Drug `Em Up

It should surprise no one that I come from a family of tall, strong, crazy, hysterical, intelligent, passionate, big-hipped women.

Mostly, we've just been told we're crazy and hysterical. The rest, we had to figure out on our own.

I had a great-grandmother who was a smoking, drinking, philandering type who'd give money to bums who showed up on her doorstep. My other great-grandmother was Grande Dame and ruled by virtue of her mean wit and insatiable appetite. I've got a grandmother who survived occupied France during World War II and hopped over to America with a GI, expecting a Place of Plenty, and finding a heapload of disappoint that she used to channel all of her energy into raising five children on a shoe-string budget and throwing plates at her husband with things got particularly bad. I've got another grandmother who told her drinking, controlling husband to fuck off for several reasons - among them the fact that he wouldn't let her go back to school to become a teacher. She was named Woman of the Year in Vancouver a couple years ago, has swum the Columbia River, was part of a rowing team, and has worked for some ridiculous amount of non-profit agencies benefiting children. My mother's the one I heard about most of my feminist books from - even if they were only in sight while gathering dust on the bookshelf in the dining room. She got herself an MBA and a VP of HR position at a $40M company before she was 40.

There are more, many more ass-kicking women in my family. Mostly, of course, they've been told they're crazy. Mostly, unfortunately, by the men in their lives.

My dad and my sister loved to tease me in my teens, because I look so much like my mom. "Mom's crazy," they said, "you're going to be just like her."

It wasn't until I was 19 or so that I realized that, you know, really, being like my mom really wouldn't be all that bad.

But women trying to raise children and have high-powered jobs and live up to their full potential are generally just regarded as nuts. There's a reason for this, of course: as a woman, not only are you expected to raise perfect children and have a clean house and get everybody to soccer practice, but you're supposed to have a successful, money-gathering, fulfilling career, too. And if you don't find doing all of this totally fulfilling and happy all the time, there must be something wrong with you.

Better drug you up.

Women in particular have been drugged up to "cure" melancholy forever, particularly with the advent of the scientifically "diagnosed" case of hysteria.

Luckily, doctor types don't generally diagnose women with hysteria anymore. Instead, we're just really depressed.

According the latest numbers, 49% of women take at least one perscription drug. Unfortunately, there isn't a breakdown as to how many of these are anti-depressents. Since we live in a capitalist society, drugged-up men are rapidly coming up just behind women, at 39%. Again, no breakdown as to how many are anti-depressents and how many are heart medication/cholesterol medication, though I'd make a broad, educated guess that says most of the men's drugs are heart medication or viagra, and most of the women's are anti-depressents.

Cause if you ain't happy, there must be something wrong with you.

Now, I'm cool with people diagnosed with severe depression and particularly those diagnosed with being bipolar being on medication, if they so choose. Depression sucks.

But I view depression more often as a symptom, not a disease. Just like I think gastric bypass surgery is a stupid "cure" for obesity when in fact, many people put on weight for many different reasons, and gaining weight is often a symptom of something else, I think that depression should be met with alterations in your lifestyle before you drug it up.

I come from a family of crazy women, and it's crazy women like those in my family who are the first ones prescribed anti-depressents. Even my younger sister has gotten up onto this bandwagon. Cause if you're depressed, it's not your life that's screwed up, it's you.

It's the message smart women have been getting forever: there's not something wrong with the system. There's something wrong with you.

When half the female population has to be drugged up in order for the system to function, I don't call that a good system.

I've learned to deal with depression by examining what's going on in my life: what I'm eating, how much I'm exercising, first of all. Then how much I'm moving towards the goals I have: how much I'm writing, how well I'm spending my reading time, my social time. Do I feel like I'm spinning my wheels? Do I feel like I'm not living the right kind of life, that I'm not living up to my potential?

90% of the time, making alterations in one or more of those areas and taking control of my life instead of playing the victim ["Oh, I *have* to stay at this job I hate/have to stay with this person I hate/have to put up with this stuff I hate"]will get me back on track.

The other 10% of the time, I take a tylenol PM and go to bed.

Sleeping lets my brain mull over what it is I'm chewing on, and I can get up the next day and go, "OK, here's what I'm feeling, here's what I'm thinking, here's what I'd like to do."

And then you do it.

I have a deep fear that when women go to their doctors and say, "I'm depressed. I love my husband and I love my children, but I just feel really unfilled in my life," the doctors respond by writing up a perscription for a happy pill, no questions asked.

Nobody says, "What would you really like to be doing? Do you feel guilty sometimes that you'd rather be doing that than doing your husband's laundry? Can he do it himself while you take a class in International Politics at the community college? Can your kids make their own lunch in the morning so you can teach yourself Arabic before work?"

I worry that we turn to drugs too quickly. I worry that complacency is stifling our potential.

On Merit. And Sex. Of Course.

So, it bugged Amanda and Echidne, too, which I find quite funny, because when I hopped over to Kos's place and read his justification for the lack of PC diversity among his guestbloggers, something in me went, "Huh?" too. Amanda explored the issue further, I think, in this post about the democratic party's seeming reluctance to forward a progressive agenda for women.

Kos's comment actually read a lot like the backlash against affirmative action. I would love it if we lived in a world where merit alone really decided whose voices we hear, but as Amanda and Echidne pointed out, we don't live there. Bringing in a voice that comes at issues from a new and different perspective (non-white, non-male, non-Christian) is a merit in itself.

Now, I'm not going to harp on Kos, because blogs are, of neccessity, very personal endeavors, and you have a right to run them the way you want to: but if you're looking to put forward voices for progressive change and you take out women - those bold, powerful women and minorities whose campaigns for equal rights shook up this country so enourmously and so quickly in the 60s and 70s, then you're missing a whole lot of shit. You're missing the whole point. You're not looking to change the world, you're just looking to change your own place in it. And when you're on top, you'll switch sides and go conservative, because you've altered the system so that you and your white male buddies are in charge, instead of rich guys like Bush and his buddies.

Shuffling around old white men within the same power heirarchy isn't getting any of us anywhere. It's got the dollar dropping, healthcare sucking wind, social security going out the window, and a backlash against women's rights that's been steadily getting worse (in some circles) since the 80s.

Because what are we really talking about, when we talk about these "huge issues" "dividing" the country? Sure, the war in Iraq is huge. The war on terrorism is huge. But creating Big Bad Enemies is supposed to unite a country, not divide it.

The issues that were put up front to handwave people away from the war are the two big issues that people in the US are now most passionate about, and clawing at each other about: abortion/reproductive rights and homosexuality.

Let's get that straight (ha), once and for all. The attacks on freedoms have to do with women. Yes, yes, terrorism is a big issue, and racism, and I don't want to forget those - but reproductive rights and attacking homosexuality and preaching Back to Bible Basics is about controlling women.

Gay men are scary because the conception of "gay men" in red-staters heads likely brings to mind anal sex (whether or not said men engage in anal sex), and the gender binary says that means one of them's gotta be passive, one of them's gotta be the woman. Which means any man can be passive. Any man can be the woman. And in a society whose fear and disgust for women is shared by many women who spent their childhoods believing they could grow up to be "real" people, this is a terrible revelation.

And there's nothing scarier to people who love to argue biological and/or Bible determinism than two women who not only can support themselves, raise children together, and provide one another emotional support, but don't need men around for sex either, cause they're quite fulfilled all on their own.

That's some scary shit.

And, scarier than that: women who can decide to have children or not. Women who decide, therefore, whether or not a man has children.

That's why people are angry about abortion. That's why the father's rights freak-outs are freaking out.

Women control fertility. Children don't come out of thin air. They're created OF a woman's body: her blood, the food she eats, the air she breathes. That's what makes a baby. A woman. Men submit a string of DNA, which triggers a chemical reaction inside of the egg, and the egg begins to divide itself. An egg is cells. Dividing cells attach to the wall of the uterus. Attaches back to the woman. And it's women's bodies that take over from there. Life depends on women. Life is women.

Get over it.

This pisses people off. It's always pissed people off.

If the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, then the people who control women control the world.

That's why controlling women is a major part of pretty much all major religions. That's why women should be quiet in church, and obey their husbands, and not fall in love with women.

And yea, this world doesn't benefit all men. There are lots of geeky guys who don't want to be violent, and hurt people, and be mean to women, and play sports, and rule the world. There are a lot of guys who really do want to just have friends, and love people. In fact, I think most people are like that, male or female. If we let sex be more social and less romantic-kill-me-I'm-dying-you-must-marry-me-cause-I'm-lonely/pregnant/can't do my own laundry, then I think we'd be getting back to what the hell sex is really about in the first place. There's a reason women's clitorises are outside of the vagina, and a reason 70-80% of women don't have orgasims with penetrative sex alone.

