Texan who was tricked by Used Husband into moving to Milwaukee. Fomenting feminist revolution based on potty parity, pockets, and psleeves. Bad bacon eater. Also, cats. Also, REVOLUTION.
“The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family—all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction.” (About the book “Against the Grain” by James Scott.) Photo source
Chloe is pregnant.
She does not want to be pregnant.
My first thought when my dear friend, Chloe’s mother, told me about the pregnancy, was “What are the abortion laws in Florida?” “What are the abortion laws in the states that border Florida?” and “At least Chloe left Wisconsin.”
Nothing else matters except that Chloe does not want to be pregnant, but I know everyone always wants the details.
She recently completed graduate school and is now a special education teacher.
Her dad, to whom she was very close, died last fall of a heart attack at age 60 and Chloe has been struggling with deep grief.
She had been dating a guy casually. This time, the birth control failed.
She took a Plan B, but a few weeks later, she realized she was late.
She does not want to marry the man she is dating. Or, at least, she does not want to marry him now.
She does not want to have a baby on her own.
She does not want to give a baby up for adoption.
What she wants is to not be pregnant.
Florida requires an ultrasound and counseling, followed by at least a 24-hour wait.
The clinic in her town doesn’t have an appointment until the end of March.
She can be seen next week at a clinic an hour away.
She can’t make her follow-up appointment until she has had the ultrasound.
She will have to take two days off from work.
It will be hugely inconvenient for Chloe. And it’s almost impossible for someone who has an hourly job or who doesn’t have a way to get around easily.
Which of course is the point.
I have been pregnant. I had a miscarriage.
My ten-week ultrasound showed – a smudge.
If the idea of the ultrasound is to convince women that there is a baby inside of them – SOMETHING THEY ALREADY KNOW – showing them a ten-week – or, in Chloe’s case, a five-week – smudge is not the answer.
But at least if Chloe decided to have the baby and be a single mom, there would be a lot of help for her. The loving state of Florida wants to do everything it can to support women and children.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
This is why we need to vote.
And, if you are so inclined, donate to Janet Protasiewicz’s campaign for Wisconsin Supreme Court. We have a chance to change the court to a liberal majority and, I hope, overturn the 1849 – 1849!! before women had the vote! – law outlawing abortion in Wisconsin.
She was in a meeting WITH A VENDOR – that is, someone who wanted this woman’s company to give them money – and the men were smirking and indulging in “locker room talk,” which I can reasonably imagine was a discussion of what she would look like naked and how they all wanted to screw her.
When Sharpe told the VP at the vendor that she wanted to switch to a female salesperson, the VP told her that they didn’t have any women qualified to help her.
I posted this story on facebook and some troll I have never heard of told me to put on my big-girl pants because this is just how men are.
As in – we women just have to learn to deal with this stuff! We have no options! It’s not like we can expect men to act like decent people. I mean – the former president does this sort of thing and he got elected. It’s OK, right?
Oh honey.
Bless your stupid sexist misogynist heart.
I have been hearing this shit from men for decades: “This is just how men are! You can’t expect us to change! We can’t control ourselves!”
In 1995, when I was coming back home over land from the Peace Corps in Chile, I met an American man in Honduras.. He worked for a paper company and told me that it was no place for a woman.
When I asked why, he told me because Men Had Their Ways and when women were around, it was way too difficult for the men to act professionally. It was so constraining for the men, he told me. So so hard.
And yet – I bet they acted decently around their mothers. Their sisters. Their wives. Their daughters.
But female co-workers?
We can’t possibly expect socially-acceptable behavior around them. LORD WILL NOBODY EASE THE SUFFERING OF THE PUT-UPON MIDDLE-AGED WHITE GUY? HOW MUCH MORE MUST THEY BE EXPECTED TO ENDURE?
After the Peace Corps, I found a job with a paper company.
My male co-workers behaved professionally around me.
It can be done.
Dear Troll:
According to The Troll, we’re just supposed to roll with the punches and accept that some men can be total jerks.
I wonder if those men are rolling with the punch that they lost Sharpe’s account.
See that image above? That’s a scene from Chicago Med, season 6.
If I had watched the show in spring of 2021, when it came out (instead of now, on DVDs from the library), I might have diagnosed myself sooner.
Do you know what interstitial cystitis (IC) is?
I did not.
