When shame can kill us

Also, why is it always girls and women who pay the price?

In search of a happy, feel-good show, I started season 5 of Call the Midwife yesterday

Do not do this. Do not watch season 5 if you want warm happiness.

If, however, you need a reminder about how horribly the world has treated women in our lifetimes and how this treatment has put female lives at risk – and even killed them at times, I am sure (CTM is not going to let all of the characters in trouble die, but they are going to get darn close), then watch.

Leaving aside the thalidomide issue, which has presented itself in several of the episodes (AKA incomplete medical research without consideration of how women would be affected), there’s a girl who is hiding her pregnancy while her mother is pretending to be pregnant. The story will be that the mother had the baby. (The girl’s father is away at sea, so there’s no other grownup who could notice that mom is not really pregnant.)

The mom is doing this to protect her teenage daughter from the shame of an out of wedlock pregnancy.

(“Do you know how many of our neighbors have done the same thing?” the mom asks when the daughter protests.)

(Eric Clapton thought his biological mother was his sister.)

Which means the girl gets no pre-natal care and which means when it’s time for the girl to deliver, there is no medical help. True, mom has had four kids and knows how this goes, but when the placenta takes too long to come out, mom is very worried. She gets the advice to pull on the cord to remove the placenta, but while I am watching her do so, I am screaming at the TV, “DO NOT DO THIS! DO NOT DO THIS!”

I thought she would rip the placenta from the uterus and cause hemorrhaging, but that’s not what happens.

Instead, she pulls her daughter’s uterus out (which is something I didn’t even know could happen but seems almost as bad as hemorrhaging).

Please notice nobody is going out of their way, at the risk of his health and life, to protect the father of the baby from shame.

The other episode that struck me (but I am not done with the season yet, so who knows what other horrors await) is the one with the pregnant unwed teacher.

She is pregnant by another teacher – a married man.

But she’s the one who loses her job.

She’s the one whose landlady kicks her out.

She’s the one who sticks a clothes hanger into her uterus and lacerates it, meaning that she collapses in the street, bleeding, and is sent to a hospital where they have to do a hysterectomy, meaning she will now never have children.

She’s the one who faces criminal charges for performing an abortion.

Yes, even if she did it to herself, she could be charged.

The married man/other teacher/father?

His life goes on just fine.

Their lives go on just fine.

Happy New Year

Who’s cleaning up after your party?

Forty years later, I still regret helping with the dishes after my boss had a bunch of us to his house for supper.

Wait. Not “regret.” “Am furious with myself” is a better way to phrase it.

When supper was over, my only female co-worker, Cindy, and I got up to help the boss’s wife clear the table while my male co-workers sat there.

My only defense is that I was in my early 20s and unknowingly steeped in deep, deep patriarchy and that I sensed (I did feel great unease as I got up to help – why were the men still sitting?) I would have somehow been punished if I had not helped. Not consciously punished, but it would have affected how my boss – who once invited us all to attend his church (Assemblies of God, I think? Some denomination even more far-right than the Catholic Church, not that inviting us to a Catholic Church would have been appropriate, either) – saw me.

I think about that event a lot when I think about expectations. I think about other events.

When Mr T’s parents stayed with us for over a week for our wedding (WHY THE HELL DID I EVER AGREE TO THAT?), I made supper every night. Every. Night. Even though Mr T and I do not have a formal, sit-down supper every night. I did so because I knew that if I did not, his parents would talk trash about me.

(Why did I even care if they talked trash about me? They had already told him not to marry me and had threatened to boycott our wedding.)

Do we ever escape our conditioning?

I make a conscious effort to not jump into sexist, gendered roles anymore. I am not always successful – I am very likely to help a female friend clean up even if the men aren’t helping just because I don’t want the burden to be on my friend.

But also, most of my friends have partners who are not assholes, so it’s not like it’s even much of an issue for me these days.

I guess I assumed it was not really an issue for other women so much, either, but then I read this.

Dear Carolyn: I usually go to my partner’s sibling’s home for the holidays. I have noticed at the end of the meal, the men sit around and only the women are cleaning. My partner says it’s because when they offer to help, she is too particular or gets annoyed when they do something wrong. But somehow, it always ends up that I am taking people’s plates away and the two of us are in the kitchen cleaning!
I don’t want to leave her in the lurch, but the dynamic really grinds my gears. Since it’s not my household, should I even try to help fix this? If so, how?