Sex isn't all about procreation.

::gasp::

The biological "facts" about men and women like to ignore the clitoris, and the fact that men can get off just fine without a vagina.

Sex is about keeping people together, forming social connections, it's about showing affection. And when women are allowed to control their sexuality, when they decide that no, maybe, they'll live in a house of women and raise children, or a house with some guy friends and some girlfriends, or a house by themselves, they have the power to cut men out of the affection loop, and eventually, the children loop, if they so choose.

This is real power. And women are raised to believe their bodies are wacky, abberant, dirty, disgusting, bloody, awful, fat things.

The bodies that could rule the world.

We're told we don't have merit. We don't have voices, because if we were really all that good, obviously, someone would have noticed us. If we were quieter, prettier, if we preached violent foreign policy, men would like us, and if we parrotted their own views back at them, we'd be allowed to talk.

We would talk about what they wanted to talk about: We'd stop talking so much about those silly bloody uteruses that are so obviously so bloody fucking unimportant that the women carrying said uteruses have been the targets of rage, hatred, and Biblical control for most of recorded history.

In fact, women's issues are so completely frivolous that men don't even talk about them, except to harp about how women being able to take care of themselves and kiss each other is biologically abberant because it leaves men out, and how women should be forced to carry around a man's strand of DNA until her body creates a child with it because "killing" a man's DNA is so much more awful than forcing women into slavery for said DNA.

Yes, we've been over this before. Women bloggers aren't read because in addition to screaming at the world and talking about healthcare and politics, they talk about their uteruses, and talking about uteruses doesn't interest men.

In fact, it doesn't interest anyone at all.

That's why entire religions, social mores, and scientific theories have been built up to control them.

Women have no merit at all.

I don't know why I didn't see it sooner: being a woman, and all.

Good Morning, Chiklits

"I get incredibly close to my characters. When I'm in full-on writing mode it's the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before falling asleep at night. Sometimes when I wake up in the night I wish someone at Microsoft would invent something that allows you to write on the dark."

- David Mitchell

And... Catherynne Justifies Herself

An interview with Catherynne M. Valente, author of The Labyrinth.

Why should readers pick up your book as opposed to, say, just about anybody else's book?

Because my book is so much cheaper than LSD, and nearly twice as legal. You are required to brave up to 60% fewer dark alleys and abandoned factories to obtain my book, and the seediness of the pushers involved in your transaction has been reduced by 67%. The FDA has recently determined that Product #423789A, “my book,” causes 1/3 less side-effects than LSD, and actually has nutritional value as a fiber-rich foodstuff. No other book on the market provides such an attractive alternative to spinal-fluid altering drugs as my book.


Assume your book has been filed under "Ages 8 to 12" in the children's section, perhaps by mistake, perhaps not. How horrified do you imagine a child would be after reading your book, and why? How many years of therapy would the child take to recover from the experience?

The lovable scamp in question would very likely immediately begin spurting blood from her adorable little eyeballs, and become suddenly incapable of communicating except in Silver-Age Latin. Electro-shock therapy would only succeed in advancing her as far as Carolingian Latin, at which point the lisping cherub would be beyond hope. Only repeated doses of high-proof alcohol will return her to a normal state. Sadly, this therapy must be continued throughout the Dickensian rascal’s lifetime.

Also, it will turn her gay.

I love writers.

Questions for Straight White People

The Guardian has some questions up that are often posed to non-white, non-Christian and/or non-straight interviewees: now it's time to turn the tables -

Do you think of yourself as white or American or both?

Ummm...

Does it worry you that you got your job just because of your race?

Yes.

Where are you from?

The west coast.

No, but really?

Cow country.

Since this is where you live, don't you think you should try and integrate with other races more?

Yes.

Is your first loyalty to your God, or to your country?

Do I only get two choices?

Is it true what they say about white guys?

I don't know: I'm often the one saying it.

Given the genocide, slavery and colonialism unleashed in the name of Christianity over the last two centuries, do you feel your religion is compatible with democracy?

No.

I don't mind white people, but if they want to live here then why shouldn't they have to fit in with our traditions?

You mean non-white people have traditions?

Shouldn't the police be doing more to tackle white-on-white crime?

I'm stealing Nick's answer: The police is white-on-white crime! Also white-on-black crime.

Given the objectification of women in your culture and the rise in teenage pregnancies, don't you think it's time to ban young girls wearing make up?

No, but I think it's high time we got rid of abstinence-only education.

What do you make of the tribal conflict in Ukraine?

Yay!

Don't you feel that this politically correct belief that we have to respect white people's feelings has stifled honest discussion and debate?

Yes.

Isn't it a shame that white people cannot pick more responsible leaders?

Oh, hell yes.

Don't you ever worry about being pigeonholed as a white person?

Oh, sure.

Why aren't you doing more to check the rise in Christian fundamentalism?

That's a really, really good question.

Who are your community leaders?

There's a community?

Why should we balance our belief in human rights with our tolerance for Christians?

Christians are people too.

What do white people think about Jews?

Non-white Jews?

How would you define "white" style?

Boring?

Why do you write about white people all the time?

Ha. Gotcha. 2/3rds of all the people I write about are non-white. Ha.

Don't you find that limiting?

No.

What are you doing for your people?

I have people? Like an army, or something?

Have you seen what the Bible says about women?

Yes. Have you noticed I'm not religious?

Don't take this personally, but why are white men so aggressive?

It's a penis thing.

Now the Olympics are over, can we finally admit that white people are genetically equipped to excel in archery and rowing?

ARRRRRGGHHHGHGGHGGGgggg

What is it with white people and homophobia?

You tell me.

You know what white women are like, don't you?

Gosh, I hope so. They're kinda like people, I think. With blood and guts and everything.

I understand that as a white person you come at this from a particular place, but can't you try to look at it objectively for a moment?

Is this code for "you should read the Bible more"?

When did you first realize you were straight?

??????

Why do you people have such a chip on your shoulder?

Feminists, or white people? The first because we're pissed off, the second because nobody ever tries to make us think we don't rule the world, and they don't ask us questions like this.

Don't get offended, I was only asking.

Watch Your Books.

"Where one begins by burning books
One will end up burning people."

-Heinrich Heine

Thoughts on Beauty

Something to think about -

A cool excerpt from the prize winning book Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body. I'm definately picking this one up:

"... Each image of a beautiful face or perfectly turned limb is not really about the subject that it appears to be, but rather what it is not.

"It is about the imperfections that are absent: the machine errors that arise from the vicissitudes of the womb, childhood, maturity and old age ...

"When we see someone who appears to have avoided them, however fleetingly, we pause to look with amazed delight. Beauty, Stendhal says, is only the promise of happiness. Perhaps. But it is equally the recollection of sorrow".

via Moorish Girl

China, China, China

In the movie Master and Commander, one of the boys working on becoming an officer is told by Paul Bettany, ship's doctor and amateur naturalist, that he has a knack for naturalism.

And the kid says: "You don't suppose I could be a sort of Fighting Naturalist, do you?"

China Mieville is a sort of Fighting SF Author.

"I always had a paranoia about someone pulling my earrings out and tearing my ears, so I always wore them with clasps that undo when pulled. Then about three years ago, this man ripped my earrings out during a political argument. Half of me was thinking, 'What the hell are you doing?', the other half, 'Result!'"

I mean, aside from the fiction, which is wholly weird and a fun romp, you've got an author personae like this:

"My first big crush was Purity Brown, the very cool human sidekick to Nemesis the Warlock in 2000 AD comics. She was a feisty kickass heroine dressed in apocalypse chic, leather, straps and guns."

and this:

"Being called 'the sexiest man in politics' when I ran for parliament for the Socialist Alliance was a pretty lovely cross to bear. But who's the big competition? Paddy Ashdown?"

Just read the whole column. It's great.

Did I mention that the fiction's not bad, either?

Some Thoughts on Fake Feminism

So, I sat down and watched the summer special-effects movie, The Day After Tomorrow. What can I say, I have a thing for Jake Gyllenhaal of Donnie Darko fame.

Being me, there's a little part of my brain attuned to the gender dynamics of the movies I'm watching. I watch them for their own sake, sure, and if they're popcorn thrillers, I let a lot slide, but I tuck the information away for later speculation.

In the case of tDAT, you've got a Scifi channel Battlestar Gallactica attempt at feminism, which is basically this: We've Got Female Characters in This Movie! One of them's a doctor! One's a Smart Asian who Works for NASA! And There's a Smart Girl member of the decathalon team! See how great and hardworking we are, how much we've done toward including women in our show? See! See!

