Real men are supposed to like beer!

Despite the fact that, well, aren’t there plenty of men out there who don’t like beer, or any alcoholic beverage for that matter. Yet… aren’t they still men?

Real men are supposed to ogle scantily clad women!

Despite the fact that, well, said scantily clad women might not be some men’s type or they probably aren’t into leering? Yet… aren’t they still men? Aren’t gay men still men?

Real men are supposed to like steak!

Despite the fact that sometimes they just prefer chicken. Or they are vegetarian or vegan. They might actually – gasp! – prefer salad! Yet… aren’t they still men?

Real men aren’t supposed to want to be teachers or nurses or stay-at-home parents!

Despite the fact that, well, many men excel in these jobs and are great with patients and children! Yet… aren’t they still men?

Real men are supposed to like… action movies!

According to that stupid Dr Pepper Ten commercial anyway. Despite the fact that men like all kinds of movies, even – gasp! – romantic comedies! Yet… aren’t they still men?

Real men are supposed to like… sports!

And of course women aren’t supposed to. Despite the fact that many men aren’t interested. Yet… aren’t they still men? (And aren’t the interested women still women?)

Real men are supposed to be… tough!

Despite the fact that, well, lots of men aren’t tough and have no desire to be tough nor violent. Yet… aren’t they still men?

Real men are supposed to want sex and lots of it and all the time!

Despite the fact that their sex drives don’t actually work that way, can still be “not in the mood”, and this myth perpetuates a lot of sexual misconduct towards men. Yet… aren’t they still men?

There’s this culture surrounding some ideal of manhood, some ridiculous culture. And, as I’m not a man, it seems obvious that I’d find issue with it! After all, I’m a chick, so aren’t I supposed to not understand men and just be a pain in their ass who should shut up and fuck them? Heh, well, I don’t claim to understand men as a whole, but then again I can’t say I understand other women as a whole either. People are mysterious regardless of gender, and any two people whether of same gender or not are differently mysterious.

But I also don’t see how any of the above makes one more worthy of the title “man” than one missing these traits. Or, as is often the case, you find a guy to claims himself to be a “real man” for fitting most of the above, but one he might not fit he’ll complain “why do I need to like that/be that way to be a man?” Um, good question, but that also applies to the things that do describe you!

This gender role rigidity hurts men and women! Why cling to it? There’s nothing to gain.

Let’s just say men are “them things with penises” (give or take, let’s not forget our trans friends!) and be done with it! Sheesh!

But the FDA came in and said “why stop those under 17? this is safe for all young women capable of pregnancy!”

But then HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the FDA, the people who actually know WTF they’re talking about, “nah, the idea of this being available to YOUNG GIRLS OMG sounds scary! so I’m going to say no to this and keep the current age restriction LOL”. And Obama supports her decision.

*sigh*

Really? I mean, I’m not surprised in a way. Typical pandering bullshit, trying not to make the Republicans too uncomfortable. And politics doesn’t like women or youth and therefore especially doesn’t like young women! So the Obama administration wants to make its policies less squeamish to the average anti-youth misogynistic Joe Six-Pack by not – gasp! – letting 12-year-olds access emergency contraception!

Sebelius claimed that she wasn’t so sure it was actually safe for those under 17. Because she knows better than FDA, the people who have to comb through mountains and mountains of research that’s been conducted before they come to such a conclusion. Right. Hey, Sebelius, you know what’s actually not so great for young girls? PREGNANCY!

Again, though, shouldn’t be surprised. Politicians reach astounding levels of cluelessness when it comes to just about anything about young people, especially their reproductive issues. They ignore any statistics and sense and just cover their ears and go “la la la la la!” and just pass more laws to hurt young people for their political gain. Hey, it’s not like those young people can VOTE!