I did not, until about year ago, when I got into a conversation about bladder pain with a woman in my Buy Nothing group.
In 2006, I went to my doctor for repeated UTIs. The doc shrugged, said they weren’t UTIs and he didn’t know what was going on, and gave me an RX for the antibiotic you take for UTIs. (Which – you aren’t supposed to take antibiotics for UTIs anyhow.)
He told me to take a pill every time I had sex, since that seemed to be a triggering event.
A few months later, Mr T and I were out of town. I had UTI pain so bad that I called my doc for a painkiller. To his credit, he called an RX in to a local Walgreen’s immediately, but it still took a few hours to be ready.
And nobody – not the doc, not the pharmacist – saw fit to mention that AZO is the UTI painkiller and it is available over the counter.
After I married Mr T, the problem persisted.
I asked my primary doc. He said there might be drugs I could take. I said I didn’t want to take a drug for the rest of my life – I wanted to understand and solve the problem.
He sent me to a urologist who put a wand up my hoo-ha and looked at my bladder, which had no problems that he could see.
“But I feel like I need to pee all the time and sometimes it hurts,” I told him.
He told me I needed to train my bladder – that my bladder had become the boss of me.
He was right about that – I had let my bladder become the boss. I trained it and I needed to pee less frequently, but I still got the bladder pain.
I did not return to the urologist because my insurance said it was a hospital visit and charged me a $700 hospital deductible and a $500 lab work deductible.
I argued that he was a specialist who happened to have an office in a teaching hospital and I should be charged only the $45 specialist co-pay, but Blue Cross of Michigan is the worst insurance company in the world and my rebuttals fell on deaf ears.
And the expert had not seen anything. Clearly, this was a problem I would just have to learn to live with.
It got worse and I couldn’t live with it.
Two years ago, after I had had several doctor visits/calls about the UTI pain that would not go away, my doc prescribed oxybutynin, which is used to treat bladder spasms and has the happy side effect of reducing hot flashes for some women.
My bladder did not get better and my hot flashes did not diminish.
Once I learned about IC, I tried different treatments, including aloe extract, which got very expensive during the pandemic and did not work for me.
It was not until last year that I saw that some foods trigger bladder pain.
Last year.
After years and years of gastrointestinal problems, including two bouts of c. diff and a fecal transplant, a very dear older friend has just learned – JUST NOW – that she might be gluten sensitive. My friend is not someone who spends hours online doing research. This is information she would trust her physician to give her.
And he didn’t give it to her until after she had serious GI problems.
My friend Shelly is a nurse practitioner who visits elderly people at home. When her patients have problems with discomfort, Shelly starts with diet.
“It’s so often what someone is eating,” she told me.
When I saw my about to be former doctor for my physical last fall, he asked if I was still taking the oxybutynin.
I told him I was not – that it had not helped me.
Then I told him I had figured out what my problem was.
“Have you ever heard of interstitial cystitis?” I asked him.
“Of course,” he answered.
“Even the writers of Chicago Med know what interstitial cystitis is!”
(He didn’t really say the part about Chicago Med. But he did say the first part.)
And I didn’t even know what to say.
If you knew about it, WHY DIDN’T YOU SUGGEST TO ME THAT IT MIGHT BE THE PROBLEM?
Why didn’t my doctor in Memphis tell me that I might have this weird thing called interstitial cystitis? That I should keep a food diary to see if certain foods, like vinegar and lemon juice and hot peppers, might trigger symptoms?
Why didn’t my first doctor here tell me I might have this weird thing called interstitial cystitis?
Why didn’t the VERY EXPENSIVE urologist tell me I might have this weird thing called interstitial cystitis?
Why didn’t my about to be former doctor tell me I might have this weird thing called interstitial cystitis?
Why didn’t anyone offer me the possible solution years ago?
Instead, I have spent so many nights awake, waiting for the AZO to take effect so the pain will go away and I can sleep.
I have used thousands of dollars in medical resources.
My friend’s flight was cancelled and the airline put her up in a hotel overnight. This was about 40 years ago, back when airlines did such a thing and when my friend was a very petite, very young woman.
She and the other affected passengers commiserated on the bus from the airport to the hotel, then ate together in the hotel restaurant.
She chatted, as one does.
She chatted with people trapped in the same situation she was in, as one does.
And she chatted with the older married man with children as they both walked to their rooms, which happened to be adjacent to each other, as one does.