And on the surface you go, oh, look, female characters.

Then you're reminded of why the female characters are there.

The female doctor stays behind to comfort a dying child. She's later "rescued" by helpful men in snow plows, showing that if you just keep up your faith in men and do your duty protecting a dying child, you, too, will be rescued by men.

The Smart Asian woman is almost a gender-neutral role, except that one of the science team members makes eyes at her, so we know that he's got "something to fight for." She has about three lines, and when The Boys go out to save some kids stranded in NY, she, of course, stays behind.

And the decathalon girl... dear god in heaven. She's a sweetheart actress and all, but she has about eight lines, and very little personality. She seems to exist merely for plot reasons: so that Jake Gyllenhaal will join the decathalon team in order to get close to her, and then brave an ice storm and some totally unneccessary and really silly looking computer generated wolves in order to get some antibiotics for her to "save" her from septic shock. Which, of course, he does (to be fair, she does get kudos for being able to speak French, and staying behind to help... um, a woman and some children from drowning in a car).

Here's what I want:

The female doctor stays behind to help a hot 30-year-old-guy dying from cancer, not a kid, and when told an ambulance isn't coming, she bundles up and goes out into the cold, finds an ambulance, hotwires it, expertly drives it around snowy obstacles, loads the guy in the back, and drives to safety. She is welcomed as a hero at the base camp, and quickly takes over the medical ward from an incompetent male doctor.

The Smart Asian actually has a personality. And instead of making eyes back at the scientist guy, she turns out to have just lost her female lover in the storm in New York, she, too, has Something To Fight For. When the guys try and leave without her, she says, "No, my lover would have wanted me to go. Besides, I've got better endurance than the rest of you, and I biked around New York for six years. I know the place better than any of you." She'll then go, and instead of one of the guys dying, she'll figure out a Smart Asian way of saving him. Also, her lover will end up being alive, and they'll have a really emotional reunion.

And Miss Female Decathalon with also actually have a personality that exists outside of Jake's conception of who he wants her to be. She'll tell Jake he's damn hot, and there won't be any of this back-and-forth with the dumb-ass loser rich kid, cause she's smart and sexy and knows what she wants, and she wants Jake. She'll save him from a bus accident or something, to prove it. Upon saving the French-speaking woman, she'll take charge of her own health, and point out her wound to everyone so they'll know right away that she's in bad shape. She'll be the one to come up with the idea that there's medicine on the ship, which she and Jake will then go and get. There can be some steamy sex action after she's been treated for septic shock. Or whatever. Then, when he's attacked by wolves for trying to save her from them, she can toss him over her shoulders and haul him back into the library.

That would a sweet-ass movie.

The Big Gay Media

I jumped over to Atrios' place and was troubled by this little post about Anderson Cooper and CNN's apparent reluctance to air the matter of his sexuality on prime-time news.

Whoa, buddy, hold on:

His sexuality is nobody's damn business.

Who I take to bed is nobody's damn business.

The forced "outing" of celebrities and media people really bugs me.

Now, I do take exception to this. People who go and vote on laws that deny me or my friends rights because of who we want to take to bed, or start to encroach on what I'm "allowed" to do in bed had better be the sorts of people who do nothing but hetero missionary style sex after dark - and don't cry every morning because they feel like there's something missing from their lives.

If they're not happy heteros, I wanna know why the fuck they're trying to force their happy hetero missionary married sex on me. If it doesn't work for them, why the fuck are they pushing it? Cause God said so? God also said slavery and incest are OK. Don't go throwing your book at me and burning everything by Michael Cunningham. Illusions of compulsorary hetero-ness need to be smashed out. If the guys who make the laws aren't even 100% grade A straight, (whatever the hell that is) they better not be making laws on who me and my buddies are allowed to be attracted to.

But here's my deal: who I'm fucking or not fucking ain't nobody's business if I'm not making laws about it.

Shows like Queer Eye are cool because they show "real" gay guys on TV who aren't dying of AIDS. Women like Ellen Degeneres are great because they're like, "Yea, I'm gay, and I do all this other stuff too. Get over it." But you know what, if Jodie Foster wants to be like, "She's my friend, fuck off, it's not your business," and Kevin Spacey is like, "I'm a reclusive bachelor, fuck off," then it's really not my business anymore than it's my business whether or not George Clooney hires high-class hookers.

Who Anderson Cooper takes to bed isn't my business. Sure, it would be great for more people to go, "Ha, yea, I'm not totally straight either. Not many people are 100% grade A straight. Get over it." because it would tear down some of the heteo-insanity myth, but at the end of the day, I can't demand that everybody talk about their fucking sexuality all the time. If you don't think that effects you, think again: cause that'll lead right on to interrogating men and women who aren't attracted to the "right" kinds of men and women, and women like me who also like little geeky guys are going to be required to talk about it all the time and justify it (as if I don't feel enough pressure to do that already).

Do we need more "public" figures to "out" themselves to help bust down the hetero myth? Oh, sure, it'd be great. But you can't force it. You can't require it. You can't ask people about it all the time. One of the reasons I mentioned my occasional attraction to women was to help bust down this myth, as it occurs to me a lot that I spend a great deal of time here talking about hot guys, and spreading my own version of the hetero myth - and I've chosen to share because this is a public space. But I can't be *required* to do that. If, like Ellen, somebody is brave enough to go ahead and share their private life in the public eye in order to help break down the absolute hetero myth, good for them.

But Anderson Cooper's a news guy. He does news. What, exactly, does his sexuality have to do with his chosen profession?

I suppose that as questions of sexuality become even more visible and more political, this is going to be an even bigger deal: who's got a same-sex partner, who's had a same-sex love affair. You can't just do a 50's "knowing wink" anymore (of course, the reason you could only do a "knowing wink" then is cause you'd get yourself thrown in jail as a communist). For some reason, if you're in a same-sex relationship, it's like you're required to scream it from the rooftops.

In a society where Britney Spears is dry-humping anything that moves and male singers display women in their music videos in the same way they display cars, we've really gotta have a dialogue about sex.

But you can't force it. And you especially can't force it on somebody just cause they're gay. Screaming heteros aren't forced to explain and justify their sexuality and how it affects their ability to be news anchors.

Nobody else should be forced to either.

Sex is personal. And sexuality is wide and varied and fun.

I don't think a news guy's sexuality is anybody's business: CNN's or mine.

And... We're Out

Writing today. I'm sure I'll find something hysterical to rant about tomorrow. Like this.

See you then.

In the mean time, here's some calming breathing space:

Just Take Away Everything That Doesn't Look Like A Statue

That's the joke, right? How to be a sculptor? Take a slab of marble and cut away everything that doesn't look like David...

When I open up a book or story project after a pause of more than a couple hours, I usually reread what I did before, which means I rewrite as I go, which means that chapter one of any book I work on is the most heavily rewritten of any part of the book, ever. Even when I trash 500 pages and start over. And it's the same kind of process: I'm cutting away and rearranging things that don't give me the story and mood I've got in my head - if you're really lucky, you might get 80% of what you were looking for when you started. That happened for me, once.

The rest of the time, I'm lucky if all the characters in the story end up with the same names they had in my original vision.

Cut it all out, tear it all down, build it up again, clearing up the image in your head as you go.

"It's not that."

"Definately not that."

"Oh, that's just shit."

And you start over again.

I love what I do.

P.S. It's so sweet being back from the break and hefting around my 30lb free weights again - my arms are once again looking Mighty... Oh, and I finished another Amber book. Almost done with The Origins of War. I'm way behind on my nonfiction (though I did recently finish, and recommend, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, which I'll discuss later).

A Woman A Day...

I love this crap:

"He defied the 25th century with a woman who was NOT HIS WIFE—and a WIFE who was NOT A WOMAN."

It's probably why I write what I do...It's like a screaming, pissed-off sort of response. With better fight scenes.

And, in response to my Hysterical Holiday Breakdown Rant, Jenn sent me this. For, you know, perspective.

Over the River and Through the... Whatever

Will be sporadic today, as my boss dumped a big pile of crap on my desk yesterday afternoon and told me to turn it into something that makes sense (during the busy days, I sometimes suspect that this is really what my job title should say: Bringer of Coherence to Crap). We're gonna get slammed soon. It ain't gonna be pretty.

Had a good MA class last night, a nice ride home, some reading in bed, & etc. Working on finishing up some war books that I need to return and/or renew this weekend. Will be churning through some line edits tonight and finishing a pesky chapter of Jihad (I really need to change that title), all willing.