Anyway, here’s a Change.org petition about it. And here’s a lovely piece by Scarleteen! And here’s a lovely paragraph from that piece:

It’s so tremendously important that your requests for rights like these be heard. And that the incredibly sound, sage things you say like this from reader Arai, “These politicians really need to get on the same CENTURY as the one young people live. All the questioning for contraceptives, abortion rights, gay marriage are real in today’s society,” or this from reader Katrina, “Politicians on both sides of the aisle reach unheard of levels of cluelessness when it comes to youth reproductive rights and needs,” are heard and seen. It is, of course just as important that they are also very thoughtfully and with great intention considered in choices like this, but we can’t help much with that part, save continuing to say things like that and continuing to be ardent supporters of youth rights, including reproductive rights.

Yes, that Katrina is me!

Yes, you ARE racist/sexist/ageist/homophobic/etc.

You just don’t know it.

Wait, what? What am I saying? If you were bigoted or prejudiced, wouldn’t you be aware of it? Wouldn’t it be obvious?

No. Doesn’t work that way. Most prejudices (except for ageism I guess, since that one is still socially acceptable) today are unknown to those who hold them. It’s unconscious.

The idea of white being the standard or male being the standard is so ingrained in our society, so laced in culture and attitudes and language, that it’d be a miracle not to adopt even the slightest unconscious belief that non-white and/or female is somehow “other”.

So don’t take offense to this. In fact, it’s through challenging these assumptions that we can seek out these harder to extinguish bugs of bigotry. Take it as a suggestion, not an insult. True, it is sometimes used as an insult, and that’s not right, nor is someone who points out a possible prejudice in you always necessarily right. In the long run, you do yourself a favor examining yourself for personal unseen prejudices, before it settles in too much.

Let’s take sexism for example. Let’s say you’re part of a group of people, mostly male, let’s say six guys for every one girl. And you generally like most of these people, but some of these people you find really goddamn annoying. You find them hostile or rude or demanding or ignorant. Oh, and the majority of these annoying people just happen to be girls. In a group where girls are outnumbered by guys six to one.

Okay, you’re probably thinking “it has nothing to do with them being girls, it’s because they are hostile/rude/demanding/ignorant!” Perhaps. But are you really saying that very few or none of the guys in this same group are equally hostile/rude/demanding/ignorant? Seems unlikely.

Or… are you more forgiving of guys when they exhibit these traits?

Or do you not notice it as much?

Or perhaps you have involuntarily different visceral reactions to an unhappy guy and an unhappy girl?

Perhaps, unconsciously, you believe when a guy is displeased and saying so, he has valid reasons, but when a girl does, it’s most likely just her own personal issues and she should shut up already?

Perhaps even the most sound arguments are to you only so sound and rational when said by a tenor, baritone, or bass, while unsound and crazy when by a soprano or alto?

Again, the key words are “involuntarily” and “unconsciously”. I’m not saying you’re thinking about it. The whole point is you aren’t thinking about it. And even self-identified feminists (of any gender) make this mistake all the time. I know I do. And why not? We live in a culture where we’re directly or indirectly taught that any time women complain or are unhappy, it’s never because we have an actual reason, but because we’re just being hysterical or are on our periods or want jewelry or babies or some other ridiculous dismissal, while men are the paragons of rational thought.

As for ageism, I wrote last year about how just because you’re a youth rights supporter doesn’t mean you can’t still be ageist. Even the most self-identified radical youth rights supporters I’ve known have been ageist in some way. In some cases, they rationalize it away, but in other cases, well, it’s to be expected, since we grew up in the same anti-youth society as everyone else and received all the same messages that the young are always inferior to their elders, that their elders are always right. As youth rights supporters, yeah, it’s our job to challenge these messages, but it’s silly to pretend we haven’t absorbed any of them and downright negligent to not challenge those that got through.

This day and age, sure, people “know” you’re not supposed to be a bigot. But it doesn’t take much to realize they don’t want to be bigots only because they don’t want to be called names, not so much because they care about not being intolerant of people because of their sex or skin color or age or whatever in and of itself. But whether or not you carry the label of a bigot or not, doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do and what you try not to do. You can call yourself a feminist (or at least a non-sexist or equalist or whatever) all you want, but when a group whose leadership is mostly male over time finally gets some female leadership, yet most or all of those female leaders just happen to be hostile or incompetent, and must be thrown out because they’re so hostile or incompetent, when over time the leaders you’ve had the most friction with just happen to be female despite the group being mostly male… yeah, I’m not buying it. Sorry.

