic makeup.

But on a more serious note...

I've flow on planes loads of times. I like flying. I like turbulence -- it's like a little roller coaster during the flight. I love the way your stomach dips when the wheels of the plane lose contact with the ground, and the bump when they touch down again. I am not squeamish about flying AT ALL.

MonkeyBoy took his first ever plane ride last week.

On our last flight, the flight attendant came over and let us know the plane was equipped with an infant life vest, which was underneath the seat across the aisle on the row in front of us. The card with all the safety info had illustrations of an infant in said life vest, floating on the water -- ALONE -- in his glow-in-the-dark life vest.

I made Freddy put the card away, because looking at it made me feel nauseous. I hugged my chubby baby and tried really hard to ignore the flight attendant cheerily pantomiming the safety information.

A while back I went to see a play where the main character is a gay teen. On one scene, he calls him mom and tries to come out to her, but she won't let him say the words. Then she has a song about her baby boy growing up... can't remember what the song said exactly, but she was, obviously, sad (I haven't decided yet if she was upset that her son was gay because she thought it was a sin -- the poor guy was at a Catholic boarding school -- or because she knew how hard his life would be, the hate and discrimination he would face, because he was gay). I fine with all this until the stage behind the mom started showing a slideshow of the guy's baby and childhood photos. When I saw that first baby photo, I lost it. Gut? Wrenched. I wanted to be home, with my baby, hugging him, protecting him from all the hate and ignorance and bigotry out there.

I have a superhuman ability to survive and function on a ridiculously minuscule amount of sleep. And, most of the time, I manage to even be cheerful.

Motherhood changes you.

But you know what hasn't changed?

I still don't regret my abortion.

A Kid's Reaction to a Gay Couple

2011-07-11T13:56:00.000-05:00

As you can see, this poor child is permanently damaged. For life. He walks out of the room and falls straight into Hell.

"I'm going to play ping-pong now. You play if you want to."

See how horrified he is of seeing two men who love each other???

Schlotzsky's Bathroom Signage #FAIL

2011-07-09T22:03:00.002-05:00

Funny name, serious sexism.

(OK, it's a REALLY bad photo. Sorry. In case you can't read it: the men's restroom is labeled "MANLY BUNZ." The women's? "SHAPELY BUNZ."

Really, Schlotzsky's? Really??)

On babies "choosing"

2011-07-01T21:54:00.000-05:00

I had to share Tanya N.s comment from the Facebook discussion I was sort-of following:

If unborn babies could see into their future and decide if they wanted to be born or not, I would be all for letting them decide. Since they CAN'T, it's up to their mother to make the best decision they can for them.

No baby chooses to be conceived or born. And again, I don't believe that aborted babies CARE that they didn't "have a chance" or not. To me, that is a projection of feelings that just don't exist...

Exactly.

Abortion: Totally Just Like A Spare Tire

2011-07-01T10:02:00.000-05:00

Birthing Rights ARE Reproductive Rights

2011-06-30T10:09:00.000-05:00

So now that I'm a momma, I'm all into the online birthing communities, too. Birthing rights and all that jazz... which is really just a subset of reproductive rights. My body, my choice: I get to choose how to birth my baby. I have a right to birth in a hospital, or a birthing center, or at home. I have a right to have a midwife, and a doula, if I want them. Makes sense, no?

Women need to be informed about their choices, what options they have when they birth. They need to know the risks of epidurals, episiotomies, and whether or not these are actually necessary (or desirable). They have a right to have an IBCLC available to help with any breastfeeding issues.

As I saw tweeted the other day, "Pro-choice" and "Trust Women" doesn't just apply to abortion -- it damn well applies to birth, too. The problem is that the conversation is so often derailed into "UR A MURDERERRR!!!" by the pro-"life" side so we don't get to talk about any real issues, we just spend our time pointing out their lies and fallacies.

Most women who have had an abortion either already have children or will have them in the future (when they're ready). "Women who have an abortion" and "women who have a baby" are not two separate groups. They're a Venn diagram, with a huge overlap in the middle.

We want the same thing: respect for women when it comes to their bodies. When and how to be pregnant. When and how to birth. When and how to feed their children.

Yesterday I saw the Ronald Reagan quote about how "everyone who is for abortion has already been born." I've seen it before, and ignored it, because it's a stupid quote pretending to be "clever." Unborn entities don't have opinions, so they can't be "for" (or against) anything. Plenty of people who have "already been born" wish they had not. Oftentimes they commit suicide. Or they turn to drugs or alcohol to dull the pain of living.

And plenty more of us would not have cared if we'd been aborted. You know why? BECAUSE FETUSES DON'T HAVE COGNITIVE PROCESSES OR THE ABILITY TO CARE.

The quote was not blog-post-worthy. What was, was where I saw it: I saw this quote on a birthing rights community page.

Those same women who are appalled that a doctor would force a C-section on a woman... are saying it's okay to force an entire pregnancy on her??

Here's my (first) response:

I'm surprised to see an anti-abortion statement posted today, when yesterday there was a question from a mom about doing a D&C for a molar pregnancy. I still don't know what a molar pregnancy is (haven't had time to Google it), but I know what a D&C is. It's one method of terminating a pregnancy (usually done in the second trimester, if I recall correctly). I had one, when I was faced with an unwanted pregnancy, just over a decade ago.

I have seen other posts (don't think it was on this page, but on another parenting/birthing-rights page) about moms seeking advice about a D&C after a miscarriage or stillbirth (to make sure all the tissue is actually out of the body, to prevent infection and/or other complications).

There are a bazillion different reasons why a woman may need to terminate a pregnancy. Sometimes it's because she's not ready to be a mother. Sometimes it's because she's not capable of being a mother -- financially, or mentally/emotionally, or physically. Sometimes it's because something is wrong with the pregnancy or the fetus -- like an ectopic or molar pregnancy. Sometimes it's because the fetus is already dead, but her body hasn't miscarried properly and removed all the tissue. I'm not and obstetrician, so I can't even begin to list all the medical reasons for an abortion.

Whatever that woman's reason is, SHE knows what's best for her. It's her body. She also knows what is best for that potential child -- deciding whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term is the first parenting decision a woman makes. Please respect her choice.

Just like a doctor doesn't have the right to force a woman to have a c-section if she doesn't want one, no one has a right to force a woman to have a pregnancy if she doesn't -- or can't -- want it.

One of the reasons the women who posted here and on other pages asking for advice on whether they should have a D&C for a doomed (or already terminated) pregnancy is because abortion has been so demonized in our society. It's a medical procedure. A necessary one. No woman makes the decision to abort a pregnancy lightly -- and any woman who would, is not apt for or perhaps capable of motherhood. Motherhood begins with pregnancy.

If you want to reduce the number of abortions that happen because of unwanted pregnancies, call your legislators and tell them to fund Planned Parenthood. Tell them to make birth control fully covered by insurance. Tell them to make hospitals stock emergency contraception in the ER for rape victims. Call your school board and your legislators and make comprehensive sex ed mandatory curriculum starting in middle school.

But don't criminalize or demonize abortion. You don't know that woman's story. You can't imagine what SHE is going through, because you are not her and you have not lived her life or survived the trauma that may be leading her to make that decision -- even for a very wanted pregnancy.

--

I went back and wrote some more comments (in response to one particularly rabid anti-choicer), which I may post here as their own mini-blogs, or I may dump in the comments here. Haven't decided yet.

But right now, my baby's calling me.

Apple Dumplings by Virginia Howes

2011-06-21T11:03:00.000-05:00

Because my funbags are food bags for my funny bug: (thanks to Arwyn at Raising my Boychick for the link)

"Selling" breast milk

2011-06-17T15:14:00.000-05:00

From the weekly Our365 email I get about my baby's development (courtesy of the people who took newborn photos in the hospital):

Yes, of course. You'd find it right next to the gallons of blood and sperm.

First of all, we don't package and sell breast milk as if it were, say cow's milk. It's distributed by donor milk banks, you know, same as we do with blood. And sperm.

Because there are so few donor banks (and the requirements are so strict -- I can't donate milk because I'm on antidepressants that are safe to take while nursing, but those meds prohibit me from donating), and because the fees to use donated milk are so steep and insurance companies put so many restrictions on who is "worthy" of receiving the little human milk there is available, some moms contribute to programs like Eats on Feets, or share their milk informally with a mom friend in need.

Yes, there have been instances of moms asking for a fee for this service (I don't have any links, but I saw people asking about it on one of the birth/parenting Facebook pages I follow, so it must have happened, at least once...), but it's not a money-making business, as Kristina C. makes it sound. It's "donating breast milk," not "selling" it.

And, Kristina C., if you're going to use an analogy... well... use the analogy. We donate and distribute human breast milk same as we do human blood or sperm: through banks, with medical screenings, and you must apply to receive the product. We don't sell blood or sperm at Stop & Shop either, so if your child is bleeding out after a car wreck, are you going to refuse the blood transfusion that could save hir life?

Birth Control Injection For Men

2011-06-10T12:28:00.021-05:00

OK, I admit I did not read the WHOLE article (it's long, and I have a baby stirring in his basket, he's about to wake up and my Internetz time will be up); I saw something on Twitter or Facebook about this the other day, but that article seemed wonky, and I couldn't tell if it was a joke or not. This article has, like, sciency-talk in it and stuff.

If this is for real, then... DUDE.

If it IS 100% effective, and reversible, then... DAMN. MonkeyBoy will be strongly encouraged to get this injection when he's 13. He can reverse it when he's ready to have kids, if he and his partner choose to make babies.

And speaking of, he's awake. So I'll leave you with the article: The Revolutionary New Birth Control Method For Men. Go read, be amazed, get excited, and find that doctor in San Francisco who wants to bring this to the FDA. Let's make this happen! Soon!!

"About half of all pregnancies in the US are unplanned. Come up with a better contraceptive and the likely results are all good: fewer unwanted kids, fewer single parents, and fewer abortions."

Switching to condoms...

2011-05-26T18:16:00.001-05:00

You can see the rest of these here, but the best one by far is this one:

Star Wars and Women

2011-04-20T19:04:00.001-05:00

Why 'Star Wars' Is Secretly Terrifying for Women -- powered by Cracked.com

"Where your money is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:21

2011-04-13T08:59:00.002-05:00

Hungerfast.org

Abstinence-Only Driver's Ed

2011-03-27T15:53:00.000-05:00

After the rousing success of abstinence-only sex ed programs, the only logical next step is implementing this highly successful method in other areas, such as driver's education programs. No?

It would probably look something like this:

Or, also, like this.

I Hate Pumping

2011-03-14T17:36:00.007-05:00

I hate pumping. I love breastfeeding, but I hate pumping.

Even when I get irritated because I'm trying to DO something (wash diapers, edit photos, defeat the evil demons of the overgrown inbox) and baby wants to eat AGAIN, I still love breastfeeding. I get to hold my baby, and give him something special. And he usually falls asleep at the boob, and I have a sleeping baby which is the sweetest sight in the world. Even if it means I can't get up to pee when I really, really have to go. (Who am I kidding? Not being able to pee is nothing. I have eight years of classroom-teaching training, my bladder doesn't even notice until it's gone a full 12 hours before being emptied.)

But pumping?

Ugh.

To breastfeed, all I have to do is lift up my shirt, unhook my bra, and attach baby.

To pump, I have to get my pumping bag, take out the cooler of baby milk bottles, attach the bottles to the pump shields, attach the shields to the pump tubing, plug in the pump, loop the rubber-band-dealies around my bra so they hold the pump shields, correctly position the shields on my nipples so my nipples aren't rubbing on the shields on the top, bottom, or sides, then start the machine. WEE-ooh-WEE-ooh-WEE-ooh... for twenty minutes.

Oh, before I do all that, I have to lock my office door, put a sign outside the door, cover the window with paper -- and that's because my boss is nice enough to let me pump in my office, instead of trekking all the way to the Student Health Center in the other building (which cuts into my pumping time, especially since I have to pack everything up each time; in my office I can leave the machine plugged in, at least, and I leave the tubing sort of draped over the bag, instead of stuffing it all back into its compartment each time).

If I don't pump every 3-4 hours, I tend to get clogged ducts. WHICH ARE NOT FUN. Especially when they don't want to unclog.

Even when I have to stop what I'm doing to breastfeed, I can still DO stuff while breastfeeding. I can still participate in a conversation. Or watch TV. Or even edit photos, or follow Twitter, or chip away at the frighteningly overgrown weedfest I like to call my email inbox. I have to do these things mostly one-handed, but I can still do them.

Pumping at work, on the other hand?

Everything has to come to a screeching halt. While I'm connected to my dairy-farm equipment I can't move freely, because the tubes are only so long and they're always in the way anyway and the bottles may spill and, well, I'm basically topless.

And there's no "reward." When you breastfeed, you are feeding a baby. A sweet, beautiful baby who looks at you and smiles and is happy to be there. When you pump? WEE-ooh-WEE-ooh-WEE-ooh... (After a while, it starts talking to you. Seriously. But it's just the same word, over and over... and it's usually a word that doesn't make any sense, but it keeps repeating it... and you can't NOT hear it...)

I know my coworkers talk about me. About all the time I'm not working because I'm in my office pumping. (I know because I hear them. And because they tell me to my face. How I'm "weird" because I do "all that stuff" that "regular" moms don't do. I'm not entirely sure what "all that stuff" exactly means, but there you go. Regular, normal moms, even ones who breastfeed, don't do "all that stuff" that I do when I pump. I'm just special, I guess. Or asking for special treatment. Or something.)

So not only do I not want to stop what I'm doing to pump, because it's a pain, but I also don't want to close my door to pump because I know that's right when someone is going to want to ask me something, and I'm going to be half-naked with my dairy-farm equipment strapped on, and I'm going to inconvenience that person by not being available. And, you know, because I'm lazy.

The worst part is that we take the kids on trips and things. And we have one of those trips coming up this week. We're going to be out with the kids all day -- from very early in the morning until very late at night.

And I have to go, as a chaperone, because it's part of my job and because they need lots of chaperones.

And I want to go, because it'll be a fun trip. I haven't seen the kids much lately, and I miss them. I like hanging out with them.

But guess what! I'm going to have to pump, every 3-4 hours, while on the road. Do you have any clue just how royally THAT is going to suck? (Er... no bad pun intended...)

I don't even know exactly how it's going to work: where I'm going to pump. I guess that'll depend on where we are, where we can stop, where there's a sink... There isn't a way to plan, really, so we'll just see when we get there.

But if it sucks this much to step away and "hide" in my little office to pump when we're just sitting around doing paperwork, how much is it going to suck when I have to leave the group of students I'm supposed to be chaperoning to find a hidey-hole where I can pump when we're traipsing across a college campus with our herd of high schoolers?

I guess this is one of the reasons so many moms quit breastfeeding early, huh?

Toilet Training: A film by Tara Mateik and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project

2011-03-10T17:55:00.009-06:00

For more info on the movie, go here. For more info on the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, go here.

Please DON'T thank me for menstruating, thankyouverymuch.

2011-02-11T18:03:00.036-06:00

Have you seen this? Josh wants to "thank me" for menstruating.

I was, shall we say, a little miffed that a cis man, who does not and will not ever menstruate, felt it was "cute" to tell me what to do with my body and my periods. But then I read the comments, and was appalled at the number of (cis) women who were THANKING him for it, praising his "bravery," and who thought it was so "great" that a cis man was telling them this...

The post has a line or two about how great human bodies are because of all the wonderful things they do, but it does not praise cis women's bodies -- nor does it ever thank cis women for doing the job of menstruating (and everything that comes along with/results from it: pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding). Instead, it just tells us that we should menstruate regularly, because in this dude's opinion that's the way things out to be.

There's no medical reason for me to shave my armpits, either -- should I stop doing that?

Actually, since the author of the post chose to equate menstruation with defecation (it would be more convenient for if you only "took a crap" once a month), let's follow that line of thought... you do realize that once-a-month crap is a 24-hour drip for five to seven days, right? How convenient would that be for you, Josh?

I have very easy periods, for the most part. I hardly get cramps, unless it's really cold. I'm paranoid about using tampons, because every box of tampons comes with the little paper with the warnings on toxic shock syndrome, and especially when I was teaching I had a hard time finding the time to change my tampon during the school day, so I often kept the tampon in longer than "recommended," making me sure I was going to drop dead from TSS any day now. (Once, when I got back to my classroom a few seconds after the bell, one of the assistant principals was outside my door, announcing to his walkie-talkie that I was MIA. I really, really wanted to explain to him exactly why I was late.) I'm not a big fan of pads, because after the second or third straight day the dry-weave starts to irritate your skin, y'know?

Now that I'm older and wiser I'm probably going to invest in a Diva Cup once "Aunt Flo" returns, so my minor inconveniences will be even less of an issue. But, you see, I know how lucky I am.

Some women have irregular periods, and take hormonal birth control to help them regulate their bodies, to help them take control of their bodies. The best thing about being on birth control was knowing when I was going to start bleeding -- because, you know, it's nice to know when bodily fluids are going to start oozing out of you. It gets messy if you don't take proper precautions, you see...

Now, notice how, sometime between two and four years of age, we learn how to control the sphincter that releases crap? And you learn how to keep it closed, holding the crap in, until you can get to a toilet, to take your crap? I don't know how up you are on biology and how uteri and cervixes and stuff work, but we don't have a handy-dandy contraption like that one in our vagina. The blood just comes out; we can't control it. So it's nice to know when it's going to start coming out, so we can wear a diaper, or plug up the hole.

And then there's those cis women's (and trans men's) bodies that work differently than, say, your wife's. Some cis women's and trans men's bodies don't do well with the whole menstruating thing... I know, I know, hard to believe, since we cis women are put on this Earth for the sole purpose of being impregnated by lovely cis men such as yourself. The idea of a cis woman's body not being 100% ready and willing to get pregnant and bear children for you is, well, preposterous!

Absurd as it may be, it happens to be true.

For those people, who have to call in sick to work because of what menstruating does to their body, the idea of fewer periods probably makes a heck of a whole lotta sense.

But you know what makes even more sense? Letting, like, doctors and other medical professionals decide what is and is not "safe." Oh, yeah -- and letting the person in question decide what ze wants to do with hir body, and which hormones ze does and does not want to put in it.

Yes, some people have bad reactions to the pill or other forms of hormonal birth control. I dare you to find a medication that doesn't have a bad reaction for somebody. And for every story you can give me of a person who had a terrible experience with hormonal birth control, I can find a person who had a terrible experience with menstruation, and who needs those hormones to "fix" the problem. I can probably also find you ten people who took those same hormones and had wonderful experiences.

We put tons of chemicals and hormones into our bodies every day, the vast majority of them not medically or biologically necessary. Maybe the author of the post above does not eat any meat or fish, or if he does he raises it himself, and grows all of his food in his own backyard, watering it with collected rainwater or water pumped from his own private, not-flouride-inated well... if so, bully for him. He still has no business telling me what I should or should not do with or to my reproductive organs, or how happy I should be about the things they do on a monthly basis.

Now, if he wanted to write a post actually thanking me for menstruating, instead of telling me how grateful I should be for it, then that's something I'd gladly read. (No, I won't hold my breath.)

Rape, Roethlisberger, and #HR3

2011-02-06T10:20:00.004-06:00

(Edited to modify some of the wording, since I do not have proof that Roethlisberger committed the actions I mention below.)

The Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex has all but shut down by ice and snow, the week before Ben Roethlisberger (and the rest of the Pittsburgh Steelers) will play in the Super Bowl here in ~~JerryLand~~ Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.

If I were a Christian Right self-righteous preacher, I'd tell you this snow/icestorm happened because God hates rapists.

The topic of rape has been all over Twitter, and the news, this week, because of HR3, a bill that wanted to "redefine rape." Because we have such a loose, willy-nilly interpretation of the act already, we clearly need to put some restrictions on it. We don't want all these silly women jumping up and saying they were raped, now do we? Next thing you know, people might start believing them!

