I'm So Not Scarlett O'Hara

It's been one heck of a long week for me and I'm behind on my feminism postings. I do have a couple other topics I wanted to touch upon, but for now I am tired and preparing to face another week of madness. However, I wanted to clarify my own positions in posting these topics at all. A friend of mine, a girl I've known since we were twelve, thirteen or so, pointed out a couple things in her comments to me that I want to clarify.

First, and most important, I want to make it clear that I'm not man-bashing. But pointing out the strengths of women in general is not showcasing men's shortcomings. And pointing out the present day inequalities that still give women a shorter stick than men should not be taken as anything other than a wake up call to each of us to negotiate for ourselves what our equally positioned but differently-gendered colleagues already receive.

Denise said, "I believe in women's rights (now) and believe that girls should aspire to be whatever they want. ... But I also have to admit that I don't like a lot of the ladies you mentioned ... I really think it's because I don't believe you have to lose your FEMININITY to be a FEMINIST. And I believe that a lot of the "pioneers" of women's rights did just that."

The pioneers of women's rights would celebrate your right to think however you want to about them. They did all of us a service, not expecting approval (for the most part, I assume) since what they were doing was a struggle anyway. Each of those women were fighting a narrow piece of the war for women's rights. There are so many rights we used not to have and I doubt the women fighting for them were concerned about their femininity as it must have been more of a shackle in many ways than it is for today's modern women. Besides, some women just aren't as naturally feminine as you and I are, Denisey-weesey. Remember those girls in gym class? You know which ones. Women, be they girly-girls ala Bree VanDeKamp or guitar-weilding Indigo Girls, have the right to freely be who they are. And when was the last time you saw a group of men discussing which of their ilk was more worthy to get ahead based on their level of masculinity? (ahem, leaving football out of the conversation momentarily.)

This sums up my brief and exhausted ramblings for now. To sum up: I love men, especially my own. And while I'm appreciative of the women of the women's rights movements through the ages, I don't think it's necessary to share their fashion styles.

I declare that mine hair shalt never be cut into a mullet, mine bra shalt never be burnt and mine shoes shalt always have a minimal heel to elongate my shackle-free legs. But seriously, let us as women lift each other up in encouragement, even if you may be encouraging a friend in a dream you cannot share or understand. It's the American woman's way.

In addition, I'm going to be traveling with Rich this week (ah, the glamorous life of a cell-technician) so I may only be in and out sporadically when I happen upon a strong enough wireless signal. I'll check in when I can. Love you all and TAKE CARE

I'm All Right. I'm Allllllllll Right.

So yesterday I drove our car into my garage door. I actually HIT our house with our CAR. My father-in-law came around the corner of the house, saw what happened and said, "You'll laugh about this one day."

That day has not yet come.

One of our garage doors is all drunk crooked, the metal track is bent like a Romanian gymnast, and broken brick abounds. Two of the four glass windows on the door are newly broken. One of the other two was broken a few weeks back when Kevin was bouncing a tennis ball off the garage door for reasons passing understanding. But that's the damage to the house.

And then there's the car. God bless the Mitsubishi people. The Montero is a beast. Front bumper is all weirded out and ugly and there are smears of white paint on the headlights from the poor garage door but it's driveable and actually doesn't look bad if you're just glancing. Of course, if you're standing there obsessing and beginning to hyperventilate, it's a little more terrifying.

My darling husband can't understand how this happened. Fact is, I hit the gas instead of the brake when I was right in front of the closed garage. I was thinking perhaps it signified early onset Alzheimer's, but he wasn't amused with that theory. Hey, the insurance adjustor said I was number five for this exact incident since the beginning of the year. I tried to get him to put that into writing for Rich, but he laughed like I must be kidding.

It's not a good story and it might not be very interesting, but since Kip said one day I'll laugh about it, I thought I'd give you guys a jump start. I'm just not there yet.

Drive safe.

Why are the Pill & Viagra Disparate Issues?

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. ~Faith Whittlesey

Why does women's health insurance cost so much more than men's? Even taking the maternity package out of the picture, women's heath insurance costs on average two-thirds more than men's. And yet, despite the fact that we have to pay a huge add-on for maternity coverage, contraceptive measures are often not covered. The good ones, the best Pill, the one that makes physical symptoms of menstruation fade like a bad memory? That Pill isn't covered. But the one that makes you even more nauseated and bloated and does not a single thing to control cramps? Yep, they'll pay for that one. But can you guess how long Viagra was on the US market before being covered by a majority of health insurers? Two weeks. And at a time when the only covered contraceptive device for women was sterilization. Now, I'm all for better, longer-lasting erections, but should that really equate to stunted measures of population control?

Insurers say that it is because women USE their insurance, going to the doctors regularly, that they pay more for it. Apparently, men's insurance costs begin to rise when they reach late middle age, because they didn't visit doctors frequently enough before that and by that time have developed health problems that require monitoring and continuous treatment. Does all this seem as counterproductive to you as it does to me?

And don't worry. I'm not about to break into the whole abortion rights issue except to point out that if an old white man was told he couldn't care for his body any way he wished, he'd kick up a fit, too. I do not begin to understand why this is a legislated issue. Seriously. And now I'm going to slowly back away from the "A" word. For now.