Carolyn Hax

You might – or you might not – be surprised to know that there are a lot of women in the comments saying the letter writer should just shut up and help the partner’s sister and leave it at that.

There are a lot of women defending the partner for not helping.

There are a lot of women saying this is not sexism but a sibling issue and the LW should just leave it alone.

But their “leave it alone” does not include supporting the LW in not helping.

The LW is supposed to help clean while the men watch TV and is not supposed to question her role and certainly is not supposed to suggest to her partner that he get off his lazy ass and help.

The LW is supposed to help maintain the patriarchy.

Here’s a good New Year’s resolution:

If the men aren’t cleaning, we aren’t cleaning.

Amen.

The new urinary leash

Keeping women out of public life, one stupid rule at a time

I was all ready to be very crabby about the purse policy – only bags smaller than 2″ x 2″ or something ridiculous like that – at a local museum and write about how this is the new way of keeping women in line, but then when we got to the museum, I saw they had free lockers for anyone who brought a larger bag and so I had to dial back my ire.

But I still have ire!

I am still annoyed – no, pissed off – that for almost any entertainment venue where I go, I am not allowed to come in not only with my bigger purse, which is a whopping 12″ x 7.5″, but also not with my smaller one, which is about 9″ x 8″.

I don’t even care what their stupid justification is. It can’t be about safety – we already go through metal detectors and any items are searched for the ballgames and for the summer festivals.

It can’t even be about people bringing in their own booze because they are already searching the bags that are allowed in.

So why is a size restriction even necessary? WTF are they accomplishing?

It might be different if I could fit things I need into my pockets.

Hahahahaha.

The only pocket where my phone fits is in the back pocket of my jeans.

I don’t have pockets anywhere else except in my big winter coat and it is not practical to wear a big winter coat in the summer.

Or even indoors in the winter.

And putting a phone in the back jeans pocket?

Not safe from pickpocketers

Not safe for peeing because when you pull your jeans down, the phone falls out.

Have you ever heard the phrase “urinary leash” before?

I hadn’t heard of it until a few years ago, when I started learning more about public toilets and the lack thereof for women, an issue we have all lived. Either there is a women’s toilet and the line is three times as long as the line for the men’s toilet and we miss the beginning of the concert and spend the entire intermission in line, or there is no women’s toilet at all.

This has been a known issue for over a century.

And it was an intentional issue.

In Victorian Britain, most public toilets were designed for men. Of course, this affected women’s ability to leave the home, as women who wished to travel had to plan their route to include areas where they could relieve themselves. Thus, women never travelled much further than where family and friends resided. This is often called the ‘urinary leash’, as women could only go so far as their bladders would allow them.

Historic UK

It took women advocating for women for the situation to change but there is always backlash and here we are, decades and decades later, fighting the same damn fight.

And it’s not just about the toilets – it’s about whether we get to exist outside of the house. About whether we get to participate fully in public life. About whether we can grab our keys and go and not have to spend the time that we are away from home worrying about if the store has a public restroom or if there is a place under the streetlight to park if we dare to be out after dark or if we can carry the things we need – our glasses, our phones – in the space we are allocated for those things. About whether our children are safe if we cannot be watching them. About if we can even have children and how we accommodate parenthood with working for money. About if we can *not* have children if we do not want them.

The big social movements – against child prostitution/rape, against taverns having first dibs on male paychecks (the Temperance Movement) – have been led by women. The book that led so many people to become anti-slavery – Uncle Tom’s Cabin – was written by a woman.

Let me rephrase that. The big social movements that have curbed the rapacious, predatory actions of men have been led by women.

Because men are not going to act against their own desires.

And the men in power now know that women will push back. And that’s why they are trying to push us back – so they can have their power that they think they deserve because they think they are actually better than us. They want to put that leash back around our necks.

He killed her because she burned the eggs

And other reasons why abuse is always her fault

I am assuming men wrote these two comments on a letter to the New York Times advice columnist. The letter is from a woman – Ambivalent – who has been dating a man for a year but she has reservations. They had a big fight, Ambivalent told her mom and her best friend about it, mom and best friend are now concerned on Ambivalent’s behalf.