The other day I mentioned something about Rapistberger, and about him being an alleged rapist, to a group of (female) friends. The first response was something along the lines of, "Whenever I hear about someone accusing [someone rich and famous] of rape, I have to wonder if they're saying it just to get the guy's money."

Another person asked why the woman hadn't charged him with rape, why the guy hadn't been taken to court.

"Because of what she said!" I responded, pointing to First Responder.

This was a roomful of women, y'all. You'd think sisters would have each other's back.

"Why didn't she report it?"

"Why did she wait [so long] to report it?"

"She's probably lying, trying to get his money/ get media attention."

These are not uncommon reactions.

You wanna know why the victim didn't report it? Because she didn't want to be called a liar and a whore.

You wanna know why it took her "so long" to report it, why she didn't go to the authorities immediately? Because she didn't want to be called a liar and a whore, but she was lucky enough to have friends who supported her and helped her eventually build up the courage to confront her attacker.

Or because she was drunk or drugged, and wasn't sure what had been done to her.

Or because she knows she can't afford lawyers that can compete with the ones her attacker's money can buy.

Or, in Roethlisberger's alleged victim's case, because she knows she doesn't have a case that can be proven in court because one of the bodyguards that allegedly helped Roethlisberger commit the alleged crime was, according to some sources, an ex-cop (or off-duty cop) who made sure Roethlisberger covered his tracks well enough, so her lawyers could not build a case against him. (This is info I got from Freddy, who got it from the sports radio show he listens to. And you know how pro-woman those guys tend to be... so, if anything, this is the "light" version of the events. I shudder to think of what the non-macho-friendly version is... Or see here, where they state Rapistberger's bodyguards are there to make sure there aren't any witnesses, or here, which quotes the victim's friends saying the bodyguards kept them from going to check on -- or rescue -- their friend. But I don't really need to give you details of this particular story; pick any report of a famous/rich guy raping a girl, the media's reaction is always the same.)

Rape culture is so ingrained in our lives and our mindsets that we don't even think twice when we victim-blame; we're not even aware we're doing it. It's second nature to react by questioning the victim instead of the attacker.

Funny how we don't do that in any other cases, huh? "I was shot!" "Well, were you standing in front of the bullet? You were asking for it." "Are you sure you were shot? Maybe that's just ketchup." "What were you wearing? You know red makes people angry, you shouldn't have worn that color." Or, as Laura Anne Stuart points out,

I feel pretty confident that following Vick's case, no one accused those skanky, gold-digging dogs of "asking for it" or opined that drunk slutty canines really want to be beaten. However, those are just the sorts of things that are routinely said about women who accuse professional athletes of rape. We are far more sympathetic to animals than we are to women.

(Before I go off on another rant, please read her article, The Roethlisberger Payback, and consider participating in the pledge.)

A few months ago, it was Assange, who obviously couldn't be a rapist because he came up with a cool idea for a website. Roethlisberger, well, that happened a while ago (over the summer?) and he must not have done anything wrong because the girl never formally brought charges in court, and, anyway, he had to sit out six -- no, wait, four -- games. Four games! Can you imagine the agony?? What the poor guy must have gone through!

When cis women report being raped, they face hostility; they're called liars and sluts; and if the guy is rich/famous, they are attacked and mocked by the rapists' fans.

We discuss whether it was "rape-rape." Was she drunk? What was she wearing? Was she asking for it? Was she flirting? Did she change her mind? Is she just looking for a big settlement? To get her name in the news?

It wasn't really rape if...

HR3, a big waste of time that accomplished nothing other than making it look like John Boehner is "doing" something to "save teh babiez," attempted to limit funding to abortion. Yes, exactly what the Hyde Amendment already does. But, you see, the Hyde Amendment includes a provision for rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother. So Boehner and his buddies wanted to make sure we're not getting out of hand with this "rape" thing, calling every little assault "rape." In order to be raped, you needed to have bruises and broken bones, according to these people. Public uproar made them remove the language that attempted to redefine rape, or further limit its definition.

Feminists got all up in arms about a cis man telling them what was and what was not rape. Because, seriously, honestly -- how dare anyone tell anyone "your rape wasn't rape-y enough?"

The irony in all this, is that... cis women do it all the time. Not to each other (well, sometimes. See the above conversation), at least not as much as they do it to trans women.

In order to be raped, our cissexist society says you must have been born with a vagina. Trans men can be raped (because, donchaknow, they're not really men -- they're really women, being eccentric, right?), because they have a vagina. Or at least were born with one. Trans women? No. That's not real rape. Not "rape-rape."

Oh, wait...

Remember what it felt like to have a cis man deny your assault experience? Now that we know what it feels like to have it done to us, let's not do that to each other anymore.

God's Gift of Free Will

2011-02-02T12:37:00.001-06:00

Anonymous asked for this post, so here it is.

(Ze asked me to cite chapter and verse, but, dude, go read the opening chapters of Genesis. It’s not hard to find. Here, I'll let you skip chapter 1; start with chapter 2 and read through to the end of chapter 3. If you don't like that version, find another, that's just the first one that Google spat out when I typed in "Genesis." I'm not going to argue details or individual words, I'm talking about the main events in the story. You can even read the LOLcats Bible, if you want.)

God gave us free will.

Adam and Eve chose to listen to the serpent and eat from the tree in the middle of the Garden, the only tree from which God told them they could NOT eat. Yet they did it anyway -- because God had given them free will. They made their own choice, followed their own will, not God's.

Now, if you remember, God is the Alpha and the Omega -- He knows all. He knew, before He went through the trouble of creating Adam and Eve, or the serpent, that Adam and Eve would eat from that tree. BUT HE LET THEM DO IT ANYWAY.

Adam and Eve controlled their own fate, but God knew what choices they would make and what that fate looked like. And God chose to NOT interfere with that.

If God did not want things to go that way, if He did not want Adam and Eve to disobey Him, why did He make it so easy for them to do so? He’s all-powerful. Could He really not manage to put a little fence or something around the tree? Or, heck, put the tree somewhere else, where Adam and Eve couldn’t get to it?

The only logical conclusion is that God wanted Adam and Eve to “screw up.” He wanted them to KNOW. He wanted them to make their own choices, and live the lives that we lead now, with the good and the bad and the ugly -- and everything else.

Because without evil, how do we know what "good" is? Without pain, loss, hardship, how do we know what "happy" is?

If we were still living in the Garden of Eden, would we understand how happy we would be? How could we, without having something to compare those “good” feelings to?

Yeah, maybe the very first (recorded) thing Adam and Eve do with their free will is something most of us would consider “unwise.” So what? Who cares what you think? God gave them the ability to make that choice, and I happen to think God does things for a reason. Maybe you think God’s kind of stupid and didn’t know what He was doing... I happen to think He knew exactly what he was doing.

He chose to create Man and Woman, and He chose to let them “muck things up” like this.

What you personally think of Adam and Eve’s choices is completely irrelevant in this conversation. What you personally think God’s choice to grant us free will is also irrelevant. And, if I may, perhaps a little blasphemous? But, hey, if you want to question God, that’s up to you. Have fun.

The fact remains: God gave us free will. Because He wants us to make our own choices. That includes women, and what they chose to do to and with their bodies.

Breastfeeding is "icky." Didn't you know?

2011-01-28T18:34:00.026-06:00

The Leaky Boob posted this link on Facebook, and I had to share, because it highlights some important truths.

The article talks about Irish women (and doctors, and onlookers), but it applies pretty darn accurately to USians, no?

Some points of note:

Bottles and the infant formula inside them had to be better than anything a woman's body could make because you had to buy them. And Irish people like buying things.

Of course, we all know that if we buy it, it must be superior. The more expensive the better. That free crap that comes out of my boobs? Must be cat piss.

Oh, wait... except for this:

Breastfed infants suffer fewer tummy and chest infections, fewer urinary tract infections, fewer ear infections, less eczema and less asthma than bottle-fed ones. They have less risk of having diabetes, Hodgkin's Disease and possibly leukaemia. In adulthood, they have less chance of getting late-onset diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. Mothers who breastfeed have less chance of developing pre-menopausal breast cancer, ovarian cancer and osteoporosis.

Huh. THAT IS SO WEIRD. Because, as we all know,

...anything a woman can do for herself isn't worth doing.

I mean, seriously, folks! Women are inherently inferior, remember?

Ladies, remember, the only thing your body is capable of is pleasing men sexually, 'mkay? And, really, nothing kills a cis hetero guy's mojo like seeing your boobs used for their God-intended purpose. Priorities, people!

I mean, how can you reasonably expect someone to NOT stare at something they find odd, unusual, or even gross? How can you possibly expect others to have enough self-control to look away of their own volition? As if they were grown-ups who knew how to solve their own problems?

Really, ladies! These people can't help it! They can't control who or what they stare at! Be reasonable, please, and stop being so selfish. Cover up. Your baby needs to learn to sacrifice hir needs for the comfort of others. (Especially if your baby is a girl. Let's get these lessons in early!)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go make a nursing cover. I want to make sure it looks nice, so I think I'll decorate it with images my husband's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. It has such pretty pictures, don't you agree?

Kitteh approves of breastfeeding.

This? A beautiful sight. PERIOD.

6wS: I make milk. What's YOUR superpower?

2011-01-16T13:09:00.002-06:00

Christina and Chrissie

2011-01-13T20:58:00.000-06:00

I didn't watch the memorial service or the President's speech, either live or on YouTube. But I got the Twitter version. Lots of good quotes.

The death of Christina Taylor Green is a tragedy. For many reasons, and I'm sure several others have written about it much better than I can, so I'll let them do it (I'm sure you've read about it plenty already, anyway).

It would still be a tragedy even if she were not a cute white girl. A cute white cis girl.

Last night, as most of Twitter mourned the death of Christina, a few voices spoke up to mourn another tragedy: the murder of Chrissie Bates.

She was stabbed to death in her apartment. According to a neighbor, "Chrissie had mentioned that she had recently been sexually assaulted, and that her apartment window was broken. When she complained, management told her she would have to pay for the window herself."

Chrissie was a trans woman. Which the article feels need to be mentioned right up front, along with the name under which she was born. Because we have to point all that out. As @metalmujer said, "They killed her twice in the press."

Why can't she just be a woman? Why can't she just be "Chrissie"? Who cares what her name used to be? That's not what it is now. And there's a reason for that. Respect that.

But I guess it is fitting, in a morbid way, that the media harps on the fact that she was transgender, specifically a transgender woman, since that's the reason why she was murdered.

I guess, also, that we should be grateful that the media (unlike the medical examiner or the police) is respecting Chrissie enough to call her Chrissie and call her a trans woman, and not a "gay man" as is usually reported. At least this time, they are calling the transmisogyny what it is: transphobia, not homophobia.

Chrissie is not going to get a televised memorial service, or a speech by the President. (She's one of the lucky ones, though... at least her death was reported, and her gender respected. Few trans women victims get that.) But that doesn't make her death any less important, or her murder any less tragic. Please take a moment to pray for Chrissie, for the loved ones she left behind, and for other women like her, so they do not meet the same fate.

Dear Anonymous

2011-01-13T20:11:00.000-06:00

I wrote a post Saturday morning, and shortly afterward I received an email notification that you had left a comment.

I was busy over the weekend, with family who'd come in from out of town to see MonkeyBoy. I've also been having computer issues, so my online time has been limited to phone time (Saturday's post and this one are via phone; right now I'm phone posting from bed, while nursing a half-sleeping MonkeyBoy, because this is how most of my time at home is spent). I love my Blackberry, but it's a pain to post blog comments on it; I prefer to do that at the full-out computer.

That's part of the reason why it's Thursday morning, and I have still not responded to your comments. The main reason is that I hadn't eve read them until a few minutes ago.

I was purposefully avoiding reading your comments because I knew you would only say something vapid and inane. Smething petty and pointless. Something I had already heard plenty of times before. But, most importantly, something I had already responded to plenty of times before.

This gets old, Anonymous. Really.

The purpose of blog comments is to have discussion, debate. When you come in, all you do is call names and parrot talking points. BOOORING!

And useless.

So I'm disabling anonymous comments from now on. I'm done repeating myself. You don't add anything to this blog, at least not when you're hiding behind "Anonymous." Maybe, if you're made to sign a name (any name! No one says it has to be you full name! Or even YOUR name! Call yourself The Baby Crusader, or something, um, "clever" like that) to your pettiness, you may put some thought into it. Imagine that! Wouldn't that be nice...

I used to have the time to bang my head against walls like you. Not anymore, sadly.

Can't say you'll be missed. Sorry.

Feel free to come back, with a name (dude, it can even be a fake name, what do I care? How would I know? Just pretend!), some maturity, and something thoughtful to say.

Thanks,
Criss.

Parenting Choices, via MTV's No Easy Decision

2011-01-08T10:56:00.002-06:00

(Phone posting, so please pardon the typos.)
(Edited to add Katie's info and make linky-links)
I TiVoed MTV's No Easy Decision, but haven't had a chance to watch it yet. Via Facebook, I found this blog post, by Katie, one of the girls in the show.

I almost can't believe a teen [edit: she's in her early 20s. STILL.] wrote that. She expresses herself better than I could (which was a blow to my ego... But I digress). I don't know how anyone can read that and think she did not "know" what she was doing, or that she did not "think her decision through." Does she sound like someone who needed a mandatory waiting period before being allowed to get an abortion?
Those of us who have made that decision have not come to it lightly. We knew what we were doing, and why.
I love what she says about the "mothering instinct" -- it starts at pregnancy, knowing whether you are ready, or even capable, of being a mother. "Mothering" starts with pregnancy, at that moment you decide you want to become a mother; with planned pregnancies, it starts even earlier. I made several choices about my diet, lifestyle, medications, etc. when Freddy and I started trying to get pregnant. I stopped drinking sodas (for the MOST part) and eating candy (and if you know me, YOU KNOW HOW MUCH OF A SACRIFICE THAT WAS), got off my "crazy pills" (though I quickly got back on them when I realized how much I needed them -- see, already making parenting decisions, for the wellbeing of the potential child growing inside of me), etc.
Parenting starts before birth, and it starts before conception. This is why we use birth control. Guess what? Birth control, like pretty much everything in life, is not infallible. Sometimes it fails, it doesn't do what it's supposed to or go the way we want it to. So we adjust: for some women, who are not ready to be parents, who are not ready to be pregnant, or who know they never want either of those, that means terminating the pregnancy.
When MonkeyBoy was born, my doctor ordered an echocardiogram to check out his heart, because of the "prominent aorta" they'd seen in one of my last sonograms. Thankfully, the echo showed everything was as it should be. But if it hadn't, if the doctors had found something wrong with MonkeyBoy's heart, guess what?
Freddy and I would have made a parenting decision and talked to the doctors to figure out the best way to "fix" it. We wouldn't have said, "Oh, well, must be God's Will! After all, He giveth and He taketh away, right?" and let the baby die.
God's Will, if you take the time to read Genesis, is for us to use the first gift He gave us: our free will*. That means making choices. Sometimes, that choice is abortion.

And that's okay. In fact, it's a responsible parenting choice.

*Edit: I was going to elaborate on the "free will" thing, but as I started writing I realized it needs to be a post on its own. So watch for that, coming soon.

Because it's Monday: Google Voice

2010-12-27T12:12:00.000-06:00

Image via WikipediaI set up Google Voice to transcribe my voicemail. I thought it was only going to transcribe messages left on my Google Voice number, but after my brother left a message on my regular phone, Google Voice sent me the transcription. Which was:

"Owner, or Christina okay. Yeah, Hi Bob on Thursday so if you are but also with the relation of course,so you know that I'm here or you assembly them either Wednesday saying that night because there ifyou're on, thinking about the silver blue through mailing address. Now. So, demand now, she. "

At first I was slightly confused. Then I realized... my brother left me a message in Spanish.

Poor Google Voice! It tried so hard...

6wFriday: On the lookout for Santa Paws.

2010-12-24T16:07:00.001-06:00

Princess is on the lookout for Santa Paws.
Originally uploaded by CrissWrites

Merry Holidays to you and your furry four-legged ones!

What's in a name?: Baby Edition

2010-12-22T20:10:00.000-06:00

Naming another human being is weird.

I have four cats. I have not named any of them.

When I was little my siblings and I had cats and named them, but that was different. All names were approved by The Parents (whether explicitly or not), so it wasn't something I did ON MY OWN. I had approval from An Authority Figure.

Naming Troy Emmitt, the fetus, was like naming a character in a story. Because it wasn't real -- naming my fetus was like naming my GPS (her name is Gloria, by the way. She's very friendly, except when you go the wrong way and she has to recalculate... that irks her a bit. But I digress...)

Unless you count those community-chosen cat names when I was, what, twelve?, I'd never named another living being.

So, suddenly, I'm in charge of naming a baby? An actual PERSON? A person with his own thoughts and opinions?

That's scary.

Freddy and I didn't tell anyone Troy Emmitt's name until he was born. Freddy and I discussed the name, of course, but since we named the baby after his grandfathers, we chose the origin/tribute rather than the name, really (we didn't get to choose what baby's grandfathers' names were). And we -- Freddy and I -- decided baby'd go by his initials, instead of his first (or middle) name. So, really, we picked his nickname for him.

Um... I hope he likes it...?

Because of my freakouts during the pregnancy (Troy Emmitt was a bit of a diva; throughout the pregnancy he kept having scary test results or sonograms, even though there was NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. Ornery fetus), I asked Freddy to call Troy Emmitt by his fetus name, not his future baby name. So we didn't even use the name until after The Birth.

It was weird.

I called him "the baby" for the first few weeks. It took me time to get used to using his actual name.

AND WHAT IF HE DIDN'T LIKE HIS NAME??

What if we picked the wrong one?

Should we have gone with those names? What was he going to think of his Spanish middle name (my dad's name)? Should we have used the English equivalent of that name? Was he going to hate having to spell it out for people all the time? Do the names sound weird because one's in English and the other in Spanish? What about his first name -- we used Freddy's dad's first name, even though Freddy's dad went by his middle name. Should we have used that instead? Is he going to like going by his initials, or is he going to think that's too cheesy? HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THIS STUFF???

Kid was barely a few hours old and I'd already screwed up, scarred him for life.

Freddy and the grandmas used the baby's name so casually, so confidently. As if it were, like, his name; as if it was supposed to be his name, and there wasn't anything wrong with it.

So, after a while, I started using it, too.

He seems to like it. So far.

We'll see what he has to say about it, you know, once he starts talking and stuff...

And after all the hullabaloo about his real-life name, I had to figure out what to call the little booger here, on the blog. Freddy suggested Freddy, Jr., which I vetoed because WHAT ABOUT ME?? I thought about Criss, Jr., but that's not fair to Freddy, and Criss-Freddy Jr., is just silly.

I thought of Little Red, short for Little Red Cryin' Dude, also in honor of his carrot-top mop. Or Red Hulk, as my sister observed (srsly, you should see him change colors when he get mad), which is fitting considering how much radiation the guy got in utero thanks to all the extra sonograms he made us give him.

I came up with a few others, I think, but they were all equally not good.

So I'm going with MonkeyBoy. Which is what his daddy calls him. (It's what his daddy called the cat, but the cat's been demoted. Now the baby's MonkeyBoy. The cat's just plain ol' Gus now.)

(In case you're wondering, by the way, yes, we have called the baby by the cats' names. Both of us. More than once. More than one cat name. It's OK, though, I don't think the kid noticed. Or the cats.)

A Letter to Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann, by @misakyra #mooreandme

2010-12-20T18:28:00.025-06:00

I've been enjoying my ignorant bliss under the excuse that my baby needs me (which is not really an "excuse" when I spend a large amount of my non-work, non-sleeping time with his little head attached to my boob, which does make it hard to hang out online and/or type stuff and such), so I've avoided reading up too much on certain current events. Sadly, sh!tty things keep happening out there in The World, even when I'm not there to read (or blog) about them.

