for Christmas, i sent my mother a gift card for a local grocery store (she was already in awful shape financially — add in a ballooning ARM and a serious recession and things get pretty bad). i asked if the locations were any good (there were takeovers going on when i was moving two years ago). her reply,

“yes we are going to Food 4 Less they built one on North Court, you can only go there in the daylight, too many shootings”

mmmm, home.

i work in an office now dealing with those same people, those people everyone is so afraid of. the poor people. and especially those who are racial minorities (well, actually racial pluralities where i grew up). you know, the trashy people, the ghetto people, the gang members, the baby mamas and welfare queens.

when i moved out on my own in 2004, a four hour drive from anyone with whom i had even acquaintance, i was warned profusely about the dangers of being a young, single girl out on her own. in public or in my home - no matter, it’s all dangerous. really i shouldn’t be going at all, because you never know what could happen to you, you know, around them.

living in orange county i found in my college peers a strange aversion to using the free-for-students bus system to get around. the system was clean, safe, with good frequency and practically no point at which there wasn’t a stop within a mile at most. but these kids just couldn’t bring themselves to use it. my roommate was without her car for one day, just one day, and she skipped classes altogether rather than take the bus to school and back. my conversation with her made it quite clear why. she felt it was beneath her. and, my curiosity piqued, i found similar attitudes in many of my classmates through my time there.

why? what is it about the bus that makes it so untouchable? it’s not the bus system itself - again, impressively clean, incredibly easy to use, and free! throughout the entirefuckingcounty! no - it wasn’t a systemic problem. it was a problem of proximity. proximity to them.

and, ok, it annoys the shit out of me.

you aren’t going to die of the ghetto cooties if you find yourself within a couple yards of a poor person. they aren’t going to bite you. stop acting like you’re passing through the lion cage at the zoo.

this middle class obsession with “safety,” with where’s a “good” area to live, and especially where is an acceptable place to raise a child, with the very heavy implication that allowing a child contact (especially regular contact!) with the cooties-carrying poor folk is tantamount to abuse - it drives me absolutely upthefuckingwall.

i’m just tired of it. look: i grew up with Those People. hell: i grew up being part of Those People. and though i am mostly comfortable financially now (it’s nice, having a husband who can work full time, not having to rely on anemic disability benefits) we still live surrounded mostly by Those People. Those People are my people.

and i say this as a moderately conventionally-attractive skinny young white chick who dresses and behaves like a solid member of the middle class (trust me, i learned how to “pass”) - all the things which supposedly make contact with Them so dangerous - as long as you aren’t stupid (you know, the old flashing-your-cash cliche), you can walk among Them and make it out alive. because really, when you get down to it - look: They are the same species you are. you can even breed with one and produce fertile offspring! (well, i guess that’s not that much of a revolution - it seemed to be about the only purpose the higher classes [that's you too, mr. middle man] had for direct contact with Them throughout history…)

anyway - if you understand these people as people, and learn a little common sense (that is, not limited to “stay away altogether”) you’ll do just fine. even if you’re white. even if you’re middle class. even if you’re a chick. even if you’re all of the above!

and maybe if more of “Us” started treating “Them” as, well, us (and not in that fakey feel-good liberal way) maybe we’d find out that there’d be much less reason to stay away from Them than we thought.

This has been a rather curious endeavor, working at a state office that provides assistance to several disadvantaged groups — and being able to see things on the other side of that reinforced wall. It is an interesting perspective. And I think having a background (however limited) in disability rights and other issues of social justice helps me understand far better what is going on. I’m not sure about you, but I can hold two opposing ideas in my head at the same time and manage to see the truth in both of them. I am large; I contain multitudes. There are honestly many things that are beyond our ability to fix, address, or really do anything other than acknowledge, if that. Sometimes, there is nothing we can do. And yet — and yet. Are the way things are the way things have to be? When the way things are means our rights cannot be fulfilled, must we abdicate them? Are our minds, our worlds, so limited?

I think I’m glad this is a limited-term job; I am still debating myself over whether I can really handle this. But for the time being, well, I will. It’s who I am. And honestly, I love it. I only wish my body allowed me the option of doing anything else too.

So this is what I have been doing. I’m doing my best to restore, slowly and deliberately, a careful balance to my life. Come say hello.

amandaw on tumblr — for quotes, short thoughts, and other collections.

behold:

Our focus is often (and should be) on the women targeted by this hate, the women who suffer under this stream of threat and this actuality of violence. It should be focused on the actors and co-conspirators as well. Aside from those who take direct part in that hate or violence, another important piece of this is the effects of this misogyny upon the male in general. What misogyny does to the male identity and psyche and sense of peace and self-love. After all, the Female is not hated in a vacuum. So, too, is the Feminine, entire. And that cannot be walled off to one gender. This loathing, this hatred points back to what we know to be part of our natural being.

Men (as boys) are “asked” to join the oppression (under great threat of both social humiliation and physical violence and over and over, too) and to do this of course, we must snuff out/suppress the Feminine in ourselves. This is, of course, a great pain and loss to a human. And as this loss cannot be mourned by implied decree, this pain becomes a bitter, perverse mess that is blind to itself. And so men not only join the hate against women, but they then envy women for their freedom (to still be allowed) to be expressive, emotive, beautiful, affectionate, relaxed, vulnerable. And the loathing to self-loathing ties to envy ties to sorrow and loss and is given ground, and men are emotionally insane when modeled as instructed. And they act out this insanity even when they don’t know why. It is because they have too often been prevented from even knowing who they are to begin with.

…

For if a man cannot love the feminine aspect of himself, nor can he love a woman. And if he is hiding from that half of himself, he cannot fully see a woman. And if he would abdicate half his power, he is weak to the point of failing.

…

Because Colonization (and Patriarchy, too) are about control. And thus, Prop H8. And thus stiff collars and the Western Modes of acceptable and authoritative dress. And thus stark unforgivable lines. And thus dichotomized stances and laws that no person lives under comfortably and organically, unless they crave unnatural and aggravating wires strapping them down to the earth, making up for all the strength they have abdicated and would have used to guide and know themselves otherwise….

Your progressive media, folks.

