Gender and Violence

The other day I was reading The Liars' Club by Mary Karr, a memoir of her childhood in Texas, when I came across an incredibly disturbing scene that made me start to shake with disgust and horror.

In this scene, 7 year-old Mary has just finished reading Charlotte's Web up in her bedroom and has this revelation about the importance of the book and its true meaning. She calls for her male babysitter to come upstairs so she can tell him about it. He comes upstairs and she starts babbling to him about what she had read, about the significance of Charlotte and Wilbur's friendship. He asks her if she would like to be his special friend, and at this point we know where this is going. In the next few paragraphs, Karr describes (very graphically) how this babysitter gets (forces) her to perform oral sex on him. At SEVEN YEARS OLD.

Now first of all, I read books like this all the time - I was not shocked out of innocence by this occurrence or anything. Second of all, she had already described being raped by a neighborhood boy at an even younger age earlier in this same book. But something about this particular scene - the way she described it or perhaps the vividness of the image in my head - this one had a very different effect on me.

I sat there stone-faced and shaking on the couch, book in my lap. My husband asks if I'm okay. I say "no," he asks why not, I explain the scene to him. He shakes his head in disgust/anger and says "See? That's why I don't want to have girls."

At this point I realize that my take on the situation is quite different from his. I get angry and ask quite forcefully, "Oh, you'd rather have the perpetrator of the crime be your child than the victim???"

I realize that this was a very sexist thing to say, and a very sexist feeling to have in the first place. But I have heard so many people express a preference for having sons because of similar reasons, claiming that boys don't need to be worried about as much, that I reacted viscerally to both the scene and my husband's statement.

What does it say about us and our culture if we would rather raise violent perpetrators than victims? What does it say about us and our culture that we associate a specific gender to one status or the other?

I have heard strong, independent females say things like "Oh, I'm so glad I never had a daughter. Boys are just soooo much easier." As if girls require some kind of high-maintenance parenting and boys just kinda take care of themselves.

My thoughts after reading the passage in Karr's book were essentially that I have to imagine it is much easier to teach a child how to never be a victim than it is to teach a child never to be a perpetrator. How do you teach your son (effectively) not to ever touch another person or force them to touch him against their will without making sex and sexual contact seem dirty, wrong and forbidden (Because we all know where those lessons lead.....Jeffrey Dahmer, anyone?).

Isn't it easier to teach a girl that she has rights, that her body is her own, that she doesn't have to respond to intimidation and that fear doesn't have to control her life? Isn't that easier than teaching a boy to control his hormonal urges, to respect females as equals, to respect female sexuality in a world where all the messages he is bombarded with are to the contrary?

I think the most disturbing aspect of that passage for me was the fact that I never once got the impression that this boy wanted to hurt Mary. He wasn't being mean, he wasn't malicious. I believe he had a strong sexual urge, he needed an outlet for it, he saw an opportunity and took it. I don't think he believed he was hurting her. I didn't get the impression that this boy was the type who would grow up to be a child molestor or a rapist. But nonetheless, he did what he did to her.

And I'm willing to bet this shit happens all the time and no one ever hears about it. The sick fuckers always seem to be adults and get caught because they do it over and over again. But what about the ones who, just once, lost control of their shit and no one ever finds out what happened?

We all know of ways to protect kids from bad people in the world. Sometimes we can't control it, but we all do our best.

But how can we effectively protect our kids from themselves?

The Question of Afghanistan: Your thoughts?

I keep getting emails in my inbox from various political organizations I have dealings with regarding Afghanistan and the question of whether or not to send more troops. 90% of the time, I am in near-perfect agreement with these organizations' stances on various issues, but this is one issue I can't get behind them on.

MoveOn.org, Code PINK, Progressive Democrats, etc., all seem to want me to protest the sending of troops into Afghanistan, and call for the complete pulling out of troops. They want me to engage in protests if Obama decides to okay the troop surge. I'm not sure it's a good idea to do any of these things.

Afghanistan is where we should have been in the first place. I want all of our troops out of Iraq, without question or hesitation. But Afghanistan is a different issue. Call me old-fashioned and bloodthirsty, but I still want Bin Laden's head on a stick.

But I am now a military spouse, and I understand the sacrifice our men and women in uniform and their families make in order to perform orders handed down by our government. I don't want to see more injuries and loss of lives as a result of another war. But we're having these things happen day after day after day in Afghanistan and the military is telling us it's because they don't have enough troops there for security efforts to be effective.

