of any group. in this case, Christianity, as written by Melissa here:

Christianity has a 2,000-year history that has seen countless iterations of the religion based on countless interpretation of the text and shaped to fit countless times and spaces and needs in disparate cultures all around the world. Christians have done great things, and not-so-great things—and anyone who makes the personal choice to carry the Christian mantle associates themselves with a history that includes all the good stuff and all the shitty stuff, too. One can’t say, “I only associate with the good Christianity—not the inquisitions and the genocides and the warmongering and the colonialism and the institutional misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, anti-Semitism…”

That’s all part of Christianity’s legacy, too—and it just isn’t intellectually honest to say, “Well, those weren’t real Christians.” Yes, they were. And so are the Christians who do shitty stuff today.

They might not be the same kind of Christian as you are, but they are nonetheless Christians.

Christianity, at least (and especially) in America, is a privilege—and, like any privilege, it can be uncomfortable to face the ugly reality of what other members of a privileged class can do to non-privileged folks, even if you don’t do it yourself. I’m white, I’m straight, I’m cisgender: I understand the impulse to distance oneself. But as a white person, I am obliged to acknowledge that the history of white supremacy in America is one of slavery, of lynchings, of segregation, of sundown towns, of internment camps, of genocide, and of all manner of institutionalized racism. I don’t get to say (nor do I want to) that the KKK aren’t “real” white people.

They sure as hell are.

I do my best not to play that game.

The problem is that such a distinction, the Bible makes very clear, is none of our business. It is, in fact, something Jesus explicitly commanded his followers not to do:

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

This also informs my feminism, for what it’s worth. I don’t get to decide what’s Truly Feminist. I do get to decide what kind of feminism to align myself with, though.

But these arguments over Who Is A Real True Member Of My Group never feel quite right. Much like Melissa said, it feels like trying to hold up the Good parts of your faith/belief/politics and disown the bad. But we don’t get to do that.

Some seriously horrific shit gets done in my name, as a Christian, a white person, a feminist, a US citizen. I don’t get to disown that for my own ego. To do so is to deny the real hurt and pain that the victims feel — to tell them “your pain matters less than my reputation.”

I am a Christian. It’s what I believe. And it’s also tied to a long and painful history of cruelty and oppression. I will not abandon my personal faith because other people who shared it were assholes. I will also not attempt to say that those assholes somehow don’t count as Real True Christians because of their actions. Because I’m not the one who gets to decide that.

I am a feminist. It is what I am. And it’s tied to a long and painful history of cruelty and oppression. It is happening now. I don’t get to deny that. What good does it do the victims to say “Well, you were victimized by fake feminists, not real ones”? What do they care, and why should they? They were victimized nonetheless, and that should be enough. That should be enough for us to take them seriously and right the wrongs that were done in part by us. Those people were, and are, still feminists. What I should be doing is not writing them out of my history, but accepting that history and attempting to make feminism better right now.

In short, the game feels dirty. Because it’s not about actually doing right by other people, in the end. It’s about our own self-esteem. And yeah, my self-esteem is important. But that’s for me to mess with – I don’t get to use other people’s pain as a tool for my personal betterment.

Things I’ve been meaning to say for some time.

1.

I am really bad about keeping up with my blog roll, followers, and reading. I am usually up to a week behind in Google Reader. I take a long time to finally get around to subscribing to the RSS feed on a blog I have been reading and loving for some time. And even then I take awhile to add it as a link. I also have the problem of figuring out how heavy a particular blog will be in content — in either length or frequency — and whether I will be able to handle adding it to my reading load.

Last year before I began my full-time job, I went through and culled every blog I could bear to part with (mostly the white liberal boy-blogger types, such as Washington Monthly) that aren’t bringing any news I don’t get from other sources, and aren’t giving me a perspective outside the mainstream dominant-group perspective (that is: Western, upper-middle class, white, cis, straight, abled, educated, etc.) This means I have a lot of trouble in that I keep coming across new blogs and writers I want to follow — but I honestly can’t get myself to stop reading the other people I still have!

There are people I come across, or people who link to me or follow me, and I take a long time to finally check out their sites, and if it appears to be a fairly heavy/frequent blog I usually put off adding it to my reading. :-\ But I am not ignoring anyone on purpose.

2.