One day my husband is dragging me (who likes to play sports, but has no skill at playing sports, and had zero interest in pro sports whatsoever) along to a playoff game, the next thing we know I’m a rabid Penguins fan. I “accidentally” bought a six-game mini-plan last season (long story), which didn’t help matters. I got to watch Malkin step up the points race while Sid was down with a high ankle sprain. I developed a quick appreciation for Marc Andre Fleury, the deft and nimble crosseyed French-Canadian crack monkey, my one and only celebrity crush (seriously, watch that man move — the splits, the dives, the spins, the full-getup-and-skates hops — and watch his dark eyes dart around behind his face mask, always searching — and tell me that isn’t impressive as hell). I got to be a part of the incredible energy in Mellon Arena during the final games of the season. It’s a drug. And I got hooked.

I don’t know what it is about the game that draws me. It’s not for a lack of other sports in the household — hubby is a baseball stats geek, and also watches football, basketball, and NASCAR — none of which interest me much. (Surprisingly, the most tolerable of those four is the last one.) But for whatever reason, now, the sound of skates on ice, and the silly epic-sounding Penguins intro music, gets me in that same giddy mood children get in on Christmas morning.

One of the things I appreciate most about hockey is that it didn’t seem to have the exclusive atmosphere of, say, your football or basketball. There are no cheerleading squads or “dancers,” and the ads during the TV broadcasts tend to be pretty mild. No soft porn, GoDaddy, macho-man robots, local radio-sponsored hot babe contests, and the like. There is an element of performed masculinity, as in just about any mainstream pro sport. I mean, fighting is pretty much a central tenet to the game. But — and I’m having trouble articulating the distinction here — while there is definitely quite a bit of feminist analysis to be done on the game, the players, the culture, the advertising, and so on — there isn’t quite the same constant reminder to women that this isn’t for you.

It’s hard to watch football and not be bombarded with messages that are explicitly and enthusiastically geared for men. Not men as humans, but men as men. And not even men as men, in an affirmative, appreciative way — but men as not-women, in a taunting, exclusionary way. It is telegraphed quite clearly that women’s only place in the game is for men’s consumption.

I never much got that sense in hockey — or NASCAR, surprisingly, as I said. The culture was definitely geared toward men, but it didn’t shut the door on women. And I appreciated that. “Honorary man” still isn’t good enough, but it’s a hell of a lot better than “man’s property.”

In football, women are a part of the game as bikini-clad cheerleaders. In racing, women are part of the game as on-the-ground reporters. And while the latter sport is hardly innocent (trust me, I’ve hardly a lack of criticism for the sport), that difference does send a message to the fans at home.

All of this is a lengthy introduction to my home team’s latest marketing project: Hockey ‘n Heels.

I mean, the program itself doesn’t sound so bad, right?

One (1) game ticket in the Club Level Seating for three (3) games which includes event ticket, event premium item and buffet dinner

Locker Room Tour

On-Ice Demonstrations with the opportunity to sit in the Penalty Box/Player Bench

Attend a morning skate

Meet and greet with players after the morning skate

Limited Edition Framed Art Piece

Sounds pretty cool. And really, I don’t see how this would appeal any differently to women than to men, or children, or hockey-lovin’ aliens from outer space. At least it isn’t a hot stone massage and black-and-gold manis and pedis. It’s cool, exciting, relevant stuff. Actually hockey-related. Nothing any female hockey fan wouldn’t love.

Why, then, the stupidass name?

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve never seen anyone standing in line to get in to Mellon Arena wearing four-inch Manolos. Pretty much everybody comes wearing some sort of Penguins jersey, shirt, jacket or sweater, possible a Penguins baseball cap or beanie. Most people are in jeans or shorts. The women who wear Pens gear tend to wear oversized men’s sizes. They look frumpy. They look “ghetto.” And they don’t give a shit! They’re showing team spirit, dammit.

I have seen a couple men in business suits, but I haven’t seen a single pencil skirt yet. And I’d say it’s somewhat impractical to mount the steep steps up to your seat inside the arena if you’re wearing shoes that double as an assault weapon.

OK, there’s nothing wrong with heels. I understand a lot of women love them. I love my skirts. I wear makeup (sometimes). I like getting all dressed up. I’m pretty cool with flowers and I like to bake. Hell, I actually like doing the laundry! All of which are trappings of femininity, some of those things perfectly harmless were they not bound to gender roles. And I don’t think it’s really feasible for most women to completely eschew anything that could possibly be “tainted” by the patriarchy. So this isn’t a criticism of heels themselves.

It’s just out of place, is all. I see a hell of a lot of women in those stands. Most of them are jumping and screaming and enjoying a beer just as much as the men.

But they needed a clever name that would capture female fans. Thus, heels.

When I see or hear an advertisement for this program, it just reminds me that I’m not a “real” fan. I’m not “supposed” to be making a damn fool of myself, shouting criticism from the sidelines, quoting stats in conversation with my husband, biting my lip when the game gets particularly tense, and jumping to my feet every time the horn sounds for a goal. That’s what men do. Women sit pretty, toss their hair, and giggle politely when men do something stupid. They’re not supposed to enjoy the game, because women don’t like sports for sports’ sake. They just get dragged along by their husbands. The only way to get them interested is to appeal to the girly things they actually like to do. Don’t cha know.

Ugh. I don’t know what else to say. I’m disappointed. If I had money to throw around, maybe I’d offer them a considerable sum just to change the fucking name. It’s patronizing. Shame.

My writing has fallen to the side as we go through something of a personal crisis. I hate declaring hiatus; closing off a door, any door, leaves me feeling cramped and constrained. But, yes, things are in a bit of upheaval at current time, and my participation in this amazing community will be limited for a time.

my body, and everything i use to take care of it.

Tomorrow is Love Your Body Day. The boundaries defining NOW, the sponsoring organization, are widely known to be drawn (conveniently) around the Western ideal of the financially privileged white life. But, much like feminism as a whole, I feel there is something of value at the core, something of use to all of us.

I find little use in campaigns and projects claiming to sprout from a respect and appreciation of the human body, which decry an unfair media ideal, but whose aim seems to be — not to deconstruct that ideal in an attempt to destroy any ideal whatsoever — but to deconstruct that ideal so as to replace it with one more conveniently molded to their own experience.