Not an insult. Just work on that. Be aware of it.

But if you don’t… THEN you’re an asshole!

Your cultural traditions are NO excuse for harming others!

In the New York Times today was a piece by Nick Kristof about female genital cutting, and after glancing at Feministing’s mention of it, found a piece from two years ago in American Prospect, Rights Versus Rites.

Rights Versus Rites is about the debate about female genital cutting. That’s right. Debate. As in there’s a side that’s all for it. Seriously, go read it. It’s long and horrifying, but read it.

Okay, seeing as the practice is still going throughout Africa, despite little victories here and there where small areas decided “meh, let’s not do this anymore, seems harmful”, of course it has supporters and lots of them. How do they defend it? Why, with the well-worn: “It’s our culture!”

And there’s this bit from Rights Versus Rites:

For Ahmadu, the time came when she was a 22-year-old senior at George Washington University. When her family decided to bring her and her 8-year-old sister to be initiated in their ancestral village, she went willingly. It was a discombobulating, sometimes thrilling and physically agonizing experience, and one that she now values deeply. Ahmadu reminds us that what public-health officials call “harmful traditional practices” are in fact the very texture of life for many people, the rituals and norms that imbue existence with order and purpose. To talk to her is to begin to understand why a practice that causes so much pain nevertheless remains so entrenched and so zealously defended by its ostensible victims.

All the same, for Ahmadu circumcision was a choice, one she made as an adult. For the overwhelming majority of girls who undergo it that is not the case. Most only have such options when a cluster of deeply rooted values, beliefs, and hierarchies begin to deteriorate, a process that causes anguish and panic for some and offers the promise of liberation to others. The fact remains that, in general, the more alternatives girls have and the more exposure to the outside world, the less likely they are to opt for these old ways.

Ahmadu was quoted throughout this thing talking about how awesome FGC is and that the snotty Western world needs to butt out of their traditions… yet here it is revealed that she CHOSE to undergo it even though she was in a position to very easily escape it. Vast majority of those subjected to genital cuttings are children and have no real choice. Ahmadu was 22 and chose it. That’s an important difference.

Then look at the next part there. “The more exposure to the outside world, the less likely they are to opt for these old ways.” See, that’s the thing. While many of these girls may be okay with going through this, despite the torture and severe bodily destruction, as far as the only lives and culture they have ever known, this is pretty much the only way to do things. If they’ve been exposed only to their own little village, only to their own people, and know absolutely nothing else, that this and only this is the path to womanhood and honor and whatnot, that to not do it means shame and isolation, of course they’ll want it. Yet the girls who are aware that there are other traditions and values in the world, that not everyone does this and that there’s no real benefit to it, they aren’t so keen on the idea. With Ahmadu being an obvious exception.

What does that mean? It means that these apparently sacred cultural traditions seem to only survive through… keeping children ignorant and forcing violent rituals upon them whether they want it or not. Now, call me a privileged white American liberal preaching from my comfy ivory tower here, but if you can only keep your cultural traditions alive through the violent coercion of children, I’m not so sure it’s in the world’s best interest to keep that cultural tradition alive at all. Traditions are only healthy if everyone is participating willingly, knowledgeably, free of harm, and able to opt out without being socially destroyed. I’m not at all claiming that “western cultures” are in the clear here, HELL no! I’m not saying that worrying about one’s culture being phased out due to the influences of bigger ones isn’t a valid concern. But if you believe that maybe dropping or altereing ONE troublesome ritual seems to mean dropping it all, then what’s really so great and strong about your culture that makes it worth preserving? Want to hang onto it because it’s yours and therefore dear to you? Fine. But in that case… slice your OWN damn genitals if you want to so badly and leave those of others (your children count as others) alone!