Commenters think Ambivalent is doing it wrong, which she is, but their advice is also wrong.

Here’s my advice to Ambivalent: Start by asking, “What is my part in this?” Then, role reverse: “How is my boyfriend likely to be interpreting my behavior, the way I acted?” After that, ask “What might be motivating his actions?” If they are harmful to you, you might ask “Is fear, anger, ignorance likely to motivating his actions?” Lastly, ask, “Have I ever acted from these motivations myself? Have I ever acted in a similar way?” If so, ask, “what would have been a helpful response from the person I acted that way towards?”

— Definitely written by a man

In reply to Guy #1, I asked, “So she should ask herself why it’s her fault?”

To which Guy #2 mansplained how to handle potential domestic abuse.

No. By questioning yourself, you see how you acted and therefore you empower yourself to take a different stance instead of being stuck in a bad situation that’s just going round and round. No progress can be made if you don’t see how you played your part.

It’s not about blame, but when you observe your own reactions you can then change them to create a path forward. It’s like finding your way out of a maze instead of wandering endlessly inside of it.

Say if he threatens to beat her and she just cowers so in the end he gets his way, maybe she should stand up and tell him she is leaving the room and when he has calmed down and stopped threatening her they can then proceed to have a more productive conversation. She changed her behavior, not because she was wrong but to create a different outcome to this problem. Empower yourself instead of waiting for others to change.

— Also definitely written by a man

Would any woman anywhere tell a woman who has just been threatened with violence to try to have a “productive” conversation? (Not to mention would you really advise her to tell him she is leaving until he has calmed down?)

No no no no.

The advice is, Do what you need to do to not be assaulted. Say what you need to say.

And then the second he has left the house, call your best friend/brother/whoever lives nearby to come help you pack and get the hell out.

Because a man who tells you he is going to beat you is, I am guessing, going to beat you at some point. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday.

I am very lucky that I have never been in this situation. As far as I know, neither have any of my friends.

But if a friend called me at midnight and asked me to come get her, I would do it in a second.

And if a friend told me that she had been dating someone for a year and she wasn’t sure about him and then she told me about a bad fight, I would tell her to break up with him.

I would not, as the advice columnist did, tell her to go to couples therapy.

In fairness, the columnist also suggested regular therapy, which I am a fan of.

But first, break up with the guy. If you’re already this ambivalent, then you have your answer.

Who’s the pig, pig?

(But does he even know how cute baby pigs are?)

Photo by Alexandra Novitskaya on Pexels.com

You all know that the president of the United States of America, a country whose Constitution includes an amendment about freedom of the press, called a female reporter, who was doing her job, “Piggy.”

“Quiet. Quiet, Piggy,” he said as he pointed his finger at her.

He’s the pig.

He’s the bad kind of pig. The kind of greedy pig who doesn’t think of anyone else. He is not the sweet cute baby pig or Babe or Wilbur. He’s the pig we talk about when we talk about crude idiots.

But – he said what all of us have heard one way or another over the years. He just reduced it to the bones.

How many times have we been told to be quiet? To stop taking up space? To make ourselves small?

How many times have we been told that we are not welcome? That we Ruined The Workplace? (I can’t even bring myself to read the piece – the premise is so stupid.) That it’s our fault that men now have to walk on eggshells?

Years ago, a man complained to me that ever since women had started working at his company, he and the other guys couldn’t cuss the way they used to.

Men have sighed as they say they can’t even put their arm around the shoulders of a female colleague these days.

Trumpers are defending child molesters, saying that it’s not like the girls that Epstein arranged to be raped were little. They were 15, for crying out loud! THAT IS NOT CHILD RAPE according to them.

I’m so tired. I’m so, so tired of this.

Every body is a beach body

We don’t always get what we deserve but we do deserve to enjoy life

A beautiful woman in Spain who probably wears a bikini to the beach.

Almost 40 years ago, my friend T asked me to tell her when she shouldn’t be wearing a bikini anymore.

A few years after she made that request, I moved away. This was before the internet and cellphones, so we lost track of each other for a while.

Last week, I saw T for the first time in almost 30 years.