I do not want to replace the size zero ideal with a size six ideal. I do not want to look at the impossibly tiny waists and replace them with well-defined waists always significantly thinner than their accompanying hips and bosom. I don’t want to look at the airbrushed, overtanned, bleached blonde ideal and replace it with an ideal that includes pores and a range of hair color, but only on caucasian and white-skinned bodies, which are still skinny and perfectly toned, with smooth caucasian hair that’s allowed to be stick straight to a little wavy, and always the bright open eyes and blinding smile, always a smile.

Instead of an ideal, instead of merely shifted expectations — we need to blow that ideal to pieces, and in its place, put a purposeful lack of expectation, put a willingness to consider, put a confident knowledge that one may be faced with anything, anything, and put a curiosity, a sense of wonder, an ability to find beauty, rather than have it delivered.

Bodies, bodies, bodies. When we tell one person her body is beautiful because it is not this, or that, or that other thing, we tell another person whose body is one of those things that her body is not beautiful. When we tell one person her body is what we should be celebrating, we tell every other person whose body is different that they are still deficient — only in a different way.

(And as an aside: when we tell one person that real beauty is natural beauty, no modifications, no adaptations, no change whatsoever — we tell every other person on earth, every person who ever does any single thing to change their body, how it looks, what it does, how it feels — we tell them that they are not only deficient — they are committing a grave moral sin. Do you use mascara? Have you ever cut your hair? Why do you eat what you eat? Have you ever taken any sort of medication, for anything from a cold to cancer? Ever visited a doctor, therapist, or other practicioner? Ever injured yourself, and applied an antibiotic and bandage, or a set and cast, to make your body do something it would otherwise not do on its own? Do you wear glasses or contact lenses? Do you wear shoes? Do you shave? Well then.)

Instead, we should tell each person: you are a full, whole, valuable person. Look into yourself. Curl up deep within yourself, forsaking the outside world. And look around. What do you like? What feels good? What does good? What is it about your physical self that makes your life a little bit better?

Maybe it is how your body looks. Maybe it is what your body does. Maybe it is how your body feels. Maybe it is not any of these things. Maybe it is something else.

Look at your body, look at it, every day, look at it and think to yourself, and seek out that which is good. Good. Not good for them. Good for you.

What do you delight in?

What will you?

Body image is a question not only for just-under-average-sized upper class white girls and women. Body issue is a question for all of us. Women and men alike. People of color, mixed races, different cultures with different values. The fully abled, the disabled, the deformed, the deficient. Every one of us, as human beings, has to deal with the reality of our bodies as they are and how that conflicts with the expectations the rest of our society has of us. This is expressed in different ways for different persons and different society. But not one of us, not one, is unaffected.

So I invited everyone, even those who know they are not NOW’s target demographic — I invite you all to participate tomorrow. Seek peace with your body. After all, you can never escape it. But your body is not your adversary. Your body is you.

Love yourself.

Quick hit today, out of CAPAF’s report on how McCain’s health plan would affect women — well worth a read on its own — noted without further comment.

… Sen. McCain’s plan would encourage insurers to eliminate coverage of basic health services. These state requirements include:

* Twenty-nine statesƒƒ require cervical cancer and Human Papillomavirus screening Sixteen statesƒƒ require coverage of the HPV vaccine
* Thirty-one statesƒƒ require comprehensive drug benefit plans to include contraception
* Twenty-one statesƒƒ require coverage of maternity care
* Forty-nine statesƒƒ require breast reconstruction

This is a sign on the side of PA Route 19 heading south. First, an advertisement for McDonald’s desperate attempt to create a new product out of the same old ingredients. It is a considerable improvement over the ad formerly in that spot, featuring a giant cup of their lightly tea-flavored high fructose corn syrup water excuse me, sweet tea, which made me instinctively reach for the car door handle to spare myself the clean-up job when I vomited at the thought.

Second, a pair of legs. Legs that are: skinny, hairless, devoid of blemishes, white, shiny, and posed in an awkward and uncomfortable position. Oh, and don’t forget, as the photo doesn’t do the picture justice: airbrushed. Very much along the lines of something like this. (Or, of course, this.)

It’s hard for me to put into words exactly what the problem is with this billboard. Maybe it’s because varicose veins are used against women far more often than men. On a man, it is what it is, and who cares if it is? What’s it to you? Was he put on this good earth to make you feel a little wet? No, he exists for his own purposes, and if you have a problem with that you can kindly go fuck yourself.

But it’s understandable why a person would want treatment for them, much as I still wish I could get braces. I’ve had veins pop out on my hands at various times in my life, and it was always uncomfortable for me, and ultimately reinforced my sense of fragility — I was always afraid of how easily my bones might snap, or my veins ruptured severely by an otherwise mild cut or scrape. And, yeah, I was self-conscious.

But really: think of how you might possibly choose to advertise such a service. It’s not hard. We are positively soaked in marketing. Our economy exists on the back of advertisement. You’ve seen ads for similar services before. Stock photos don’t even need to come into the picture.

But they do. And what is the message it sends when this is the photo that is chosen?

Your legs should look this way.

But they don’t. Your calves have actual muscle to them. Or even fat. There is stubble, or considerable hair growth, which might be fine and downy and light, or might be red, or dark, coarse, frizzy, curly. Maybe your closest shave still leaves that slightly mottled look. Of course skin is not a single color; there is some mottling and mingling of different hues and shades; I can see a little blue and purple mixed in with a decidedly peachy color, but yours might trend more toward olive or plum. I have moles all over like freckles, little and flat, but dark and brown. Right now there are very deep red marks in about five places from shaving cuts over the last six months or so (my skin takes a long time to heal) and lines imprinted from the chair my leg was resting against — low circulation, low blood pressure will do that to do — and my bones stick out. My calves are rather skinny, but they’ve always been; even now that I have settled in at 175, my calves and forearms are like toothpicks — my wrist measurement is still 5″ rounded up. But there’s no muscle tone, so I still fall short of the photoshop standard.

So do you.

And when you look at that picture, you are keenly aware of this fact. You might not consciously think: “I don’t look like that.” But our minds are much more than what we consciously think. You are completely, mundanely aware of the fact that what you look like and what the ideal looks like are in two totally different realms.