She said goodnight and entered her room, as one does.
And then, she heard a knock.
As one does not.
She opened the door. (As one would not do today, with experience and wisdom.)
It was the Older Married Man With Children.
“Would you like to borrow my toothbrush?” he asked.
As nobody – NOBODY – does.
Raise your hand if you have ever accidentally used your spouse’s toothbrush.
Raise your hand if both you and your spouse – who share bodily fluids on the most intimate levels – were grossed out.
Now raise your hand if you would ever voluntarily use a stranger’s toothbrush.
Yeah.
That’s what I thought.
Now think to yourself: When I was 19, what kind of man did I want?
I bet that the answer is not “Someone my dad’s age, married, with children.”
Yes, yes, yes – of course there are the rich and famous exceptions, but this guy probably had the western Kentucky territory for a shower ring company.
(And I just had a thought – what if he were a toothbrush salesman? And he had a clean toothbrush? But he should have led with that – and offered them to all the other travelers who were separated from their luggage. So no, he was not a toothbrush salesman, I am sure of it.)
What 19 year old woman wants a married man with children?
They don’t.
Nineteen year old women do not want
Old
Married
With Children
Men
But what a woman wants does not matter.
We all know that.
All that matters to the Delusional Middle-Aged Man is what he wants.
Society has supported him in every way.
When my friend and I were 19, there was no such thing as sexual harassment. There was no such thing as going to HR to complain. There was no such thing as men raping their wives.
What men wanted, men got.
No.
What men wanted, men took.
Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100% of them.
My friend and I kept wondering why any man would think a line like “Would you like to borrow my toothbrush?” would work.
And then we realized it wasn’t about that at all.
He didn’t even think to himself, “I need to be charming and attractive to overcome my obvious shortcomings that would not appeal to a beautiful young woman.”
Of course he didn’t think, “I’m a married man. I made a vow to my wife.”
He just thought – with the confidence of the average middle-aged white guy – that the world is his oyster and what woman wouldn’t want him?
(She didn’t want him.)
(Would anyone want him?)
(Thank goodness she was able to close and lock the door, because if he had wanted to, he could have overpowered my petite friend.)
(How can we women get that kind of confidence but with the asshole component?)
Y’all, a doctor listened to me and believed me and told me I was right.
It was so weird.
It’s not that I am used to doctors not believing me, but I have never – that I remember – had one look at me and say “Oh yes I can see the problem you are absolutely right we must fix that.”
Part of the issue is that the complaints that have taken me for my rare doctor visits have been for pain, which is hard to pinpoint, see, and measure.
My family was never a go to the doctor family. I remember having to go to the ER when the mouse bit me and I needed rabies shots and when my parents thought I had broken my arm. (I had not. It was a sprain. But the doc asked if I wanted a cast anyhow, WHICH I DID, but I said no. Why didn’t I get that cast? I regret it.) I also had to go several times for strep throat.
But for pain?
Who goes to the doc for pain?
My pain must have been awful for my mom to take me to the doc for cramps when I was 15, but my problem was not resolved. The doctor suggested birth control pills and I was horrified at the idea because birth control pills not only were Against My Religion but also were for Bad Girls and there was no way I was going to become one of those girls discussed in hushed whispers at school: “She’s on THE PILL.”
And the doc (who was also female, which makes me even angrier about this) didn’t talk to my mom (who also had very painful periods), either, to try to get her to understand so my mom could convince me.
I hope things are different today. I hope a doc whose 15 year old patient declines birth control pills when BCP are the only solution to the problem probes and tries to understand. Because I suffered from cramps for years and years after that.
But yeah – going to the doctor was not A Thing in my house. Certainly not for pain! What’s pain? It’s just something people have, right?
And to be fair, I don’t even know if I ever complained to my mom about my headaches when I was a kid. Even if I had, I might have discovered – as I didn’t discover until I was well into adulthood – that my mom, my brother, and my sister all had headaches.
That is, we all have migraine.
But – we probably would have thought – *I* would have thought, “Oh. Headaches are just a thing that happens. They happen to almost everyone else in my family. I guess that’s just how life is.”
My friend Susan and I went to a party. We talked to a few guys, one of whom Susan decided she liked.
“Maybe he’ll call me!” she said.
“Susan!” I laughed. “He’s GAY!”
She shook her head. “What? He didn’t say that! How do you know?”