I have a lot of trouble writing crisply and coherently on a consistent basis. Sometimes, the words flow without trouble. But most times, I am really struggling to translate thought to speech. A lot of this is what is often called “fibro fog” or brain fog. It’s a state of cognitive impairment common to fibromyalgia patients that makes it difficult to focus or concentrate, makes it hard to recall words, makes it hard to organize thoughts. It is so named because it feels like a thick, heavy fog settling in on your brain. It is hard to push through, hard to see where you are heading and how to get there.

I described it in my about page thusly:

I often have difficulty translating ideas into coherent sentences or pulling up a particular word important to conveying my meaning. My writing may be imprecise at times, like describing the buildings, greenery and landmarks surrounding my house without being able to describe the house itself. When I am angry it gets very bad — or maybe I get angry because it is so bad — and I can grow very frustrated at being unable to untangle the mess of ideas in my head and translate them to cohesive, understandable sentences.

Another aspect of it: I feel like my brain groups words together based on similarity in meaning — but files away all but one of those words. So I have trouble speaking precisely, using the right word for the meaning I am trying to convey, because I can only access the one word from that group, and no matter how hard I exert myself I just cannot pull up any of the other words. And the way my brain organizes these grouped “files” is haphazard, so I may not even be looking in the right group, so to speak — it may just be a group with a loose association to the group that contains the accurate word for whatever concept I am trying to express.

This gets very frustrating, to say the least.

There is another, much more personal reason I have for having trouble translating concepts-inside-the-mind into words-on-the-outside, having to do with my past and childhood, which I may elaborate on in the future. But that will have to be a long post, and I don’t have room for it here, at this time.

3.

I am a flake.

There is no way to get around it. It is who I am. I always have been, and always will be, a flake. No amount of effort, will power, meditation, medication, or otherwise will ever change it, because it is fundamentally what I am.

For a thousand different reasons, physical and mental and emotional, legitimate and il-, excusable and un-, understandable and not, I simply cannot hold true to every commitment. I am apt to forgetting things — anything — my cell phone when I go out, or to close the window in the kitchen when I turn on the air conditioner, or to read or respond to an email (no matter how important; ask both my husband and my best of friends, and they will inform you that they, too, have had it happen — often), to participate in an event or project I expressed interest in … even a very important doctor appointment for which I have been waiting for a long long time. Just last month I actually triple-booked myself at 2 p.m. on the 27th, for a doctor’s appointment, counseling and physical therapy.

I am a flake. It’s what I am. No matter how important something is, how much I care about it, how many check-points I set up to ensure I remember to do it. I am still prone to forget, delay, procrastinate, lose track of.

I’ve given up on changing it, because all it did was foster guilt and self-worth criticism and never actually changed the behavior itself. So what the fuck good was I doing — to myself or the other people who may be affected?

I am a flake. It is who I am. It will never change. And I’m not going to apologize for it any more.

That’s all for now.

You’ve undoubtedly heard the news already. A history of domestic violence or C-section are considered, by private US health insurance companies, to be “pre-existing conditions,” which are used as a basis for denying coverage, rescinding coverage, charging higher rates, or other discriminatory practices.

Of course, this is outrageous. Why should a woman who has been beaten by some asshole be denied health care coverage? It isn’t fair.

But there’s something wrong here. And not just with this discriminatory practice — but with the people breathlessly reporting it.

Because, you see, it is being reported, not as:

Pre-Existing Condition Exclusions Are Morally Wrong, but as

How Dare They Treat DV Victims and Mothers the Same Way They Treat Women with Depression, Diabetes and Cancer!

It is being reported as different from “normal” pre-existing condition exclusions. It is being reported as being especially wrong. As being worse. A true moral violation, taking things to a new level.

But why?

Here’s the thing. Insurance companies refuse coverage to people with pre-existing conditions (anything from asthma to leukemia) because they know these people will be highly likely to incur greater costs than healthy patients. The entire rationale for excluding them is because they cost more money.

If you have had a C-section once, you are much more likely to end up having another one if you ever give birth again. If you have a history of domestic violence, you might end up with an abusive partner again, and end up needing care.

Yeah, it’s complete bullshit that these people would be refused health care. It’s downright immoral.

But why is it especially immoral to refuse health care to these women — but not to women with osteoporosis or an anxiety disorder or back pain? Or Ehler-Danlos Syndrome or food allergies or heart disease or lung cancer?

How is it any different?