You know that if you have varicose veins, and you receive treatment for them, and they subside, your legs will still not look like that. You may think they look better, but they aren’t going to look like that. Ever.

And that is the message you take away. You are not made of the right stuff for beauty. You are a totally different animal. You are fundamentally unfit. It doesn’t matter what you do. And that is a failure not of the standard, but of you, personally. You owe it to society to fit that standard. And because you don’t, you are personally slighting every person you ever come into contact with. Ever.

Catblogging will return on Friday.

***

My body is mine.

There are seven tumors in my breasts. They are benign.

Two of them are palpable on the surface at one o’clock on my left breast. The size of ping pong balls.

I don’t bother to self-exam anymore. I know they’re there. I don’t want to be reminded.

***

You know the slur idiot-savant?

I know its counterpart. They are called parent-saints.

There is a reverence simply unparalleled in this society (with the possible exception of professional athletes) reserved for these people.

What earns them such a status? They didn’t terminate the pregnancy instantly upon learning of the disability.

There are no standards beyond that. I do not exaggerate. It does not matter how a parent treats a disabled child. They might even beat them, and their actions will be excused because after all: they are dealing with a heavy burden, so who are you to judge?

And that’s it. Upon knowledge that a child has a disability, that child is no longer a child. Sie becomes a burden. In familiar words: dead weight. Hir humanity is erased altogether. Sie has no curiosity, no sense of mystery or delight, no joy or sadness, no hurt or relief. Sie learns nothing, hir growth only physical. There is no sentience.

And so the relevant facts about hir have nothing to do with how hir environment affects hir. They have entirely to do with how sie affects her environment.

Which is why “choosing” to keep a disabled child is cast as such: an active choice. Because the default assumption is that such a child is not worth keeping.

After all, no one wants to be saddled a dead weight.

The attitude toward those sainted persons is summed up thusly: “I don’t know how they do it; I wouldn’t be able to. There has to be a special place in heaven reserved for them.”

It is such a drag on a person’s life to deal with any person with a disability, any person who does so must have supernatural patience. Love is not an issue, of course; love requires more than one person.

Parents of children with autism, muscular dystrophy, Down’s syndrome, and others. Anything that requires assistive equipment any more complicated than a pair of glasses, and anything that renders a child unable to speak clearly and “articulately” in their region’s preferred language. It is not limited to these, but these are conditions that earn a parent a sympathetic eye.

Do not leave these assumptions unquestioned. Sarah Palin’s refusal to terminate her Down’s child will be invoked as a shorthand for her upstanding moral character. Don’t buy it. She did not do so out of respect for the disabled as equal persons of equal worth. She did so out of allegiance to a philosophy that would deny women the ability to make their own choice to carry to term and keep a child with a disability or to safely terminate a pregnancy likely to result in disability. On that note, even those in feminist circles will frame Palin’s circumstance pretty much exclusively as a question of awoman’srighttochoose. DON’T BUY IT. For better or worse, with a few but only a few exceptions, the only time disability issues are picked up on mainstream feminism’s radar screen is when it involves a disabled woman who becomes pregnant in questionable circumstances. Sometimes it is a case of rape, and sometimes it is a case of upper-class white abled feminists plowing right past said woman’s agency to insist she must have been raped and/or coerced because of her “diminished mental capacity” (whether or not her disability is mental in nature, and even then, whether or not her “capacity” is “diminished,” and even then, whether it has any bearing whatsoever on her right to control the direction of her own life). DON’T BUY THAT EITHER. Women are damn well entitled to a well-defended and highly-accessible right to reproductive justice. That includes disabled women, and that includes any woman’s right to choose to continue or cease a pregnancy likely to result in a disabled child, depending on that woman’s own personal considerations. THAT IS NOT THE ONLY ISSUE AT STAKE, and GODDAMMIT, THAT IS NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE! Why the HELL is a woman who does not faint at the idea of a disabled child someone who deserves a Goddamn crumb of praise?

It’s like people see the ideas “disabled child” “pregnancy” “conservative politician” together and obviously the issue at hand is every woman’s right to be free of a dependent with any sort of “defect.” Just like every woman’s right to kill a mosquito that lands on her arm.

Don’t let this opportunity pass. “Liberal” men and “feminist” women, consider your privileged asses called out. You should know better. And I, we, any person with a shred of human decency, should expect better of you.

***

I was enjoying some much needed heat therapy and electrical stim at therapy today, lying on my back on the you-call-this-padded? exam table in a room of about eight others, all of us closed off individually behind hospital curtains. Usually I am one of two or three people in the room, but I came at a busy time today and that was the last table.

My physical therapy office shares space with an acupuncture/holistic therapy group. And, um, they had a rather loud patient in the curtain-cube across from mine. She was screaming at length about how her doctor put her on some medication for an infection but she’s going to taper herself off of it, medication don’t do nuthin, etc. etc.

When I laughed and told my therapist — quietly — “I think most people would be scared when they saw my medicine spinner” — she reacted negatively to my twelve-pills-a-day and Ol’ Screamer caught wind and bellowed louder and more defensively. THATSTUFFISNOGOODFORYOUDON’TYOUKNOW and so on.

I’m kinna’ tired of it. My therapist has been amazing but I was let down a little by her reaction. Look, I know I pretty much funnel 75% of my paycheck to Big Pharma. I know most people are only accustomed to the occasional Z-Pack. But most people don’t live every day in my body. And damn it all, I know the difference between my-body-now and my-body-then. I took about a third of the medication I currently take a couple years ago, and I couldn’t work any more than 8-10 hours a week, tops. Then when I got on my current regimen, I was able to up that to 20-30 hours in a retail environment. And back when I took none of it? Oh yeah, that time in my life, you know, the time I almost failed out of high school and had to drop out of college (whether fifteen units or five) twice, all within a span of 18 months?

Yeahhh, that.

I’m sick of placating. So, to those people, kindly accept my Gayest Look.

This public service announcement was brought to you by … oh hell, I’m going to bed.

Just yesterday had to buy a size 4 to get a correct fit on top.

When are they going to standardize pant and basic shirt sizes for the other sex? I guess they wouldn’t make as much money if women didn’t have to make a trip to the fucking dressing room before being able to buy anything. Women might like being able to buy a size that fit accurately without the guesswork, and then they might actually be able to go in a store needing a specific basic item and pick it out and pay for it and walk out!