Now if I were president, I would remove all troops from Afghanistan and send a team of CIA special operatives into the area to find and capture/kill Bin Laden and bring his body back to the US. This would be done in secret, of course - the plan only coming to public knowledge once the capture was successful. I am a big fan of targeting the specific enemy rather than an entire group of people who may or may not be marginally related to that enemy. I think it sends a better message about use of power for justice than bombing entire cities and villages full of innocent people.

But maybe I've seen too many spy movies.

What do you guys think? Where do you stand on this issue? Should we send more troops or call for a complete withdrawal?

This Sucks.

Being knocked up sucks. Anyone who says differently is either extremely lucky or is suffering from a mental disorder characterized by delusion.

At first it's all, "Wow, holy shit! This is amazing, I'm so excited!" And then the hormones kick in.

I'm not even SICK. I have been lucky enough to escape the morning sickness, which is probably some function of my evolution, seeing as I am such a wuss about nausea that I would have already drowned myself in the bathtub if I were unable to stop vomiting.

Even without THAT, this completely sucks balls.

The exhaustion is unbearable. Have you ever seen a 2 year-old that is utterly wiped out and hasn't had a nap in like forever? That's me - a whining, miserable, exhausted, weepy mess. I have never been this tired in my life. There is no such thing as "enough" sleep - I could nap all day, get 10-12 hours of sleep at night - doesn't matter, still feel like shit. Worse than that, it is nearly impossible to get comfortable in bed at night and I have to get up to pee at least twice. Why on earth is it so hard to sleep at this point, before my physical shape is even a factor in my discomfort?

And the cramps. Oh my god, the goddamn cramps. No one tells you about this until AFTER you're knocked up. I have been down on all fours at 3am on my kitchen floor with tears in my eyes because apparently my uterus decided it would be a great time to play twister with my ovaries. The stupid cramps come and go constantly - it's not like PMS or your period, when you know they'll go away. And to add insult to injury? You can't take anything but fucking Tylenol. Not even extra-strength Tylenol. Definitely not Vicodin, though the situation seems to merit it more than others I've experienced.

But probably the worst thing, for me, is the stupid pregnancy brain. Becca pointed out in my previous post that I kept referring to swine flu as "H191" rather than "H1N1." Fucking DUH. This is your brain: :) This is your brain on progesterone: O. Yup, big empty space. I have been missing exits on the highway, leaving bags of stuff I just purchased at the checkout counters of stores, leaving my coats/jackets in places I visited for work, forgetting words in the middle of conversations, forgetting CONVERSATIONS in the middle of conversations. Saying "Yeah mom, I'll email that info over to you right now while I'm thinking of it," hanging up the phone, and having no recollection of what I was supposed to do or why.

I'm not exaggerating. In fact, I'm sitting here right now thinking "There were way more examples than this, but I've completely forgotten them." Dammit! I am so frustrated that I can't get my brain to work properly I don't know what to do with myself. For those of you who did this while in grad school, or while conducting research that required cognitive effort, or while simultaneously raising another little one at home - you are my heroes. Because I can't even fucking load the dishwasher these days. I don't like feeling dumb. I don't like worrying that there are typos in my emails and blogs, or that I'm saying the wrong words, or that I'm forgetting something important. This is not me, and I hate it. I hate it a lot.

Not being able to drink also sucks. But that doesn't suck as much as not being able to smoke. I'm not resentful about it - I should make that clear, seeing as this was a choice I made. But there are times when I'm just like "Fuck. I could use some damn nicotine" and it becomes apparent how much my little routines have already been changed.

I think the hardest thing about being only 8 weeks is that there is nothing to show for it. Not that I'm in a big hurry to blow up or anything, but there are no flutters, no ultrasound photos, no heartbeat, no knowledge of biological sex, nothing. It's like I have to get up and remind myself every day - "Why am I not smoking a cigarette with my cup of coffee? Oh. Oh yeah. Damn." I ordered a non-alcoholic Strawberry Fresco with dinner tonight, and immediately felt like the waitress assumed I was underage. When I go to work and there are bags under my bloodshot eyes, I feel like my clients assume I have a drug problem.