She is as beautiful to me as she was on the day I met her.

I saw another long-time friend last weekend. I hugged her and said, “You are gorgeous! You have not aged!”

She laughed and said that oh yes she has indeed aged.

And I realized that I had internalized the whole “Beauty=youth” narrative.

My friend was beautiful 40 years ago and she’s beautiful now. Age is not incompatible with beauty.

I used to look critically at older women who let their flabby upper arms show by wearing sleeveless shirts. That was when I had the gift of youth and thought that an imperfect, no longer firm body was a sign of – what? Of not caring enough? Of not exercising enough? Of some kind of moral failure?

Yeah I was dumb but aren’t we all kind of dumb when we’re 20 and everything is still tight and smooth?

Cover those arms! I thought.

Oh Lord I was an idiot.

I am seeing people get the faces they deserve now. My friends are beautiful beautiful beautiful.

My enemies – people who have done mean things to me and to others – not so much. At a reunion, I saw a man – former boyfriend? former gaslighter? – not sure what the right word is for the man who treated you so badly that you ended up going to therapy. (Which to be fair I did need anyway, so I guess thank you horrible man.)

Gaslighting Guy looks awful. Like he looks so bad that other people who didn’t even know how awful he was to me were asking what the heck. He’s super skinny, which could be because of illness, so that’s not the issue. I am not commenting on his body.

I am commenting on his choices – his hair goes halfway down his back, but it’s long and straggly and unwashed. His pants were a few sizes too big and were cinched around his waist. (He does have steady very good employment so I’m not sure what’s going on with the clothes.)

I do feel a little bit mean talking about him like this but not enough that I won’t mention him, not just because I am petty but also because I want to share the poem my super-talented friend Karen, a retired professor of engineering who has started writing poetry and writing it very very well, wrote about him.

Reunion

How appropriate

You aged like you treated me

Rather terribly

At the same reunion where I saw Gaslighting Guy, I saw a guy – Good Guy – I had not treated well in college. I have since apologized to him – I was very unfair to him and it weighed on me for decades. (I was nowhere as mean to him as Gaslighting Guy was to me! I promise!)

I was very grateful that when I saw him 15 years ago, he not only talked to me but he accepted my apology.

Good Guy looks great! He has gotten better looking over the years. And he deserves it. He seems to be genuinely kind and is definitely a warm, gracious person.

Wear the bikini, T. I am never ever ever going to tell you not to wear the bikini. Wear the bikini.

ICE rights

Men worry women will laugh at them

Women worry men will kill them (thank you, Margaret Atwood for summarizing it so well)

Photo by Earnest Joseph Odom on Pexels.com

There’s a story in the NY Times about how “people” (women) are checking out other people (men) before they meet them in person.

In the comments, many men are complaining that women are Doing It Wrong and women will end up all alone with nothing but cats if they persist in wanting to know all about a man before they agree to put themselves at risk.

Why are women so damn picky, they want to know.

I get somewhat annoyed by requests from women I meet online for an audition via a telephone call. The reason I suppose is that my interpersonal skills are much better in person, having honed them over the years in my profession as a trial attorney. So, I get annoyed because I know I won’t be seen at my best (or seen at all) during the telephone interview. As for what to do on a first meeting, nothing is better than a lengthy lunch with great food and wine filled with fun conversation at an upscale ocean view restaurant.

(Random male commenter)

Why would women feel danger, they want to know. This guy has “never felt the need” to escape from a date.

I’m well known in my city, and I’m not interested in people knowing that i’m on a dating site and all the gossip about me that will follow. So, i have only one photo posted, and I’m not too clearly shown in it. As for a first date, I have never felt the need to escape from one. By the time I meet someone in person, I generally know enough about them from their online profile and a little vetting to enjoy their company despite their faults, and most people have some faults. That is a given, which I accept.

(Same random male commenter)

What is wrong with women that we don’t want to meet these men immediately in person for a long, expensive meal?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH WOMEN?

My sister met her husband online.

My friend Kim met her husband online.

I met my wonderful boyfriend John online.

There is nothing wrong with meeting someone online.

There is also nothing wrong with trying to make sure a man is not an ax murderer before you meet him in person.