No, it’s much better for her to have to pick through a dressing rack, pulling out items of clothing in arbitrarily-assigned size numbers based on what looks approximately big enough to fit whatever their widest part is, shaped as though women were simply scaled replicas of some barbie doll basic: the exact same body, sized up or down with locked proportions at every point: no long torsos or tall legs or narrow hips or full bellies or racks of doom; women’s bodies as documents on a copy machine: you’re 108% the Ideal Woman? Great, you’re a size 12! Oh, no matter the inseam is too short or the straps are too long. The problem is with your body, not with our design practices. The burden is on you to seek out an alterationist and pay on top of our already marked-up cost just to get something that fits you correctly.

But just to make sure you don’t take it home and find out it clings too tight to your ass, let’s take it in the fitting room, and do let me know if you need a different size or color! Oh and honey, you’re rocking some major VPL — you need a good thong. They’re next to the shoes on the back wall. And don’t you think this shrug would go great with your outfit? You’ll need it to cover those scandalous top two inches of your arm, which aren’t quite covered by the just-slightly-see-through top, which you’ll need a good undershirt to wear without showing off your satin-and-lace demi bra to your coworkers.

And if you open a store brand credit card today, you’ll get 10% off your purchase!

Pretty please? I’m required to make a daily sales quota and the picking’s been rough. Apparently not every person can manage a new Visa for every retail store they ever visit, and if they did, why, there’d be no one left to sell the credit cards to! Sigh. This world today.

This shit makes me blood boil.

This morning I read (rather, viewed) Lauredhel’s documenting of the bullshit uni discrepancies for the Olympic athletes. Remember, these are athletes; there are surely performance advantages to skin-tight Lycra vs. baggy poly or vice-versa depending on the sport, but why then are women always mandated the Lycra and covering as little skin as possible (yes, this is in the rules) and men sometimes skintight, sometimes baggy, but always covering a modest amount and always far more skin than their counterpart women’s unis?

On that note, I was wandering around our discount store today after a job interview, grabbing some band-aids and bathroom products and a few more Fuji apples (divine!). I meandered by the sport care section, looking to replace my late shower chair and see if there was any sort of wrap to keep a heat pad on my back. I noted the name of the manufacturer of the products available there, and came home to print out a few product pages to discuss with my physical therapist.

While browsing the site, I curiously clicked on the “ Life Care™ for Her” link. This is the page that comes up:

What is wrong with this picture?

Oh yeah. The sexy vixen with smoky eyes trying to seduce you to come…tighten her knee brace.

WTF?

You’ll notice the pictures on the packaging, of course, includes more pictures of hairless poreless fatless pigmentless sssssexy chick. And they helpfully spotlight them in the middle of the page!

Mmmmm, check out my soft, silky, supple, b……races.
Why don’t you come support me, baby?

Targeted Support for Today’s Active Women. “Active,” huh! Smirk, wink, amirite amirite

I included the full first screen of the page to give a context as to the site it’s on. This is sports medicine. It’s hot/cold gel packs and creams, and tapes and wraps and braces. By contrast, here’s another picture of a woman on the site:

She’s wearing skin-tight midriff-bearing clothes, but at least she’s wearing any at all — and she’s up and active and at least her awkward position is actually doing something.

And here’s another page for one of their product series (as opposed to just a category of products). Notice that all but one of the pictures have been converted to grayscale and digitally edited to look like an understated grey model.

I don’t see why the same approach couldn’t have been taken with the women’s series of products — which appear to be designed so as to be better marketed, not so as to be a better product for women’s particular needs. They say they are thinner and sleeker so as to be less conspicuous under clothing, an advantage that I see no reason to be confined to women. Surely men in business suits would benefit from a non-bulky ankle brace too?

The message this sends to viewers is, simply put, even when you are injured or sick, you must always be sexy. What it tells women is that they need to shave their entire leg before they put on that knee brace. And white women should preferably tan, without tan lines. WOC need not apply, of course. Nor fat women.

There is quite simply no time that we, as women, are permitted to escape from the exacting standards set for us to be on-the-ready for any male passersby. Not when we are sick, not when we are injured, not when we are active or participating in sport, not even when we are altogether disabled. We must always be aware of our appearance, not in terms of presentability, but in terms of sexual attractiveness to a hypothetical mainstream white heterosexual male.

Even when no one can see us at all.

Chew on that for awhile.

Extra credit: The store had a different women’s-series set of products: they were “for her” and their distinguishing characteristic was that they were sized larger for a “plus-size” body. Apparently only women get fat.

Sometimes I read things — the whole of which I may not endorse, but which I still feel merit more attention — to which I have nothing to add. So…

shah8 on historical trends:

One of the things that I have noticed about big F feminism, and this may not be an accurate perception, so feel free to correct me, is that there is a much lower appreciation among women that enlightenment and oppression happens in cycles. Ever greater progression in civil rights is not typically the rule, especially beyond a generation or so.

How the hell can Bush redefine abortion as “any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation”?

EVERY ONE OF MY PRESCRIPTION MEDICATIONS FITS THIS BILL.

Including the Lupron, which is a Major Treatment during which we are very strongly advised to be double-extra-careful in the area of birth control, because it can cause major serious birth defects. The Lupron which I am taking to shrink endometrial implants which can fuse together my organs and completely sterilize me.

Fucking caffeine fits this description.

It’s not just oral contraceptives, folks. It’s treatments which have no relation to family planning whatsoever. Just think of all the prescription medications that would be restricted.

How the hell? How the FUCKING hell? Are there any lawyers in the house who can address this one?

Tagging this one under accessibility just to emphasize how much this policy would affect my medical condition and my ability to WORK, to HAVE CHILDREN, to LIVE MY FUCKING LIFE without debilitating pain.

Fuck.

* The fact that The American Prospect has a “Religious Right Watch.” Sarah Posner’s work has all the substance of a celebrity gossip blog. There is palpable disdain toward the groups religiosity — which is distinct from their political involvement. I don’t talk much about religion here, mainly because it is a private matter and it doesn’t come into play with most of the stuff I write about. But when I see the “latest update” I feel like a rat in a cage, looked down upon, my every movement tracked and reported as though it is of great importance to the outside world. But is it? I feel like the figures in question are monitored not for their danger to progressive policy, but for their religion, full stop. Isn’t it just so funny?