But, for now: work. Ha.

Fun For Your Sidebar

Our Nuclear Neighbors

Some cocktail party tidbits stolen from The Cat's Blog

COUNTRIES WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS:

USA, RUSSIA, CHINA, FRANCE, and UK
The same countries with VETO POWER at the U.N. Security Council

ISRAEL, INDIA, and PAKISTAN have NUCLEAR WEAPONS too. But "we are not supposed to know."

Israel is considered an undeclared nuclear weapon state, and is believed to have 100-200 nuclear weapons. It could deploy these weapons on 255 aircraft (50 F-4E and 205 F-16), 100 missiles and three submarines.

For more, go here.

I find this fascinating. When will Israel, India, and Pakistan get seats on the UN Security Council?

Hahahaa

Yea. That was supposed to be a rhetorical question.

Tidbit

"A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular."
-- Adlai Stevenson

via Soapbox Blog

Live Your Life Anyway

Fascinating peice comparing the behavior of abusers in domestic relationships and the actions of the Bush administration toward most Americans:

Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don’t let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he’ll win, not because he’s right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.

Even if you do everything right, they’ll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they don’t even know they are being hit.

I think he goes a little heavy-handed here, but it's something to think about - particularly the part about not making concessions: about living your life anyway, even if you're getting beaten over the head for it. That's what strength and bravery is all about.

Some people call that arrogance and stupidity: until 56 million other people get up and stand next to you.

I am a good woman until somebody tries to lay a hand on me, until someone tries to push me away from the life I want to live so that I fit better into their conception of the way "things are supposed to be." That's when the gloves need to come off.

I'm not letting myself get pushed into the "way you're supposed to be" box ever again. That's the stuff miserable lives are made of.

Some Happy Thoughts

Here are some textbooks disclaimers for evolutionists and other miscreants (via Jed)

And all I have to say about the latest National Organization of Witches stir is: Buy yourself a T-shirt.

Also, there's a very funny and terribly touching "How the Grinch Stole Marriage" ditty up over at Ex-gay watch, just in time for the holidays. Please read it.

More later.

I'm Back. Now, With Better Music

My favorite line from Thanksgiving:

"Careful what you say to her. She'll be blogging about it on Sunday."

My best response to the yearly "are you dating anyone?" question:

"No, I really like my life. I don't want to bring in anyone else who'll ruin it." (this statement illicited much laughter from the widowed and divorced)

Favorite ironic moment:

Talking about my aunt's gastic bypass surgery, my dad's interest in getting gastric bypass surgery, and how much it sucks to be fat while surrounded by three tables worth of food for 20 people.

We could have fed a small village in Peru.

My favorite response to said moaning about weight:

"We're the women built for populating the West."

I also packed up a bunch of CDs and story materials that'd been lodging at my parents' place for the last six years. So now I've got better music at work and more work to work on.

Here we go again.

Headin' Down the Highway...

A jet plane, actually...

I'm outta here at noon today, heading out to the West Coast for holiday debauchery (I wish). Currently listening to Snow Patrol's "Run" on repeat.

Packed up my plane books: The Origins of War, Zelazny's The Hand of Oberon, Chris Hedges's War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, and Mary Renault's The Persian Boy, which I've been savoring slowly, over many months, like a fine wine.

Ready to fly. I'm a nomad by nature, and I've gotten ancy this year - money troubles have prevented me from doing much traveling. I think it'll be a good break before all hell breaks loose. I've got a shitstorm of stuff to take on once I get back.

Will be working on Jihad and Over Burning Cities on the plane. I'm like 80 pages short of where I should be - when having trouble, revert to old-fashioned yellow notepads. They can work wonders.

Will be blogging and checking e-mail sporadically - apparently, my parents' computer crashed, so I'll be trying to wrest e-mail privileges from my gamer-brother and his hip customized machine. If you've ever tried to part a gamer boy from his machine... yea, definately sporadic access.

Fuck Unity

Why didn't we protest like this?

Oh. Yea. Cause we're united.

Also, there's a movie coming out that addresses the genocide in Rwanda in `94 - and the movie doesn't look half bad. Check out the trailer. There's a great book about the genocide here.

And, from the director of Hero, and starring Ziyi Zhang (who is just so incredibly cool) comes - "A feast of blood, passion, and silk brocade," called House of Flying Daggers. You better bet I'll be in line for this one.

Oh, the Humanity

It's writers like these who make the rest of us look bad.

You know what the best part about being a bleeding-heart liberal is? As long as these nutty people don't hurt anybody or try and pass legislation on my bedroom activities, I really don't mind sharing the world with them. They're wacky and insane, sure, but I don't feel that they'll physically harm me. If nothing else, I find them wildly entertaining.

The problem, I think, comes when they don't believe in sharing the world with the likes of hippies like me. That's when the shit starts to fly, and you get dems in black hoodies slashing people's tires...

Try and put your hand on me, and I'll lay you out. That's the line.

A History of Sports Brawls

I'm not sure what came over me, perhaps it's living in Chicago, and knowing how insane sports fans are here, or perhaps it's my interest in the history of organized forms of violence, but I went ahead and checked out the video of the basketball brawl down in Indy.

The Evil Kameron part of me was like: "Dude, that's so cool."

I pulled my liberal self together and banished the thought. Check out this history of US sports brawls at SI.

As somebody with a background in the history of warfare, I'm fascinated by violence in sports when instigated by what are "supposed" to be "passive participants" (though every sports geek will tell you otherwise). I'm wondering, with the red/blue divide in the country reaching an all-time freak-out level, will we see more fan brawls at sports outings and more sportsmen blowing each other away?

I mean, afterall, we're all just taking a cue from Our Fearless Leader.

I want data.

The Obligatory Hysterical Holiday Breakdown Rant

"What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner." - Colette

Because I'm not superwoman.

Skipped kickboxing last night.

Bad sign.

Wandered aimlessly downtown, renewed my worry and angst about being too big, about not losing enough weight, about not being smaller. Felt like I was spiraling into some sort of...

Oh, yes: holiday depression.

I don't often give thanks during the holidays: the holidays are my time to reflect on all of the things that I'm doing wrong, and all of the ways that I could be a better person.

And I felt completely aimless. What the fuck am I doing with my life? I should go back and get a Ph.D. I'm wasting all this brain power at a mediocre job that pays me well to use my MA skills to print shit out for my boss all day, to copy and collate and call contractors. I need to apply for another job. I need to write more shorts. I need to write better books. These fucking books aren't going to pay off for ten years. Why am I still doing this? Why is it my primary work, my primary project, when I won't see returns for a decade? And what about the boxing? Am I going to take this shit seriously, or not? What the hell am I doing, skipping a whole week of classes? Why don't I have any friends here? What the hell am I hiding from? Am I some kind of freak? Am I broken?

I fly home for the holidays on Wednesday, so Monday was really my only chance for a class this week, and I lost myself to apathy and stirred around downtown guiltily with $29 in my account and an Old Navy Card. And there's that, too: I'm going home for the holidays, which is always stressful as hell, because the whole time, we go out to eat and complain about how fat we are. That's just the family dialogue. That's just what it's always been. I've got an aunt who just had gastric bypass surgery. I've got a cousin who's up for trial for committing a felony. I've got a sister whose life is full-up with a child and a restraining order. I've got a bevy of relatives who measure my worth by the width of my ass. I'll never be thin enough, I'm not using my smarts enough, the writing is nothing so much as perverse masochistic scribbling of doom, and old friends back home who expressed interest in seeing me over the holiday have gone totally silent (how many have leapt over to this blog, I wonder?). I need a Ph.D. I need to be in better shape. I need to make better use of my time. I need to live up to my potential. I need a holiday.

And in the midst of my anger, my self-loathing, my freak-out about wasting my precious time, my youth, steaming toward 25 without seeing any kind of investment panning out in the near future - I realized that I could just stop.

That is, I could stop trying to be better.

It was really an option. To just stop. To go home and have a food binge, stop going to martial arts classes, stop trying to sell stories, stop looking at volunteer opportunities and French classes and angsting about not doing enough and just... stop.

And it was that realization that shook me, because it's just that attitude that I've been violently rebelling against since highschool. It was why I jumped off the bridge at Molton Falls. It was why I moved to Alaska. Why I moved to South Africa. It's why I'm here, carving out a life on my own terms.

Yes, I could stop. And I know exactly who I would be if I stopped. I'd churn back into the binge-eating, drinking too much, smoking too much, and attach myself to some abusive loser who could confirm all of my worst fears about myself. I could go back to living in a shitty apartment in the ass-end of nowhere, and get my phone cut off, my electricity cut off, get evicted and crapped on and start thinking up really great ways to *really* make everything stop.