I answered. “Because he said he wanted to spank Al Gore, which should have been your biggest clue, but also, he asked you a question. And then he listened to your answer.”
She fell silent.
I fell silent.
We both thought about this phenomenon.
A man had asked a woman a question.
And then stopped talking.
So he could hear her answer.
“Oh yeah,” she said, shoulders slumping. “You’re right. There’s no way he’s straight.”
It’s not that I don’t feel like doctors haven’t believed me – they have treated or tried to treat the conditions I presented to them.
But I have never had one say “OH YES YOU DEFINITELY HAVE THE PROBLEM YOU SAY YOU HAVE!”
(And to be fair, even though I just gave an example of how rare it is for a man to listen, I have also had female docs who have left me feeling a little bit unheard. This might be more of a doctor thing than a man/woman thing.)
And yet – it happened this week.
And it was about a tooth.
Which is something that can be evaluated objectively.
And this is a story about a dentist and so it’s still not really about my issues with medical doctors, but dang has it stuck with me.
I told my student dentist at the dental school that the tooth next to the one she had repaired felt odd.
“Maybe I’m imagining it,” I apologized. “I mean – it’s the tooth next to the one you’ve been working on. That’s weird, isn’t it?”
She took a look and then asked her male professor to take a look.
“Oh yes!” he said.
“I can see that your bite is off. We need to take care of that or you could crack your tooth!”
After he told my student what to do, he left her with these words: “Always believe your patients. They know when something is wrong.”
“Does anyone really care where the rain falls on the Iberian peninsula?”
My friend Danielle saw My Fair Lady last night and spent most of the play fuming in rage.
“Now that I know what I know,” she said, “I see it in a completely different way.”
There are so many stories – so many romantic comedies and teen comedies that I thought were great when I saw them decades ago and now I watch and wonder, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
Take Sixteen Candles, which is about the overlooked teenage girl finally getting the attention she wants.
Right?
But – the purloined underwear? And the unconscious girlfriend and the jokes about her and her possible rape?
And Grease. The way to get the guy is to completely change yourself? Even though he liked you as you were and the issue was that he was too embarrassed to be public with you?
Plus the line “Did she put up a fight?”
And General Hospital, when Luke rapes the underage Laura – and then marries her. That wedding was a huge deal. It was so romantic – except – he was a rapist.
And the character was already married to Scotty when Luke raped her! They had her married – she was 17 in real life, and, as it turns out, in the show as well – as Laura’s probation for murder (I did not know this plotline – thank you internet for this info) would end when she turned 18 or when she got married, which is why Scotty marries her.
To make things worse (although how can I, with this awful storyline?), the show made Genie Francis defend the plot.
In the documentary ‘The Story of Soaps’, Genie spoke about how despite finding the falling in love with your rapist premise problematic, she had to defend it. She said, “It was such a big deal in the media and it took the country by storm. I’ve had to justify it for so many years and I have to say, it feels good to sit here and say I won’t justify it. It’s awful. They shouldn’t have done it.” The producer of the show, Gloria Monte, and the writers tried to deal with the situation by calling it “rape-seduction”, and explaining that Luke did it for love. Despite the rape scene, Laura and Luke remain television’s golden couple.
When the one person you want to tell is the one person you can’t tell
We were going to outlast our enemies together. Source
Our mutual brother in law – Ted – was being his usual jerk self at Stephanie’s funeral.
I thought, “Oh man I need to call Steph and tell her what Ted is doing!”
Steph was the only one who Got It.
Mr T also gets it to a certain extent, but Steph and I were the outsiders with no blood ties, so it was easier for us to roll our eyes at Ted. Mr T is his brother (or his “half brother,” as Mr T’s parents were always so quick to point out), so it’s a bit harder.
She and I shared many a gossipy conversation about how awful Ted is.
He and his family don’t eat leftovers, he told Mr T.
(Steph was an amazing cook and Italian tomato sauce gets better if it sits a few days. Stephanie and I are both big fans of leftovers.)
When their dad, Sly, was in the rehab center, Ted told Mr T that Mr T needed to prepare Sly’s house for his return, including removing all the carpet and making Sly lose 30 pounds and stop drinking.
(Steph and I wanted Mr T to use his amazing weight loss powers on us first.)
