Where I state the obvious because it was on my mind

Characterizing "god" as a man is a way to "other" women. And by other, I don't just mean, "not like me", I mean "nothing like men, not even like the creator of the universe, just some thing that I can't understand because I don't want to listen and accept women as my equals." And its been that way since the advent of the monotheistic religion that was the precursor to the religion that has consumed a third of the world. I wish I could lament the advent of monotheism, especially this terrible strain, without being compared to genocidal meglomaniacs. I don't want to kill anyone, I just want people to think about things a little bit.

Goodness, it has been a while

It has been 8 whole days since my last post - far too long. I have been in a bit of an emotional slump, and Rock is busy preparing for the bar. But as I feel someone alienated from my [now] old political forum. I would like to extend the scope of this blog to progressive politics in general, but still with a decidely feminist bent.

Speaking of feminism, I heard a sound bite on NPR this morning, that "dog fighting is no worse than legal abortion"

I assume that it is something about Michael Vick's dog fighting thing. First of all, what I think is more reprehensible than dog fighting were the cruel punishments of dogs that lost. One of which was to wet down a dog (which was needlessly identified as female, did that really need to be pointed out?) and electrocute it. Cruel, horrible, and UTTERLY POINTLESS.

As for if it is no better or worse than abortion. The human body rejects certain fetuses, biologically. It can be traumatizing, not to mention frustrating, especially for those having trouble concieving in the first place. Call me cold and cruel all you want, but we need to remember that mistakes happen. MISTAKES HAPPEN, even in biology.

So how does this relate to abortion? Well, miscarriages are, basically, abortions by one's own body, and for very good reasons - maybe your body isn't ready for a baby yet, maybe it never will be, maybe it has passed that time [my mother had a miscarriage in her 40s]. Maybe the baby hasn't been formed right. For whatever reason, the body aborted the baby. Abortions are what happens when the unconcious human processes can't detect any problems, but the concious human process can. Maybe a woman is not financially stable to even reliably support herself, maybe she is not at a point in her life when she could give the best care to herself for 9 months of pregnancy. Why is this such a problem? Well, duh, women are the ones best able to know when the pregnancy isn't right, and men get uptight when women have control over anything. Well, not "men" (though traditionally, that has been the case), just sexists.

In the Namib Dessert, one of the most arrid deserts in the world, a culture of people evolved that could only support a certain number of dependents. If a woman got pregnant and gave birth to a kid it couldn't support, after birth, the mother would quickly and quietly kill the newborn infant. This was a normal and accepted practice. I'm not sure if the practice still happens, but as with much in Africa, it probably still does.

So many like to paint the decision to have an abortion as frivolous, but, damn, it couldn't be further from the truth. Just another smear tactic from sexists who are afraid when women make decisions on their own.

So is legal abortion like dog fighting? Is legal abortion like an activity to starve and abuse animals so as to make them angry? Is the decision to not bring a baby into the world that one cannot or will not support adequately (even during pregnancy) the same as getting enjoyment out of dogs brutally killing each other? The answer should be apparent.

Again, how can love exist here?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/07/05/damon.india.widows/index.html

Do young Hindu children look at their mother, preparing to abandon her the moment their father dies?

At the same time that I am glad that my culture does not believe that a woman's worth is entirely based on another person, I know how easy it would be for culture to revert.

Then again, why do we feel so much pity for the 22 year-old war widow? I'm 26, and I can see my life spread out before me like a great valley of milk and honey. When bad things happen, I just close that chapter and move on. Sure, it hurts to lose a loved one, especially when it is so unexpected, but how many ex-boyfriends do we never ever want to see again? Admittedly, thats a little harsh, but the point is that the 22 year-old war widow has probably 75% of her life yet to live.

I have a post in mind - an unfinished post - about why sexists hate when women are famous. The long and short is that men feel that they are the important ones - all based on the reaction the hunting party would get when they returned to camp with the big kill. The camp was celebrating the arrival of meat, protein, and the hunting party thought that made them special. So men assumed that they deserved all the celebration.