You’re doing your own laundry. I will not do it for you provided you have the physical capability of operating the washer and dryer. In your case, child, I’ll do it for you since you won’t be able to for the first several years, being too short. Once tall enough to be able to reach the control and understand simple operating instructions, it’s your job and no longer mine.

I mean, even being single and childless now, it’s pretty disgusting how seldom I do laundry. I rewear stuff quite a bit between washes. Now imagine if I had to do it for both of you, as well!

Especially you, husband. What the hell? Just because you’re married to me doesn’t mean you don’t take care of yourself anymore. You can wash your own damn clothes. You can iron your own damn clothes. Though I don’t get the fascination with ironing as I don’t even own an iron and have only ever used one maybe once or twice. And laundry really is pretty simple. That crap about not mixing whites with colors? Yeah, I have never made that division in doing laundry and there has never been a problem! Seriously, load the clothes, keeping it somewhat balanced, pour in detergent, start it, and go do something else. Come back when it’s done, put stuff into the dryer, which is RIGHT NEXT TO IT, throw in a fabric softener sheet, clean lint screen, push start, and walk away and do something else. Come back when it’s done and – yay! – you’ve cleaned your clothes! Not complicated. Process takes two hours at the most, and very little of that time is spent actually worrying with it. Seriously, if this little chore and numerous others like it that I expect you to do yourself are too much for you, I’m not marrying you. Huge turn off!

All this comes from one of my most important values, which is self-sufficiency and independence. Husband, you should already have this ability and expect to retain it even after we’ve made those vows. Child, well, you’re new to the world and all, so of course you’re not there yet, but I’m here to help you. And by help, I don’t mean do all these things for you. Once you’re able, you’re doing your own laundry. You’re dressing yourself. You’re washing your own dishes. You’re keeping your own room clean. My maternal job here isn’t to do all these things for you just because that’s what wives and moms are supposed to do. No, as your mother, my job is to enable you to do these things yourself. There are way too many people out there who are incapable of the simplest tasks of basic self-care, and damn it, you will not be one of them. I had people like that as college roommates. Your grandfather is like that! As for you, you’ll be doing all these things well before you hit puberty.

I mean, I’m not going to force you to do any of these things, hell no. I don’t intend on having any coercion in that house! I just mean I won’t do it. So you must do it if it gets done at all.

This is not out of laziness, mind you. Like I said, self-reliance needs to be taught and encouraged as early as possible. Some people, if they get taught or encouraged at all, are started on it way too late, sometimes after puberty, after they’ve already gotten used to mommy waiting on them. But this is also about making sure you are unafraid. Children are systematically kept ignorant of the day to day lives of adults, even though they need to know all this since they’ll be adults someday. You, my child, will have at least some familiarity with this early. I’ll show you how to cook various things. I’ll show you how to do basic home repairs that may come up. I will be showing you the utilities bills each month, to see how much these things cost, how some of them change depending on time of year. I’ll show you the tax forms. I’ll ask you to calculate tips at restaurants. You will be present when I purchase a car or house, and I’ll explain each step of the way. Why am I listing all this? Personal reasons, I guess. A decade ago, the mere thought of all these things overwhelmed me, being part of a scary adult world I did not understand and was rarely shown. In your case, if it is shown to you early and often, if you are involved in it, well, I hope you’ll understand it better and are more confident once you take care of these things one day, and you’ll be not only happier but less likely to be taken advantage of. I want to protect you, like any mother, but the best way to do that is to enable you to protect yourself.

Now don’t think I’m all about kicking you out of the nest. I still have lifelong responsibilities to you. For one, yes, I will pay for your education, though exact specifics of this are to be determined once you exist and have gotten that far. My home will always be open to you for free, though once you’re grown and legally able to be elsewhere, I ask that you only exercise this right if you have no other options, like if you haven’t saved up enough money yet or have fallen on hard times. But again, we’ll work these specifics out once we come to it. Still have to make or adopt you!