But, see, I've been there. Done that. I'm very lucky in that I hit what I saw as rock-bottom at 18, six months after abandoning high school and running the hell out of my house. I was eager for life to start - and I made the big mistake of relying on somebody else to help me get it started. The lucky thing about hitting bottom so young is that you really have nowhere to go but up. And you've got a really great shitstorm to compare everything else in your life to.

"Am I doing better than I was then? Yea? Great. I'm on the right track."

But every morning I get up, I could choose to stop. And I know that person, and I don't want to be her. I know exactly where I'll be.

Maybe that's what's really hitting me full-on right now. There's this person I always wanted to be, this image of myself I had in my head. I wanted to be a writer, to travel, to have degrees, to know things, to meet people, to have friends in all sorts of odd places. I wanted to have stories, I wanted to speak in a loud voice. I wanted to be strong. Independent. Smart.

And I'm looking out now at what I've done, what I have, where I live, what I think... and I'm seeing in my life the sort of person I want to be. I'm seeing that and still living in mortal fear of the person who's still at the core of me, the one who allowed herself to stay in a shitty relationship, the one who used weight to punish herself, the one who didn't believe she was a real person because it didn't seem that anyone ever saw her.

I chugged home on the train and came home to find another reject from Sci Fiction. As per the usual, it's the rejections that tend to finally release the day's pent-up shit (likely because I only retrieve them at the end of the day). I sank to the floor in my hallway and burst into tears. Not just those slow leaking tears, but those full-body, Greek mourning wailing sobs that echo through the whole house. It's like taking all of this pain you've been holding inside of yourself and giving it a voice, making it tangible and real. I sobbed and sobbed, clutching the rejection letter, half disrobed of my work clothes, and let myself be sad.

It's a funny thing, with this sort of pent-up pain. If you give it voice, if you surrender to it, it sometimes eases up. It bleeds out of you.

I retreated to bed, cried some more, skipped dinner, took a couple Tylenol PM, and surrendered to darkness.

And this morning, I woke up.

And I started again. Because I start again every damn morning.

What's the difference, I always wonder, between the person I was and the person I want to be, the adult scribbling pages and typing up tidbits on blogs and backpacking around Europe?

There's only this difference, every morning: you get up and you start over. You let yourself have a hysterical little freak-out, and then it's over. You don't feel bad about it. You don't carry it around with you. You don't let it make you feel weak or crazy.

You just let everything bleed out of you - all that hate and anger and fear - and you start over. And the next time it builds up, you find another way to channel it.

Go to law school. Move to Tuscany. Spend six months living in some backwater in New Zealand. Go help AIDS orphans in Africa. Volunteer your time at a homeless shelter.

Only remember that you'll be the same person in all of those places, doing all of those things, and that's OK, cause now you'll also be the sort of person who does those things.

The fear and despair never really go away. Sometimes I think I'm the most cowardly person I know.

But living it up is about being afraid and holding the course anyway.

Every damn day.

...with a day off now and again for holiday hysterics.

Old and New Beauties

My buddy Greg Beatty has a poem up at Strange Horizons about sleeping beauties - check it out.

Gamer Girls

Cory Doctorow's got a new short up at Salon.com - about gamer girls and kicking ass. Highly recommended read:

Anda didn't really start to play the game until she got herself a girl-shaped avatar. She was 12, and up until then, she'd played a boy-elf, because her parents had sternly warned her that if you played a girl you were an instant perv-magnet. None of the girls at Ada Lovelace Comprehensive would have been caught dead playing a girl character. In fact, the only girls she'd ever seen in-game were being played by boys. You could tell, cos they were shaped like a boy's idea of what a girl looked like: hooge buzwabs and long legs all barely contained in tiny, pointless leather bikini-armour. Bintware, she called it.

But when Anda was 12, she met Liza the Organiza, whose avatar was female, but had sensible tits and sensible armour and a bloody great sword that she was clearly very good with.

Watch him go with this one - sugarfree zones around the schools, book and meal tokens, school weigh-ins, unionizing gamers... I love this guy.

Not Pissed Off Enough to Rant, Today

So, I'm not pissed off enough to rant today.

Saw a mediocre production of Equus last night (It's such a great script that it's difficult to imagine a truly *bad* production of this show) that didn't really piss me off. Got a bunch of crap on book one finished, and today I've just got one last Roh chapter to lengthen, and then I'll have fit in all the new plot elements I wanted to add to clean up the pacing. Today I'll be working on Jihad, which is so behind it's not even amusing. I really want to have another finished book in hand next year that I can start peddling. I need to pick up the pace.

Expressed interest in some volunteer positions at Planned Parenthood yesterday, and also applied to the local city college (automatic admission) where I'll signing up for a French class on Tues/Thurs, all willing. Gotta keep busy...

So - unless I find something amusing to share, I'll see you all tomorrow.

Snapshots From my Worklife, 5

Got an e-mail circular from the lead A/E guy here at the Workplace of Silliness - looks like we're going to get 2 proposals we've currently got out that are closing up right now. One of our clients also just gave a glowing review of our A/E guy working in Iraq, so we've got kudos with them.

More document formatting, less writing for me. Ha.

Along with said e-mail, we were forwarded a snipped and scanned PDF of this lovely trite piece of crap about how evil it is to "foster a negative attitude."

Us? Negative? Hell, I'm the least cynical person here... Like all Americans, we deal really well with conflict resolution.

Today's Diversions

Bush, Rumsfeld, and Powell take some time off to model for the Banana Republic catalog...

Matt Cheney's got a post up about some of the flack Strange Horizons appears to be taking for publishing a soft SF story... that's about the sexual relationship between two women. Though I agree that the story would have been better placed in an erotica anthology (and for erotica, it's not all that great either), I applaud SH for taking it on - if nothing else, it leads to discussions like this about what the hell SF is. Ideally, this story should have been weightier, and explored some issues, really gotten me in the gut - instead, it was like "Huh. Time travelers. The Love That Cannot Speak Its Name. Prostitution. What's the point?" As someone who was drawn to writing SF/fantasy because I felt it was the best place to explore worlds that were *really* different (including social roles), I've since become frustrated with just how narrow and conservative most of the genre really is. Like Matt said: "Science fiction, the literature of yesterday's future!" (to be fair, there are a number of writers doing great stuff - Kelly Link being a good example, but they get flack for it, and haven't been as commercially successful as they should be. Read her collection Stranger Things Happen).

For those interested, Nick Mamatas has also shown up in the comments section of that post, and sparks will fly.

And you may be interested in this double-speak Forbes article about how Americans are living longer, healthier lives... yet 69% of older Americans are "overweight", which is EVIL. Yet, we're living longer, healthier lives... yet...

Yea. C'mon you guys, when are you going to fess up and tell us that most people have an 80lb "healthy weight" range, not a 10lb one, and people's set weights and metabolisms are very different? When are you going to admit it's more important to move your ass than to have less of an ass?

Bah. These people exhaust me.

Thoughts for Singletons on a Friday Night

My roomie has a date tonight, and I'm sitting here watching Rocky movies, eating Thai food, doing line edits and arguing with myself again about what a lame person I must be to be sitting here finding some kind of happiness in line edits and Rocky movies. Aren't I incomplete? Isn't there something wrong with me? All the magazines say so. The TV says so. They say how I'm supposed to be, and how I'm supposed to feel, and I'm supposed to feel lame, sitting here at home by myself, doing line edits and watching movies.

I should go out tonight. Go to Second City. Go around the corner to the Green Mill. Really should go out tonight. Should do something.

I should be dating.

Ack.

Scratch that. Go back. Rewind.

Me: We've discussed this.

Evil Kameron: You're a freak.

Me: Whoa. Hold on. First: you're channeling all the bullshit pressure again. You were totally fine until your roomie started dating. You're internalizing social expectations for the way women are supposed to live. Step back, deep breath. Are you wholly comfortable yet with the idea of being in a relationship? Are you secure enough in your sense of self that you know you wouldn't let it be subsumed by the desires of someone else? We've been down this road before, honey - if you want to be strong, if you want this life, if you want to be happy right now, this is how you have to play it. Once you've got your stuff together, once you're more comfortable in your skin, with who you are, we'll have this conversation again. That's what the journey's about, honey. That's what the traveling is about, the writing is about. That's everything. And until you have a handle on yourself, you can't go dragging anybody into your life.