But other people are out there, keeping up with all the sh!t that's happening, and writing things like this. Which is much better written than anything I could have done.

So, please, go read Cassy's Open Letter to Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann.

(But also take a moment to chew on this for a bit: the women in the Assange case are lucky. At least there is public outrage over what's happened to them, and the way the media has treated them. Because they're cis. When a trans woman is raped, we don't hear a peep, do we? Even if, somehow, the media bothered to report on a trans woman's rape and the media did to that woman what Olbermann and Moore are doing to these cis Swedish women, would the rest of the Internet notice? Would Salon and its cis feminist bloggers show anywhere near the same outrage?)

Thankful Thursday

2010-12-16T17:44:00.029-06:00

I'm thankful for:

my beautiful, healthy baby boy who just turned two months old!
the breastfeeding-friendly hospital where I gave birth
my OB, who treated me like a person, respected my wishes about my birthing experience, and was open, honest, and compassionate throughout the pregnancy and birth
my Freddy, who's an awesome daddy
my mom, who took care of me and The Boy during those first weeks, even if she got no sleep and put a ridiculous amount of miles on her car driving from and to Austin...
my long-distance doula/pregnancy-and-birth guru, Marcy
Lacey, supernanny extraordinaire, for taking care of my sweet baby when I'm at work
my mom-in-law, another awesome babysitter. And so much more.
all the awesome #bfing and #clothdiapering moms on Twitter who answer all my ridiculous questions. IT TAKES A VILLAGE, people. And online villages rock.
my NaNoWriMo co-MLs, who picked up my slackery-slacker slack this November. (I was busy. Baby busy. I wrote a whopping 1,765 words. w00t.)

Quick thoughts: On Being a Parent, On Being #Prochoice

2010-12-07T18:14:00.006-06:00

The more I learn (first-hand, in this intensive long-term crash course) about parenting and what it really means to be responsible for another tiny, needy human being twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for as long as ~~you both shall live~~ it takes, the more I'm convinced that anti-choicers have no clue whatsoever what "A BABY" actually means.

Either that, or they're angry, bitter people who really, really hate women.*

*(Yes, women can be misogynists too.)

Criss tags!

2010-12-03T17:48:00.011-06:00

Have you checked out Tagxedo?

It's like Wordle, but different.

6wS: Waiting for Simon and/or Garfunkel...

2010-11-28T10:42:00.001-06:00

6wS: Mommy's Boob: Baby's Bed AND Breakfast

2010-11-21T14:59:00.003-06:00

International Transgender Day of Remembrance

2010-11-20T14:30:00.000-06:00

Today is International Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day when we remember trans men and women who have died, victims of hate crimes due to their sexual orientation.

As a cis feminist, I know I'm part of the problem. Most of the names on that list (and please realize the list is really much longer; these are merely the crimes that were reported) are trans women of color. Traditionally, "feminism" has ignored cis women of color; while we're "getting better" about thinking of cis women of color when fighting for "women," we have a long, long way to go when it comes to supporting and fighting for trans women, and especially trans women of color.

I feel awkward, "unqualified" to write about this day, about these lives and deaths, about these women's lives, because as a cis woman I know nothing of what they face. I was going to post a collection of links, like Arwyn at Raising My Boychick did, but since she did it already I'll be lazy and link to her. (Yes, I realize I'm a cis woman linking to another cis woman. But she has a good collection of links.)

You should also read It Makes Sense at Questioning Transphobia. (Actually, this whole archive is good reading material.) And Helen's post at Bird of Paradox. And Remembering Our Other Dead by lucypaw.

As someone else just tweeted, my voice is not one that needs to be heard or centered today, so I should stop writing and let you go read the posts linked above.

I just want to leave you with a thought, especially if you're a protected, cozy cisgendered person like myself: yeah, very few of us can fathom murdering another person, committing the acts described here. But that's not where it starts.

How many times have you heard someone make a joke about Ann Coulter being a man, and using that as a way to attack her political views? How many times have you laughed at that joke (or RTed that comment)? How many times have you sat there silently while a friend made that comment, without challenging the transphobic attitude that inspired it?

How many times have you laughed at a sitcom where the guy is put down by being called "a girl"? Or his worth as a man, as a human, is questioned because he does something "girly," and crossing gender boundary lines like that is an unforgivable sin?

Words have meaning, and they have power. Pay attention to how you use them, and how those around you use them. Let's work to make transphobia and transmisogyny NOT be so unquestioningly mainstream, so that next year's list can be at least a little bit shorter.

6wS: "But I don't WANNA be Jedi!"

2010-11-14T14:58:00.000-06:00

Doesn't he look dandy in his Halloween outfit? It's from Build-A-Bear. For serious. (Which s why there are ear holes on the top of the robe's hood.)

"American Family Values" At Work: Working Breastfeeding Moms Don't Need Breast Pumps

2010-10-27T20:46:00.001-05:00

There are not enough cuss words in the English language for me to express my opinion on this. Go read the article, Jodi does a much better job of discussing this rationally than I could:

IRS Fears Women May "Abuse" Tax Credits for Breastfeeding Supplies | RHRealityCheck.org

Freddy and I were planning on using his flex spending health care account thingie money to buy a breast pump, especially since he needs to spend the money by the end of the year and doesn't have anything else to spend it on. But I guess that's just trying to ABUSE THE SYSTEM!!!

Maybe I should just quit my job so I can feed my child as God and nature intended -- with breastmilk, not some chemical substitute. Of course, that would mean Freddy and I would have to go on some sort of government assistance program. That's a much better option, right, IRS?

Gotta love American Family Values: YOU MUST CARRY THAT PREGNANCY TO TERM!!! THAT LIFE IS SACRED!!

Until it comes out of the womb (i.e., becoming an ACTUAL life). Then, we'll screw you any way we possibly can...

On Parasites and Choice

2010-10-25T21:59:00.001-05:00

Behold! The last vestige of Troy Emmitt's parasitehood.
The umbilical cord stump fell off this morning, which caused much rejoicing for Freddy and me because we were a little freaked out that it might have gotten infected. We noticed some greenish-yellowish crusty stuff on The Boy's onesie and at the top of his gDiaper, and looking at the cord stump itself it has some yellowish-greenish goo in it. Didn't exactly look like pus, but it didn't exactly look healthy, either...
We had not been cleaning the stump because the hospital hadn't said we had to, and my books said you could clean it or leave it alone. However, the presence of goop prompted an emergency trip to the store to buy some alcohol (er... for cleaning, not drinking).
After a while we noticed that the stump looked... less attached. So maybe it wasn't infected, it was just detaching. Which was a MUCH preferable situation.
(Plus, it just looked so yucky. And it icked me out every time I had to change his diaper.)
Then, this morning, Freddy showed me The Boy's clean and clear (and not infected) belly button. Whee! The stump was gone!
Freddy asked if I wanted to keep it. Part of me wanted to throw it away, because it was yucky and it had caused me stress. But part of me felt sentimental, and wasn't ready to throw away that nasty, crusty, dried-up stump.
It was, after all, the source of his life force for 39 weeks and two days. (A life force he sucked out of me, like a good little parasite.)
Now, he still sucks his food source from me, but that's because I CHOOSE to breastfeed him. If I wanted to, I could let him have a bottle and let Freddy or one of the Grandmas take over; breastfeeding is borderline torture right now because my nipples are cracked from a bad latch I keep thinking I can fix myself. It kinda sorta seems like it's getting better, but then at the next feeding the pain when he latches on is so fierce I'm surprised I don't draw blood each time I bite my lip.
But I keep doing it. I keep letting him feed off me, I keep letting my day revolve around his needs and his feeding schedule, even though it's wearing me out mentally and emotionally and taking its toll physically -- even though I have such an easy out, now that he's no longer inside of me, attached by the umbilical cord.
Because I WANT to breastfeed him. See how this works? I CHOOSE to put up with the sh!t and pain and "minor inconveniences" because it's for something I WANT. Some people would make a different choice when faced with this same situation -- some people would make the same choice as I when faced with a worse situation; some would make a different choice when faced with a less challenging situation.
This doesn't make any of us "better" people than the others, it just makes us people who exercise our God-given free will.

6wS*: LOOK WHAT FREDDY AND I MADE!!!1!!11!!!!!

2010-10-18T19:24:00.000-05:00

Troy Emmitt BananaLaffyTaffy-TheBatman

*Yes, I KNOW it's Monday. SO WHAT? I just had A BABY. I've been BUSY. I'm allowed to post a 6-word Sunday on a Monday.

Even fetuses know the difference between a fetus and a baby!

2010-10-13T08:58:00.000-05:00

Throughout the weekend (and before), Freddy and I did all the things you're supposed to do to trigger labor. All the normal things, and even some off-the-wall things. (Freddy REALLY wanted Troy Emmitt to be born on 10-10-10.) Nothing happened.

Then I realized why Troy Emmitt doesn't want to come out. Even he, a teeny, tiny little fetus, knows that there is a difference between a fetus and a baby. He knows that as soon as he comes out, he stops being Troy Emmitt the Fetus -- he'll become a Real Baby Boy. And he likes being Troy Emmitt, Fetus Extraordinarie, doesn't want to become [Real Baby Boy Name].

See? Even fetuses get the difference.

Now, I feel sorry for Troy Emmitt, and I know that I, too, will miss Troy Emmitt the Fetus, but we gotta do what we gotta do. So we're going in to the hospital tonight, to start the induction process.

I know Troy Emmitt's going to be peeved that we're doing this to him, instead of letting him stay in there, all fetusy, forever, but once h becomes Real Baby Boy, I think he'll get over it.

Like parents, like fetus...

2010-10-04T21:10:00.000-05:00

You know, maybe the anti-choicers are on to something... maybe fetuses really are sentient beings with complex thought processes after all (er... who somehow lose this ability as they squeeze through the birth canal and revert to creatures whose only thoughts are HUNGRY! WET! sleeping... HUNGRY! sleeping... WET!! HUNGRY!...)

Since Friday, I've been seriously wondering if instead of calling Troy Emmitt "Troy Emmitt," we should have called him "Bruce Banner." This kid has been exposed to so much sonogram radiation, I truly won't be surprised if he comes out green. (The rage part he's going to have regardless -- I mean, look at his mom. Need I say more?)

Early on (first trimester), we had the nuchal-something scan, where Troy Emmitt decided to have a thick neck and no nasal bone. Which threw everyone in a tizzy, thinking he had some chromosomal abnormality. We went to these fancy specialists, with their fancy-shmancy super-powered sonogram machine, and looked at Troy Emmitt, only to find out everything looked "normal" now. We did an amniocentesis and everything... to find out the little bugger was fine.

All that fuss, for nothin'.

But because of that abnormal scan, we've been doing biophysical profiles every week for the last [something] weeks. (We were doing them monthly before that, and maybe every two weeks... can't remember. There've been LOTS of them.)

He scores high on all the BPPs; our appointments are a lot of, "Fetus looks good, mom looks good..." I think we bore my OB sometimes. She's sick of seeing us.

BUT THEN FRIDAY, little Mr. LookAtMe!!! decided to have a "prominent aorta." Again, everyone got all worked up over this. We scheduled an emergency appointment with the specialist doctors and their super-powered sonogram machine, and made the grandmas worry all weekend long.

You know what the fancy-shmancy super-powered sonogram showed? Nuthin'.

Normal-looking aorta.

Now, Troy Emmitt, prima donna that he is, decided to turn the wrong way to make it hard for the nice doctor to get a good look at his heart (he even used this fetus-harasser vibrator thingie, to make Troy Emmitt turn around, but the boy refused to cooperate), and we're under orders to tell the pediatricians at the hospital to make sure to check for heart murmurs and other stuff after he's born, but everything's fine so far.

Here I was, thinking this fetus was just a fetus, floating around drinking his amniotic fluid (and peeing in it, and then drinking it. Yeah, fetuses are gross. They drink their own pee), and hiccuping like nobody's business, but all this time he's been actively, purposefully doing these things to call attention to himself. Just like his dad, he's a tooter-face. Attention hog. Prima donna, just like his mom.

Little stinker.

Dude's not even born yet, and he's this much trouble?

Really.

Freddy and I are in for a rough ride, aren't we? (I can hear the grandmas laughing... Are they saying something about karma...?)

Pregnancy Sucks: Under Pressure

2010-10-02T09:27:00.000-05:00

You can't compare pregnancy to anything else. Not even parenthood.

Yeah, sure, "It's easier to take care of them in there than out here!" Well, that depends on what you mean by "easier." Yes, "in there," I don't have to DO anything to feed Troy Emmitt; once he's "out here" feeding him will require action on my part, or the part of one of the many other people who will be caring for him once he is no longer part of my body.

But that's the problem.

EVERYTHING I eat, he gets. Once he's out, if I'm breastfeeding, he gets most of what I eat, but there are ways to get around that -- I can wait until the offending food is out of my system before feeding him again. If I formula feed, I don't have to worry about that at all. But now? Nope. I eat it, BOOM! immediately, he's eating it.

If I'm not eating enough, he's not eating enough. If I'm not drinking enough water, he's not getting enough water. If I have caffeine, he's having caffeine. And while it may be "fine" for an adult woman to have ONE caffeinated drink a day, it's not "fine" for a newborn to have that same amount of caffeine injected directly into his bloodstream. So imagine what that does to a fetus that's even younger and smaller than a newborn.

Same goes for any medicine I may need to take. Fun, huh?

Same goes for any involuntary actions and feelings.

If I'm stressed out, guess what! He feels it. Yeah, sure, tell me to "relax" and not worry about stuff. BECAUSE THAT'S GOING TO TAKE CARE OF IT.

I can make myself LOOK relaxed. I can take deep breaths and smile and sit quietly -- that's not going to make the stressful situation or feelings go away, it's just going to make those of you outside of me feel better about it.

I can refrain from talking about the stressful situation, but I can't stop my mind from thinking about it. Trust me, I try -- my mind's going to go there. I can try to focus on other things, but it's going to find a way to go back to it.

I can control the outward appearance of "stress," but I can't control my body's physiological responses to it. And the fetus feels the physiological responses, not my outward demeanor.

But, FUN AS THAT IS, it's not just that.

Right now, I'm the only person in the world who can feel Troy Emmitt.

Yeah, you can put your hand on my belly and feel that foot that just kicked me in the ribs. Or you can put your hand on my belly and feel the rhythmic thumping of his hiccups. (You, however, can remove your hand when you get bored, and stop feeling these things. I'm stuck with them 24/7. Yeah, it was cute at first. Exciting, and all that jazz. But after a while? I just want to sit, okay? I want my body to stop doing these weird things.)

But whose responsibility is it to check kick counts daily? Is he moving? Is he dead? When was the last time he moved? Is he moving enough? Has the frequency of his movement changed? Has it changed enough that I need to contact my doctor, let her know something may be wrong?

We found out about halfway(ish) through that we were at a higher risk than most for a stillbirth. That's nice. So, besides dealing with everything that life involves, I need to be constantly attuned to my uterus and its movements -- because a decrease may mean my fetus is dead. And the only person who can be in charge of this oh, so pleasant task is ME. No one can relieve me of this duty, or take over for an hour. Just me!

So far, I'm 37 and a half weeks and I haven't killed the kid yet. He's still moving around in there. So that's good.

But yesterday we found out he has a "prominent aorta." Which could mean there's something wrong with him, bad enough to require surgery once he comes out, or it could mean nothing at all.

I don't know if you noticed, but yesterday was Friday. Which means today's Saturday, and tomorrow's Sunday. Monday doesn't show up until AFTER that, so that's how long we have to wait until the other doctors can do yet another sonogram to look at this uppity aorta and decide if it's nothing, or if it could be something. If they say it could be something, then we get to go to yet another doctor to do yet another test to see what sort of something it could be.

(Remember that "stress" thing? Yeah.)

We've been having weekly sonograms for seven weeks now. Why did this aorta thing not show up in any of the other sonograms? Did it just grow from last Friday to this one?

That's what would make the most sense, right? This abnormality JUST NOW developed.

So... where did it come from?

What happened NOW that made this thing screw up?

I currently have two huge, red scratches on my left thigh from when one of the cats tried to get in my lap when I was sitting on the toilet. I also have several smaller scratches on my hands, from when I had to pick up the other cat to get him out of the bedroom, and he felt he should stay in there.

Throughout the last eight months I've accumulated quite a collection of bites and scratches from our four cats. Three of whom are known hunters. Who kill and eat wild game. (If suburban rats, mice, and birds are considered "wild game.")

You know why pregnant women aren't supposed to garden or change the cat litter? Because there are bugs in dirt and cat feces that can cause birth defects. These bugs are not just in cat feces, but in cat bodily fluids; the reason we focus on the cat poop is because that's how most people interact with bodily fluids or excretions.

These bugs come from cats eating raw meat. Like rats, mice, and birds (wild and suburban varieties).

Despite living with cats for pretty much all my life, at the start of this pregnancy I did not have the immunity to these little bugs, which means if I was exposed to them sometime during the pregnancy, I could make Troy Emmitt have some nasty, horrible birth defect.

I've been getting scratched and bitten by cats who kill and eat raw meat. And now my fetus has a "prominent aorta" -- a potential birth defect.

You do the math. What is any rational person going to assume?

They may be "easier" to take care of "in there" than "out here." But you know what would be nice? NOT being the one and only person to blame.

Dancing at the Movies montage

2010-09-13T12:52:00.000-05:00

Because it's Monday again, and you'll need this to make it through the week:

#Preggo Goodie Bags: Someone Get On This

2010-09-12T11:42:00.003-05:00

When I went to my OB for my first pre-natal appointment, they gave me a StrongMoms bag with some swag. I love bags, it's an obsession with me, so I was THRILLED.
(It wasn't until I started reading the brochures and stuff that I realized StrongMoms is a Similac thing. So when the cats chose to pee on the bag a few weeks later, I was not too bothered about it.)
The bag contained some useful information, like the brochure from the doctor's office detailing the three trimesters, what medications were considered "safe" during pregnancy, and what I could and could not have done at the dentist. But most of the other stuff? I could have done without. (Seriously, ViaCord, HOW MANY TIMES are you going to "remind" me of my "SPECIAL OFFER!!!1!!" to bank my baby's cord blood with you??)
You know what would have ACTUALLY been helpful?

A portable fan. Battery powered. Two, actually: one to keep on a desk (or other surface), another to wear around my neck.
An overnight maternity catheter. Or a nine-month supply of overnight Depends.
A bib. Large enough to cover the overgrown boobs and overgrown belly.
Coupons for unlimited quantities of healthy, antioxidant-rich dark chocolate. Redeemable at any store, nationwide, throughout pregnancy and the child's first year of life. (Once the kid's a year old, he/she is old enough to ask you to SHARE the chocolate, so the magic's gone by then.)
Optional: sign reading "Yes, I'm pregnant. Due in _____. My doctor says I'm just the right size, thank you."

What am I missing, ladies? What else would a USEFUL #preggo goodie bag contain?

***UPDATE***

Due to reader input, it has been decreed that the coupons for unlimited quantities of healthy, antioxidant-rich dark chocolate do not carry and expiration date. Once you get pregnant, you get free chocolate for life, for yourself and your child.

(Are you listening, Nestle? If you wanna win back the mom demographic, you'd better quit your unethical practices and get on this chocolate coupon thing.)

Letter to my 33-week fetus

2010-08-31T12:45:00.003-05:00

Dear Troy Emmitt:

I see you have inherited your mother's impatience. (Of all your mother's traits, I guess that's not the worst one...)

I'm really, really anxious to meet you, too, but you still have to bake for another seven weeks or so. As much as I'd like you to come out and play now, you really shouldn't. So please stop trying to bust out through the walls of my uterus.