I don’t want to say too much on what I’ll do once you exist, if the day ever comes, seeing as you don’t exist yet and there are a zillion things I’m just not seeing and don’t know yet. But what the hell is parenting if teaching self-reliance and providing an unconditional safety net aren’t the most important things (next to love, of course)? Keeping you ignorant until age 18 is not parenting. It’s sabotage. My job is making sure you’re okay your entire life, by enabling you to keep yourself okay, and helping you back up if you fall so you can easily be okay again. With all the love I can bestow upon you!

But that mustard stain on your favorite shirt? *hands you bottle of detergent* You’re on your own.

Every now and then I hear about some mall or museum or whatever that kicked out a mother for feeding her baby in public. Even if that doesn’t happen, there are still other people who flip their lid over it for some reason. “Oh, noes, that horrible woman is exposing her breast and a baby is sucking on it!”

Hey, idiots. What the fuck do you think breasts are FOR? They aren’t sexual organs, outside of exhibiting some sensitivity and reactions to arousal. But then again, so does most of the body. To your stupid self, the mother is exposing a shameful sexual part, but to the baby, she’s allowing him/her access to FOOD. How would you like it if people got pissed at you for eating in public? And, hell, some people’s eating habits are way more gross than breastfeeding could possibly be (not that breastfeeding is disgusting at all, mind you). But you’re not anywhere near as likely to be asked to leave for chewing with your mouth open as a new mother is for nursing her baby. Hell, if you’re eating some nachos near me, I’ll be gagging on the smell of the cheese. That I would find disgusting. Much rather a breastfeeding mom were near me than you. But in that case, I would simply get up and move away to where I can no longer smell the cheese. Like you should do if you’re so bothered by how a little baby is eating.

Then you get the ones who are worried about their children seeing a woman breastfeeding her baby…

Seriously?

Weren’t those children breastfed themselves? I should hope so, since mother’s milk is not only free but way better for the baby than formula, though there are of course cases where the biological mother is either not present, whether because of death or adoption or whatever, or she simply is unable to produce milk, which happens. Most of us were. I mean, yeah, it’s creepy to think about it when we’re much older, to look at our mothers and think “wow, I sucked on her nipples for sustenance for the first several months of my life”. But that’s what those nipples are for. That’s what’s natural. So are you really going to tell those children they shouldn’t see a baby being fed because the way they were fed at the beginning of their lives was wrong? Or, if they were denied it, and probably because of some qualm about it in this case rather than simply being unable to get it, you’re telling them the natural way babies are fed and what they were denied is evil somehow. A mindset that is infinitely more disgusting than a woman feeding her baby from her own body could ever be. Though, again, not that the latter is all that disgusting at all.

And, hell, that kid already spent most of a year sitting inside you, having gotten in there because you had… sex… and after that was born out of your… vagina… but I guess the baby feeding from your nipples, oh well, that’s just crossing the line!

But, nah, seriously, if you personally do not want to breastfeed your kid, that is of course your choice. I’m not one of these types who thinks you’re evil if your 4-year-old is weaned already*, or that those who can’t produce must make themselves do it anyway or get someone else’s breast milk. That’s a bit extreme. I’m also not interested in acting like breastfeeding is “OMG it’s the most beautiful thing in the world!” Not really. It’s pretty normal and mundane, really. No, if you’d rather do the formula and bottle thing, fine. Your choice. But if someone else is making the choice that breast is best, and even does so in public, STFU and look away if it bothers you so much. Remove yourself from the situation entirely because your own mind is the only place where what’s going on here is perverse. Then everybody’s happy.

* = seriously, though, don’t breastfeed a 4-year-old.

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

I consider sense of humor to be perhaps the most important character trait in anyone. Couldn’t very well go through life without it. Funny stuff is fun. However, then you get the jokes that just get repeated over and over, from different people acting like they invented it and that they’re so smart and witty. If they were ever clever, it was lost long ago.

Two very recent examples?

“I don’t understand! How could Tunisia have overthrown their government without me signing a petition or changing my Twitter avatar?”

And…

“The new Starbucks Trenta is larger than the average human stomach! Lulz!”