* The language that is used to Other the disabled. Sweet Machine highlights the work of Susan Sontag, examining how “grave, incurable illnesses (particularly cancer in the 20th century and TB in the 19th) get appropriated as metaphors for moral conditions, political events, and the like — and then the negative connotations associated with those metaphors are extended back onto the people who actually suffer from the disease.” Considering the recent discussion at Feministe about the use of words like “crazy,” “insane,” “psycho,” “demented” etc. I think this is an important point to make. For the vast majority of people in our society, the only model they have to reference when they come into contact with a pwd is the concept of that disability, or disability in general, that has been built up in their minds. And that’s where our “ironic”/”sarcastic”/”irreverent” use of these words comes into play — we associate “crazy” with, say, the religious right, which means that they are Irrational, and Silly, and Dangerous, all at once, and those associations are reflected back onto the people who actually live with the condition at hand. It is not a conscious process, but again, it happens, and the more we use these words as a shorthand for all these negative traits, the further we reinforce a structure that contributes to the oppression of the disabled every day. Maybe it doesn’t really feel offensive when someone uses the word “crazy” around me, but that doesn’t mean that these tropes aren’t being steadily fed even right this very moment. And it’s not limited to mental illness, as SM explains; it also applies to fat — and to “gay,” and “retard,” and “gyp,” etc…

* When issues that are deeply important to millions of people in this country are glossed over because they might also be expedient to someone else with an agenda. See my sputtering below about Jezebel, fibromyalgia, drug therapies and Big Pharma; see Mindy’s guest post at Hoyden About Town on advertising companies and women’s products; see TAP’s Dana Goldstein wax political about Obama’s campaign actually centering women’s rights as an issue that includes more than simply white middle class women’s access to safe abortions. Those are just the examples off the top of my (very cluttered) head. Sometimes, people’s actual lives don’t fit neatly into your ideological narrative. And if you really want to be a friend to those people, you’ll turn off the “irreverent” macro and listen to their actual concerns. (Can you tell I’m really pissed off about this stuff?)

* The fact that my emails to my husband at work keep getting bounced back to me, and I can’t shake this anxiety, the trembling and heart racing and shortness of breath that comes with certain triggers, one of which is confronting people who beat upon the “fibromyalgia is bullshit” (still the leading search term to this blog) drum in service to their own egos. Usually, rambling at him helps me settle down, but I can’t really fit the jumbled contents of my brain into a 160-character SMS.

* My continued unemployment, which is going to screw up our finances so hard. I am looking around but I worry about the insecurity, the fact that I didn’t have much choice in quitting because of my disability, and the fact that my prospects are severely limited because of same — which means I’m likelier-than-not to remain unemployed for the foreseeable future. It’s unsettling.

* Pantyhose.

Hmmm.

What Vague Pharmaceutical Industry-Invented Malady Do You Have?
Fibromyalgia. It sounds so daunting — like angina! which also sounds like vagina, or chlamydia. And if the pharmaceutical industry’s multibillion-dollar marketing machine has any sort of pathway into your consuming psyche, you’re probably aware of this hot new disease. Hasn’t the industry gotten so much better at naming new maladies since the whole dubious “restless leg syndrome” thing? Anyway, here’s fibromyalgia in brief: it affects primarily women around their middle ages — potentially 10 million of them in this country according to advocacy group, which means something like one in five. You’ll know you have it if you start to feel “chronic, widespread pain of unknown origin.” The pain won’t respond to anti-inflammatories, and no one knows where it comes from really, so instead of trying to sell you on something to soothe the pain, the pharmaceutical companies — namely Pfizer — is trying to soothe your brain’s perception of pain. Clever! Okay, so here’s the shocker: some people think fibromyalgia is a bit, you know, fictionyalgia. And “some people” includes the doctor who named it in the first place.

Why invent a disease? Well, if you’ve got a drug with a limited market — like Pfizer’s Lyrica, originally developed for seizures, it’s pretty genius business to make up a mysterious new ailment that a lot of people could potentially have or be scared they have. Where do you think ADD came from? What about “bipolar disorder”? “Irritable bowel syndrome”? Oh sure, those diseases affect one in 1.5 Americans, and we have them too, but:

…Those figures are sharply disputed by those doctors who do not consider fibromyalgia a medically recognizable illness and who say that diagnosing the condition actually worsens suffering by causing patients to obsess over aches that other people simply tolerate.

But why tolerate when you can obsess? And speaking of obsessing, did you know ADD makes people obsessive? I should be done with this post already but I didn’t have enough amphetamines today. What about you?

Moe, the post’s author, later “apologized,” saying:

Which brings me back to an important part I was trying to make when I posted insensitively about fibromyalgia the other day… We like to think we make rational purchasing decisions borne of a thorough survey of all the available options — or that at the very least, we are creatures of our own innate needs and desires. I can only assume that this is why a lot of you got so defensive when I joked that fibromyalgia was a “vague pharmaceutical industry invented malady.” A few of you turn out to have fibromyalgia — and “restless leg syndrome”, and whatever else I treated with my signature careless disdain. I’m sorry guys; I made my point less thoughtfully than I maybe should have. We all have health problems. But right now the most highly -capitalized, influential and consumer-savvy source of all that we know and learn about those problems — the developers of the drugs, the sponsors and publishers of their studies, the sources of continuing education to your doctors — is the pharmaceutical industry, and the pharmaceutical industry exists to convince us that our problems are “syndromes” necessitating a pill you take once a day.

Yeah, OK, that sounded totally sincere — NOT!! Haha, look, I’m being irreverent!

No, what you’re doing is telling me that the pain that has caused me to nearly fail out of high school in my final semester, drop out of college and remain bedridden for weeks and housebound for months afterward, drop out of college again a year and a half later, quit work, quit work again, and quit work again all within the past 14 months, is an invention of the Big Bad Evil Medical Industry, and that the medication that pulled me out of my houseboundedness and allowed me to even go to college that second time (during which I actually completed five classes, the only ones on my record to this day) is nothing more than snake oil.

To which I extend a hearty fuck you.