Which leads me to the last thing I want to bitch about - not being able to tell everyone. I mean, yeah, you CAN. But given the risk of miscarriage in the first 12 weeks, it just seems really stupid to tell people you wouldn't tell if something went wrong. So I'm not. But then you have to try and remember who knows and who doesn't, and try not to slip in front of those who don't, and hide pregnancy books when acquaintances come over, and explain the Tigger puzzle you've been working on that's sitting on the dining room table as nothing more than a diversion to keep you from thinking about Marlboro Lights.

So far, the only thing even remotely entertaining about pregnancy is the food cravings. Though in my case, I won't call them "cravings." They're more like food fantasies. I don't "need" them, I just "want" them. Up to this point they have included spicy food of all kinds, frosted strawberry pop-tarts (which I hadn't eaten since I was 11), hot dogs, baked chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes, and lasagna from Olive Garden. Not even that weird in general, but very weird for me.

Hopefully the next 4-5 weeks will pass quickly, I'll start to feel better, and I can stop bitching about this thing I did to myself. But in the meantime I feel somewhat responsible to let any other clueless young women out there know what they're in for. I wish someone had told me.

Vaccinations and Insanity

I support Amy Wallace:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/

Perhaps the aspect of this so-called "debate" that I find most fascinating and frustrating is its lack of pre-existing platform. Eg., it's not a conservative versus liberal or Republican versus Democrat or northern versus southern kind of debate. There is no pattern of irrationality to be discerned - just one, single, stupid, fucking, poisonous, pandemic idea that is grasped by some and ridiculed by others.

The foundation problem, as I see it, is that when parents find out that something is wrong with their child, they need to find someone to blame - some semblance of control they can regain over their lives. That someone to blame can't be themselves, not entirely. And random bouts of unfairness in life is just an unacceptable idea - surely there must be a REASON!

I've mentioned before in my blog how I feel about yuppie, child-worshipping, paranoid, Lysol wipe-obsessed parents. Did I forget to say selfish? My bad.

Parents nowadays have this irrational fear of germs and dirt. It is selfish. They don't want their children to get sick. Of course this doesn't sound selfish at the outset, who wants to see a little one feeling miserable? But if you try to save your child from being sick as a child when they can stay home and be cared for by an adult, they WILL spend much of their adult life being sick instead because you never let their immune system develop. And I think that's selfish. And it's all about control.

You cannot control anything in this life except for your own behavior. If your child is autistic, there is a pretty good goddamn chance that there was nothing you or anyone else could have done to prevent it. We don't know yet what causes autism - shit, there is still debate over what, exactly, autism IS. But if you begin with major distrust of the medical community that is trying to help you, how can we ever make progress toward understanding, treating, and preventing autism?

But beyond that - you have no right to endanger my life or the life of my children because of your personal beliefs in celebrity tales of woe. How many children have to die? How many is ENOUGH for you before you realize that you are playing with fire? If Jenny McCarthy believed her child was strangled by swimmies, would you throw your child into the pool without them and hope they learn how to swim really quickly?

The utter lack of common sense in this country right now is staggering. This whole belief that correlation equals causation, the lack of understanding of how probabilities work - are so many of you really that uneducated? Do we need to start a mandatory statistics and probability course for adults in this country?

Why does everything have to have that flavor of hysteria?

Less than an hour from now I will be getting the H191 vaccine. I originally had no intention of getting it, because I was more concerned about making sure the most vulnerable populations had the vaccine available to them. And, I won't lie, I had some concerns about the safety of it, given how quickly the FDA approved it and sent it to market.

But my job requires me to spend a lot of time in schools across my state. And several of them have closed down recently due to H191 breakouts in which huge numbers of kids were sick with the virus. I am also 8 weeks pregnant. That fact combined with my job puts me in an extremely high risk group. When I started to see that the virus had come to my neighborhood and then found out I was pregnant, it was no longer a question of "if" - it was a question of "when."

It is my responsibility to make sure my baby (even if it is the size of a raspberry) is as safe and healthy as possible, and sometimes you need the numbers game in order to make that decision. But in order to do that, you have to make sure you know what the numbers mean. When the virus was in Mexico, I wasn't worried about it. But when it came to New England and started hitting hard, the minute risk became justified.

All you can ever do is make the best decision you can using the information that is available to you at the time. Moms smoked and drank and did god knows what else while pregnant right up until the 90's. The vast majority of us were born healthy and turned out just fine. Does that mean it's okay or safe to smoke and drink while pregnant now? (I wish.) No, and the Pregnancy Police will be sure to point out every reproductive felony you commit, rest assured.