Ted screamed at Mr T when Mr T wouldn’t reimburse him $800 cash for the frequent flier miles Ted used to attend his own father’s funeral.
Please note that Mr T did reimburse him what an actual plane ticket would have cost – about $400 – to attend the funeral.
He just didn’t give Ted the $800 he wanted.
Steph agreed that Ted was a greedy jerk.
Steph and I also had our shared history about Mr T’s dad, who, one Thanksgiving, pitched a fit because his grandchildren, whom he had told to serve themselves of the 20-lb turkey, had taken nothing but white meat.
He would never have dared to take only white meat when he was a kid, Sly shouted.
Why didn’t their mother raise them better? he yelled.
It was quite A Thing and ended only when Steph, who didn’t take crap, got her coat and said she was leaving. Mr T and Steph’s husband (Mr T’s other brother) convinced their dad to leave his office, where he had been sulking, and return to the dining room.
At Thanksgiving the next year, Sly said, unprompted and apropos of nothing, that he had never liked the white meat anyhow.
Steph and I turned to each other as our jaws dropped.
Years ago, after Steph, her husband, and their kids had moved closer to Mr T’s parents, Mr T’s parents had asked them over for Christmas Eve.
Steph politely declined, saying that they had their own traditions – the Seven Fishes, something Steph’s Italian family did every year, but that Sly and Doris were welcome to come to their house.
Sly and Doris insisted and said they would honor the tradition.
And they honored it.
Sort of.
Mr T’s parents provided Steph with a crab leg.
Yes.
One.
One crab leg.
Every time I saw crab legs on sale, I would screenshot the ad and text it to her.
Ted told Mr T that our musical tastes were “pedestrian” because we went to a Dire Straits concert.
Steph said “I like Dire Straits. Am I pedestrian, too?”
Ted’s wife had told Mr T it was a good thing that Mr T and I were not “financially strapped” the way they were, giving us the joyous freedom of taking care of Mr T’s parents as they died.
Ted and his wife grabbed tons of stuff from Sly and Doris’ house after they died, asking for furniture and complaining that Mr T wasn’t giving them the Good Jewelry that Doris had promised them.
“WHAT GOOD JEWELRY?” Steph asked. “She had nothing but costume jewelry!”
Mr T finally dumped all of Doris’ jewelry into a box and sent the whole thing to Ted.
And then he sent his mom’s silver to Ted.
Ted was not amused.
Steph was.
For Steph’s funeral, Ted chose to stay at the same hotel where Mr T and I were staying.
He chose.
We did not ask him to stay near us.
We did not ask him to stay in the same hotel.
We did not even recommend the hotel.
Mr T got our room on points and it was a convenient location and that was it.
Ted complained to Mr T that the hotel was awful and said he was going to punch and maybe even murder Mr T for that.
He also told Mr T that he needed to “open your wallet” and stay someplace like the Ritz Carlton.
He said that an open-casket funeral – which this one was – is “morbid.”
And he questioned my amazing, smart, kind, thoughtful niece’s ability to plan a funeral and execute the estate.
OMG! I thought. STEPH WILL NOT BELIEVE WHAT A JERK TED IS BEING!
Then Ted suggested that we – Mr T and I, our nieces and nephew, their dad, and Ted and his wife – get together for supper the night before the funeral.
At an expensive restaurant.
Not world class, though! Not world class, like where the ones where Ted lives, but it was good enough, he assured us.
“Surely the trust can pay for the kids,” he said. “I’m sure Sly and Doris wouldn’t mind kicking in from the grave.”
Thing the One
This trust is the money the kids inherited from their grandparents. It’s their money now, not their grandparents’ money. Money that Mr T is using to pay their student loans. To help them with unexpected big expenses. To fund their IRAs.
It’s not go out to fancy restaurants money.
Thing the Two
Mr T and I, in Before Times, would have supper with my dad’s two brothers and their wives. We tried and tried and tried to pick up the bill and my aunts and uncles WERE NOT HAVING IT.
“My brother’s kid paying for my supper? I DON’T THINK SO!” my uncle muttered. (Yes, he muttered in all caps.)
In what world does an uncle invite his nieces and nephews to dinner on the night before they bury their mother and expect them to pay for their own meal?
Steph is going to be so pissed that Ted thinks Niece #1 can’t handle this. Generous Steph, who always fed me when I visited, is going to be so pissed that Ted didn’t offer to host.