As I pointed out the other day at Hoyden About Town, a lot of people seem to get a huge kick out of declaring helpful products useless, and the people who use them brainwashed — in so many words — because after all, the companies who distribute them are only trying to make a profit off of our poor gullible asses.

What I find incredibly amusing is that I, one of those apparently intellectually-challenged souls, have actually read the research on this condition and its treatments, while they, the Wise Knowing ones, know approximately shit about any of it.

Throughout the 1990s, fibromyalgia was regarded as a “wastebasket condition,” a label to throw at hysterical, hypochondriac middle-aged women who were being a pain in the ass by demanding that their doctors actually give a shit about their patients. (Oops, sorry, I’m being irreverent again!) Nobody really knew much about it, except that it was totally a disease of old Faker McFakersons, the crazy old fat women who lounged about the house all day stuffing their faces with donuts and watching the cable they could afford even as they were applying for welfare benefits and we all know the stereotypes, so I’ll stop there.

Then some idiot got the bright idea to actually conduct clinical research on the condition and they started finding out that hey, this doesn’t seem to be psychosomatic at all, in fact there are distinct physiological differences between fibromyalgia patients and healthy controls, mainly in the nervous system and related parts of the brain, and all sorts of peripheral findings like sleep disturbances and pain “memory” and the like.

Huh. Who would’ve thought?

And now we’re into the new millennium and guess what: major medical groups still aren’t really paying a whit of attention to the condition. The main treatment is tricyclic antidepressants, which worked about as well as a single extra-strength Tylenol works on a severed leg (that is, it does some measurable amount, but only hardly), and doctors are still being dismissive assholes, leaving fibromyalgia patients to fend for themselves in managing the condition, often falling on the alternative world, which is going absolutely crazy pitching cures and panaceas to people whose problems stem from aspartame intake to phosphate buildup to an insufficiently positive outlook on life.

Then, in the middle of the aughts, BAM! All of a sudden, a single pharmaceutical company takes notice of the condition and thinks hey, here’s a market to be exploited! And they pump money into a promising new drug called pregabalin, which is an anti-epileptic drug that works by depressing the central nervous system, and it seems to actually have measurable impact on the pain of fibromyalgia patients in double-blind randomized trials!

Huh. Who would’ve thought?

And it takes several years to move through the whole FDA approval process, not without its bumps-in-the-road (including, recently, a proposed black box label), and Lilly decides to cash in on the fun with their Cymbalta, and other companies throw their spaghetti on the wall, which doesn’t really stick (sorry, milnacipran) but in the end, there is an Actual FDA-Approved Treatment For Fibromyalgia, which honestly does go a long way in legitimizing an unfortunately-maligned condition.

But when the commercials start airing, the bottom-feeders of the world heap derision anew, basking in the glow of using the suffering of the already-overburdened as a cudgel against the only group that has ever paid any attention to their condition in their quest to stake out a position of Purer Than Thou irreverence.

Ignore the fact that the condition existed decades before Big Pharma ever caught wind of it, which puts a kink in the whole “Big Pharma invented it out of thin air to pad their pockets” line.

Because if it comes from Big Pharma, it must be a lie. Make sure you keep your eyes covered so that you never see the lives of the actual people in question, who make have quite a different story to tell you.

But eh, why worry about them?

Or maybe women suffer from chronic fatigue and muscle pains more often because they often have to work full time, care for children, run errands, and do all the housework while the husband kind of hangs out. Find me a hormone to correct THAT.

I’m running on a headache and a sweat rag right now, so please excuse any sloppiness. Remember, it’s all Pharma’s fault.

(Where did all this come from? Jezebel’s rise to prominence in the feminist blogosphere, mainly. We all read blogs with whose every opinion we do not always agree, but I wanted to make sure this offense is officially called out, so at least people have a more accurate picture of what it is they’re supporting. This is the language of hatred. This is the culture being encouraged on this site. Please, be as mindful of these things as you are of bigotry against women. Thank you.)

Ms. cripchick writes about Independence Day and mentions that her mother and grandmother stay home, “[not] for political reasons—more of not connecting with the holiday or feeling like it’s theirs” and it struck me.

This day to celebrate our country and all its inhabitants — to a good lot of those inhabitants, this day doesn’t feel like it’s theirs. This day is for someone else, not for me.

And the sentiment is pretty widespread when you think about it. It applies to all groups.

To a poor child: college is for someone else, not for me.

To a person living with an abusive partner or family member, who has never seen someone they know personally ever have anything better: respect for my dignity and autonomy is for someone else, not for me.

To the little girl in school: complicated mathetmatics and science are for someone else, not for me.

To the child of color, or child with a visible disability, who sees advertisements everywhere (for toothpaste, for breakfast cereal, for universities, for bank services) with skinny white people with perfect teeth and “good” hair: society in general is made for someone else, not for me.

When we structure our society this way, we may not be saying explicitly, this is Not For You. But those people get the message — loud and clear.

Ezra brings up an issue that continues to lie dormant.

Insurers charge women more than they charge men… studies show the effect is all the more pronounced when you’re dealing with health savings accounts and other forms of high-deductible coverage. A Harvard study from a year or so back ran the numbers and found that men under 45 racked up about $500 in yearly, out-of-pocket costs, while women spent closer to $1,200. Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, the lead author of the study, summed up the findings starkly. “When an employer switches all his employees into a consumer-driven health plan, it’s the same as giving all the women a $1,000 pay cut, on average, because women on average have $1,000 more in health costs than men.”

Here’s why: For most of their lives, men and women use health care very differently. Men seek episodic care: I sawed off my thumb, fell off a mountain, tried to stop an SUV with my Civic. Contact with the health system is relatively rare, and most everything is covered by insurance. Conversely, women seek a lot of routine care. Check-ups, pap-smears, reproductive health care, etc. The expenses are small, but they’re regular. So when you move towards health coverage where small, regular expenses come out of pocket, you’re erecting financial barriers to the type of care sought by women.

It’s also a good object lesson as to the folly of HSAs. The type of care that HSAs put a higher price tag on, and thus discourage, are small and discrete interactions with the health system. So they disadvantage mammograms and pap smears, but leave lumbar surgeries and angioplasties untouched. Anyone want to guess which category accounts for the majority of our health spending? Anyone want to guess which type of care studies suggest we discourage, and which type of care studies suggest we make more broadly accessible?