I know it's getting cramped in there, with you getting bigger and all (put on the fat you need, but don't feel a need to overdo it, okay? Seven or eight pounds is big enough). The kicking is fine, too, just keep in mind I know you're strong, you don't need to prove HOW strong you are. Your daddy will be more than happy to play Karate Kid with you once you're out, so save some of those moves for him. No need to use up all your moves now, on Mommy's organs. (She'll still need to use those after you get out.)

Anyway, just wanted to let you know we love you too, and can't wait to meet you... BUT WE DO HAVE TO WAIT. So please stop pushing on my lower abdomen -- that's not the way out anyway. In about six weeks or so we'll start making the cervix open up, so be looking for that. And make sure to stay head-down, don't try to pull any breech business, please. (Trust me, it won't be fun for you, either, so don't try it.)

Now, to keep you busy between now and then, I'll leave you with this song, that sorta makes me think about you every time I hear it:

(I loved the song before, but now that I know it features an impromptu, choreographed 80s-style dance number in a grocery store... I think this has to be my FAVORITEST SONG EVER.)

Out of the mouths of babes (or, Sex and the City... and Horses)

2010-08-29T12:13:00.000-05:00

Cover of Girls Just Want to Have FunFreddy is not a fan of Sarah Jessica Parker.

I must say, myself, I have a dear, dear spot in my heart for Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Hunt, and Shannen Doherty, for having starred in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (a.k.a THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME).

I also owe a debt of gratitude to Sex and the City (the series; have not seen the movies yet): after going on a whopping two(?) dates in high school and spending all my college years (all six of them) with the same (controlling, abusive) boyfriend, SATC was my instructional video on dating and relationships. (Also loved He's Just Not That Into You [book, haven't seen the movie], because, sometimes... he isn't. And you need to move on, because you're worth more than that.)

Freddy's experience with SATC is a litle different... a (supposedly monogamous) girlfriend of his flippantly informed him that the show "inspired" her to be "liberated" and sleep with another guy when she and Freddy were dating (in a supposedly monogamous relationship), because that's what "modern women" do (or something). (Now, I watched all six seasons of the show back to back, thanks to Netflix, and I saw nothing in there about cheating on your super-awesome boyfriend... but I digress.)

Author's note: I, myself, prefer monogamous relationships. Clearly, so does Freddy -- which is good, we match. I have no problem with people in open relationships or polyamorous relationships, because that's what works for them. But you gotta pick one! And make sure your partner(s) and you agree on which one y'all are in!)

Because Freddy has this resentment, which he has projected onto the main star of SATC, he jokingly likes to point out that... her face has some horse-like features.

Yesterday, while hanging out with Freddy's sister and her kids, SJP's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? came up in conversation... and Freddy, gentleman that he is, asked if any equine members were discovered in SJP's ancestry. At his sister's confused expression, I explained that, in Freddy's opinion, "Carrie Bradshaw" looks... like a horse.

Freddy's horse-loving 10-year-old niece, taking things a little too literally, asked, "Do people ride her like a horse?"

Well... that role did call for her to be in the "cowgirl position" quite often...

Simon's Cat in "The Box"

2010-08-19T18:54:00.000-05:00

Since I can't muster the energy (or find the time) for a real post, I'll share this with you instead:

On Vegetarianism

2010-08-09T12:39:00.000-05:00

To quote my brother-in-law:

The Solution to the Name Game Conundrum!

2010-08-05T17:03:00.042-05:00

Feminists, we have a problem:

If you get married and take your husband's last name, you're an appendage to said husband. And that's BAD.

If you DON'T take your husband's name -- either because you never married him or because you married him but kept your own name -- then you still have YOUR FATHER'S last name, which means you are an appendage to your dad. Which, honestly, is kind of creepy in an icky way... so let's not go there.

(Oh, and... if you happen to NOT be part of the monogamous heteronormative binary borg... well, you're screwed. We have no idea what to do with you. Sorry, polys, genderqueers, and lesbians.)

BUT I HAVE FOUND A SOLUTION!!!

Because, really, ladies... who wants to be an appendage? Let's face it -- appendages only look good on the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who knows how to wear his noodley appendages with style. And we know neither your husband nor your dad are the FSM. (Really. Don't blaspheme. That's just not cool, dude.)

So, what's a gal to do?

We need to have a last name, but the two options open to us right now are YOKES OF THE PATRIARCHY. And we radfemz won't STAND for that -- WILL WE?

Didn't think so.

This leaves us only one option:

(Actually, it leaves us two. Because I am SO GOOD, I came up with TWO awesome solutions to this problem.)

1) We must make up our own last name.

And you can't pick someone else's name, because that's being an appendage to that other person. AND WE DON'T WANT THAT. (Remember?) Just pick something cool, that you like. And make that your last name.

For example: I shall heretofore be known as Criss L. Bananalaffytaffy. Freddy shall heretofore be known as Freddy Thebatman.

When Troy Emmitt is born, he'll hyphenate his parents' names (so he'll be Troy Emmitt Bananalaffytaffy-Thebatman*), until he's eighteen. On his eighteenth birthday, he'll pick his own last name, to replace the hyphenizationing.

*"Bananalaffytaffy" goes before "Thebatman" because you have to follow alphabetical order. Otherwise, chaos ensues.

Now, I know this option will not work for EVERYone, because some people like to have a little more continuity (or "lineage") in their families, so they can go on genealogy websites and find out if they're related to anybody famous. This is why I've designed Option #2:

2) Instead of a last NAME, everyone gets a last NUMBER.

For example, the last four digits of your Social Security number. Or your driver's license number.

So, let's say my number is 0805. And Freddy's number is 2010. I'd be Criss L. 0805, and he'd be Freddy 2010.

When Troy Emmitt is born, his last ~~name~~ number will be THE SUM of both his parents' last ~~names~~ numbers. (GENIUS, isn't it?) So he'd be Troy Emmitt 2815.

Let's say one day he marries a girl named Eugenia 3715. Their kids, my grandkids, would have the last ~~name~~ number 6530. See how simple it is? And you can totally trace family histories by subtracting. Everybody wins!

So, who's on board with this plan?

What's in a [last] name? NOT THAT MUCH. So get over it.

2010-08-02T18:15:00.002-05:00

There's been lots of hullabaloo lately about "feminists" getting married, and changing their last name to the Evil Evil Man's last name, and how this MUST MEAN that these feminists are NOT feminists -- THEY ARE IMPOSTORS!!! They are SARAH PALIN!!! RABID PANIC!!!!

Seriously, people? THIS is what we need to fight about? A freakin' last name?

Feminism's treatment of non-cis, not-heterosexual, non-white women is not stellar. That's a big strike against it. Some feminists are working to correct that, learning to check their privilege and actively work to help those that need it most.

But then... other "feminists"... pull this crap : Can I be an Appendage to a Man But Still Call Myself a Feminist?

Really? Just because a woman decides to get married, she can't be a feminist? Just because she decides to change her last name, she's not a feminist? Just because she does the dishes while her partner is working 12-14 hour shifts at work, she's not a feminist?

If that's what "the cool feminists" do, then no thanks, dude.

Maybe I'm the one who's all backwards. I mean, here I thought "feminism" was about women breaking free of the roles imposed on them by outside parties (otherwise known as the kyriarchy), and pursuing their own happiness, their own dreams and ambitions, instead of someone else's.

Apparently, "feminism" is being part of the FemBorg. It's all about teh manhatingz. And if you break the rules, even just a little bit... YOU'RE SARAH PALIN!!!!

Now, since social equality is all about doing the dishes, does that mean I'm the patriarchy? Because Freddy's the one who does the dishes at home (his and mine). And the laundry (his and mine). And the cooking -- his and mine, even though I'm the vegetarian who requires special meals.

Is there a Feminist Handbook where I can look this stuff up? The rules are starting to get confusing.

I make Freddy do all the household chores (because I'm a lazy bum, and I spend all my time blogging and tweeting). But... I like pink. And I wear dresses. And I shave my legs (er... most of the time). And my armpits (slightly more often than my legs).

Can I still be a feminist if I wore a pink dress at our wedding?

Can I still be a feminist if I got married?

Now, if you're going to tell me that I'm a bad feminist for getting married when same-sex couples and couples where one or both partners is trans can't, then I'm going to agree with you. Getting married was a selfish move on my part, very self-centered. If you want to take away my feminist card for that, then I'll agree with you, and hand it over.

But if you're going to tell me I'm a bad feminist because I got married in a dress and had a party, I'm going to laugh in your face.

And the name thing? Are you bleepin' serious?

My last name was "Cox." Have you ever taught high school with the last name "Cox"?

You should try it. It's fun.

You don't even have to teach high school -- an ex-boyfriend's friends thought it was HILARIOUS to ask me, "What's your middle name, Sucks?"

Freddy's last name is WAY COOLER than "Cox." First of all, there are a bazillion Coxes around. (And I'm not related to any of them.) Freddy's last name? Totally unique. And pretty.

When I get an email address assigned at work, I don't have to have numbers or anything weird after my username -- it can just be "firstinitiallastname" because THERE ARE NOT SEVENTEEN BILLION OTHER PEOPLE WITH THE SAME LAST NAME IN THE DISTRICT.

That's pretty nifty, I think.

Had I had Freddy's last name when I graduated college, I bet the university would have sent me MY diploma in the mail, instead of Renee Marie Cox's diploma. (There were 5 of us with the same last name in the College of Liberal Arts that semester, if I recall correctly.)

You know what else has ALWAYS bugged me? That my last name (Cox) was shorter than my first name (Cristina). I HATED that as a kid. I wished I could have gone by my mom's last name, Donovan, because THAT one was a decent length.

Freddy's last name? LONGER THAN THREE LETTERS.

So I changed my last name when I got married.

OF COURSE THIS MUST MEAN I HAVE NO PERSONALITY OR SENSE OF SELF OUTSIDE MY HUBAND WAAAHHHHH!!!!!

I am "an appendage."

Meh. Good to know.

Come on, people... Don't we have bigger fish to fry than last names?

Women are bullied into unwanted and unnecessary C-sections daily, and our maternal mortality rate has risen thanks to this. Doesn't WOMEN DYING rank a bit higher than their chosen last name?

Or what about the women who will die because of lack of access to a safe abortion?

Or 13-year-old girls being arrested for prostitution, when they're not even old enough to consent to sex until they're at least 14?

Or what about the legalized discrimination against trans women? Denying protection to our most vulnerable sisters, which will inevitably result in (even more of) their deaths.... but that's NOT NEARLY AS IMPORTANT as your last name!!!

Dunno... seems like there are better things on which to spend "feminist" blog space than petty name-calling. No?

THIS is why it's not a baby until it comes out:

2010-07-10T19:42:00.000-05:00

Because you can have a biophysical profile at 39 weeks that shows everything is going just the way it should, that you have a happy, healthy fetus, and then two days later -- with no warning, with no indications, with no reason -- you have a stillborn.

Because of my abnormal AFP screen in the first trimester, my OB has warned us that we are at a higher risk for something going wrong (read: stillbirth). This is why I'm getting a sonogram at every appointment, to make sure the fetus is moving the way he should, his heart is beating the way it should, that he's drink-breathing his amniotic fluid (and his pee) the way he should, etc. If he starts to get lazy, lethargic, or his little fetus organs don't look as active as they should, she'll want to induce labor (or go for a C-section) to get the fetus out and fix him.

Just what every pregnant mom wants to hear, right? "Hey, by the way... that baby you thought you were having? Yeah, he's likely to die, for no reason at all, before he's even born. No, we don't know what causes it. No, we don't know how to prevent it. We just know to tell you about it so you can spend the next ~~three~~ four months freaking out."

At our appointment Tuesday, our OB shared the above story. It happened to one of her partner's clients, just the week before.

I'm feeling better now (our appointment was Tuesday morning -- and, of course, this was the first appointment where I only took a half-day off work, same for Freddy. I really needed time to sit with him, talk about all this... but no. Had to rush to work from the doctor's office, without even time for a quick lunch); have had time to process all this and accept it. Sort of.

It's beyond infuriating that I have absolutely no control over this. I do everything I'm supposed to do. I eat good things, have severely limited my intake of processed crap, eat organic fruits and vegetables, don't eat fried crap. I rest, don't exert myself physically (picking up heavy items, etc.), listen to my body when it's tired. I've modified my lifestyle to accommodate this fetus. And now he's going to quit on me for no reason? Make me go through all this, just to wait until the last minute to die for no reason? WTF, fetus??

Now, statistically, the most likely possibility is that everything turns out fine and all this worrying is for nothing. But there's no way of knowing that. There are ways of knowing it's NOT going to be fine (if the biophysical profile comes back with poor results), but even as "good" BPP can't say that everything will be hunky-dory.

Freddy and I both had to go back to work after this appointment (the first time neither one of us took the whole day off -- I had to rush to work from the doctor's office, didn't even have time to eat lunch. Of course, this was also the day we'd done the glucose test, so I'd had nothing to eat all morning except for two hard-boiled eggs and a super-charged artificial-sugar drink), so we had no time to sit and talk about the news.

(It wasn't truly news-news, since we'd already talked at our last appointment about the need for monthly screens until 32 weeks, then weekly screens, to make sure everything was "okay." But when you throw the word "stillborn" in there, especially right after "perfectly normal screen," it changes things a little.)

Freddy and I had started calling Troy Emmitt by his real name, Blanky McBlank, when it was just the two of us. We used his real name when talking about him inside my belly, when talking about his nursery, when talking about what he'd be like when he grew up. We'd started talking about him as if he were a 100% guaranteed, real baby.

I know there's never a guarantee. Even if he's born, he could die of SIDS in the first few weeks after birth. He could catch some easily-preventable disease at the doctor's office, from some kid who's parents believe Jenny McCarthy's crap and decided not to vaccinate their kids. We could get in a car wreck on the way home from the hospital, or on the way to the grocery store, or on the way to daycare. He could get leukemia. There's a bazillion things that could happen.

But in each and every one of those scenarios, before that death happens, I have a baby to have and to hold. I can see his face, look into his eyes, hold him, hug him, SEE HIM before he's gone. I have something before he dies.

When we got home from work that day, I told Freddy, "I want to go back to calling him Troy Emmitt."

Freddy paused for a second, then said, "Okay."

I was going to explain -- I had my speech all rehearsed. But I didn't need to.

"No, I know," he said. "You know it's going to be okay, right?"

"Yes, I know."

Except we don't. But that's okay.

I can deal with losing Troy Emmitt. I know he's going to go away, eventually -- when he becomes Blanky McBlank. But I can't deal with losing Blanky McBlank before I even get a chance to meet him.

This is why it's not "a baby" until it comes out. Because too many things can happen before the fetus finishes doing it's thing. Too many -- wanted -- fetuses never become babies.

This doesn't mean the loss of a wanted fetus is not a terrible, horrible loss -- please don't be that naive or ignorant.

This means that there is a significant difference between a fetus developing inside a woman's uterus, and a baby living outside of it.

How is your pregnancy going?

2010-07-05T11:46:00.002-05:00

It's going really well. Most of the time.

(Like, the other day, when I was driving home from work and stopped at the green light because my #preggo brain thought it was a four-way stop . Because on my way TO work the first intersection after I exit the freeway has a four-way stop sign, so of course the first intersection after I exit the freeway on my way home FROM work would be the same, right? Clearly.)

I have resigned myself to the fact that I need to write everything down, because if I don't, it didn't happen. Kind of like the dude in Memento (but I use Post-Its instead of tattoos. Can't find a decent tattoo artist at work).

I have had an extremely easy pregnancy (so far). My 24-hour sickness in the first trimester was mild; I was very picky about what I wanted to eat, but I could eat, and as long as I was munching on something throughout the day I was fine.

Freddy works at a health-food grocery store, so I have access to all sorts of healthy, organic goodies daily. He texts me before he leaves work asking me what I want to eat. And he does all the cooking (and all the cleaning, and all the laundry, and all the cat-duties...) because he is, pretty much, the Bestest Hubby And Dad-To-Be In The World.

(Seriously: I come home from work, sit on the couch, get waited on hand-and-foot, and after I pass out around 9:30 he gently wakes me up and takes me to bed. Once I get home from work, I do NOTHING.)

Troy Emmitt has been kicking healthily, but he likes to give me a few good kicks, so I make Freddy stop what he's doing to come over and feel them, and then Troy Emmitt stops. But Freddy has gotten to feel a few of them... and you should see how his face lights up when he feels those little kicks.

I also have an extremely accommodating job where I sit most of the day, so I don't have to worry about overdoing it physically or straining myself. I cannot imagine how miserable I'd be (and how stressed and unhealthy Troy Emmitt and I would be) if I were still in the classroom, teaching full-time, dealing with parents and administrators and grades and all that blah-blah...

Tomorrow we have our 24-week appointment, where I get to drink the glucose stuff to test for gestational diabetes. I'm either going to ace the test or fail it miserably... but I've been really good about getting my sugar from natural sources, so I should do well. My body's so used to processing massive amounts of sugar, I'm probably going to metabolize (or whatever you do with it) all that glucose in half the alloted time. (How does that glucose mixture compare to a bag of cotton candy, washed down with regular Coke? Anybody have stats on that?)

Last week Freddy and I started our Bradley childbirth classes, so I've been doing my exercises and counting my protein intake. I thought I was doing really well nutrition-wise, eating 65-75 grams of protein a day. Well, according to Dr. Bradley, I should be getting 80-100 grams of protein a day. EIGHTY to ONE HUNDRED grams of protein A DAY.

They give you this little chart to fill out, and though it looks a little intimidating at first, I've actually done well so far. I just have to make sure I eat, the right things, pretty much all day long.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to eat some hard-boiled eggs and get back to reading NATURAL CHILDBIRTH THE BRADLEY WAY.

Ask, and Criss shall answer.

It [was] my birthday! Wanna give me some water? @mycharitywater

2010-07-05T11:20:00.000-05:00

I'm really bad at this... this is the second mycharity: water campaign I've started and then forgotten to advertise...

So, belated, but here it is! I turned 33 on Saturday. I have lots of stuff, including a PUR water filter attached to our kitchen faucet, so I can have extra-clean purified drinking water whenever I want. Talk about privileged.

I whine about having to walk down the hall and around the corner to get to the water fountain at work, to fill up my water bottle. There are people who have to walk miles to get to any water, and it's not even clean or fit for drinking.

So, instead of asking for stuff for me this year, I want to ask for water for those people. Because they need drinking water way more than I need another Hello Kitty trinket (trust me, I have plenty).

How about you skip that frappuchino or ice mocha this week, and give the $5 to me mycharity:water?

Thanks!!

"Tiny" #preggo rant

2010-06-14T18:44:00.001-05:00

Let's make a deal: you abstain from commenting on my body shape, and I'll abstain from commenting on yours. Mkay?

Oh, I know... silly me! I'm pregnant! That must mean my body is now part of the public domain! (At least that's what the politicians keep telling us, isn't it?)

Well.... sorry. WRONG.

Still my body. If you want to touch it, you'd better ask permission first (and be ready to have it denied).

I'm five and a half months pregnant.

Yes, I'm sure. Yes, seriously. Why would I lie to you? What purpose could that possibly serve?

Kindly put your eyes back in your sockets.. there you go, that's it. Better?

Again, I'm really very sorry, but "You're so tiny!" is NOT a compliment. I'm effing pregnant -- I'm not supposed to be tiny, I'm supposed to be PREGNANT.

I'm very aware of my size. It's one of the reasons I asked my OB if I was big enough when I saw her two weeks ago, at my last appointment. (You know what she said? SHE SAID I WAS FINE.) I really don't need you making any comments on my weight or size, thank you. Notice how I'm not commenting on your size? See how nice that is, my NOT telling you what's wrong with your body size?