Mr T and I agreed that our nieces and nephew might want to spend the night before their mom’s funeral with Steph’s brother and his family and the rest of their mom’s relatives. That having dinner with us might not be top of mind for them.
Mr T’s brother and the kids’ father told Ted the same thing.
Ted said he would make reservations just in case.
FORTUNATELY, Ted told us, he is friends with the front of house manager at the restaurant and could get reservations for nine.
(Ted aside, the last thing I want to do right now is to 1. eat at a restaurant 2. with unmasked possibly infected people 3 when it’s so crowded that reservations are required.)
(Also the last last thing I want to do is spend a lot of money to eat out.)
(And if I were going to risk covid to eat at a restaurant, it would not be so I could eat with Ted. It would be with people I actually like.)
FORTUNATELY, Mr T told him that we wanted to eat the local food, not the French food offered at the fancy restaurant Ted had chosen.
To which Ted replied that he can’t eat the local food because he can’t eat onions and I thought “WTAF? Is this about being together or is it about eating where Ted wants to eat?”
Silly me. Of course it’s about eating where Ted wants to eat.
And then FORTUNATELY Mr T told Ted we are not eating in restaurants anyhow these days and the kids’ dad already said they’re not going to supper, which would be the reason we might make an exception.
And I wanted to text Steph and say “OMG CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS GUY?”
College-educated, practicing Christian (former Catholic) white man who voted for Trump in 2016 but now hates him with a passion and voted for Biden in 2020.
Grew up in a major city but now lives in a rural area. Vaccinated. Divorced for many years, now living with a lovely woman who agrees with me on abortion. Upper middle class economically, I would say. Parents were blue collar, devout Catholics. Early 70s?
TEXAN (AKA ME)
C’est moi, also a former Catholic, also white, but never voted for Trump.
Complicated feelings about abortion but my journey has brought me to wanting full abortion rights for all women, no matter what. I was wrong before, which is why I try not to be too harsh when I am talking to people who disagree with me, as I am living proof that minds can be changed, not just about this issue but about many issues. (I have been wrong about so many things.)
Act 1
Scene 1: Women Should Stop Being Floozies
THEO: I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that abortion wouldn’t even be an issue if women would just stop being such floozies. They get pregnant from their own irresponsible behavior.
ME: Floozies?
ME: (Are we in the 1950s?)
THEO: Women are so much more sexually aggressive these days. My friends tell me that women will go to bars and drink and proposition them!
ME: Men can say no.
THEO: Well they do.
ME (yeah right)
THEO: It’s their own irresponsible behavior that gets them into trouble.
ME: Do you even know anyone who’s had an abortion?
THEO: Of course I do! My neighbor told me she had one and she regrets it.
ME: That’s one. One woman. I guarantee you that you know women who’ve had abortions and you don’t know about it.
THEO: My neighbor told me!
ME: Women are not just going to volunteer that information to you. But we talk to each other. And I promise you that many of the women you know have had an abortion and you don’t know why. You don’t know why a woman has one but I guarantee you that “irresponsible behavior” is not the main reason.
Scene 2: Women Should Be Using Birth Control
ME: Are women not supposed to enjoy sex?
THEO: I guess, but they should use birth control.
ME: A lot of them do. But birth control can fail. Then what? Is an abortion OK then?
THEO: No. They should have thought of that.
ME: Are you aware that birth control not only fails a lot, but that the current methods – pills, IUD – have not really improved since the 1960s? And that there isn’t really anything new? What’s out there can have really bad side effects, too. I had to try eight different pill formulations before I found one I could stand.
THEO: It doesn’t fail that often.
ME: Even if it’s only one in a thousand, that’s one women out of a thousand every year, which is still a lot of women. She’s not supposed to be able to get an abortion?
(According to the CDC, the failure rate for the pill is closer to 7% than to the 0.1% I suggest here.)
THEO: No.
ME: So a woman does everything right and the birth control fails and she’s supposed to be punished by having a baby?
THEO: Yes. She could have said no. She could have said no to sex.
Scene 3: Women Should Ask Men To Wear Condoms
THEO: Why don’t they ask men to wear condoms?
ME: Why do the men need to be asked? Why is the burden on the women to ask? Why don’t men just wear them? Actually, why don’t men just get vasectomies?
Scene 4: If My Daughter Were Raped Abortion Would Be OK
ME: What about rape? Should someone who’s raped be forced to carry a baby to term?