Victims of domestic violence don’t deserve to suffer consequences for something that is not their fault. This is truth. It contributes to the very popular cultural myth that victims are somehow to blame for the abuse they suffer — that they must have done something to provoke it, or that they should have left, etc. All this stuff is highly damaging.

But that doesn’t make it different than telling a woman with lung cancer that she can’t have care because her disease is somehow her fault. Which contributes to the very popular cultural myth that people with medical conditions are somehow to blame for them — that they must have done something to earn them, that it’s their own fault they ended up that way, and therefore they lose rights to certain things because they are inflicting the costs of their mistakes on the rest of us.

Because if you haven’t done anything wrong, you won’t ever end up sick. If you do end up sick, there must be something you did wrong.

Maybe that woman smoked. And maybe that other woman slapped her boyfriend first. And that woman who was raped wore a short skirt and flirted with the man first. That does not make this violation her fault. This is basic feminist theory. “Blaming the victim.”

Health care is a human right. We all deserve basic health care that respects a person’s dignity and integrity and humanity.

So why are these things different? Especially outrageous?

I can’t identify any reason except one.

Because they apply to healthy women.

It’s understandable why health insurance companies would refuse care to women with arthritis. It makes sense that they would deny care to women with psychiatric disorders.

Because we, as a society, think it is OK to deny quality of life and societal access to people with medical conditions, disabilities and chronic illnesses. We have determined that it makes sense to discriminate against them. We get why these things are done. And they’re done to those people. Over there. Not to me and mine.

But C-sections? Why, one-third of mothers in the US will have a C-section instead of a vaginal birth! That affects me and mine. Therefore, it is especially outrageous — that we would be treated like we treat them.

Oh, but that’s not how you think?

Really?

What justification is there for acting as though these practices are any worse than the practice of denying coverage to women who have lupus?

There isn’t any that isn’t rooted in a deeply ableist bias.

How about we get outraged by the fact that there is any such thing as a pre-existing condition exclusion at all? I can get behind you on that one.

This is for my blog-sisters who use wheelchairs, power chairs and other mobility aids.

hodgepodgeia is a seller who makes, among other things, “saddle bags,” chair caddies, bed caddies and walker bags:

Smartie Pak, Jr.

Image description: An over-the-arm bag for armed chairs, with a zipper pouch and several pockets.

Easy Reach Scooter Pak

Image description: A bag that hangs over both sides of the seat on a scooter or powerchair, with various pockets and pouches for storage

Walker Bag

Image description: A bag that hangs over the front handle of a walker, with a pouch on both the front and back side with various pockets inside for storage

The seller appears to be open to custom orders — if you prefer a specific fabric or color scheme, or other reasonable changes.

This is what is so wonderful about Etsy: you find people making quite innovative products, often costing less than you would pay even at the cheapest brick-and-mortar store, and most of them are open to working with you to produce a custom product for your specific needs or preferences. You can reference their current items and former sales (linked on the right-hand column of their storefront: X items for sale, Y items sold) for the types of materials and fabric patterns they have used, as well as styles of product they are capable of making, when figuring out what sort of modifications to ask for.

Further searching produce a variety of products including padded seats, pocket scarves, more walker bags (of various styles from various sellers) and a range of other items.

All it takes to buy from Etsy is a free account, which also allows you to message sellers with questions about their items or inquiries about the possibility of customizing. And if you make anything and would like to sell it, Etsy provides a very nice platform for selling your handmade items with what appears to be a very reasonable fee schedule (around 20 US cents per listing, all listings created equal). There is a huge variety of items available on the site — up to and including baked goods, teas and houseplants! — and it’s a nice little community.

See also: my last post on Etsy items for people with disabilities/chronic illness.

Once you see this, we know the new system’s a go.

I haven’t messed with tech stuff in years now. I’m a little rusty. Fortunately, my statistic geek husband, for whom “playing with spreadsheets” is a primary hobby, helped get everything restored via remote MySQL access. I’m sure I would have been able to figure it out on my own… eventually… and with much worse stress and corresponding headaches and pain. So. Thanks, honey! ;)

We now return to our (ir)regularly scheduled blogging. Thanks for your patience.

I am transferring both the hosting provider and domain registrar for my blog as my husband and I reorganize/consolidate accounts. In the meantime, the site may be down for periods. It may be completed in a day, maybe 1-2 weeks.

In the meantime, you can find me still posting regularly over at my Tumblr.

Thanks for bearing with me :)