When I was dating, I would always do some basic google search on a potential date. In most cases, after a day or two of chatting (e.g. where one went to school, what do they do) I would be able to find out their last name and current job through LinkedIn. This would give me a sense of security and at the same time an idea of how successful they are, which was important to me. In a few cases advance screening of a facebook profile would let me know in advance that the guy was married, so I wouldn’t waste my time going on a date with them. But two+ weeks of texting prior to meeting in person would look like a potential red flag (unless there’s a good reason e.g. they are traveling). This feels like too much effort for an uncertain outcome.

(a woman)

My friend Amy dated a man for a year before she discovered he was married. That he did not have cancer after all. That he had a criminal record.

He had been lying to her about everything.

I don’t remember how she put it all together, but she showed me his criminal record on CCAP.

She now looks at CCAP before she goes out with someone.

When I was dating online 25 years ago as a single mom, I swore I would have a background check done if any relationship became serious, but I didn’t follow my own policy with a guy I was dating from my work place because we both had security clearances. My logic was that if he had done anything wrong, he wouldn’t have a security clearance. Wow, was I wrong. A simple check of my state’s judiciary case search database would have given me the information I needed to know–that he had been arrested twice for assault and battery just a year or so before I started dating him. I learned that tidbit years into our marriage, When I confronted him and told him I wouldn’t have married him if I had known about his arrests, he first denied, then denied again, before blurting out “that’s why I didn’t tell you!” We’re now divorced.

(a woman)

Her church friends tried to set up my friend Jaime with a man they knew.

He seemed too good to be true, so Jaime kept asking questions.

The church friends finally admitted that the man had been charged as a child molester.

But that he was praying very hard about it.

Jaime declined.

When I met John online, 25 years ago, it didn’t occur to me to run a background check.

But I did set up a Matchmaker.com-only email. I was not going to share the email that showed my real name.

I didn’t use my real name on Matchmaker.

I didn’t use a photo.

I didn’t share my address.

I didn’t agree to meet in person until we had emailed for a week or so, during which time I discovered that John was a brilliantly funny writer.

I finally agree to meet him in person at a cafe in the airport, which was where he worked.

I still didn’t tell him my real name.

And he was fine with all of that.

Because John had an imagination and empathy and he had read a newspaper before.

(We dated for a few years. He was wonderful.)

If I were dating these days, I would absolutely screen for if someone had voted for trump. If he voted regularly. Where he stood on abortion rights. On gay marriage. On the shitshow that is our current government. These issues are not about being a fun date but about being a decent human being.

Asking “big questions” before meeting in person. Background checks before a dinner or coffee. 50 first dates. All seem to be red flags and indicative of people who perhaps should extricate themselves from the dating pool until they feel more comfortable with being a little uncomfortable. Dating is supposed to be fun, and a little uncomfortable. It’s not supposed to be an exercise in paranoia. If you can’t meet another adult in a crowded public place in NYC without a background check, you really shouldn’t be meeting people for dates. As for first dates coffee feels like a business meeting. Dinner feels like a commitment. Try meeting at the bar at a nice restaurant for a drink. If things are going well get a table or order some appetizers. If things are not, enjoy your drink thank them for their time and move on. But for gods sakes have fun dating.

-(Another man, I presume)

(Not that I plan to date again if Mr T goes before I do. I will, as my friend Joyce, who was widowed at 95, enjoy my solitude, cooking only for myself, cleaning only for myself, watching TV only when I want, reading when I want.)

Nuns live longer than other women

They don’t have to put up with shit from men

This.

This is why women should not marry.

Or, at the least, why women should have a very detailed and specific conversation about money before you agree to marry. (The Money Talk is harder than the Sex Talk, I think, but is way more important.)

Because marriage should benefit us, not disadvantage us.

How is this woman better off married to this man? How is she better off with her husband than she would be with a roommate or someone where borrowing the money actually makes sense?

What kind of man makes his wife borrow money to buy food?

I heard of a woman whose husband didn’t think he should pay for her to get maternity clothes. When she was pregnant. With his baby.

I heard of this guy who has been married for 30 years but still has not put his wife’s name on the house (he owned the house before they married) and who is not leaving her anything in his will. No, she is not independently wealthy. She can live in the house after he dies, but she is retired from a modest career – where does the money to pay the taxes and insurance and maintenance come from? Where does the money for her to buy food and pay medical bills come from?