The point is that your unvaccinated children are dying. And you are risking the infection of children who are not yours. Do you really want to send the message that a dead child is better than an autistic child?

Because that, my dear readers, is fucked up no matter which way you try to spin it.

Invasion of the Body Snatcher: Month 1

A week and a half ago I found out that I'm pregnant. Holy crap. No need for congratulations - it wasn't exactly some feat of accomplishment. In fact, the running joke in my house is that it was the first thing my husband did when he came home.

You know what the craziest thing is? It should not be that much harder to get into grad school than it is to become someone's parent.

I debated whether or not I wanted to post about this on the blog or keep it a secret until the rest of the IRL people knew. But the advice and support available to me offline is pretty limited and I figured what the hell. If something bad happens, I'd probably post about it on here anyway.

I did not expect it to happen that fast. Not in a million years. That said, the timing of it is perfect because I'll be due in June and I get summers off from work. I was 2 days away from calling my GYN and asking for a new Rx for the pill when the test came back positive. It's amazing how that works out.

So here I am, 8 weeks pregnant this coming Monday. I'm not sick at all which is fantastic, but I do get cramps like a motherfucker and I'm not allowed to take anything stronger than Tylenol. Not even extra-strength Tylenol. I am also exhausted most of the time. I told my husband that getting out of bed in the morning is like trying to re-animate a corpse with nothing but a set of jumper cables and a D battery. I sleep like shit, getting and staying comfortable is nearly impossible, and it doesn't help when 4am finds you down on all fours on the floor trying not to cry as your uterus throws a violent temper tantrum inside your abdomen.

Nope, not a whole lot of sunshine and roses here. Nosirree.

I am also a complete and total airhead. I knew the stereotype of the pregnant brain and all that, but holy shit they weren't kidding. I have all but left the house without pants on. The other day I was driving on the highway, moved over into the right lane because my exit was less than a mile away. And in that .75 mile or so distance, I forgot what I was doing and drove right by the exit ramp. That has never happened to me in. my. life.

I went out and bought the obligatory What To Expect When You're Expecting. It's pretty boring, but I appreciate the information. My other book, though, was worth every last damn penny I spent on it, and that is The Girlfriends Guide To Pregnancy. HI-LAR-I-OUS. Author Vicki Iovine is now my idol. The wit and humor in that book is so fantastic and needed that I haven't been able to put it down. In fact, I am currently reading the section on what to bring to the hospital even though I am 9 months away from that point. I just can't stop reading.

Something I wasn't expecting:

I have been cool as a cucumber about this whole thing. Not overly excited and yuppie-psycho, but not pessimistic and brooding either. I've been very zen - accepting it, allowing myself to be happy about it, willingly taking on the responsibility, mentally preparing myself for the possibility that it might not work out this time around.

Yesterday afternoon I saw the slightest potential sign of something going wrong. I knew on a rational level that it was 99% likelihood of nothing and that I was probably being paranoid. But when the possibility entered my head that I might lose the pregnancy and it felt as if I had some evidence right in front of me, I lost my shit.

I always thought, given what I know about my family's reproductive history, that I could face something like that with the understanding that it is not my fault, that it happens, that it's so early, etc. But when you're looking that demon in the eye, it's a totally different fucking story. It was in that moment that I got to feel what it's like to be a mother instead of just the earthly vessel that I feel like the rest of the time.

Everything is fine. At least for now and as far as I know. My first appointment isn't until 11/10 and next week I have to get the H1N1 vaccine since my job requires me to visit about 14 schools a week and some of them have just closed down due to the swine flu. Hopefully the vaccine doesn't make me sick because I've been running on E for weeks now.

Kitchen Adventures

I have made some seriously cool stuff in the kitchen in the past week or so. Inspired by the book Julie & Julia (not the movie, haven't seen it yet), I made 2 Julia Child recipes: Oeufs en Cocotte avec Sauce au Cari, and potato-leek soup. The eggs were awesome, I loved the curry sauce. But in truth, it is way too much of a pain in the ass to be any kind of practical breakfast. However, the claim that it is a powerful hangover cure is spot on - IF you can drag your sorry ass out of bed to cook it.