Evil Kameron: But isn't that really cynical? Why the hell are you sitting around here on a Friday night eating Thai food and doing line edits on some fantasy book nobody's ever expressed any interest in and watching lame Rocky movies?

Me: Cause it's the one day a week I get Thai food, I'd rather write fantasy books than do anything else, and I've got boxing class tomorrow.

Evil Kameron: So this is the life you chose for yourself?

Me: Yea. For now. This is a journey, like all the rest of them. And when you're traveling, you'll have some lonely Friday nights. That's what makes you love the crazy, people-filled nights all the more.

Evil Kameron: Dammit, you're getting all philosophical and Old Woman Wise again.

Me: It's called perspective. I know what it is to be in the corner, in the shitter, in poverty, without anything or any hope for anything else. This world, this night, these things I've chosen - I'm so fucking lucky to be here. I'm so happy to be here.

Evil Kameron: Get yourself a drink. You have another 680 pages to work on.

Me: Damn straight.

Evil Kameron: Bungee jumping in New Zealand next year?

Me: Count on it.

Evil Kameron: Dorky guy in tow?

Me: Don't push it.

Have a great weekend, all.

Teaching Gaiman

And, one more before I get started on these 700 pages of line edits (arg): check out Matt Cheney's reflections on teaching Neil Gaiman's American Gods to his highschool AP English class.

I just think it's damn cool he got away assigning a real book - with swearing and vagina dentate and non-white people and non-Christian mythology and everything.

I would have killed to get assigned books like this in highschool.

Random Linkage, My Chiklits

Charge `em by the pound. Yea, that's right, fat girls. What the hell is up with places like Eddie Bauer and L.L. Bean that don't charge you for plus sizes? Who do they think they are? Hey, let's start putting a "woman tax" on shirts. Afterall, if a woman's got breasts bigger than a B, she should be paying extra, lousy bitty.

And here are some local blue-state hysterics who are pitching fits about the idea of the existence of Bad Ass coffee. No, no, they're not even protesting by just not going to the place (you know, boycotting is the usual sort of protest for this thing) they're just pissed that the damn place even exists. Messes up their cozy view of the world, apparently. Only good asses live in their world.

Speaking of boycotting and freedom of speech, Jeff Jarvis has been doing some research into the big bout of FCC fining bullshit that's been going on this year (showing a white woman jumping into the arms of a black quarterback still rankles, apparently). Want to know how many of the 260M Americans in this country it takes to get a show fined and send all the networks into a censorship frenzy?

About three.

Over a million women had to march on Washington to get the government just to *think twice* about further tampering with reproductive rights and enforcing the ban on partial birth abortion.

But three people can scare the media into censorship.

Stand up. Write back. Send letters to the FCC saying that you're against the censorship of free speech. Even 30,000 is more than 3, last time I checked. But then, this administration has fuzzy math.

Enough, Already. No, Really, ENOUGH.

I did a bad thing last night.

I rented and watched Enough with Jennifer Lopez.

Oh, gag me with a spoon.

To be fair, I knew this was going to be a wretched movie, but I'd heard she learned a bunch of Krav Maga for it, and I've had a higher-than-usual interest in fighting movies since I've started learning to fight. I enjoy watching training sequences now and going, "I've done that! I know how to do that!"

And I've also begun to understand why my buddy Patrick - who's a fifth-degree black belt in Kenpo karate - gets so frustrated with fight scenes.

"Enough" is one of those domestic-abuse movies that's obviously been written and directed by a man.

"What, you mean, he'll just hit her, and she'll be a stay-home mom, and he makes all the money? That's not scary enough! How about he has serial affairs, too? No, no, MORE, EVIL! How about he hires thugs to pose as FBI agents and go after her? How about he taps her phones? No, more! How about we find out that he conspired with a friend to get her into bed in the first time! Yay!"

Oh, puleez.

Want to know the scariest moment in the movie? It's not when the pseudo-FBI agents come after her, or when some other guy is tracking her, or whatever else totally over-the-top crap happened that was thrown in there to make the guy REALLY SCARY. It's the moment when, after he's hit her, he goes into her purse and takes her keys and her wallet.

Really, that's scary enough. So is canceling all of her credit cards and closing her accounts. That's what it's all about, keeping control over women. That's why women owning their own property was such a big deal of a law to change, and why so many men balked at it for thousands of years. That's why women still aren't allowed to drive in some countries. Take away the money and the transport, and you control people.

So, unfortunately, instead of being a woman-training-to-kick-ass-and-finding-the-strength-in-herself-movie, this movie was just a really poor knockoff of Sleeping With the Enemy (which was way better, in my opinion), only really disjointed, over-the-top and bordering on the frickin' ridiculous. I started fast-forwading through the husband-stalking-the-wife scenes, and about 2/3rds of the way through the movie, I realized I wasn't going to get much Krav Maga, and the point of the movie wasn't about the awesome realization of her power as a human being or anything. It was just about killing her husband.

"Oh, crap," I said to my roomie, "it's going to be one of those two-and-a-half-minute training sequences, isn't it? The one's with the music, where she learns how to move like a super ninja in three days?"

And, lo and behold:

All the Krav Maga we got was one of those two-and-a-half-minute training sequences with a nameless trainer, complete with the music.

And, BAM: Jennifer Lopez is a super ninja.

No, no really: she goes into the husband's house and climbs around in the rafters and sets up this fighting trap for him, and moves all the guns around and closes her eyes and figures out the number of steps to all the furniture, and brings a bag of gear so that she can scamble cell phone signals in the house. It's like the Karate Kid, only without all the actual, you know, training and self-discovery and shit like that. And, obviously, without any attempt whatsoever at realism.

That's right, two-and-a-half-minutes of Krav Maga, and a former waitress has becomes James Bond.

Me, screaming in the background, "What the fuck is this???"

So Jennifer Lopez the Super Krav Maga Ninja kills her husband with her Krav Maga super powers, and the police arrive, and tell her she's lucky to be alive, and then super ninja and her daughter go back to Seattle to shack up with the nice dorky guy she broke up with in high school and should have married in the first place.

The End.

What a lame movie.

Good Women Are Thin Women

Amazon.com is sponsoring a series of rather dull, boring short movies that then try and "make money" by advertising products seen in the short. They've got one up with Minnie Driver called "Portrait" in which the office fat girl - who's seen eating in *every damn scene* - at a modeling agency gets her photo taken at a Glamour Shots type of place that says she'll have her "inner beauty" revealed by the photographer.

At work, she's looked down on by all the thin-bitch-women who've screamed their way to the top, and she's always walking three steps behind everyone. She's a sloppy dresser, hesitant, unnoticed, and flighty. Did I mention she's eating ALL the time? Nobody seemed to realize that lots of overweight women actually don't eat in front of people - yea, there are binge sessions at home, but most of them don't consist of enough food to take up THE ENTIRETY OF THE COUCH AND COFFEE TABLE. And hello, jerk-offs, skinny people binge too: they either have happy metabolisms that slough it back out, or they vomit it up. Don't throw your fat girl stereotypes at me.

So, after having her photo taken, our heroine wakes up the next morning, and ta-da!!

She's thin.

Yes. That's right. Her inner "goodness" has shone through and sloughed off all the fat that was hiding the "good" thin woman inside of her! Now, she goes to work wearing stylish clothes, tosses her hair a lot, flirts with guys at the watercooler, gets a better job, and becomes the envy of the thin-bitch-women.

Imagine me screaming in the background, "What the fuck is this???"

As someone who's gone up and done the sliding size-scale from a 12-22 (since I was twelve years old - yea, that's right I was a size 12 at 12, again at 16, again at 20, and likely will be again at 25 - see a pattern here?) and back again, once, twice, working on three times down the size loop again, I can tell you this: I'm the exact same person at a 22 as I am at a 12. I guess this must mean that I'm not a "good" person on the inside, as I'm not thin and blond, and really don't have much desire to be.

I think what always offends me so much about thin actresses going around in fat drag is that the women who do it may have a deep, deep fear of being fat, but they've never *been* fat. They don't realize that life goes on, that you're the same person, that the world doesn't end. For most actresses in Hollywood, and in the minds of some ridiculous amount of women, being fat is the absolute worst thing that can happen to them. How can you have people who think this giving us the popular media idea of fat women? How can you so blantantly tell people that "goodness" means being thin, and "badness" means being fat?

And how come fat girls have to dress like shit, and walk five steps behind everybody? Why can't they laugh out loud and dress really great, and not be flighty and stupid? Why do they have to show fat women gorging themselves at work all the time?

These writers and directors and actors need to move the hell out of Hollywood and go write something from the real world.