Alright, so the Tunisia thing was mildly chuckle-worthy when I first saw it tweeted. Then within only a few hours of that I heard a zillion other people say it as if it were their own creation. Heard and read and laughed at by those who either hadn’t heard it yet somehow or those whose memory is so terrible they forgot they saw someone else say it five minutes earlier. With any iota of cleverness washed away in the repetition, I see the stupid joke for what it is. Uh, of course Twitter awareness campaigns and whatnot don’t alone cause national revolutions nor are integral. #16tovote on the 16th is not intended in and of itself to lower the voting age. Online campaigns like that are for raising awareness and solidarity and keeping dialogue going, but obviously it wouldn’t work alone. Nobody thinks that. Don’t be an idiot.

As for the Starbucks drink being bigger than the human stomach… welcome to America! Aren’t you so smart, you learned the volume of the average human stomach! In order to, you know, repeat this Trenta joke over and over as if it’s something you came up with all on your own. But here’s another thing about the human stomach… stuff put into it doesn’t just sit there forever. You know that bathroom place you have to visit a few times a day? Yeah…

Those two are fairly new and topical, so they’ll fade after a bit. To be replaced by the same basic shit before long, of course. There are also the jokes that have lasted for years, perhaps decades, some of which weren’t even funny the first time. I mean stuff like…

“I got so drunk/high that I had to cling to the ground to keep from falling off the earth!”

This one I probably laughed at when I first heard it. Then you get a few different comedians regurgitating it, maybe some humorous drugs or alcohol related lists. And at that point it’s like “okay, you’re intoxicated out of your mind, so much that you can’t come up with a new way to express it.” Yawn.

“I think gay people should be allowed to get married and be miserable like everyone else.”

It was on Family Guy. David Letterman has said it about 500 times. So have a crapload of other supposedly facetious commentators. It’s always said with such authority, that the speaker has come up with this all on his/her own after a lot of thought. “I believe they should be just as miserable as everyone else!” Of course it’s said with such confidence. They saw a ton of other people get laughs off the identical statement, so they know the reception it’ll get. Had they truly invented this statement themselves, they might be a bit more coy.

“I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.”

From Mr. Garrison in the South Park movie, plus countless random comedians and other assholes who think they’re being funny and brilliant. Referring of course to us women and the fact that we *gasp!* spew blood out of certain parts for a few days every several weeks. This one is just downright offensive, and not only because it’s misogynistic but because the basis of it is proud willful ignorance. First of all, we don’t “bleed for five days”. It comes out intermittently, starting off heavy and getting steadily lighter until it’s done, and it was all pretty much out of circulation anyway, and not a whole lot is “lost”. Of course, if blood loss is such an issue, how can I trust you when your supposedly gigantic penis fills with blood several times a day and clearly not enough left for your brain? So if we’re monsters and untrustworthy for something that goes on under our clothes once a month that you will not be aware of unless we explicitly tell you, then you aren’t so innocent yourself, Mr. Every Six Seconds.

“Pro-life women are ugly virgins.”
“Pro-choice women are hot sluts.”

Even “great” comedians like Chris Rock and George Carlin (RIP) spew crap like this. It was said in Dogma by Jason Mewes. Plus some lesser comedians have said it. That pro-life women are only pro-life because they aren’t getting laid and have body issues because they are unattractive. That pro-choice women must want abortion legal because they screw everything that moves and want to be able to end the resulting pregnancies. Classic virgin-whore dichotomy. Yeah, sorry, folks, but someone’s stance on abortion is not indicative of their sexual history. Plenty of pro-lifers have gotten laid. Plenty pro-choicers have not. Also, these pro-choice women, who clearly “must be fucking”, would not necessarily want to fuck YOU. What is this, some 1960’s high school? Where if a girl has sex at all, she’ll have sex with anyone? Sorry, guys, but the words “I’m prochoice” do not translate to “I hereby consent to any and all sexual advances and activity”.

There are surely more I’m forgetting. I add them later when/if I remember.

So now you know. So from here on out, try not to be a dumbass. Just try.

Babies aren’t sexy!