Just in case this isn't sinking in (heck, if I had to tell you the first part, I doubt you'd be clever or aware enough to get the second part without having it spelled out for you): three months from now, when I'm huge, I'm not going to need you to tell me how huge I am. I will be aware, trust me.

Also: if you meet a woman who tells you she's, say, six or seven months pregnant, and you think she looks HUGE... you don't need to tell her that. You don't need to ask her if she's sure she's only six or seven months. I can guarantee you she knows how far along she is. And that she's aware of how big she is.

All you need to do is shut your huge mouth and smile. If you must speak, congratulate her.

It would be really nice if people stopped feeling the need to tell women what their bodies are supposed to look like. Pregnant or not.

how did calling hubby Freddy come about(sorry, I'm sooooo out of the loop!)? Also, congrats on the fetus! Do you plan to find out the gender or keep it a surprise?

2010-06-05T15:26:00.001-05:00

Freddy and I met while doing Picasso at the Lapin Agile (a play by Steve Martin). His character was called "Freddy," so that was his name as I blogged about my suitor. It's stuck. :D (He likes having a code name. It's almost like a superhero alter ego.)

The fetus is doing quite well; doctors say he's growing just like he should. And he's doing his fair share of pummeling me, mostly around my underwear/pants waistline... which makes me wonder if he's getting squished? I've noticed while my belly is not growing at the rate I'd like it to, the hip/butt/thigh area is picking up the slack, so my pre-preggo underwear is tighter than it used to be...

We found out the fetus is a boy (or will be born one, at least... he'll let us know later if he has other plans). I'm trying to avoid the barrage of blue, but it's hard. Not that I want to dress him in pink (not EVERY day, at least...) but what about some PURPLE clothes? Or YELLOW? Apparently, baby boys are only allowed to wear blue, light blue, dark blue, or green-and-brown. Meh.

He already has a "This is what a FEMINIST looks like" onesie, courtesy of his Aunt Marcy, so, overall, I'm happy with his wardrobe. :)

Ask, and Criss shall answer.

Why I Chose to Have an Amniocentesis

2010-05-29T10:40:00.003-05:00

I want a natural birth: no drugs, no cutting, no steampunk-wannabe machinery like forceps or vacuums. Biologically/evolutionarily speaking, my body was made to grow fetuses and birth them, to ensure the survival of the species; I trust God knew what He was doing when He designed my body (wide birthing hips and all), so I want a chance to do it the way God and nature intended before a doctor comes in with drugs, needles, and a scalpel. (I understand medical interventions are sometimes necessary, and if I happen to be one of the 10% or so of women who need a medical intervention, I will be very glad for the technology. I just want to find out if I NEED it before it's automatically used on me.)

Because I want a natural birth, I'm reading hippie-granola books by midwives (Ina May's Guide to Childbirth) and other natural-birth advocates/supporters (The Birth Book); and maybe that's why they seem to be slightly anti-testing. Both books, while presenting the issue in a way that respects the reader's opinion, warn against much of the tests that OBs routinely run on pregnant women during their prenatal care, including amniocentesis.

Ina May cites the risk of miscarriage due to an amnio to be 1 in 300; Dr. Sears cites it as 1 in 200. Ina May's book was published in 2003, Dr. Sears's in 1994 (my copies, at least). Partly due to these numbers (and I'd heard even before reading the books that amnios can result in miscarriage), I told myself, and family members, that I was not going to get one. (Besides, who really wants to have a huge needle stuck in their stomach? Poking holes in my uterus and amniotic sac, and disturbing my fetus?)

Even after we had the 12-week NT screen, which showed a thick neck (3.9 mm) and no nasal bone -- soft signs of Down Syndrome -- I was still against an amnio. When the bloodwork came back not denying the original findings, I was still against it.

When the doctor first told us that the sonogram showed the possibility of a chromosomal abnormality, it was a shock. It was different and it was an unknown; I can't recall exactly what happened in what order in those days, but neither Freddy nor I were worried about the possibility of a child with Down Syndrome -- the problem where the other two types of abnormalities, which are fatal 95% of the time and my doctor, who works with the Baylor Health Care System, "a Christian ministry of healing," said even that religious hospital would recommend (and perform) an abortion.

(Dear Antis: if any of you are still lurking, I know medical facts make your heads hurt... but that doesn't mean medical facts are not true. Thank you.)

I wanted confirmation that we were NOT looking at Trisomy 13 or 18 (the almost-always fatal ones, hardly carry to term); Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) was not a concern/problem.

It became even less of a concern as we educated ourselves on Down Syndrome and talked to people about it. A friend of Freddy's has a niece with Down Syndrome, and her words stuck with me the most: "I want to say I'm sorry, but there really isn't anything to be sorry about."

Four weeks after the initial shock, we finally had an appointment with a geneticist. I still said I did not want to have an amnio, so part of my wondered why we were even going to talk to the geneticist (the dude who does the amnio), but my OB said this guy would do a super-duper sonogram and look for other stuff as well -- plus, if we took a blank DVD they would record the sonogram -- so we went to the appointment.

At this point, Freddy and I were almost excited about having a child with Down Syndrome (as opposed to an "average", 46-chromosome kid). Through the parents of children with DS we had met, we'd gotten a glimpse into that loving and supportive community. We were no longer afraid, now that we knew more about it and understood what it would entail. Raising a kid is not all rainbows and roses no matter what kind of kid you have; you're going to have challenges no matter what. Some of our challenges were going to be different than what we had originally anticipated, but we were okay with that.

We also realized that if anyone was going to have a child with special needs, this was the family that child should be born into. Freddy's sister just got her Master's in Special Ed, and is a Diagnostician for one of the school districts around here. My mom's a child therapist. My brother's getting his Master's in [I forget the title but it's] working with children with special medical needs -- and, interestingly, he had just finished a research paper on mothers of children with Down Syndrome. My sister is a Montessori teacher, who reminded me that Maria Montessori began her method working with children with mental retardation and other special needs (and, under her care and instruction, these "deficient" children began to out-perform the "regular" children).

We have family close by to help and support us, and on top of all the informational resources built in to our family, we have the means to afford the child's medical needs (physical, intellectual, and emotional). If anyone was going to have a child with special needs, why should it NOT be us, when you look at it that way??

When we met with the genetic consultant, she went over our test results in more detail. She said that given our sonogram and bloodwork, we had a 1 in 5 chance of having a child with Down Syndrome. We had not heard those numbers before; I think (please note that what she said and what we heard could be two totally different things -- there was a big wall of emotional static through which her words had to travel) my OB said we had a possibility of having a child with Down Syndrome, and I guess I'd assumed that was doctor-speak* for "you're having a kid with Down Syndrome."

*doctor-speak being the result of years of malpractice lawsuits and if-I-say-anything-too-definitively-I'll-get-sued-either-way-so-everything-is-iffy. Please note I am not blaming doctors for doctor-speak; that's a result of our sue-happy culture. I am not blaming lawyers, either, because lawyers don't hire themselves.

A 1 in 5 chance was different. Maybe we were making all this fuss for nothing.

1 in 5 was actually a pretty small chance. 20%. We could know for sure if we did an amnio, which we could do that same day, and the lady said that the chance of miscarriage was more like 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,500; for this practice, it was closer to 1 in 1,000 because this is what these doctors do all day, every day (the higher chances of miscarriage happen when the doctor doing the amnio is not properly trained or as experienced in doing them).

So the numbers we were given at the geneticist's office were quite different from the numbers I'd had in my head before the appointment. I had a lower chance of having a child with Down Syndrome than I'd thought, and a much lower chance of complications of miscarriage from doing the amnio.

When we had the sonogram (where we forgot to give the doctor the blank DVD so we didn't get it recorded... but we're going for our follow-up on Tuesday), the doctor said everything looked like it was developing at the "normal" rate, all body parts were proportional, etc. (He also pointed out all the fetus's organs, and said they were all working well... which I'm glad he said, because I couldn't see anything he pointed at. I saw the heart, because it was blinking. Everything else? No clue... that's why I'm not a doctor.)

According to what the doctor saw in the super-duper sonogram, that 1-in-5 number seemed to be leaning toward the other 4 instead of the 1.

I hate not knowing. Not knowing the sex of the baby for those 16 weeks (12, really, since the first four I didn't even know I was pregnant yet) had been bugging me enough. I like to make plans, I like to know so I can daydream about how it's going to be.

I didn't want to go around making plans for a special needs child, tell people that we might have a child with Down Syndrome, only to find out in October that nope, just kidding! I already felt like a poser because of the few people we had told and talked to about it. Like we were walking around telling this story to get attention and sympathy when we didn't even deserve it.

(And, if I was going to have a child with special needs, I was going to go around making plans. This is why we did the NT scan to begin with -- to be prepared. If we were going to have a child with Down Syndrome, I wanted to know all I could about it. I wanted to find a pediatrician who knew all about it as well. I wanted to have physical therapy scheduled from the beginning, and anything else I might need to set up for my child. I was making plans to get my blasted last four credits for my blasted Master's so I could quit my full-time job and teach part-time at one of the local colleges, so Freddy and I could work out a schedule where one of us was home with the baby and we wouldn't need daycare, but would still have a way to, like, buy food and pay the mortgage and all.)

So we did the amnio.

It took two minutes, and didn't hurt any more than drawing blood, really. Even when Freddy made me laugh WHILE THE NEEDLE WAS IN MY STOMACH.

I made a point to look at Freddy, you know, for support (in case it hurt). The doctor said that it usually hurt the father more than the mom, because the father was the one looking at the needle. Which is why I thought Freddy would look AT ME, but no. He looked at the needle, fascinated... and started making faces. Like, "ZOMG, that's HUGE!" faces. Which, if you know Freddy, he was likely to do before he even saw the needle, just to mess with me.

"It looks like a beer!"

"What?"

"No, look! It looks like he's drawing a beer! It even has a head on it and everything! Just like it's coming from a tap!"

Well, if you're making me laugh while the poor doctor tries to draw some amniotic fluid from my stomach without poking the fetus, then you can expect the fluid to be a little shaken up and bubbly, I guess.

The one surprise I had when they did the procedure was that I had to rest the next 24 hours -- as in, bed rest. No going to work the next day (even though I work in an office, relaxed setting, and I sit all day). The nurse and doctor told me before they did the procedure, and they were very accommodating about letting me come back and do it another day, when I had time to arrange for time off, etc., but I wanted to get it done then (impatient? Who, me??) and I had already taken that day off work so might as well do it.

But I was surprised that I had not heard that before; that an amnio is a two-day procedure (you get it done, you rest the whole next day). My books didn't mention it, and my OB hadn't, either (not that I'd asked about the details, but still). I'm lucky that I have a flexible job and an understanding boss, so I could call in and tell her I'd be out the next day, but I realize many women do not have that option.

If I were still in the job I had last year, teaching public school, I would not really have had that option. Leaving lesson plans for being gone one day (for the appointment) would have been hassle enough -- calling my department chair to tell her I was going to be gone ANOTHER day, and no, I didn't have lessons ready? Plus, when I went back to work at this job, I had the luxury to sit all day, and take it easy. In the classroom, I would have been expected to stand for most of every class period, walking around monitoring the students, and stand in the hallway during each passing period (where kids running in the hall and playing around with their friends can easily bump into you).

What if I worked an hourly job, in retail or food service? A) That would be TWO days of no work = no pay, and B) that's a huge amount of physical strain, when the care sheet the doctor gave me said to take it easy, no exercise, for two weeks after the procedure.

Sure, I know an amnio isn't a "necessary" procedure by the strictest definition, but it was necessary for me. I had to know what I had to prepare for. No, I was not going to abort if I found out my child was going to have Down Syndrome (and by the time we met with the geneticist we had pretty much ruled out Trisomy 13 and 18; my OB said she would have seen other signs/physical deformities if the fetus had one of those abnormalities, so that was no longer an issue), but I needed to know what to prepare for. How much my life was going to change. Other pregnant people deserve that same opportunity.

They poked me on a Tuesday, and by Friday afternoon they had the preliminary results. 46 chromosomes, two of each, no extras (except for the last one; that wasn't two of the same, it was one X and one Y).

Freddy and I both felt that a part of us was disappointed with this news. We were looking forward to the challenges, and joys, unique to having a child with Down Syndrome (and I no longer have as good an excuse to stay home, so looks like I'll still be working full-time after Troy Emmitt* arrives).

*I wanted to TWILIGHT the names and call him Emmittroy, WHICH IS SO MUCH BETTER DON'T YOU THINK??? but Freddy said no.

I am glad we went through this experience. I know there are a bazillion things that could still go "wrong" with the pregnancy, and a bazillion things that could still make Troy Emmitt a child with special needs. Now, Freddy and I know we can handle it, and we found out we can handle it before post-partum depression and the stress of living with a newborn set in. If we do find out, at birth or shortly thereafter, that Troy Emmitt has special needs, we know we can cope and we don't have to go through the same shock period we already went through. (It's still going to be a shock, I'm sure, but we know we can get through it).

Also, I'm 32 years old, will be 33 when Troy Emmitt arrives. Just two short years away from the magical age of 35, when BAD THINGS happen more regularly to pregnant women. I want at least a second child. Before all of this happened, I was a little scared of trying to get pregnant again so "old," because I was afraid of the unknowns and thought that "different" was "BAD." Now I'm not scared, because I feel I can handle it, and I know Freddy, and the rest of our families, can.

My books warn against testing because the results can often be false positives (like mine was), and this causes unnecessary stress. I had a false positive, and Freddy and I did go through a period of stress, but I don't regret it. I'm glad we did the testing, because now I know more than I did before -- not so much about the fetus/future baby, but about myself, and about Freddy.

fetus report?

2010-05-27T09:39:00.001-05:00

It's coming! I have a blog post I've written in my head several times, but haven't sat at the computer to type. I was going to do it yesterday, but I got sidetracked responding to another post... and then -- oh, look! Something shiny!

Ask, and Criss shall answer.

Wrandom Ramblingss and #Preggo-ness

2010-05-08T10:32:00.004-05:00

Hello, blogosphere. How've you been? Have you missed me?

What's been going on with you? Things have been busy over here. Just... stuff. Y'know? I'll probably tell you some of it later, but not yet. Which is WEIRD for me. I don't like feeling like I have to censor myself... you're my therapy, blogosphere. You are how I process stuff. But I can't tell you certain things, or I can't tell you yet, which sucks.

But enough of that for now.

In other news, I really wanted to do Story A Day May (as featured on InkyGirl's site), but it hasn't happened yet. I always have all these snippets of ideas that could potentially make short stories, but I never take the time to write them down. This would have been a gret way to do it. If I could remember even ONE of those bazillion snippets of ideas...

I was even going to go all daring and post my stories on le blogue, for all of you lovely people to read. WHITOUT EDITING THEM FIRST. Be all raw and real and stuff. Because yes, I am that arrogant.

But my creative energy is all gone. Maybe the fetus is sucking it all up... all my creativity is going straight to my uterus, to work on creating the fetus. Has that happened to anyone else? Or am I just making excuses?

(I'm firmly in the second trimester now, so the first-tri fatigue is gone. I still sleep lots, but I can't use the "embryo is zapping all my energy" excuse anymore.)

Maybe I should just wait until after the baby is born, so I can take it to coffee houses and pubs to take advantage of the free heating and write my stories on cocktail napkins.

In other-other news, my nails are growing WAY TOO FAST. Now that the fake nails are gone, I'm left with sharp, brittle natural nails. They are ANNOYING. How do you people do this? I have to cut them every week. Or I scratch myself. And I have the cats to do that, I don't need to injure myself. Not with Gus Attack Kitteh in the house.

Speaking of #preggo-hood and its side effects, I am now an Official #Preggo. Freddy and I went maternity-clothes shopping yesterday. One pair of (work-pretty) pants, two nursing tops, two bras, and three maternity tops (on sale): $200. Not even a full week of clothing. $200. HAVING A BABY IS EXPENSIVE. And we haven't even gotten to the baby part yet!

I do have to say my boobs are very happy to be in a bra that fits. Maybe that's why I've been so cranky lately... those blasted underwires digging into my flesh.

how's the fetus?

2010-05-04T20:42:00.001-05:00

I have a doctor's appointment Friday, so I can let you know then.

Right now, my pants are fitting tighter, but I still don't feel anything.

Ask, and Criss shall answer.

Message to Pregnant Women and Mothers

2010-04-22T16:00:00.000-05:00

The bathroom in Chipotle has a sign on the door telling pregnant women not to drink alcohol (it's perfectly fine for all non-pregnant people to drink as much as they want, though -- warning is just for preggos).

Why this sign is in the bathroom, I have no clue. I'm not a drinker, but I think that if I were, I wouldn't go to the bathroom to think about whether or not I wanted to order a drink...

(Does Chipotle even sell alcohol? I forgot to check before I left... How many fast food places have liquor licenses??)

You know what else I noticed in the bathroom?

NO CHANGING TABLE.

Yet again, one more subtle example of how society sees women, specifically pregnant women and mothers: Preggos, let us tell you what you can and can't do with your bodies. Mothers, take those annoying kids of yours somewhere else, we don't want 'em here.

Did you leave the Catholic church before or after your abortion?

2010-04-12T11:13:00.001-05:00

I left the Catholuic Church a long, long time ago.

Officially, I guess I'd have to say it was when I started high school, here in the US, and we started attending a Lutheran church, where I got involved with the youth group (and all that "God LOVES you" stuff finally made sense... because the pastor talked about God's love, not how worthless I was because I was a sinner and didn't deserve anything God gave me).

My family had started going to a Lutheran church while we were still in Chile, but I didn't really get into it (the pastor was a friend of my mom's and his daughters were my sisters' ages, so they loved going to Sunday school, but my brother and I didn't really get into it).

The last time I remember actually going to Catholic church regularly was when I was in fourth grade, doing my First Communion. I walked to church by myself because my religion teacher (at school) said if we didn't go to church EVERY SINGLE SUNDAY God would hate us forever. My parents didn't go to church that often, so I walked there myself.

(All that effort was for naught, though, since when we did our first confession, before taking communion for the first time, I confessed that I picked on my younger sisters. That was my sin. The priest said if I continued to pick on them, then I wasn't truly repentant, so God would not forgive my sin. And I would go to Hell. Even if I said my Hail Marys and Our Fathers.)

My abortion was in 1999; I started high school in 1991, and finished fourth grade in 1987. So, to answer your question, I left the Catholic Church long before my abortion.

Ask, and Criss shall answer.

What emotions do you feel about your pregnancy and impending mommyhood? Are you excited, scared, etc? (Btw, CONGRATS!)

2010-04-05T09:50:00.001-05:00

I'm excited about the impending mommyhood. I want that part to happen.

Right now, I don't really feel pregnant... I know I am, and I have the "symptoms" of pregnancy, but I'm not showing yet (hubby keeps "measuring" my stomach and noticing it hasn't grown...) and I don't feel anything inside my belly so it doesn't feel "real" yet. I kind of feel like a poser, like I'm making it up. It feels weird when people congratulate me, because I haven't "done" anything yet...

The only not-happy feeling is thinking about working (my full-time job) with a newborn. That part's probably going to suck... but we'll find a way to make it work.

(And, even though I don't feel I "deserve" it yet, THANKS! :)

Ask, and Criss shall answer.

ZOMG The Pro-Choicer is Pregnant!!!

2010-03-19T21:04:00.000-05:00

Guess what, Internetz? I haz a fetus in my belly!

Six weeks ago, when I took the pee test and Freddy and I saw the little "+" on the EPT, I was SO EXCITED!!! (We'd been trying for a few months. I was starting to get REALLY MAD at my body for not cooperating.)