Further Hysterics

So, one of the guys in the office just forwarded all the women in the office this stupid urban legend thing, passing it off as him being this concerned male citizen of virtue. You know this one, the *677 cell phone feature (in CANADA) that'll save a poor helpless woman who's got an unmarked police car on her ass and thinks it may be a nefarious villain out for rape and plunder and not a real police officer.

This is a lot like the traumatizing story I got of the rapists who would hide underneath your car at shopping malls holding knives, and cut your ankles to distract you while they pinned you to the hood of your car and raped you. For some reason, my young adolescent self never realized that the sheer physical dynamics involved in him cutting your ankles and then *sliding out from underneath the car and managing to disable you before you screamed, bit, gouged, and ran away* would pretty much prevent all but the stupidest attackers from trying this bit of menacing.

My well-meaning mother sends me these hysteric stories all the time. If you get them forwarded to you, check out truthorfiction.com to get the real deal.

Now, while I appreciate (though am exasperated by) these forwarded e-mails from my mother, I'm irritated and more than a little angry to find myself receiving one from a co-worker whom I rarely work with and barely know, whose social life is nil and work life lackluster and who suffers from a severe Napoleon complex.

Put me and this guy in a fight, and I can tell you right now who'll win.

I want to shake this guy and tell him I've got a Master's degree and have trekked 160 kilometres into rural Africa. I can lift some ungodly amount of weight, jog three miles, and have a whopping amount of anger just ready to be directed at a potential attacker.

Rapist? BRING IT ON, BITCH!!!

Here's the deal, right... the guy was thinking he was doing his helpful male protector thing. He was alerting all of the women in the office that maybe that unmarked police car behind you isn't really a police car (yea, cause *guys* would never fall for this sort of thing), and you should be really hysterical about it, because BAD THINGS happen to women EVERY DAY.

And yes, I agree. Bad things happen every day. What I hate is the automatic assumption that because I'm a woman, I'm going to be the victim of a crime, and I need special consideration, and the guys in the office don't need to know this stuff, cause only 77% of the murdered are men. It's automatically assumed that I'm weaker and stupider and I need more protection. Is rape a woman-specific crime? Mostly, yea: but it's these goddamn I'd-rather-die-than-be-raped stigmas surrounding it that keep women silent about it and keep men doing it, and keep us all in so much fear of some stranger's swollen flesh that we send hysteric e-mails to each other instead of saying, "Yea. Just bite it off." Then report the fucker. You'll have a great DNA sample.

Yes, on the domestic abuse and sexual assault front, women are abused more than men, and it's bullshit, and the abuse needs to stop, and women need to stand up to it, and we live in a society that doesn't give most women the tools, skills, or resources to do so. But men are more likely to be the victim of a car jacking than women. 77% of murder victims are men. And, to top it all off, crime rates have been falling steadily for the last 20 years.

And I'm still getting hysterical e-mails.

Yea, there's still crime, but the pressure on women to be good or get violently assaulted for it is largely social. We're more likely (in the US) to be threatened with a crime or sit around in fear of a crime than to actually experience once.

As somebody who's spent a year and a half in South Africa terrifed out of my skull by rape rates/crime rates & etc. and *still* traveled alone through East London to King William's Town to Alice - the heartland of nowhere - and *still* came out alive... well, I can tell you that this fear bullshit is crippling and false.

Learn how to fight. Hold yourself a little taller. Don't take shit from anybody. Don't let anybody invade your personal space.

I stand by my earlier assertions: if more women knew how to fight back, more men would think twice about fucking with them. I'm a big believer in this one (this ideal could change, of course, I'm young). But as long as men and women are raised up believing that women exist as pretty ornaments instead of friends and partners, I'm going to keep getting these well-meaning e-mails that talk down to me instead of treating me like an equal.

And treating me like an equal means forwarding that hysteric message to everybody in the office, not just me.

And being a decent co-worker is about checking stupid fucking truthorfiction.com before forwarding said co-workers THIS BULLSHIT.

The end.

Dynamic Personalities

This one is fascinating, from New Scientist:

Students who thought of Superman volunteered much less of their time than those who thought about other superheroes. Furthermore, Superman-primed subjects were significantly less likely to show up at a meeting for volunteers held three months after they were initially asked to participate.

The reason, believes Nelson, is that asking people to compare themselves to an exceptional individual makes them realise their shortcomings. Whereas thinking about a general category encourages people to identify the strengths they have in common.

What I want to know is, was there any difference if they primed them for Superwoman instead of Superman?

The Fighting Life, etc

So, almost six months into fighting classes, and I'm still loving this kicking-ass thing.

Had a good class last night. Wore a newer sort of shirt that really, only waifish petite women should wear (says the media - smaller straps, more breathable material, tight-fitting), but damn I was comfortable, and when I got a look at myself in the mirror, I didn't look ridiculous so much as I looked scary. My upper body is starting to get slightly impressive, and I'm a lot denser than I used to be. Still, I'm big. I can hurt people. I always wonder if bigger-than-average guys (height and weight) internalize the Fat Kid label as much as women like me absorbed the Fat Girl label. I always suspect that big guys were told they were just Really Impressive.

So I'm looking forward to Wednesday classes more this time around (format changes every month, to keep our bodies guessing) because we're doing bag work and no jump roping. Worked on krav maga drills, broken up by squats, push-ups, and plank position feats of fancy requiring good balance and a really strong core.

I've been looking at my Saturday morning pilates class as a low-intesity warmup before boxing class or just a great way to start my Saturday morning (on the days I skip the boxing class that follows it), but after a couple of pilates classes in addition to my usual routine, I've really noticed a difference in strength levels. I wonder how much of it has to do with just breaking up my routine and doing something totally different.

My leg strength is also finally starting to catch up to my upper body (yea, I have no problem carrying my roommate around the house on a lark, but doing wallsits for a minute is still painful). I was doing front leg roundhouse kick drills last night, and it's this really elegant thing - you've got your left foot turned out away from where you're kicking, and you take up your right leg and snap it at the bag, pointing the toe, and wallop with the front of your pointed foot. Then snap back, bring the pointed toe to the floor, then do it again.

It requires a lot of balance, which means a lot of strength in your legs and abs, and last night was the first time I'd done the kicks where I consistently felt really elegant doing them. Sure, it's still like, "Wow, I have this huge body," (I've actually stopped comparing myself to most of the women in class except the Amazons, and started comparing myself to the men of my same belt rank - we're closer in height/weight and of course, experience level) but this time around it was, "Wow, I have this huge body, and I can really make it do this elegant, powerful stuff."

Looking pretty when you wallop someone is a great added bonus.

Ha.

Ain't No Goat

I don't understand what a bunch of hysterics find so scary about some rural 17-year-old kid who says that yea, mom and dad, I think guys are pretty hot.

I mean, *I've* been a rural, 17-year-old-kid who was like, "Yea, mom and dad, I think guys are pretty hot (and that chick in speech class isn't bad either)."

And you know, I don't consider myself very scary.

Certainly not scary enough to warrant this sort of behavior from Westboro Baptist minister Fred Phelps and his hysterical flock. This guy rallied up and shipped out some good Christian folks and sent them to picket this kid Michael's home town - and his local church - to tell him he was a demon freak and all of the people around him who hadn't stoned him to death were evil sinners and going to hell.

What happened to "Jesus loves everybody" and "Don't judge lest ye be judged" and "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"?

Are these people Christians, or hate-mongers?

The town's response to this is telling - you can't bring in "foreigners" to a small town and have them try and alienate the town and one of their own because they accept somebody the way he is... well, no, his town doesn't really accept him the way he is. They keep hoping he'll change, which is why they keep letting him back into church. But let's ignore that for a minute, and just say that you can't get a bunch of people riled up and send them out after a small-town kid, cause you'll get a backlash. You'll get locals saying stuff like, "Stay away from our homos."

He's ours. Not yours. Fuck off.

It's a starting point, I guess.

In truth, the best part of this article for me, and the part that I really connected with, was when The Human Rights Campaign offered to fly Michael into DC to attend their national dinner. Michael went with his sister Shelly, after getting his mother's very hesitant permission to go. And, in DC:

The next day there was a luncheon and sightseeing of the monuments. A lesbian couple with a 3-year-old daughter took Michael and Shelly to dinner in Dupont Circle. Walking around the gay neighborhood, Michael was in awe. "It was like being around family," he said. "Seeing all those successful people, that could be me."

As somebody who's from a small town, it was this bit of the article that really struck me. That realization:

There are other ways to live. Things can be really different.