But get with me on this. Take a look at health care issues and turn the tables on these rules. Would men allow others to force them to make incredibly personal choices based on politics? Would they pay lots more money for the privilege of seeing a doctor and then accept an inferior prescriptive product because the one that really worked was exorbitantly priced? Would they sit back and watch the other half of the species revel in their newly extended orgasmic capabilities while no one produced anything remotely similar for them? I'm guessing not. Women, why do we let it happen to us?

Thoughts on Feminism

No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.

~Van Wyck Brooks

I'm kind of ticked off today. Those are words that would typically strike fear into my darling husband's heart, but today it's not him I'm ticked at. It's the entire male gender. I think Dan Brown's little book opened thoughts in my head about the sacred feminine, specifically the unholy swiping of our own power by men who didn't understand it for what it was, seeing only through the film of their own ideals.

As women, we're raised in subtle ways to think that men are smarter than we are, to think that they have better logistics skills, to think they are stronger in more ways than simply physical. And as a mother of a teenage boy, I see clearly the influences leading him to believe in his own rights and strengths, his ability to reach for whatever he wants with no superficial limitations placed on his goals. And none of those influences should be changed. But why, as girls, were we not afforded the same influences? Those positive influences that were proffered were often presented or referred to in common culture in an unsympathetic light as feminist nazi bra-burning free-love hippy chicks. Susan B. Anthony, Gloria Steinem, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger, Sojourner Truth, Betty Friedan, Abigail Adams. The list of women who battled for their rights and those of others can be endless and is peopled with an assortment of class, race, and age. And I'd challenge anyone to call the second First Lady of the United States a hippy chick.

I said above that I was ticked off today. I'm not sure what's set me off specifically, but I've been watching the news coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting and I'm pretty sure the image of an angry man rampaging around with a gun, taking innocent life without thought beyond his own puling slights might be at the root.

Taxes, Politics & the feeling that Something is Amiss

Every year I swear, I SWEAR I will do our taxes early. I know a family who filed and recieved their tax return and already spent it on a family vacay to Florida. I picked them up from the airport when they returned, tanned and refreshed. Sadly, I've only just started on ours. AGAIN.

This is what I do every year. I procrastinate and then spend a week pulling at my hair, gnashing my teeth, crying and fuming, cursing the IRS then praying they won't find any mistakes and come after me. Generally, since moving to NC anyway, it all ends in a nice return for us which we'll spend paying down debt. Sigh. I hate being practical.

But on the news, politics as usual is taking a turn for the nasty for the current admin. Just this weekend President Bush's chief campaign strategist broke ranks from the narrowing circle of aides who still stand with the president in his decisions. His article in the NY Times is enlightening, an eye-opener, and probably the way many, many people who were taken in by Bush's apparent disingenuous attitude feel now.

NYTimes article on Michael Dowd

And it's not only Bush's advisors trying to turn him around. Yesterday in a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the power to regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act. Apparently global warming exists after all and some people think there might be value in attempting to slow its degeneration of our planet. Huh. In other news, the Earth is found to be round and the Sun shone on time this morning.

But even that is not all the bad news for the sitting president. Turns out that the new democratic majority in congress might have a backbone after all. After the president's childish admonition to the congressional leaders that he be allowed as much money as he wanted and the freedom to spend it any way he wanted and a personal threat to veto anything but a blank check arriving at his desk, they actually found the wherewithall to say no.

Did you hear that? They said no. I almost fell down.

There is actually a group of senators banning together to forward the idea of pulling funds for the war. In response to which, the president shut his eyes and held his breath, kicking his heels into the floor of the Oval Office. I assume.

It's quite a game of chicken and it would be interesting to see who flinched first, if not for the overriding awareness that these are American, human lives in the middle of it all. Lives who haven't been fully funded or fully protected since day one of this war. Lives that have been thrust into a situation we KNEW we couldn't control from the very beginning. And if you don't think that's true, go pick up the book written by our president's father, George H.W. Bush. In it he explains in detail why America didn't take out Saddam when he had the chance back in the 90s. Alternatively, see this link:
Bush Sr. on Iraq

Cheney, or Dead-Eye Dick as I like to call him, put out a statement saying again that if we set a deadline ont he war, the terrorists will simply wait us out before attacking. Okay. Say we don't set a deadline. How many of them do we have to kill in the meantime to make it okay to declare victory and come home? And aren't these people who carry their grudges happily for years? Won't they continue to fight tooth and nail for as long as our presence is in Iraq? These folks like their revenge eaten cold. They will wait it out one way or the other. There is no victory. We've toppled Saddam. They've had free elections. They elected people we don't like and now they're in a civil war. What's confusing about all this?

And explain to me the fear we have about fighting "them" over here? They're fighting EACH OTHER. If we're so worried about terrorists coming to this country, perhaps we should have spent some of the trillions and billions of dollars on security for our own country in the last six years. You know, more than just taking off our shoes and tossing out our hand creams at the airport. We are spending 8 billion a month in Iraq. That's 2 billion a week, 267 million each day or 11 million each hour. For what we spend in three weeks we could make needed improvements to our public transportation security. For what we spend in five days, we could put radiation detectors in all of our ports. And for what we spend in two days in Iraq, we could screen all our air cargo.

But let's not worry about all that. I know it's more fun to talk about Sanjaya's hair.