But we couldn't tell anyone, until we got medical confirmation form a real doctor and a real sonogram. Why? Two reasons:

stupid Glee, and it's "hysterical pregnancy." I don't even know if that's a real thing, but I really, really wanted to be pregnant. So what if, instead of actually being pregnant, my stupid body was playing a REALLY MEAN TRICK on me? What if the missing period and hugely swollen and painful breasts were JUST A JOKE?
okay, let's say I was really, truly, honest-to-goodness pregnant. WHAT IF THE STUPID EMBRYO HAD GOTTEN ITSELF STUCK IN THE FALLOPIAN TUBE and never made it to the uterus??

Paranoid much? Yes, very. Thank you.

Turns out not only am I REALLY actually pregnant, but the fetus is hanging out in the uterus, right where it's supposed to be.

BUT WHAT GUARANTEE DO I HAVE THAT IT'S GOING TO STAY THERE?

Do you have any clue the number of things that can go wrong with a pregnancy? DID YOU KNOW VITAMIN A IS BAD FOR YOU?? (Well, not you -- it's bad for fetuses. If you're reading this blog post you've already made it out of your mother's uterus, so vitamin A is fine for you.)

It's a VITAMIN, for crying out loud! How can a VITAMIN be bad?

You know what else is bad for fetuses? Herbal tea.

Let me say that again:

HERBAL. TEA.

Bad for you.

(Again, not you. Bad for fetuses.)

Did you have any idea? Because I didn't.

Until I read the section of this pregnancy book about foods that are or are not bad for you, which are myths and which you really do need to avoid. And herbal tea was one of them. AND IT WAS NOT A MYTH.

Sure, it said it small doses it was fine -- BUT HOW CAN HERBAL TEA BE BAD? EVER?? It's freaking tea, for crying out loud! And it's the wimpiest of teas, at that!

And you know what I found out yesterday?

My pre-natal vitamin only has 400 mcg of folic acid.

Do you know how many mcg of folic acid I should be getting, according to Fit Pregnancy magazine? 600 mcg.

And do you know when is the MOST CRUCIAL period when the embryo needs to get the right amount of folic acid? Weeks 6-10. Which means I have two days to make up a 200 mcg deficiency for the last month. Or my fetus will develop some horrible neuro tube defect, and it will all be MY FAULT.

At least, Utah would definitely say so. Utah would probably call my behavior "reckless." For not double-checking the dosage on the pre-natal vitamins my OB/GYN prescribed. Or something -- hey, where there's a will, there's a way, right, anti-choice?

(Oh, also? Two Sundays ago, at church, I took communion wine. It was just an automatic motion, they gave me the tiny vial of wine and I took it, instead of pointing to the tray of grape juice vials. What would Utah think of that?)

You know those really annoying information-overload bing commercials? I'm kind of like that right now, with pregnancy complications. I've read so many stories of things that can go wrong in a pregnancy, especially in the third trimester, that I'm one big panic ball. I am fully aware of all the things that can go wrong -- actually, I'm fully aware of a fraction of the things that can go wrong. I know there are a bazillion other things that can go wrong that I don't even know about yet. Stuff doctors don't even know about, and can't predict or explain.

This is why we call it a fetus. It's not a baby until it comes out, and it coming out, becoming a baby, is not a given. At all.

I really, really want this fetus to become a baby. You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this baby. Freddy and I picked out names before we were even married. This "baby" has been alive for years, even though it was only (physically) conceived in February. And I have to wait until October to find out if it's going to materialize into a real, live, human baby.

It's going to be a long seven more months.

Hello. My name is Criss, and I am privileged.

2010-03-17T21:36:00.004-05:00

But then again, you knew that.

I write a blog. So, like, d'oh! To write a blog, I need:

to be literate (in English)
Internet access
free time

Then again, you needed these same things to read this blog. So I guess we're even on that one.

I received an email that called me out on a few things. Some were valid, some were not. (Please, people, remember what happens when you make ASSumptions.) I want to address the valid ones.

The lovely profile you see to the right, over there --> (um, under the BlogHer ads. So sue me, I'm trying to make a dime off y'all) was written a long, long time ago. Before I knew what privilege was, and how much of it I had. And I hadn't thought about the way I'd described myself, until this person pointed out some things in this email.

My first reaction was the rage, partly because of the incorrect assumptions and partly because of the cranky, due to [thing I'm going to tell you about tomorrow]. So I asked for help on this, and asked if the things person said were true according to other people. Like my good friends on Twitter.

Turns out some of the things were true. So I changed my profile.

I had a line in there that I thought was a clever reference to Charleton Heston's "Get your paws off me, you damned, dirty ape!" line. I kind of forgot that, um, Planet of the Apes (the original) was a long time ago. And maybe I'm not as clever as I think.

And my "joke" used the word "ape," which is a highly charged word even when you're making a clever reference to an old movie. Kind of like how even if you put a lower-case "i" in front of the word "pad" it still means something you use five days out of every 28 when your VAGINA is bleeding. (Who knew Apple and I had so much in common!)

Then there's the having a laptop and good grammar thing... my class and education privilege. The fact that I blog regularly (and practically live on Twitter) pretty much tells you about my class privilege, and makes it highly likely that I have a home computer/laptop anyway... right? The "better grammar" thing was supposed to be another clever joke, but meh. It's not really funny, is it?

So, yeah, I have lots of privilege. I am aware of some of it, and I try to stay aware of it.

Having privilege doesn't make me evil, though, nor does it mean my opinions are not valid. It means I have a limited view of things, and I need to watch it to make sure I don't stick my privileged foot in my privileged mouth.

It doesn't mean I don't have a right to speak about certain things, even if, egads, you disagree with me. The fact that I have not lived that particular situation my own very self does not mean I am wholly ignorant of it; I may not be an expert, I may not be able to speak from personal experience, but I may have taken the time to listen to someone who has lived through that experience. And if that person isn't there at that particular point in time, and that point of view needs to be shared, then I have a right -- and many would say a responsibility -- to speak up.

Having all this privilege means I get to speak in places where others do not. And in those situations, I try to speak up for those not welcome or included in those spaces. No, I'm not going to do it perfectly; I can almost guarantee you I'll screw up at some point. I'm going to say the wrong things sometimes, and I'm going to say incomplete things pretty much all the time (since these are not my first-hand experiences), but I'm going to do my best to call out oppression and discrimination when I see it, and to bring up the points of view and experiences that are usually silenced in those privileged spaces.

And so ends yet another rant.

I edited my profile. If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to leave them. I'll listen. (Even if I don't agree with your "tone.")

VAGINA!!! TAMPONS!!!! VAGINA!!!!

2010-03-16T14:54:00.001-05:00

This article, Rebelling Against the Commonly Evasive Feminine Care Ad, is worth the read, for the main focus of the article (Kotex's new approach to marketing tampons). But this tiny tidbit has got to be my favorite part:

Merrie Harris, global business director at JWT, said that after being informed that it could not use the word vagina in advertising by three broadcast networks, it shot the ad cited above with the actress instead saying “down there,” which was rejected by two of the three networks.

The ads are selling tampons -- which are things you stick inside your VAGINA -- but they are not allowed to say the word "vagina."

THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SAY THE WORD VAGINA ON TV.

You can say "bitch" on TV, but you can't say "vagina." You can say "ASS" on TV, but you can't say "vagina." BECAUSE THAT ONE IS DIRTY AND OFFENSIVE.

I have been accused, in the past, of overreacting to things. Of reading too much into it. Of looking for something to be offended about.

Years ago, this must have been in the late 90s because I was still in college (sitting around at home in the morning hours because my classes were in the afternoon) I remember seeing an episode of the Christina Applegate TV show where she worked as a nurse. She had to learn how to draw blood from people, so she was practicing on an orange. Something happened, where a guy got a promotion or raise or cool assignment and she didn't, and she got all up in arms and went to the supervisor or person in charge and said that it was not fair that the guy was given X (instead of it being given to her) just because he had a penis.

They said the word "PENIS." On TV. In a sitcom. In the middle of the day, when children could be at home, watching sitcom reruns.

I remember this distinctly because a few nights before, we had been watching The Big Lebowski on that same channel. At midnight. Late at night. When children and their precious, delicate virgin ears were in bed.

AND IT WAS THE FREAKIN' BIG LEBOWSKI.

Remember the scene where Julianne Moore is painting in her art studio, and she tells Jeff Bridges her paintings resemble VAGINAS? (Or something like that. The point is that the dialogue included the word VAGINA.)

When her character said the word "VAGINA," the word was muted. IT WAS CENSORED.

AS IF SHE HAD SAID A CUSS WORD (of which there are plenty in The Big Lebowski, if I recall correctly. EXCEPT THAT VAGINA IS NOT ONE OF THEM.)

This upset me.

Why is it okay to say PENIS in the middle of the day in TV but we cannot say VAGINA in the middle of the night on TV?

What is wrong with the word VAGINA??? Can you even begin to explain it to me??

You can say "arm" on TV. You can say "foot" on TV. You can say "nose" on TV. You can even say "breast" on TV.

Why are VAGINAS so scary and offensive and naughty???

It would be one thing if we banned the medical term for all reproductive and/or sexual organs. Now, this would put several marketing campaigns in quite a pickle in October -- how are they going to sell us PINK JUNK if they can't tell us it's for BREAST cancer awareness? Are we going to have to refer to October as HOOTER cancer awareness month?

But when you allow breast and penis, BUT BAN VAGINA, you are sending a clear message that those are okay, but THAT ONE is not. THAT ONE is dirty. And bad. And icky. Ew!!!

No, I'm not okay with that.

And neither is my VAGINA.

"Feministas" and the T-Word: The Aftermath

2010-03-09T13:22:00.004-06:00

This post is written in response to Erica Kennedy's comment to yesterday's post, on her use of the word "tranny" in her novel FEMINISTA. I could have just left another comment on yesterday's post, but that would be an extremely long comment, and also I feel this is a topic that needs to be discussed. So I'm putting it up here, to be seen. Maybe some edumacation can happen.

The first thing I need to address is:

[...] do you realize that most people probably have no idea what you're talking about? I have no idea what CIS means even after reading this blog post. I have never seen that term. Your movement is not mainstream yet so you can't expect people to know what you're talking about or what offends you unless you educate them.

If you don't know what "cis" means, it is YOUR job to educate yourself. Ignorance is not an excuse. Did you even try to Google the term? "Cis" by itself brings up some random computer stuff, that obviously didn't fit the context in which I used the word; "cis feminism" (which is how I used the term in my post) brings up this:

Without even clicking on the Wikipedia link, you can get the meaning. In the simplest, most basic, most binary terms, cis is the "opposite" of trans: people whose gender matches their genitalia at birth.

The definition I have linked before on this blog is the second link, to RaisingMyBoychick's glossary. There are a lot of good terms on that glossary; bookmarking it would be a good idea.

So, as a normal person who comes across a term online, finding the definition of the term is not that hard -- that's how I figured it out, after I saw it on Twitter and in blogs.

As a writer who has written a trans character in her novel, my blog is not the first time you should have seen the term "cis." If you were going to write a transgender character, shouldn't you have done research into what that would entail? Shouldn't one of your beta readers or crit partners have been a trans woman?

She could have clued you in to the fact that a cis person using the word "tranny" is the same as a white person using the word "nigger."

You're right that people don't talk about this -- at least not properly or accurately -- in "the mainstream media." When you published that book, you became part of "the mainstream media," and it became your responsibility to learn how to talk about it the right way (not the "politically correct" way. "Politically correct" is what you do to appease irrational people that you totally disagree with but you don't want to hear their crybabying anymore).

The book is told from Sydney's point of view. She is the narrator, except for the few times when Max (or Mitzi or Liz; I think they each got one or two scenes) tells the story, but none of these other POVs addresses Sydney's transmisogyny. The other problematic aspects of her personality are called out, but this one isn't.

You even chose to silence The Raven the one time she could have spoken up for herself; instead, the scene turned into making fun of the weird "tranny" who just started crying when Sydney wanted to ask her about her penis.

And you don't think her getting fired from her cushy, well-paying job is a consequence?

No.

Sydney didn't get fired because she misgendered The Raven. She got fired because the editors wanted her out, as Sydney and Myrna discussed.

My first thought when I read the scene where Sydney tells Myrna she was fired was, "And no one read the article before it went to print??" Doesn't Sydney have an editor, to whom she turns in her work? Doesn't the editor read it, and suggest necessary changes?

Even if Sydney were such a high-level writer she didn't need an editor anymore, isn't there a copy-editor who proofreads all the magazine's copy for grammar, spelling, and typos?

Isn't there a headline writer who reads the article and gives it a headline?

All these people read the piece, and nobody pointed out Sydney's blatant and spiteful misgendering?

And that's just for a regular, run-of-the-mill party-covering blurb. This was Cachet's STORY OF THE YEAR! Gareth AND Conrad show up to oversee Sydney's bleepin' hair extensions, but niether one of them bother to read the actual article?? Especially knowing how eccentric and sensitive The Raven was??

As the story is written, Sydney was fired because the bosses wanted her gone, and this faux pas was a good excuse. Sydney learned nothing from the experience (she still called them "the trannies" who got her fired and referred to them as "cross-dressers"), and the reader can't see the firing as a consequence of the transmisogyny since obviously the rest of the magazine was in on it, since not one of the gatekeepers said a peep about it.

If Sydney had posted a status update on her Facebook page about "just got back home after interviewing the crazy tranny," or if she had a blog on Cachet's site and she had blogged about the interview and misgendered The Raven there -- without the gatekeepers to stop her -- then the firing could be seen as a consequence to her actions. As written, it was just another political move -- easy come, easy go. She was hired for "PC" reasons, she was fired using the excuse of "PC" reasons.

If you had written something interesting, something that could enlighten the rest of us, I would have happily posted it on my blog. But there's nothing here worth blogging about. You're not trying to start a dialogue. You're not looking to educate. You're just looking to rage.

Yes, I was raging. I spewed bile onto my notebook. When I realized yesterday was International Women's Day, I thought the post was fitting, and typed it up without letting the thoughts simmer so I could elaborate on the issues.

You're right, yesterday's post was hastily (and angrily) written, and I could have done better. This is another reason I made this response it's own blog post, instead of just leaving a comment.

I'm not looking to educate. I'm looking to expose. It's not my job to educate you (and it sure as sh!te isn't Voz's job to educate you) -- it's YOUR job to educate yourself.

Since you're dark-skinned and I'm white-skinned, is it your job to educate me about the discrimination women of color face? Is it your job to kindly and politely (yes, you must say, "Yes'um," just like Mammie did!) explain to me about racism, and why I shouldn't call you "colored"?

So why are you telling Voz (and me) that's what she needs to do?

Just the fact that you have been called out on your use of the t-word (and your ignorance of trans* issues) should be enough to make you want to "share" this on your blog. I'm not saying you have to link to me, or anything -- I am by no means an expert on this topic (if you want to link to anyone, or ask anyone to guest post, I'd have to refer you to Voz). Finding out the hurt your words caused, the hate your words conveyed, the ignorance your words validated should have moved you to explore the topic and write about it on your blog. "Share" the information you just received.

But, if your comment was any indication, you are not interested in learning. You are interested in justifying yourself, and continuing to revel in your cis privilege.

International ALL Women's Day: "Feminista"

2010-03-08T22:20:00.002-06:00

As a writer, I shouldn't say bad things about another writer. It's bad PR and it's bad karma.

But as a woman, I have to call out sexism, and cissexism, when I see it.

I was excited to read Erica Kennedy's FEMINISTA mainly because of the title. I happily bought the book, not just because I could put it on my shiny new eReader but because buying it I was supporting a fellow Latina writer.

The story and characters have turned out to be not be my particular cup of tea, but I wanted to read it anyway. Until the word "tranny" appeared -- and didn't go away.

***Warning: HERE BE SPOILERS***

The main character, Sydney, works for a magazine and she's assigned to interview The Raven, a male-to-female transgender artist who, Price-like, went from being known by his male name, then decided to go by a symbol becoming "the artist formerly known as." Then the artist disappeared for a while, and reemerged as a woman, calling herself The Raven.

When we first hear of Sydney's assignment, we have to play the "he -- no, I mean she; he hates to be called he -- I mean, she hates to be called she -- oh, whatever, you know what I mean" for laughs. Because denying a person's gender and identity is SO FUNNY.

Sydney's boss/editor calls The Raven a "tranny," and Sydney, an supposed feminist who "gets offended for everybody," does not bat an eye. Instead, she uses the term herself (in her inner monologue/thoughts, so it's not like she's doing it to "fit in" with the boss or to suck up to him/keep her job).

She gets her panties in a wad when the British boss uses the term "colored woman" instead of "woman of color" (which may be a cultural/dialectical thing, I'm not up on my UK PC jargon), but not a peep about "tranny" and "she-male" and misgendering The Raven.

When Sydney actually interviews The Raven, the pronoun "(s)he" is used once, and then, for one, "she." (Those are the only two times she's referred to with a pronoun). I guess we should be grateful they got the right pronoun ONCE, huh?

Yes, Sydney is supposed to be a snobby, petty, judgemental, shallow bitch. But she's the main character, and nobody calls her out on misgendering The Raven. All her other shallow BS is called out (if feebly) by another character, sometime in the book. This? Nope.

In the chapter following the interview we find out Sydney has been fired from her job because she misgendered The Raven in the article and made fun of her chosen identity. However this is presented as the "excuse" the higher-ups needed to get rid of her -- so, you see, she didn't really do something wrong, she did something stupid. And it's so unfair! "The trannies" complained about her, boo-hoo Sydney, and now "the cross-dressers" are picketing her apartment!

Later on in the book the author does paint this incident as Sydney subconsciously-yet-intentionally self-sabotaging herself, because, deep down, she really wanted to get fired. So she did the stupid thing on purpose. This does not solve the problem of the cissexist, transphobic, transmisogynistic slur being so casually thrown about: the fact that Sydney may have known it was wrong to misgender The Raven in print, out loud to the world, does not say anything about how she thinks about trans women. Not once was the term "trans woman" used in the novel, by the author/narrator or by any of the characters.

I wanted to read FEMINISTA because of the title. Because I still have not realized that "feminist" does not mean what I want it to mean. "FEMINISTA" means, clearly, "CIS FEMINISTA," with a capital C that stands for "cunt." Because if you weren't born with one of those, then eff you.

***EDIT***
The definition of "cis," for those of you who have not seen it before.

We mades a video! Meet Gus. And Darth

2010-02-28T19:13:00.000-06:00

Working wives are bad news for Hero Husbands

2010-02-23T15:36:00.000-06:00

Man! Freddy is going to be so excited when I tell him I'm quitting my job so he can be a HERO.

You see, according to Dr. Laura, when women work outside the home, they lose respect for their husbands. Because the MAN is supposed to be the PROTECTOR, the HERO. And how can Freddy be a hero if I'm out there working, just like he is?

I mean, of course I have no respect for him! I see him as an equal! I see us as partners -- and anybody knows that's no way to make a marriage work.

And can you imagine what would happen to our marriage if I had a job and Freddy -- gulp! -- had to stay home with the children? What if he had to -- I can barely type the words, the thought is so unpleasant -- be a father???

I would have absolutely no respect for him! Seeing the man I love utterly devoted to our children? Feeding them, playing with them, reading to them, caring for them when they're sick? Please! WHAT WOMAN WANTS THAT???

Because, really, girls... who wants a man who does a woman's job? How demeaning.

(Thanks to TheSexist for bringing all this to my attention. Now let me quit my job so Freddy can be my HERO WARRIOR PROTECTOR. He'll LOVE that, don't you think?)

Stolen Words Wednesday: "I am not American."

2010-02-17T13:03:00.005-06:00

(Actually, I am American. I am Chilean and USian, and both those countries are in America. Which is a continent, not a country. Go look at a globe.)

But I like how The Arrogant Worms say it:

Now go read Chally's post at Feministe: Dear USians On The Internet. It's a good read.

(Oh, and please don't bother USsplaining. Keep your privilege to yourself. Thanks.)