Why is this not on the front page of every newspaper in the country right now? On the screen of every cable news watching citizen?

What do you think the effect of this is on single mothers? What do you think the effect of this is on poor women? What do you think the effect of this is on disabled women?

How many people are unnecessarily unemployed because the health care that would allow them to work is denied them? How many people end up in the ER in the middle of the night because they put off routine care for so long, because it was money they didn’t have? Money that could instead go toward their education? Money that could instead go toward their children’s school activities?

How many children lose mothers, husbands wives, parents daughters, when one more woman ends up with cervical cancer because she didn’t have the time or money to spare?

Do we really think we can patch things over by throwing a couple dollars at the Komen foundation and calling it a day?

Think about your own mother. Your sister. Your daughter. Your partner, your lover, your best friend. Do you really want to just let this go because “that’s just how things are”?

I am tagging this one under “privilege” to remind you, the reader, if you are able-bodied and able-minded, that I, the bitch, the cripple, am subsidizing your health care. And that woman in the Section 8 housing who just got evicted because of the money she’s spent getting run around the ringer about those abnormal cells on her Pap test? She is subsidizing the yearly checkup you don’t even bother to get most of the time. And when you go home with your Z-Pack, knowing that you are going to be free and clear after seven days and a $10 copay, know that the money to pay for that came directly out of the pocket of that woman and her two infant children. And I hope you’ll find that redistribution worth it when she dies at 42 of cancer that could have been prevented.

Welfare queens? Taxpayer dollars? Hard-earned money? I don’t want to hear it. Fuck you.

let’s label this one “NOT surprising”:

One in five lesbian and gay people have experienced a homophobic hate crime or incident in the last three years.

One in eight have been a victim in the last year.

Three in four of those experiencing hate crimes or incidents did not report them to the police.

Only six per cent reported them to third parties.

Seven in ten did not report hate crimes or incidents to anyone.

One in six experiencing homophobic hate incidents in the last three years experienced a physical assault.

Eight per cent of all black and minority ethnic lesbian and gay people have experienced a physical assault as a homophobic hate incident, compared to four per cent of all lesbian and gay people.

One in six lesbian and gay people have been insulted and harassed in the last three years because they are gay.

One in eight lesbian and gay people experiencing homophobic hate incidents have experienced unwanted sexual contact as part of the incident.

Overall, three in five lesbian and gay people have been a victim of any crime or incident in the last three years.

I think we all know that POC are subject to a higher rate of violence and harassment than the population as a whole; for every minority status added, that figure rockets higher and higher. how many trans people of color have been shunned, beaten, raped, killed? how many disabled lesbians? how many poor gay men? how many sex workers of any orientation?

the less a person conforms to the default normality, the less human they become, and thus the more subject to brutality, in an attempt by society to assert dominion.

I had an english teacher explain to me once that in film, in novels, in plays, and other methods of storytelling, the author only gets one “gimme,” one unexplainable phenomenon. the rest of the piece needs to be internally coherent and consistent. any more logical inconsistencies and the audience loses immersion, they lose that sense of believability, because they are being reminded again that this place they are visiting is not real and could never be real.

and honestly, I think that society can work that way too. a person can have one “gimme” and still succeed in the public’s eye. a person can be black, but they have to be higher class, they have to be heteronormative, they have to be fully abled, they have to be conventionally attractive. only then are they accepted as an honorary “full person.” similarly, a person can be gay, but they must be white, upper class, fully abled, conventionally attractive, and conforming to a tame boundary of gender, never pushing their confines too hard, to be accepted as honorarily “real.”

the more you, as a person, fail to live up to that standard, the more you remind everyone else that you are not that standard. people can only ignore so much before they fail to think of you as human at all.

and once you reach that point, you’re one stroke of minor misfortune away from dead.

…if feminism is a social-justice-for-everyone (with the possible exception of middle-class white women) movement, then gender is just one commitment among many.

Give me a fucking break.

As Jill says,

And it seems to me that white middle-class feminists shouldn’t be doing the same thing that the white guys have always done: We should not be telling other women to forgo their issues for the ones we deem important. We should not be telling other women to wait their turn.

If feminism is losing its focus, it is not because it pays heed to the needs of all women. More likely, it comes down to this:

This is not a movement.I repeat, this is not a movement.

It’s an exclusive networking club.

(Or, as a variant, if she had apologized for her vote, Edwards-style?)

No.

People must understand: Clinton’s decision on the AUMF is part and parcel of the person she had to be to get where she was.

She was a strong woman. She didn’t take any bullshit. She stood up for herself, and she fought for what she thought was right.

To be able to survive in the public eye as a legitimate politician, Clinton had to learn how to steel herself and keep fighting, even when everyone else was telling her that she was wrong. Because that is what it takes to be a high-profile female politician in today’s country.

Relatedly, she had to cultivate a reputation of strength, because the Bossy Butch Bitch is the only woman the public can tolerate — not appreciate, but tolerate — as a high-profile leader, especially one in charge of things that are coded as masculine.

There is a reason Clinton has publicly refused to apologize for her vote on the AUMF or on Kyl-Lieberman, and for accepting money from lobbyists. If she is anything like the strong women I know, and my suspicion is she is: she has carefully cultivated her convictions, searching deep to find the truest truths she knows, down below the miles of muck with which our society imbues those of the female persuasion. And she has built a fortress upon a foundation of those truths, with thick strong walls and a careful defense system.

Because she knows that if she is to be the person she truly is inside, she is going to need it.

So she will not back down. Because if she does, it erases everything she stands for, stands on.

(And, you know, watching the campaigns of her husband and each Democratic nominee to come since, with their primary media narratives of waffle and flip-flop, maybe she learned something?)

If Hillary Rodham Clinton had voted against the AUMF, she would have been an entirely different person, and an entirely different politician. And she would not be where she is today. She may not even have been where she was then.

And, for better or worse, that is the fault of the system that puts her at an immediate disadvantage, the system she had to learn intimately, the system she had to manipulate to get her where she wanted to go. No person can operate outside the system; if they want to do anything within it, they have to work within its rules.

And that is what Clinton is, and was, doing.