This doesn't even get into the innate and unconcious jealousy men have of women. Women know that their kids are their own, and that by getting pregnant, they will pass on their genetic material. Men do not have this luxury, which is just one part of my "evolution of sexism" theory, and they know it. The ultimate goal of life is to sustain life, and pass on genetic material. Women have more control over this than men, and men have been punishing us for it for a long time.

In the tradition detailed above, the punishment is the devaluing women so much that their entire worth is based on their association with a single living man. Conversely, he is so important that his death is more than one death, it must be two. So I ask, how can a whole society be so horrible? How does a woman enter a marriage knowing that she will end her own life cast out of her family? How can a mother love a child she knows will only love her as long as her husband lives? Thank goodness there are those, within the society, who won't stand for it.

Who is emotional now

This video clearly demonstrates that the Republican party has been playing on emotions since at least 1984. Oddly enough, this is the party aligned with the ideas of conservatives and anti-feminists - aka sexists. As I read on pandagon, sexists do not believe that women make rational decisions. Well, I knew this tenant of sexism before reading that, but the line really hit me, probably because of the story I'm about to tell.

Back during second wave feminism, consciousness raising groups came together and realized that the anecdotes of ordinary women came together to form real evidence of oppression. So in that spirit, I will offer some anecdotes of my own.

Recently, I had a guy working for me that I found interesting, and we seemed to get along. But oddly - to me - he never seemed to want to communicate with me outside of work. About a month and a half ago, I learned from his co-worker (my other employee), R, that he is a cookie-cutter sexist, except he claims to be liberal. His parents married in the late 1950's and his mother never had an outside job, save a waitressing gig at 16. She also never had a driver's license and raised two boys. One of whom is the 27 year old I employed who has never had a job that paid more than $13 an hour [in Northern California, no less], and has been working on a 2 year degree for the past 7 years. Oh, and he lives at home too. From what I've heard, I seriously I doubt that he has any appreciation for the isolation his mother has endured her whole life out here in the California suburbs.

Apparently, the type of woman he prefers is just like his mother - a woman who wants to devote her whole life to the service of men. One that will take care of him so he doesn't have to take care of himself. Last week, R told me a story he learned about one of this guy's ex's. After they broke up, she began to date his friend. He was very angry with his friend, but not with his ex. When R asked him why he wasn't rightfully mad at his ex, he explained that "women are too emotional" and he couldn't blame her. It is really too bad that nobody stood up to him and told him the truth. She probably realized that he was an asshole and a loser, then dumped his ass to date a more interesting guy - one that might have even thought of her as a person, his friend. His friend is the one that can't be blamed - if anyone can't be blamed for a situation like that. The long and short of it is that this guy doesn't think that women are full people. He even argues that lesbians aren't really attracted to women, they just couldn't get a man. IRONICALLY - R once told me, in an email conversation, about the sexist employee, that "It is difficult working with someone who is so emotional."

So now, my assignment supervising people has come to an end, and I'm free to pursue my former subordinates as friends. As a newcomer to this state, and a 20-something myself, I was eager for this moment, and before discovering the vile reality of my employee, I was hoping to really get to know him. In a good twist of events, I managed to actually befriend R. He, unlike the first guy, has an effective career plan and a healthy understanding of women. So I realized, in the end, why the other guy never wanted to talk to me outside of work - I don't have a y-chromosome, rendering me - to his tiny brain - not human. Furthermore, I have no desire to become a subservient housefrau. If he was to actually date me, he would need to grow up and begin taking care of himself. PATHETIC

So there is "women stereotyped as too emotional to make rational decisions", now my anecdote about "rational women stereotyped as heartless bitches"

Oddly enough, when I dumped my own boyfriend just last month, I realized how men developed the stereotype of women as heartless bitches. I made a very rational decision. I didn't do it as well as I could have, admittedly, but I had never done anything so mean before in my life. It was difficult for me to take the rational action I needed to take, especially in the face of my ex's reaction, but in the end, I buckled down and did it.