THEO:
ME: What if your daughter were raped?
THEO: I guess I can see how an abortion might be acceptable in that case.
Scene 5: 12 Year Old Girls Can Get Abortions But Have You Seen Them?
ME: Have you seen the abortion statistics for the state? Do you know how many girls – girls under age 14 – have abortions? Do you think a 12 year old girl should be forced to have a baby?
THEO: Some of those girls – they want sex!
ME: They were raped.
THEO: They consented!
ME: It is not legally possible for a child that age to consent.
THEO: Have you seen what some of them look like?
ME: That is not the point. A 12 year old cannot consent to sex.
THEO: But —
ME: And I can promise you that if they are getting pregnant, it is not because they are having sex with a 12 year old boyfriend. The Memphis newspaper did an investigation years ago where they discovered that the majority of births in underage girls were because adult men had raped them.
THEO:
ME: And it counts as rape even if the man sweet talks them and treats them nice. It doesn’t have to be a gun to the head to be rape. It’s rape simply because these girls are underage.
THEO:
ME: Are you going to punish these girls further by making their underdeveloped bodies carry a pregnancy to term?
THEO: Maybe not.
Scene 6: I’m Not Trying To Impose My Religious Beliefs On Others
ME: You want your religious beliefs made law. But not all religions think abortion is wrong.
THEO: No I don’t!
ME: Don’t you want abortion to be illegal?
THEO: Yes.
ME: But Jews don’t think abortion is necessarily wrong. Why should your religion be making laws that affect other people’s religions?
THEO: Maybe there just shouldn’t be any laws at all about it.
Until my dad died, I thought the thing about people bringing food for a death was something that happened only in books.
But only hours after he died, in a hospital 35 miles away from his hometown, a place he hadn’t lived in 44 years, people started showing up at my grandmother’s house with food.
That’s when I got it.
It’s how you share the burden. It’s how you acknowledge – in a material way – that something has happened. It’s how you go beyond words to comfort.
I didn’t see this behavior modeled when I was a kid. Neither did Mr T.
But the reason I didn’t see it modeled was because I grew up on air force bases where you don’t see death. My dad even commented that that was one of the disadvantages of rearing children in that environment as opposed to the one he and my mom grew up in – that we weren’t around old people and we didn’t get a chance to see that death was a normal part of life.
Mr T didn’t see it modeled because his parents had no social graces. “They didn’t belong to a church,” he said.
“But they had neighbors!” I answered. “Surely there were deaths in the neighborhood!”
He shrugged.
(His parents also did not teach him to write thank-you notes.)
This book, y’all. My friend Kim gave it to me and it’s amazing.
Even in the days preceding my dad’s death, when my mom, my brother, my sister, and I were staying at the hospital hospice with him, my aunts and uncles and cousins took turns driving that 70-mile round trip every day to bring us meals.
Yes, there are restaurants in the city where the hospital is and yes, there was a kitchen in the hospice, but going out to eat and cooking are the last things on your mind when you are watching the slow death of someone you love.
I didn’t know then, but I sure know now. And ever since then, I have shown up with food.
I thought this knowledge was universal.
At least, I thought that by the time people reached full adulthood, it was known. It was known that this is What Is Done.
But last week, when my neighbor’s mother died, nobody else showed up.
My neighbor – who is also a friend – has lived in this town her entire life.
Her mom had lived here most of her adult life, I think.
My friend had been taking care of her mom these past few months and writing about it online, so her friends knew that her mom was ill.
My friend has also been very open about the challenges her family has faced with a child’s mental illness this past year.
Basically, any of my neighbor’s friends online know about what’s been going on with her and know that her mom died last week.
But when my friend thanked me online for bringing a meal over, I was the only one she thanked.
And all I did was make soup, bread, and brownies.
I cannot be the only one who took food over.
Can I? Maybe she has a ton of friends who aren’t online who showed up?
I’m not trying to brag. Because I didn’t do anything noteworthy. I did the bare minimum, actually. I certainly didn’t do anything big enough to be praised online for.
Where were her other friends?
Why didn’t anyone else take food?
And it’s not even like they have to cook – they could stop by the grocery store to pick up something hot from the deli or order a pizza.
Maybe they just don’t know?
Maybe everyone is so busy and so traumatized with all the other stuff going on that it didn’t occur to them? The past few years have been hard.