This isn't all there is. Everybody doesn't marry the guy they dated in high school, have a miserable or lackluster marriage of obligation, and spend their lives raising kids that they may not really want but feel are expected to have.

You can know these things on a rational level, but until you actually see it at work, it remains about as tangible a reality as the North Pole. Sure, you know it's there, but you can't see a way to get there, or how it being there would affect you. Except insofar as it affects the weather, and magnetism, and the tilt of the earth, and...

The first time I walked into a gay-friendly neighborhood, I was twenty years old and attending Clarion West in Seattle.

My realization happened quite suddenly. I was walking around, mapping out the local neighborhood, looking for the grocery store, the pharmacy - and then this odd thing happened. I looked up and realized I was walking down the street next to same-sex couples holding hands.

And no one was jeering at them.

Nobody looked furtive or harassed. Happy couples ate out at the sidewalk cafes. Groups of women in practical clothing ordered real food and laughed and talked in big voices. Men held long conversations with each other about personal relationships and clothing.

Now, I'm one of those illusion-of-heterosexuality types who identifies as hetero, but is probably a 3-3.5 on the sliding scale of human sexuality. That is, I mostly go crazy about boys, and I identify as straight, but I've been known to goggle at the occasional girl. So really, as a self-identified "straight" person, I shouldn't have felt this huge relief I felt when I was walking around. I should have just been like, "Wow. That's cool."

Instead, I felt, for the first time, like I could totally relax. It was a bit like going to a science fiction convention (bear with me here), where everybody's a fat dork, and has these really fascinating sexual relationships or lack thereof, and it's all OK.

As I grew up, I stumbled into the "fat girl" stereotype, and the "fat dork" label that I draped over my head and started to internalize. I recognized that I was bigger and taller than most women. I didn't wear makeup. I didn't know how to flirt. I had the braces/glasses/headgear thing going on. I lived on books. People were always making fun of me. They were stealing things from me. They were throwing stuff at me on the bus.

Like most people, I got rid of most of my dorkly attire as I got older, lost weight and got even taller, but I still had this feeling, this feeling like, "This isn't the right world for me. What other people want isn't what I want. I don't want what I'm supposed to want."

I didn't want to get married. I wasn't thrilled at the idea of having kids. I wanted to run around the world with a backpack. I wanted to live in a little cabin in the woods and write books. I wanted to ride motorcycles in Rome. I was a lot more crazy about hopping into bed with people than women were supposed to be. I was still too big and too tall, to be a woman. That's what the media told me. That's what seeing all these hetero couples and their screaming children told me. I was wrong to not want these things.

But walking down that street in Seattle, in that neighborhood, with all those comfortable people, it occurred to me that I had found a safe place. Nobody would likely ask me why I wasn't married. Nobody would say that since I wasn't dating I must be a lesbian (and if they did, they wouldn't say it like it was a *bad* thing). Nobody would call me a fatty or say I read too much or ate too much or sneer at me for talking about feminism. Why not? - cause I believed that most of these people knew *exactly* what it was like to be hated for something about yourself that made you comfortable and happy.

Oh, sure, nobody's a saint - there are lots of people, no matter their sexuality or skin color or nationality or religion or whatever, who have a deep fear and resentment for stuff like fat and dorkdom - but again, no matter what the rational part of my brain was saying, the rest of my body was comfortable, relaxed, and yes, relieved. I could just walk. Nobody here would hurt me. That's what my body told me.

I get that same feeling browsing at the Women and Children First Bookstore in Andersonville, and dining next to four women on a double-date at Andie's. It's that thought, like:

I can say liberal things, and talk about female revolutionaries, and sit here looking the way I look, and nobody's going to pat me on the head and say I'm a silly girl, or the wrong kind of girl, or tell me I'm going to hell cause I'm not married.

I'm OK here.

This is what I don't understand about people who hate. People who seek to attack others who have done them no harm, who are not thinking to do them harm, and then start screaming at them and throwing stones - the way I felt screamed at in a town that always felt too small for me.

I like to think of myself as being really accepting of people, because I know what it's like to feel suffocated by a world that doesn't seem right for you. But I can't understand the need to hate. I can't understand standing on a sidewalk and screaming that some 17-year-old should die and his whole congregation is going to hell cause they "let" him into church, and love him for being a person.

Yes. A person. You know, like everybody else.

All I can figure is that these are very, very, terrified people who believe that if others exist who are different than they are, then those people threaten their own belief about the lives they've chosen. After all, if there are people in the world who your version of the Bible says shouldn't exist, how can you be so absolute in your faith? If there really are places where you don't have to grow up and get married and kow-tow to a physically superior husband who makes more money than you do, then you might have to question why *you're* doing it.

There are a lot of men and women who are very happy with the cozy nuclear family lifestyle - though not nearly so many as the cultural illusion would have you think. I respect stay-at-home mothers more than I respect many people, because I have an understanding of just what an incredible undertaking it is to bear and raise children. But there's a fear that came true for a lot of conservatives in an explosive and very public way in the 70s: there's a fear that if women, especially, are given another way of living, that they'll take it. That they'll jump ship, and start making up lives of their own.

Wouldn't that be terrible?

These rebel women would threaten your way of life with their very existence, because god wouldn't strike them down, their children wouldn't all be deformed, they wouldn't get into some disfiguring accident, and no, Massachusetts wouldn't sink into the sea...

And then...

And then...

Who's left to hate? Who do you blame for your own unhappiness? Who do you blame for your own dissastisfaction? Who's carrying all the sin in the world?

Back in the day, little communities started the new year by transferring all of their sins to a goat. The goat was then sacrificed to god or the gods, purging the town of it's yearly sins and feelings of ill-will.

And you know what? I don't wanna be anybody's fucking goat. And my friends and neighbors ain't goats either.

I think that all of us dangerous women and rebel men hold up a mirror - I think it scares the shit out of people.

I think we should do more of it.

There are other ways to live. We're making them, and we're living them.

And yes, I do believe that other people need to hear about them.

Because my heart bleeds for all these 17-year-old kids in these little towns, the ones who don't know that there's another way to live, and so stay home raising goats.

There’s another way to live.

Things can be really different.

And yes, that's an OK thing. The world will not explode. Nobody's going to abolish happy hetero twosomes. Nobody's going to take away your Bible. Another person's happiness doesn't threaten yours.

What I want out of my life doesn't affect the lives of Phelps's hysterics - unless some of those hysterics see my life and realize they don't much like their own lives. Unless seeing me and my buddies living as single (or unmarried-partnered/married-open relationship/poly/same-sex partnered), successful, strong women who can lift 120lbs and knock somebody out with a right cross means that they start to question Phelps.

I suppose I can understand, then, what a shepherd like Phelps finds so terrifying.

He's afraid his sheep will turn into people. He's afraid they'll start thinking like people.

Random Odds and Various Ends

So, which of these is the Washington Post article, and which is the satirical Onion article? Sorry, these are getting uncomfortably close for me.

No wonder Jon Stewart's doing so damn well.

And my, my my - more pulp magazine covers! (not quite work safe)Pagan lesbians and all (definately a freeper's worst nightmare)! I just break into uncontrollable giggling.

Check out more hysterics here. This time, we get this great freak-out quote from a mother protesting the mere idea that there's such a thing as a school dance where men and women are expected to switch social roles. She seemed to believe this meant crossdressing - as opposed to, say, the Sadie Hawkins women-ask-the-guy-out-and-pay-the-tab dances that prep women for real life - you know, life after highschool.

My favorite quote from this hysteric: "It's like experimenting with drugs," Davies said. "You just keep playing with it and it becomes customary. ... If it's OK to dress like a girl today, then why is it not OK in the future?"

It's not OK? Wow. I must live way way too close to boys' town Belmont and Andersonville, then, cause in my world, all sorts of non-compulsory-hetero-social-role bullshit is OK... I really do live in a different world than these 58 million Americans. I really do. More on this later.

I've also submitted my newsfeed to - and been picked up by - Feminist Blogs, a cool compilation of feeds from a bunch of feminist and pro-feminist blogs. Check it out.

And for those interested - I'm currently reading and recommend the Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women. For literary snobs who can't be bothered with "fantasy" you'll find "literary" luminaries in here like Elizabeth Bowen, Muriel Spark, Leguin, and P.D. James. And you'll get to meet swoon-worthy Angela Carter and that most epic of brutal women, Joanna Russ.

Writing Today. Seriously. Yes. Seriously.

In the mean time, you may be interested in amusing yourselves with John Rickards's latest pet procrastinating project - and check out these inspiring passages from John Kerry: the novel.

Ahem. Yes. Anyway. Back into the trenches with King Nathin...