When Mr T and I got married, we put everything in both of our names. Indeed, buying our house was a pain in the neck because we weren’t married yet so we needed a special provision in the deed to make sure that I would get the house if he died and vice versa.

Two weeks before closing, I proofread the documents. They had not incorporated the provision. I pointed out the error and went on my merry way.

Mr T and I went to the Friday afternoon closing. I re-read the documents as one does before signing a contract and discovered they still had not included the provision. Not only that, the only owner they had listed was Mr T. My name did not appear anywhere in the documents.

My friends – the entire 50% down payment for the house came from the sale of my house in Memphis. That was all my money.

I told the closing people that they needed to fix that section before we signed.

The woman told me Oh just sign it now and we’ll fix it on Monday!

I shook my head. Nope, I said. We’ll. Wait.

They were crabby but girl this was your fault I told you and you didn’t fix it.

It took about 30 minutes for them to update the documents but I did not care. We were going to have joint ownership and joint finances.

I understand that this isn’t always the best approach. When my college roommate was getting ready to marry another college classmate (whom she had met at our 35 year reunion), they consulted a lawyer about their finances and their wills: They each have children from their first marriages.

If you’re a parent, you want to make sure you are setting things up so your kids get what you want them to get.

But for those of us without children? And without ancestral estates that come with prenups?

You combine the money. You put both names on deeds and titles and bank accounts. You don’t act like roommates and charge your spouse for buying food.

I was 12 and I wanted my mom to give me money for something.

She refused.

I opened my smart mouth and asked why she even cared – it was dad’s money anyhow.

My mom, who had borne three children and cared for them alone while my dad was in Vietnam and who had packed the house and moved across oceans far from her family and community and raised us three almost single-handed when you consider how often my dad had to travel for work, slapped me.

I deserved it.

When you think you are so clever but then you realize this is another instance where you personally have benefitted from America’s Original Sins

It’s all stolen land

The little grave on the farm where my mom grew up. My great-X grandparents watched all of their (first) seven children die from diphtheria in one week. Those children are buried on the farm.

Someone posted this story on facebook – the TLDR is that cooperation is better than competition if you want to survive in dangerous circumstances.

But of course then the incels had to chime in that no way dude would they ever want or need or ask for help from another person and that it’s so much better just to be on your own, like the cowboys and the ranchers and that the dadgum government had never given them anything and they were and are indeed Rugged Self-Sufficient Individuals.

One commenter – let’s call him Bob – claimed that’s the life many live today in Wyoming. None of those darn government subsidies.

how about you actually go somewhere that was built on ranching and has been part of the culture for generations. If you come to wyoming you will find that not only was the west built by cowboys and frontiersmen, but cowboying is still a way of life today. I’ve known several who make their living without relying on government subsidies and the like. It ain’t easy, but it’s possible.

To which I replied, “How did they get the land, Bob? How did they get the land?”

You all know what I mean. Who did that land belong to before?

Bob, however, did not understand or chose to ignore what I was really asking, and got mad at me.

depends on the ranch. Many ranches started during the farm crisis of the 1980’s, and they simply bought the fucking land. In the late 1800’s they had homesteading laws, so they loaded their shit up in wagons, moved out and homesteaded the land you unfrosted fucking poptart.

How dare I challenge his myth!

(Also is being an unfrosted pop tart bad? I like unfrosted pop tarts so I am very confused.)

We know who the land belonged to before.

It’s not what we were taught in school. We were taught that this land was empty when the Europeans arrived.

But it was not empty.

It was full of people who had been there since before the Common Era, but then the Europeans wiped out, via disease and murder, according to some estimates, more than 90% of the population.

And most of us know that now.

If you don’t know it, well, welcome to the knowledge.

I thought I was so smart asking Bob where the land came from.

And then I thought about the farm where my mom grew up. It had belonged to her great-grandparents, then her grandparents, then her parents.

The great-grandparents had cleared the trees and turned the forest into farmland.

I never once questioned the story.

I had never once thought, But who owned the land before them?

Where did the land come from, Texan? Where did the land come from?

Yeah.

It’s a sobering realization.