I spent a lot of time thinking this white privilege bullshit did not apply to me.
I did not grow up in a rich home, or, according to my husband, whose family ate out at least once a month, even a middle class one.
I did not grow up with connected parents.
I have never gotten a job through networking.
My whiteness has never gotten me anything.
This white privilege stuff is all BS, I thought. IT’S BS.
And then I thought about my travels over land through South and Central America on my way back from Chile.
Wow.
Just writing those words – my travels through South and Central America – HOW DAMN PRIVILEGED IS THAT?
And that’s not even the part that made me see my privilege.
While I was traveling, no matter how disreputable I looked – I was clean, but hadn’t had a haircut in a while, and I was wearing kind of scruffy clothes and definitely scruffy boots – unlike the poor indigenous people who were the majority population in some of these countries, I could walk into the fanciest hotel in town and nobody would question me on my way to the ladies’ room.
Because even though I was scruffy and had a backpack, I was a blue-eyed blonde white scruffy person with a backpack.
I had privilege.
I have privilege.
Just because of the color of my skin.
I see the privilege now and I wonder what to do about it.
I see it most immediately when people I know exercise their privilege on behalf of their children.
I don’t blame them.
I don’t blame parents for networking with their friends on behalf of their kids.
I don’t blame them at all.
But – I also see that that is exactly how privilege is perpetuated.
And how those spaces – those interviews, those internships, those jobs – are not available for anyone else. Someone else might be just as qualified – or maybe even more qualified – for the job but now will never have a shot at it.
And then I realize – I HAVE DONE THIS!
I have networked on behalf of my friends’ kids and nieces. On behalf of my niece! MY NIECE IS AWESOME! Anyone who hires her is getting an amazing deal!
I have introduced them to people. I enjoy this! I want to help!
But – am I part of the problem?
I don’t know. I don’t have enough pull to get someone hired who isn’t qualified. Nobody will do me that kind of favor. But I can definitely get someone put at the front of the line.
However.
However.
Is this the same thing?
Am I right to be annoyed at this situation?
Someone in my college alumni facebook group asked for an internship for her son, who is a sophomore at the college.
First, this mom isn’t even an alum, so – why is she in an alum facebook group?
(OK, technically, the group is open to anyone, but why would you join a facebook group that is almost all alumni if you are not an alum? That’s just weird? It’s just as weird as my college combining homecoming and parents’ weekend into one event. I am not interested in hanging out with the parents of current students. We have nothing in common. Sheesh.)
Second, it was the first time this person had ever posted, so it wasn’t even like she had a relationship with anyone.
Third, she asked for an internship for a kid who is majoring in electrical engineering and computer science.
My friends.
Is there anyone in the world who needs less help finding a job than an EE/Comp sci major?
Just in case you aren’t up on your hiring trends – nopety nope nope NO.
Electrical engineers do not have a hard time finding work.
Mr T, a EE who has not been employed for a few years, could go back to work in seconds as a EE if he so desired.
It’s not like the kid is an English major.
I did not say anything, which is a new strategy I am trying and it’s killing me but I think it’s the right path as my usual approach is to open my mouth and put in not only my own feet but those of everyone around me – but total strangers did.
Yes, there were a few “My company will be hiring interns have him send me his resume” (because EEs are a scarce resource) but there were also a few “Has he talked to the people in the placement office?” and “Has he set up a LinkedIn profile, which are polite ways of asking, “Is he running his own job search the way a college student should be?” Which is the politeness I aspire to but don’t think I am capable of. Which is why I remain silent.
But I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought that perhaps asking complete strangers to hire your son who should be looking for his own job was maybe not the way to go.
But as I write this, I wonder if perhaps I am wrong.
It has been known to happen.
Maybe a complete stranger – whose ethnicity and background is completely unknown to me – asking other strangers for help is not such a bad thing.
Yes, sure, I find it rude. But that’s me and I have been so, so wrong about so many things in my life and I’m sure I will be wrong about many things in the future.
Maybe this mom’s approach (I am assuming it was the mom) is the proper one.
Maybe this is how we break those privilege barriers and make sure everyone has a shot.
Maybe this IS how we make sure everyone knows someone.
Maybe we need more people breaking the rules instead of more people following them.
Hmm. I will be thinking about this. What do you think?
Texan in Exile 