The potato leek soup was also pretty damn good. I had never eaten a leek before in my life, had no idea it was a type of onion. Used a potato ricer for the first time - I am pretty convinced it would make some damn good mashed potatoes, texture-wise.

I had found a recipe in one of my cookbooks for a casserole that sounded tempting, though in general I am not a fan of casseroles. It was for Southwest Chicken Tortellini Casserole, and goddamn was it good. I have been craving spicy food lately like nobody's business, but while this dish wasn't actually "hot" spicy, it had a nice, soothing spiced tone to it. I plan to kick it up a notch next time.

Today I am attempting to make chili for the first time. I LOVE chili. I am starting with the basic recipe found in the Betty Crocker cookbook (the bible-sized one). I have a couple of tweaks planned, including Ro-Tel diced tomatoes with chiles instead of the plain diced tomatoes, jar salsa instead of the canned tomato sauce, and simmering with a seeded jalapeno or two to add some kick. The recipe calls for the chili to simmer for just over an hour, but I plan to simmer it for at least twice that long. Any tips for me from fellow chili-lovers out there?

It's a cold, shitty, rainy New England sunday - I think it's got "CHILI" written all over it.

Unexpected Twists and...Christianity Internalized?

We thought we were all set. The condo was sold, we had found a house we loved, A was finally home from the military and we were all like "Let it rock, baby!"

But then there were issues with his job status that were going to keep us from getting a mortgage. And we thought we were fucked because of the contract on the condo - we were going to have to move in November no matter what. We had nowhere else to live and about a million things were up in the air - could we get the house? Were we totally unable to get the house? Was he going to get this new job that he really wants or wasn't he? WTF were we THINKING, anyway??

We were about ready to kill each other from the overload of stress. I formed a habit of hiding out in a bubble bath for as long as possible as soon as I got home from work. He spaced out in front of a marathon of Supernatural episodes. We drank too much, smoked too much, and argued too much.

And then today, we got word that the condo didn't appraise as high as we needed it to. We could take an additional loss and continue to sell it to our current buyer. We could let the buyer go and reduce the asking price to fit the appraisal. My husband texted me these options while I was on the road, and I responded:

"Take it off the market. And thank god for small favors."

What we needed more than anything else was time. The condo wasn't supposed to sell in 3 weeks. We weren't supposed to need to close on it before A found a new job. We needed time just to find the ducks, let alone get them in a row.

And time is what was granted to us today - in a form that most home-sellers would consider a major setback.

So thank you, Universal Chaos, for working in our favor this time. I raise my margarita glass to you in salute.

On another note, I had a very strange and unexpected reaction to a plot line in one of A's episodes of Supernatural. Now I don't actually watch this show. I was reading a book about Chicago hookers at the turn of the century and the information from the episode came to me peripherally.

Basically, the archangels of Christianity were coming down to earth searching for human "vessels" so they could fight a war against Lucifer and bring about the apocalypse. But they were total assholes - giving one of the brothers stomach cancer as a torture method to get their way, being more concerned with relieving themselves of the responsibility of running heaven than with the suffering and death they were about to bring to the humans on earth, etc.

Michael, Raphael, Gabriel - they were all part of this plot. And they were all dicks.

And this really, deeply, bothered me.

Might I remind you, I am an Atheist. A Catholic-born one, but an Atheist nonetheless. So the fact that it bothered me, bothered me even more.

But my reaction to it was "WTF? The archangels are the protectors of mankind. They are supposed to be the embodiment of kindness, perfect love, and compassion! What the hell kind of bullshit are these writers trying to spin??"

And then I gagged in my mouth a little for even having that reaction.

My grandmother, when I was growing up, was very into the stories of the angels. She claimed to have seen them, and spun fantastical tales of the presence of angels on earth. When I was 4 or 5 years old, I spent every night praying feverishly, asking for an angel to come to me. Obviously, no one ever showed up. I was very upset that my grandmother could see angels and I couldn't. Really, this was probably the first domino to drop in my long and twisting path to Atheism.

The best explanation that I can come up with is that my feelings were aroused in the same way that they are when a beloved fairytale or novel is bastardized for television or the movies. It's not that I believe in angels, but goddammit, you're going to characterize them in the way they were meant to be and has always been told! As in, Michael is supposed to be the most beautiful, most powerful, and most loving angel that ever existed - not some douchebag that smites people for not conforming to his will.

But still. Strange, huh?