Two quick things that came to mind when reading this:

filling out our school paperwork when we arrived in the US from Chile, and having to mark our ethnicity. We'd never had a race/ethnicity before. My brother and I (who were old enough to fill out our own forms, while Mom filled out my sisters') asked Mom, who thought for a minute then said, "Put 'Hispanic.' You'll be eligible for more scholarships that way."
explaning to my Spanish II students why they couldn't say "americano" in Spanish to refer to someone from the US, that the vocabulary word was "estadounidense." They could not understand the concept of AMERICA IS A CONTINENT, like, say, Europe is a continent, and people who lived in France were French AND European... so someone who lives in Chile is Chilean and "americano," but only someone who lives in the US is "estadounidense." They became enraged when I tried to explain how the word did not solely belong to them.

Sure, 92 million people heard Pam Tebow. But did she SAY anything?

2010-02-16T12:25:00.000-06:00

(See? What did I tell you...)

I wasn't going to blog about the Focus on the Family Super Bowl ad, because that was, like, a long time ago. But today I came across this article, and I felt this made it "relevant" enough that I could beat the dead horse.

I watched the Tebow ad. I was going to watch it anyway (that whole "keep your enemies closer" thing), but even if I had planned to leave the room when it aired, I still would have watched it. Because I had no idea that's what the ad was.

I don't know what Pam Tebow looks like. Put her in a line-up of two women, both with short, black, curly/wavy hair, and I can't pick her out if you tell me which one is not her. So of course I didn't recognize her face when she came on the screen.

Honestly, I thought the ad was a spoof of the FotF ad. I thought it was a woman making fun of what FotF was going to say.

And given what she said, I swore it was a health care reform ad. Even when Timmy himself showed up (see, I knew it was him because he tackled her, and that's what football players do) I still didn't get it. It still sounded like an health care reform ad -- all Ms. Tebow talked about was his health and how worried she still is about his health. How could that NOT be an ad for health care reform, and health care access for all?

Okay, so that's what I wanted to say about the ad. Unless you knew, before hand, that the ad was supposed to be an anti-abortion ad, you would never have known that's what it was. If nothing else, because the only thing about the ad that stuck in your mind was Pam Tebow being tackled to the ground by a guy a foot taller than she and probably 100 pounds heavier.

Now, this article says although the ad ranked dead last in Nielsen ratings, the ad was still a success because even if you were the lowest-ranking ad in the Super Bowl, you were still in the Super Bowl. And all these millions of people saw your ad.

Which would be a valid point, if the message you gave in the ad said what you originally wanted it to say.

Sure, 92 million people saw your message. But did they get it? Did they know what you were trying to say? (Besides "tackle your mom." And, dude, while I'm harping on that... don't quarterbacks throw more than they tackle? Couldn't we have had Timmy tell him mom to "Go long!" and toss her a football, or -- not to get too radical here -- a teddy bear or other baby item? That way, we get the football reference, without the violence against women. Just sayin'.)

I do agree that the hype before the ad aired gave Focus on the Family the attention they wanted. Bully for them. But how much hype was there outside the pro-choice community? Outside the anti-choice community? Did your Average Joe and Jane hear about it?

Or did they just see your health care reform ad and stand there, scratching their heads?

I'm too lazy to do the research, and I don't want to give FotF any more of my time, to look into it, but... was that the original ad? Was that what they were originally going to say?

Because that's not what was reported they were going to say. And they never released the script (did they?) So did they water down the ad because of the outrage?

Or did they truly spend "less than $100,000" to produce and $2.8 to air an ad that said... nothing? If you're going to spend that kind of money, shouldn't you make sure your message is as clear as it can possibly be?

Then again, I've never understood the anti-choice mentality. Maybe they are that clueless, and they do think this ad was a "success."

One-Track-Mind Criss

2010-02-15T23:30:00.000-06:00

Apparently, I have a one-track mind. I can either be a prolific blogger, or a hard-working writer... but I can't handle both at the same time.

Since I have to get my novel DONE (because it needs to END and escape it's work-in-progress status), I'm thinking of taking a leave of absence from le blogue. Sort of. That way I can focus on the novel without feeling guilty about neglecting the bloggy.

I may take some time off the whole Internetz thing, for Lent. (Don't worry, I'll still hang out here on Sundays -- I grew up Catholic, so I can Lent-cheat on Sundays.) So this will be less time on Twitter, less time blogging, less of all that stuff. For 40 days.

(Can I do it? Watch, I'll be back tomorrow, writing three posts before lunchtime. Meh.)

10 Things That Make Me Happy

2010-02-14T15:55:00.001-06:00

Marcy tagged me, so here I go:

my Freddy.
my Indy. And the other cats, too... but Indy's my favorite.
my electronic Trifecta: Blackberry, Sony eReader, Asus Eee PC (aka Itty-bitty PINK laptop).
crochetting. Even when I have to fight the cats off the yarn.
writing, and editing my novel. Which WILL be ready to see the light of day by April.
Twitter and my Twitter friends.
my job.
Hello Kitty.
finally seeing real snow, and finding out why people think snow's cool. (Er, no horribly BAD pun intended.)
my SPESHUL SEEKRIT I can't tell you about yet. (Details to follow.)

Now I have to tag five people... Lacey, Amanda, Danine, Suzan, and Cid.

Thankful Thursday: #snOMG edition!

2010-02-11T17:40:00.000-06:00

This week, I'm thankful for

THE BEAUTIFUL SNOW FALLING FROM THE SKY!!!
REAL SNOW, STUFF THAT STAYS ON THE GROUND AND STUFF!!!
a safe drive to work (in the snow and slush).
a safe drive home from work (in the snow and slush).
leaving work early!!!
late start tomorrow!!!
beautiful snow still falling. Everywhere. And it looks so beautiful.

Maybe Focus on the Family should have thought of this instead...

2010-02-08T09:24:00.000-06:00

Could this have been a better use of the organization's money, perhaps?

formspring.me: "Do you think it is healthy for teenagers to view pornography? Why or why not?"

2010-02-06T14:26:00.002-06:00

Do you think it is healthy for teenagers to view pornography? Why or why not?

Ooh... that's a tough one.

I think we need to remove the taboo from sex and sexuality, definitely. Teenagers are having sex and doing things their parents are ashamed to even think of, so we need to talk about these things, without shame or blame or fear or judgement, and provide teenagers (and adults) with the tools they need to particiapte in that behavior safely if that is what they choose to do, and the tools to know how to decline participation if that's what they choose to do.

We need to have this information out there.

Now, as to pornography... hmm. I'm a prude at heart, really. Also, from what I understand (I have viewed pornography, I'm not going to pretend I've never seen a magazine or a movie, but I also know there is tons of stuff, and genres and styles, out there that I have not seen) "most" or much of what's out there does not send positive or healthy messages to the role of the cis female in sex (I won't try to speak for trans or intersex people since I am wholly ignorant as to how they are represented in pornography, though I am willing to wager they are seen as a source of fetishes and not treated as real people/being with sexual desires of their own).

I guess before I could say yes, it is healthy for teenagers to view pornography, we'd have to change the industry and the material. I would want to make sure that lesbianism is not portrayed as a sexual fantasy for cis het men, and that women are not perpetually in the submissive role, only there to fulfill the fantasies of the males.

I do think porn has a place and a value, since, given our puritan, prudish society, teens can't get information about sex and sexuality and "alternative lifestyles" and non-cis, non-hetero sexuality any other way.

Ask me anything

Duty Calls (stolen from xkcd)

2010-02-05T20:12:00.000-06:00

Thankful Thursday: Planned Parenthood edition

2010-02-04T17:04:00.000-06:00

I'm thankful for Planned Parenthood.

They were there for me when I was a starving college student with no money and no insurance. I hope they can continue to be there for the women and men who need them.

Did you know that...

over the past 75 years, Planned Parenthood of North Texas has provided healthcare to more than 2.2 million patients?
PPNT serves men as well as women, in 29 health centers service 57 counties across North Texas?
the majority of PPNT's patients are 20-29 years old, earn less than $300 a week, and have no health insurance?
PPNT is the only nonprofit family planning provider in Tarrant County?
PPNT provides vital preventative healthcare, including:

birth control options,
well-woman exams,
screenings for blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes,
even flu shots?

PPNT does more cervical cancer screenings than any other healthcare provider in Texas?
PPNT educates parents, teens, educators, medical professionals, and civic and religious leaders?
PPNT advocates for

healthcare access and availability,
comprehensive and confidential care,
and accurate information about sexual health?

Well, now you do.

Feel free to do something to help.

Stolen Words Wednesday: Christine Todd Whitman

2010-02-03T20:43:00.000-06:00

Today I attended Planned Parenthood of North Texas's Annual Luncheon. The keynote speaker was Christine Todd Whitman, former New Jersey Governor (first female governor in NJ) and co-chair of the Republican Leadership Council, among other things. These are quotes I scribbled during her speech. (These are all her words; the stuff in quotations marks is word-for-word, the non-quoted text is my paraphrasing because I didn't get the exact words and I don't want to misquote her.)

On people protesting Roe v. Wade 37 years after the Supreme Court's decision: "It's as if people were still protesting Brown v. Board of Education in 1991."

"I am a pro-choice Republican. Contrary to what some people may say, we are not an endangered species!"

"[As Governor of NJ, was appointing women to different positions; people were saying] I was appointing 'so many women' -- something I had never heard when my male counterparts were appointing 'so many men'!"

"We need to be much more intentional in electing and appointing women to political office."

"Women do bring a different perspective to the table... We set a different tone." The atmosphere in her office/in her cabinets was one of collaboration; people were not fighting to pin the blame when something went wrong or to claim the credit when something went well, which happened often in male-dominated offices.

"Women have something unique to offer in politics."

[Talking about her daughter running for office... sorry, didn't get all the details] "As women we hold other women to a higher standard than we do their male counterparts." Her daughter had experience in politics, and children. She was asked, "Who's going to take care of the children?" and was told she didn't have enough experience. The man she was running against had been a substitute teacher before being elected.

"I'd never say support a woman just because she is a woman [but if two candidates are equal in their issues/stands] then yes, it's okay to choose the woman because she is a woman." We need a variety of opinions, women, people of color, etc.

Quoted Maureen Reagan: "Women will have reached equality when we can elect women who are as unqualified as some of the men we elect."

Spoke of the Terry Schiavo case: in four days, due to calls and letters to Congress, legislators wrote legislation and Bush returned from a vacation early to sign it. The next day polls showed 70-80% of the USians said the government had no business getting involved in that case. This means that 20-30% of the people were the ones who called and wrote their legislators to act on this. Congress got involved and took action in FOUR DAYS because of that small percentage being active and vocal. Be that active and vocal population -- never underestimate its power.

Stolen Words Wednesday: Sean James and Al Joyner Respond to the Tebow Super Bowl Ad

2010-02-03T19:18:00.000-06:00

PAJAMA JEANS. Need I say more?

2010-02-02T14:01:00.000-06:00

This? The greatest thing EVAH. For serious. I want some.

Found here.

A bad day to be a Texan...

2010-02-01T19:30:00.000-06:00

Today was not good. It's like all the bad news came out all at once today, and aimed its missiles at Texas.

It actually started last night (but I wasn't fully online last night, so I'm calling it "very early this morning"), when Marcy posted a link to this blog. Go read it -- see it with your own eyes -- then come back.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The Texas State Board of Education has banned -- BANNED -- a children's book. A BOARD BOOK. You know what they call them "board books"? Because they're made out of cardboard, instead of paper. Because the target audience is too young for paper. The necessary motor skills to turn pages have not yet developed in children of that age.

BUT THE BOOK IS MARXIST!!

Bill Martin, Jr. wrote children's books. He wrote BROWN BEAR, BROWN BEAR, WHAT DO YOU SEE. He died in 2004.

Bill Martin wrote some Marxist book. In 2008.

Obviously, this is an elaborate communist conspiracy to indoctrinate our children, and the Texas State Board of Education is the only entity smart and brave enough to see it and stand up against it.

Need more proof this is "socialist indoctrination"? See for yourself:

Exactly.

Oh, but that's not all of it.

Later on, via Twitter (how I get all my news, for serious) I discovered Props 4 and 5 (scroll to the bottom of page 4): [emphasis mine]

Prop 4: "The use of the word 'God', prayers, and the Ten Commandments should be allowed at public gatherings and public educational institutions, as well as be permitted on government buildings and property."

Prop 5: "The Texas Legislature should enact legislation requiring a sonogram be performed and shown to each mother about to undergo a medically unnecessary, elective abortion."

Need I say more?

I thought this was a free country, with separation of church and state. Isn't that what our Founding Fathers wanted?

I also thought doctors were the ones who should deem what is and is not "medically necessary" or "medically unnecessary." So if I request an elective tonsillectomy, do I have to watch a video of the procedure before the doctor will allow me to go into the OR?

This is just too insulting for words. I can't give it any.

But you know what takes the cake? This.

I can't comment on that last one. I really can't. The only thing that comes to mind is cuss words, and I try not to use those out loud (or typing). I can't believe I live in a state that has such a f*cked up legal system where something like that could even potentially happen.

The first two links are annoying, but, sadly, predictable. And, in the grand scheme of things, mostly harmless (those propositions are NOT going to pass, are they?) But this last one?

Tim Tebow's Other Super Bowl Ad

2010-02-01T12:50:00.001-06:00

I'm Criss, and I approve this message:

(Also, in case you missed it, read my "interview" with Pam Tebow here.)

Formspring.me: Transgender issues edition

2010-01-30T14:17:00.002-06:00

Where do you stand on transgender issues?

Where do I stand? Transgender people are people. Their body, their choice. Why is this even an issue? Shouldn't it just be a given??

Why do people think they have a right to question, prod, investigate, interrogate, judge, or comment on the self of another?

My stand on transgender issues is the same stand I have on every other issue: this group [be the group trans folk, intersex folk, LGBQ folk, women, people of color, people with disabilities... or whoever else I'm forgetting] deserves the same rights and privileges as your average cis, white, able-bodied, heterosexual, upper-middle-class man.

How has your support of transgender issues evolved? by lilithvf1998

I don't think I can use the word "evolved" yet, since I've just recently become aware of transgender issues.

I was sittin' pretty in my limited cis world, completely ignorant that the word "cis" existed. I had heard of drag queens and transvestites, and I was vaguely aware that there were people who said they were "a man trapped in a woman's body" or "a woman trapped in a man's body." But that was over there, far away, so I didn't really need to think about that, did I?

Now that I'm thinking about it, the closest I probably came to thinking about transgender people was when I read Isabel Allende's EVA LUNA, where one of the characters was a trans woman who worked as a prostitute -- I can't remember any of the details (now I feel I need to re-read the book *goes to get it from the bookshelf, realizes it's EVA LUNA, not PAULA as she had originally typed), but the main character is a young girl who somehow is taken in by these misfits (as in, a human Island of Misfit Toys), and one of the people in the house is the trans woman. I can't remember if Allende refers to her as a he or a she, but I remember the character wearing women's clothes and plucking her facial hair so she wouldn't have stubble.

But other than that and the episode on Friends with Chandler's dad being played by Kathleen Turner (which I think is further evidence of how misinterpreted and misrepresented trans people are in the mainstream media -- they still refer to his dad as a gay man and drag queen, not a trans woman, even though Chandler's dad lives their life as a woman -- or am I missing something?) I didn't really, for lack of a better word, notice trans people nor was I aware of their issues.

I think I first followed @nueva_voz because of a Twitter chat on women of color; through her I became aware of trans women's issues and -- as shameful as it is to say, but I'll say it because it's true -- trans women became "real people" to me (as opposed to fictional characters who only appeared in the controlled environments of books and movies).

I still want to call myself a "feminist" because I want to keep believing what I originally understood feminism to be: a movement to end oppression, especially the oppression of women... ALL KINDS of women. I know the movement started with cis white (rich) able-bodied women fighting against sexism, but it has grown to include the fight(s) against racism, heterosexism, and classism (in most cases...?) and I still want to believe it is still growing to include the fight(s) against ableism and cissexism and all other -sims I'm still not aware of (or that I'm forgetting as I type this... I'll blame it on the cold).

But I know the reality is that too many "feminists" are either still ignorant of trans issues (as I was) or choose to not take the opportunities given to them to learn and educate themselves on those issues. Then there are some who are openly and actively transphobic and transmisogynistic, which I cannot even comprehend. Which makes me hesitant to attach myself to a movement that would willingly exclude and attack an entire population of women who need it the most.

All that to say... my support of transgender issues is still in the "Behold! An amoeba!" stage, but I hope I am slowly making progress toward evolving into a multi-celled organism.

On Rape and Victim-Blaming

2010-01-30T08:23:00.002-06:00

(This was a phone post. Which is why it all came out as one long and painful paragraph... ARGH. And no, I do not regularly drive my father's cat. Edited to fix...)

Every time a woman comes forth with her story of rape, the victim-blamers feel the need to chip in their two cents. So that's got me thinking...

... We all know that it doesn't "count" if you rape a sex worker, right? I mean, they have sex for money! So when you FORCIBLY take sex for free and AGAINST THEIR WILL, well, that's totally okay, right? So...

... it's okay for me to steal from a grocery store, right? Because they GIVE THE FOOD AWAY for money, so it's not like they mind if people just TAKE the food -- at least, they shouldn't mind. I mean, that'd just be hypocritical, if all of a sudden they got all pissy and told you you can't just TAKE IT just because you feel like it! What if I'm really hungry, huh??

And what about whores and sluts? The women who dress all skanky and then get mad when you sexually assault them and rape them? Aren't they just asking for it because of the way they dress? So...

... the other day I was at the mall. Have you ever been there? Dude, those stores are such sluts!! They have all their clothes ON DISPLAY right there in front of you, showing it all off. It's like they're ASKING ME to steal the stuff. I mean, if they didn't WANT me to steal it, wouldn't they put their merchandise behind a counter or something?

And what about the stuff they have "on sale"? How is it wrong if I steal that? They're practically GIVING IT AWAY? So what if I take it by force? Only because I really really want that shirt? That's not really "stealing" if it's on sale and they leave it lying around so I can just put it in my purse and walk away, is it?

There's this guy in my neighborhood who drives a motorcycle. He's always driving around in it, showing it off, making lots of noise. So if I want to ride it, it's okay for me to take it, right? He's ASKING FOR IT, showing off his cool motorcycle to everyone. Isn't he begging me to steal it and take it out for a joyride?

And what about date rape? You know, when one person says the other one took advantage of them and raped them? Like, most of the time they're friends, or they're on a date, or at a party, or they're hanging out together and stuff? Shouldn't the person know what they were getting into? Just like...

... the other day a coworker invited me to her house to play Guitar Hero. She showed me how to use the controllers, and how to play the game, and all that. She knew what she was doing when she invited me over, okay? And why did she show me how to play the game if she didn't want me to play it? So it's totally okay if I punch her in the face and take the gaming system with me, right? I mean, she invited me to her house! She asked me to play! She can't just CHANGE HER MIND and not let me keep the game, now can she? How is that fair??

And then there's, like, couples who have had sex before, or they're in a relationship. Just because you said "yes" ONCE, that means you said "yes" FOREVER, right? I mean...

... my friend let me drive his car the other day when mine was in the shop. He was totally cool with me driving his car, he said he wanted to help me out, and when I said "thank you" he said "anytime." Um, HELLO. That means that ANYTIME I want to borrow a car I can just take his, right? Didn't he give me permission to steal his car because he let me drive it once?

My dad lets me drive his car ALL THE TIME. He prefers that I drive his car when he comes to visit me. So what's the problem with me going into his house, taking the car keys, and driving his ~~[cat]~~ car whenever I feel like it? He let's me do it, because he let's me do it when he gives me permission!

Wow. Look at that, victim-blamers. Your logic totally makes sense, when you put it that way. Thanks for enlightening me.

Thank you, Dr. Tiller.