My mother then told me of an instance when, as a teenager, she kept dating a guy she didn't like just so she could have a date to the Christmas dance. After the dance, she told him that she never wanted to see him again. Her reaction, even 40 years later, was "someone once told me that was a very cruel thing to do." Of course it was cruel, but my mom only told me that she "didn't like" the guy. He could have been a complete asshole, or a total loser and my mom could have just been too busy to bother finding a better guy for just one dance.

But my point is that both of these guys probably think of us as bitches for our rational decisions. My own ex didn't understand what he had done wrong, when the reality was that I realized that we weren't a good match after all. I can't accuse my ex of being a traditional sexist, he wasn't. For the most part, he just didn't want to have political conversations, which included sexism and feminism, even though we completely agreed on nearly everything.

For traditional sexists, women are either blameless animals, driven by emotion, or cold, heartless bitches, completely devoid of emotion. That dichotomy is a lot easier than accepting us as adult human beings, who strive to use our rational and emotional minds to make the best decisions possible.

Then again, rejecting women's humanity is an easy way to reject one's own responsibility and remain a child. My former employee obviously had no handle over his emotions. A traditional sexist begins his life watching his father exploit his mother's labor, and is encouraged to do much the same. After all, he is the posessor of the magical penis, and women "don't have the mind" for anything else. I use quotes because my former employee actually once claimed that women "don't have the mind" for music simply because the wife of a friend of his wasn't as into tooling around in their basement with guitars as they were.

That has to be the most disgusting thing about this whole pile of bullshit. That the people refusing to be responsible think they are "better" than the women with whom they live. Not only that, but their deluded minds make them think that they are better than ALL women, even with their unfinished humanities degree and that 980 on the SAT. Heaven forbid a sexist is actually good at something, then it just gets worse.

But back to the video at the head of this post. I found it very ironic that the party of most sexists - certainly the party of the most vehement anti-feminists - has been manipulating people's emotions for more than 20 years now. Meanwhile, the party of the feminists is the party of rational explanations. Even reading feminist reactions to the gutless sexist comments on a few blogs has shown me that sexists do nothing more than spit out unfounded rhetoric* and feminists respond, attacking every paragraph with logic and evidence.

I'd participate, really, I would, but like my father, I get too passionate about things and I don't have the patience to engage in online arguments with sexists/idiots.

*On Alternet, one actually insinuated that feminists don't realize that men work because they have to - like women just sit on their asses all day too. Thank goodness I grew up in a matriarchal family where the head of the family was a woman who taught us all that hard work was essential to a good life. In the early 1990's, when my uncle was shirking his responsibility to milk the cows, she would trudge up that icy driveway to the barn - even with her osteoporosis and arthritis - to milk the cows herself. Furthermore, we live in a system that has been built around the unpaid labor of women as a given. But I digress - I don't have time to get all the sources for you, so do it yourself. Start with Alternet.org

That wrestler that died

Last night, I decided to check out the LJ Pics generator and saw a few RIPs to a wrestler - Chris Ben-something or other. I figured he'd had a heart attack or something. But today, I learned that he had some kind of emotional issues, and actually killed his wife and kid and then took himself out. Why don't these men just kill themselves first? Why do they need to take their adult female partners out with them?

I'll tell you why - its because for thousands of years, society has taught men that their wives are their property, and not full, independent human beings. Yes, I think this guy was mentally disturbed, but his wife wasn't [necessarily]. But now she is dead because of HIS mental illness. He could have just killed himself, but because he assumed that his wife was a part of him, he had to kill her too. Of course, the other possibility is that he was abusive in the first place, and killed her accidentally, then saw what he did and killed himself to avoid accountability (granted, he's dead, the ultimate accountability).

On an individual level, all domestic violence is a mental health issue, but when combined with a patriarchal society that teaches men that they hold dominion over the female adults with whom they live, it becomes about sexism.