2010-01-29T20:43:00.017-06:00

Thank you, Dr. Tiller, for giving your life to serve women and provide a service few others were brave enough to provide. Thank you for trusting us, and helping us.

Thank you, Dr. Tiller's family, for the sacrifice you made allowing him to go to work every day, despite the threats. Despite the bombings. Despite the shootings. Thank you for the love you showed him and the women he treated.

Thank you to his nurses and staff, who also braved the protesters and suffered the death threats. Thank you to their families, who send them to work every day knowing what they face.

Thank you to all the doctors, nurses, and staff, and escorts, who work at clinics that provide abortion services (and those that work at clinics that don't, but still have to put up with protesters who don't even understand what they're doing). We know you're there, and we appreciate it, even if we forget to say it. We need you -- thank you for being there for us.

A Few Questions I'd Like To Ask Pam Tebow

2010-01-29T15:35:00.001-06:00

As many of you are aware, Focus on the Family will air an ad during the Super Bowl (whose "network [CBS], which used to forbid "advocacy" advertising, agreed to air Focus on the Family's spot, which is valued at $2.5 million to $3 million"), where Pam Tebow, mother of ~~demigod~~ football player Tim Tebow, talks of her decision to carry her pregnancy to term, against her doctor's recommendations. According to The Christian Post,

The 30-second commercial, which features football star Tim Tebow, will present the former Florida quarterback’s personal story and will also feature Tebow’s mother, who refused to have an abortion while she was pregnant with him despite having suffered from a life-threatening infection.

(Don't you love how Ms. Tebow doesn't even get a name? She's just "Tebow's mother." As if she were, I don't know, a mere object, a tool to birth sports stars... instead of a full person on to herself.)

I think it's great that Ms. Tebow is being given this chance to tell her story. In honor of the event, Criss Writes... interviewed Ms. Tebow* about the ad.

*Editor's note: Due to the fact that Criss Writes... is not an actual news entity, and that Criss L. Cox, owner, manager, and editor-in-chief of CrissWrites.com, does not have $2-$3 million to request a real interview with Ms. Tebow, the conversation below never actually took place. But, trust me, I researched stuff and things, and I read, like articles and blog posts (what -- which ones? Well, uh... like, all of them. You know) about "Tebow's mother," and her responses have been written based on the information gathered by the journalism and fact-checking staff here at Criss Writes...

Criss: Ms. Tebow, thank you for meeting us here in my living room. Please pardon the cats.

Pam Tebow: I love all of God's creatures, even cats.

Criss: Now, Ms. Tebow, next Sunday, February 7th, you will be talking to the American-football-watching nation during an ad that will air during the Super Bowl. Is that correct?

PT: Yes.

Criss: Sources say you will talk about your choice to carry your pregnancy to term, the pregnancy that resulted in the birth of your son, Tim, even though doctors advised you to terminate because the pregnancy was endangering your life.

PT: Yes.

Criss: Did the doctors force you to terminate the pregnancy?

PT: No.

Criss: Did they force you to undergo medical treatment you disagreed with, because they were the doctors and they knew better?

PT: No.

Criss: They gave you the facts, gave you their medical diagnosis, and allowed you to make your own decision -- exercise your right to choose, so to speak -- on what to do with your pregnancy and your body?

PT: Yes.

Criss: Thank you, Ms. Tebow. No further questions, Your Honor.

I rest my case.

(Have something to say? Here, let me help you.)

***EDIT***
Go read this, too.

Thankful Thursday, pre-dated edition

2010-01-28T18:34:00.002-06:00

(Yes, I'm cheating. I'm typing this on Friday. But I wrote it, in my head, on Thursday. I just had a very busy Thursday, so I didn't get to type it then. I didn't phone-post because I can't do nifty bullet points from my phone.)

I'm thankful for:

my job. Not just because I have a job, but because I really do like my job. I love working in an office; I share that office with cool people; I still get to work with kids and teach them stuff.
my sister Lindsey, who introduced me (and the rest of the fam) to Dave Ramsey, without whose financial planning Freddy and I would not have transitioned so smoothly from my previous paycheck to my current one (which is CONSIDERABLY smaller).
my critique groups, who make me a better writer.
my Twitter writing buddies, who help me write more often (even if I don't officially participate in #wordathon I still get tons written on the weekends because of it).
Twitter in general, who answers any writing question in seconds. Research was never this simple or speedy.

Stolen Words Wednesday

2010-01-27T23:43:00.002-06:00

"... it's no longer inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to."

~Anna Nalik, "Breathe (2 AM)

"So what? I'm still a ROCK STAR."

~P!nk, "So What"

Scrubs, what happened to you?

2010-01-26T23:21:00.002-06:00

Scrubs used to be such a great show. Funny, poignant, clever... and multiracial.

Yes, the majority of the cast was white, but at least we had Turk and Carla, two huge characters. And Laverne/Nurse Roberts, before she died. (The Chief of Surgery was Asian, but that kind of follows the Asians-are-super-studious-and-are-all-doctors stereotype, so I think that cancels out the diversity.)

Then last season, when they got the new interns, we had Sunny. We also had that guy who's now on Parks and Recreation, though he left early on. We had two blond girls (in addition to Elliot), but at least we had some color on the show.

But now?

Le sigh, Scrubs.

We still have Turk, but even though the other leads from the previous incarnation have made guest appearances, and Turk is a main character in the new incarnation, we have not even mentioned Carla. Is there some sort of contract dispute between Judy Reyes and Scrubs? Or is there one now, that they have dissed her like this?

Our new "main character" is a blonde. (And a really annoying character, too, but that's another post.)

The other girl in med school is a blonde who doesn't even get lines -- she's just a prop so they can make jokes about her Australian supermodel body.

Denise, another blonde is back from the intern class. But her foil, Sunny?

*crickets*

Oh, wait, that's right. She showed up at the end of that one episode. Giving me false hope -- thanks, Scrubs writers.

At this point, I'm watching the show out of habit more than anything. The blondness is really irritating me.

Scrubs, you had such a good thing going. And this is what you do with it?

*sigh*

At least bring back Sunny.

(And make Lucy flunk out. She really sucks. Cast a brunette as her replacement, ease yourself into it. I would,t want you to sprain something, making such a drastic move as casting a Black woman or doing anything RADICAL like that.)

I must be doing something right...

2010-01-25T21:05:00.000-06:00

The other day I got the following ray of sunshine in my Facebook inbox: (beware, there is some foul language)

Stupid cunt, get back in the kitchen. Rape is hilarious, abortions should be mandatory, and you cunts should bow to your masters that are MEN. Pic related, its what you should be doing, instead of being a stuck up bitch looking for a reason to complain MEN are so much better than you.

fds In case you are curious about the "pic related," it's a lovely photograph of an erect penis with a girl's face behind it. She is somehow hanging from the top left-hand corner of the photograph, so she must have bee suspended from the ceiling when the photo was taken. Or maybe he was. Crazy kids...

I must be doing something right, if someone felt the need to take time out of his day to create a fake account, write this message, and attach a photo to it. When I'm getting on these people's nerves, well... can you ask for a higher compliment?

My Dream Job. For Serious.

2010-01-25T12:44:00.002-06:00

(I heartz LOLcats.)

formspring.me: How's Freddy doing?

2010-01-25T00:10:00.002-06:00

How's Freddy doing?

Freddy's doing quite well. He was a little ticked at the Cowboys last weekend, but he's over that now (time heals all wounds, don't you know).

He's come to terms with last weekend's loss, and today's win by the Colts cheered him up. If the 'Boys can't go to the SuperBowl, at least he can cheer for his bud's Colts.

Oh, and since our home Internet had been broken for most of the last two weeks, and I had not been chained to my laptop the way I usually am, Freddy and I were spending some nice quality time together. Too bad I fixed teh Internetz today (sort of... wireless is still broken, but I'm plugged in and therefore confined to this one corner of the house), and we're back to me sitting at the laptop while Freddy does... something else. I don't know, he's in the other room...

Ask me anything

6wS: Indy is excited about his victory.

2010-01-24T17:27:00.002-06:00

Go Colts!
(Cowboys didn't make it, so we'll take what we can get.)

Six-word Sunday challenge

What does TRUST WOMEN mean to you?

2010-01-22T19:52:00.003-06:00

I don't even know how to start to answer this question. Is the answer not painfully obvious? Do we really need to spell it out for you??

Trust women. Trust us to know what we're doing. Trust us to know the consequences and effects of our actions. Trust us to know enough to make decisions for ourselves.

Trust that when we make a decision, we've thought about it. We've weighed all the options. And if this is what we decided, then there's a d@mn good reason for that.

Trust me -- I know better what's best for me than you do. Because I'm me, I live every day of my life as me. I know how I will react to the things that will happen to me -- okay, fine, I don't know the future, so I don't know exactly how I will react to something until it actually happens to me, but you know what? I know how I have reacted to everything in my life up to now... so maybe I can make a pretty darned good educated guess about how I will react to those unknowns in the future.

You, person who doesn't know me -- literally, we have never met (no, not you, people who regularly read this blog; I'm talking to the rabid antis) -- you, on the other hand, have no clue. And you know what else? You won't be there for all those unknowns; I will. So let me decide for myself what I need to have happen so that I can handle those things.

If I feel an abortion is the right choice for me, and for that potential child, then that is nobody's business other than mine and my doctor's. If you don't like it, for whatever reason, then... who cares? I don't. You know why? Because you are not involved in this.

I don't force you to do things my way -- see, I trust you to make your own decisions about yourself -- so why do you feel you have a right to force me to do things your way?

No other medical procedure has to put up with this. No, wait -- that's right. Silly me.

Did you know that if you're a cis woman, you can have all sorts of operations on your breasts, and even on your vagina, without anyone batting an eyelash? But if you happen to be a trans woman, and you want to have gender affirming surgery to make your body match your self... whoops! Sorry, now we need a note from a therapist. We need to know you've talked to someone about this "radical" move you're trying to make. Yes, you need to get permission from your doctor and your therapist to do this.

To go from a B-cup to a D-cup, just because you feel like it? Sure, go ahead! No, no note. No problem.

To treat gender dysphoria? Oh, no, we can't do that. That's... different. That's not what I would do!!! You must not know what you're doing -- we must stop you! Protect you from yourself! Do you really know what you're doing? Have you thought about it long enough? Maybe we should give you a mandatory waiting period. Here, talk to a therapist about it. Because I'm sure you have not thought this through well enough. Why? I don't trust you, because you are not like me!

Really, people.

Yes, I know we're talking about things that deal with the naughty bits. We're talking about -- shh! -- S-E-X. Oh noes!

Please note: things that make you more heterosexxxy are fine. Breast augmentation, vagina tightening, vagina dying... those are fine. Because, cis women, you are, after all, little more than a sex object. (Trans women, you can't even make babies. If you're of no use to us as an incubator, what use are you? Sheesh... Oh, wait -- we'll keep you around, for those of us with fetishes. Cool.)

I really meant to write an eloquent post for Blog for Choice day, but the whole idea that I'd need to explain what it means to trust women makes me too angry (maybe I'm still channeling the main character from my novel -- I've been working on the scene where she walks into the abortion clinic). So, instead, this post just turned into an angry rant. Yes, that's what you get from me today: angry wordvomit.

What does "trust women" mean to me? It means mind your own business. Trust me to mind mine, and to take care of what I need to, responsibly.

Thankful Thursday, Roe v. Wade edition

2010-01-21T17:08:00.002-06:00

(Edited to add linky-links and to correct some info as pointed out in the comments.)

I'm thankful for:

being lucky enough to live in a country, state, and large-enough city where I had access to a safe and legal abortion.
the support of my family and friends when I "came out" to them; I wish I'd done it when it happened instead of waiting 5 years to find out they didn't judge me and they loved me anyway.
being lucky enough to be employed, with an employer who offered health insurance, so I could afford birth control for the majority of my fertile life (so far).
the Internet, specifically blogs and Twitter, where I have found so many like minds who encourage and inspire me to keep fighting for what's right.
growing up on Chile, where I received comprehensive sex ed in school (along with religion class -- though I can't say I'm thankful for that instruction; I just wanted to mention the unusual spectrum) since I was in middle school. *EDIT* I'm thankful my parents could afford to send me to a private school which provided comprehensive sed ex (along with Catholic religion classes).
Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, NNAF, and all the other organizations who fight to offer reproductive choices and health care to low-income cis women. (I haven't done any research yet to know how/if these orgs offer those same services to trans men, or if they also offer basic health care to trans women, which is why I qualified the statement. Any info on the matter would be most welcome.)
all the people who choose to bring children into the world because they want to love them and care for them.
all the people who choose to remain child-free, for whatever reason.
all the people who choose to bring a child into their home when the biological parent was not able to care for them.
Roe v. Wade, all 37 years of it. I'm thankful I've lived in a society that respects me enough to grant me control of my own body, even if I have to fight each day to keep that right.

What are you thankful for today?

Pass real health care reform, not another abortion ban

2010-01-20T11:54:00.001-06:00

Day 9*: Where do YOU want your tax money NOT to go?

2010-01-14T13:13:00.004-06:00

*Two posts in one day! Because I skipped days 9 and 12. So this is a make-up post.

And along those lines... HOW AWESOME IS THIS VIDEO???

Support the No Abortion Ban. We already have Hyde, where do you want your money NOT to go?

(Thanks to @dancerjess and @dubiouslygreat for tweeting this!)

Day 14: From The Onion: New Law Requires Women To Name Baby, Paint Nursery Before Getting Abortion

2010-01-14T11:53:00.004-06:00

When I first saw this tweet, I almost passed out -- until I saw "via @TheOnion." Then I felt a little better.

I watched the video, which I'm embedding below, and while part of me wanted to share it, part of me didn't (and I'm still not entirely sure I'm going to publish this). I know The Onion is doing it's social-commentary-through-satire and that they are pointing out the ridiculousness of all the many, many laws mandating what a pregnant person* must do before being allowed to get an abortion (viewing a sonogram, mandatory waiting periods, and other crap I don't want to bother remembering).

The problem is that when in reality we do have such preposterous laws (or proposed laws; the most ridiculous ones have thankfully been defeated), the joke walks a fine line. "Crisis pregnancy centers" send you home with diapers and baby booties and onesies so you can "think over" what you're going to do with your unplanned pregnancy. So how far off are we really from painting a nursery?

I also hesitate to post it because of the language used (which is the language anti-choicers use all the time). We all know that a fetus has the potential to develop into a baby, but the fetus is not a baby. And it's not an "unborn baby," any more than I am an undead corpse; it is a developing fetus, one that could develop complications (or maybe already has). It is a parasite.

A baby is a living, breathing, autonomous human being (dependent, but autonomous -- it breathes on its own, eats and digests on its own. It can't hold the bottle, but it sucks and swallows and digests all on its own. For the purposes of this specific situation, that's an autonomous being); a baby has already been born and it is no longer part of the "incubator," no longer attached to them and dependent solely on them for survival -- a baby is dependent on someone, but since it is not attached to any one person's uterus, any other person, besides the person from whose uterus it came, can assume the caretaker role.

Many people who have an abortion do want children, and love children and babies, but for a wide variety of reasons, cannot carry that pregnancy to term at that point in their life. Therefore the flippant talk of babies and nurseries in the Onion video, as if the fetus were already a baby, can be triggering for those people who had to make a difficult choice -- for their sake and the sake of that potential child.

(This was supposed to be a short, quick blog post, showing you a funny video. Well, so much for that...)

So, if you want to watch it, there it is. The joke is very well done; I just wonder how long it'll take before we see this conversation play out seriously on Fox News.

New Law Requires Women To Name Baby, Paint Nursery Before Getting Abortion

*First I wrote "woman," but that's an incorrect generalization, as A) I meant cis women, not all women, and B) trans men can also get pregnant.

Day 13: Help Haiti (stolen from @mightymarce)

2010-01-13T15:21:00.002-06:00

Of course my home laptop decides to delude itself into thinking it doesn't have a wireless card anymore, so Criss has no home Internetz. During NaBloPoMo.

Since I am suffering technical difficulties, you will forgive me if I cheat today and send you over here, to Marcy's blog, where she has some info on the earthquakes in Haiti and links to Twitter accounts to keep you up to date on the events (and aftershocks), as well as links to donate money to rescue efforts, so people can get help, food, water, etc.

If you're too lazy to click over, then at least read this:

The simplest way to give money quickly is to text "Haiti" to 90999, which automatically sends $10 to the Red Cross (the charge shows up on your cell phone bill, and 100% of the $10 charge goes directly to the Red Cross). But if you have more time (and money) to give, do check out the Mashable list to find out where to donate.

Come on. It's $10. You can do it. I did.

Day 11: How to warp the perfect Valentine's Day present

2010-01-11T13:59:00.001-06:00

I know Christmas is over, but Valentine's Day is coming up! And what would your sweet someone love more than A CAT?

The only problem is they are so hard to wrap! So I'm sharing this how-to video with you.

(Video was shared with me by @maureenjohnson.)

Criss writes...

Some thoughts on the Penn State thing: educators and administrators reporting abuse (or not)

Motherhood Changes You

A Kid's Reaction to a Gay Couple

Schlotzsky's Bathroom Signage #FAIL

On babies "choosing"

Abortion: Totally Just Like A Spare Tire

Birthing Rights ARE Reproductive Rights

Apple Dumplings by Virginia Howes

"Selling" breast milk

Birth Control Injection For Men

Switching to condoms...

Star Wars and Women

"Where your money is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:21

Abstinence-Only Driver's Ed

I Hate Pumping

Toilet Training: A film by Tara Mateik and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project

Please DON'T thank me for menstruating, thankyouverymuch.

Rape, Roethlisberger, and #HR3

God's Gift of Free Will

Breastfeeding is "icky." Didn't you know?

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On Parasites and Choice

6wS*: LOOK WHAT FREDDY AND I MADE!!!1!!11!!!!!

Even fetuses know the difference between a fetus and a baby!

Like parents, like fetus...

Pregnancy Sucks: Under Pressure

Dancing at the Movies montage

#Preggo Goodie Bags: Someone Get On This

Letter to my 33-week fetus

Out of the mouths of babes (or, Sex and the City... and Horses)

Simon's Cat in "The Box"

On Vegetarianism

The Solution to the Name Game Conundrum!

What's in a [last] name? NOT THAT MUCH. So get over it.

THIS is why it's not a baby until it comes out:

How is your pregnancy going?

It [was] my birthday! Wanna give me some water? @mycharitywater

"Tiny" #preggo rant

how did calling hubby Freddy come about(sorry, I'm sooooo out of the loop!)? Also, congrats on the fetus! Do you plan to find out the gender or keep it a surprise?

Why I Chose to Have an Amniocentesis

fetus report?

Wrandom Ramblingss and #Preggo-ness

how's the fetus?

Message to Pregnant Women and Mothers

Did you leave the Catholic church before or after your abortion?

What emotions do you feel about your pregnancy and impending mommyhood? Are you excited, scared, etc? (Btw, CONGRATS!)

ZOMG The Pro-Choicer is Pregnant!!!

Hello. My name is Criss, and I am privileged.

VAGINA!!! TAMPONS!!!! VAGINA!!!!

"Feministas" and the T-Word: The Aftermath

International ALL Women's Day: "Feminista"

We mades a video! Meet Gus. And Darth

Working wives are bad news for Hero Husbands

Stolen Words Wednesday: "I am not American."

Sure, 92 million people heard Pam Tebow. But did she SAY anything?

One-Track-Mind Criss

10 Things That Make Me Happy

Thankful Thursday: #snOMG edition!

Maybe Focus on the Family should have thought of this instead...

formspring.me: "Do you think it is healthy for teenagers to view pornography? Why or why not?"

Duty Calls (stolen from xkcd)

Thankful Thursday: Planned Parenthood edition

Stolen Words Wednesday: Christine Todd Whitman