Happy Epiphany, everyone! It’s the official last day of the 2010 Christmas season, which in practice mostly just means that tomorrow it’s time to take down the decorations and for me to put my Santa Claus pin away until Thanksgiving. Always sad. But, contrary to my perhaps unsatisfactory posting frequency when it isn’t December, Sure, Why Not? is still here to celebrate the win, the fail, and the lulz.

Now let’s talk about the sexualization of infants…

Is anyone else really creeped out by ads on TV and elsewhere for skin products that seem to place a lot of emphasis on the smoothness of a baby’s skin? There’s that Johnson & Johnson baby oil ad that’s been on a few times where throughout the entire thing, some woman is downright fondling a little baby. It starts off with her kissing him on the lips, and throughout she also kisses his feet and rubs his baby-smooth stomach and arms and face. Why? Because he’s a little baby that makes his skin so smooth and fun to touch and rub! Oh joy!

Also creepy are ads for women’s skin products that at some point show a baby or toddler to point out that this cream will make your skin feel all smooth like theirs! Use this skin cream and your skin will be so soft you’ll feel like a baby! A sexy baby. Or a baby-like woman. Textural attractiveness means your features feeling like you spent most of the past year in a womb, be it the smooth baby skin as dictated by skin creams and moisturizers or soft baby hair as sung by Hall & Oates (though they at least think the eyes should be a woman’s).

Of course, the infantilization of women isn’t exactly new and is something feminists have been battling in several forms for about as long as there have been feminists!

Hey, I’m not saying anything against smooth skin. That’s fine. But when extolling how attractive and hot and sexy smooth soft skin and other features are, think you could, you know, leave the little kids out of that one? We really shouldn’t be encouraging people to find their features attractive and definitely not to feel them up!

And can we get rid of the phrase “smooth as a baby’s behind”? You’re talking about someone’s ass, for God’s sake!

*takes down lights, takes off pin*

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

Let’s say you hear a news story, something like this: A man beats his pregnant girlfriend to death because she did not want to have an abortion. Or the perpetrator may not be a boyfriend but a husband or one of her parents or whoever. May not have beaten her to death but raped her or injured her severely in some other way.

And who should shut the hell up? These fucking idiot prolifers who point to this horrible shit and say “see! see! pro-choice people commit violence, too!” Often times the headlines of these articles will identify the assailant as pro-choice or pro-abortion (which a lot of idiots think is just another word for pro-choice, which is bullshit, but more on that in a sec).

*facepalm*

Let’s review some definitions, shall we? Pro-choice means being in favor of having a choice. Imagine that! Choice in the pregnancy options context means it is the sole decision of the one who’s pregnant what becomes of that pregnancy, whether terminating or carrying to term. And that BOTH choices are equally valid! So that if one does not support the pregnant one having the choice for EITHER ONE of those options, no matter which one, then that person is anti-choice.

Therefore, the idiots saying you should not have the option of carrying to term are JUST AS anti-choice as those who say you should not have the option of abortion. Pro-choice and pro-abortion are not the same thing, just as pro-life and anti-choice are not the same thing.

So, no, the above scenario is NOT a matter of pro-choice attacking pro-life. If anything, it’s anti-choice attacking pro-choice.

Or, to drop the useless abortion controversy weight, it’s some asshole injuring or killing a pregnant woman. It’s pretty horrible regardless of motivation.

(Psst… note the date and time this is posted and the subject matter, see what I did there? )

For one, look at what the bride and groom wear. Groom wears a tux, something guys wear at their own weddings as well as weddings of others and a number of other black tie occasions. The bride? She wears a special white dress that is worn at absolutely no other time ever. In that weird sense, it’s like the wedding is its own special day for her while for the guy it’s just another formal affair like any other.

And that wedding dress is supposed to be pure white. Why? White dress means virgin bride. The bride wears white, signifying her all so important virginity, while the groom’s tux bears no sign of his virginal status at all. Because, in bizarre wedding world, who gives a shit whether a guy is a virgin? But if that bride is worth her salt, she damn well better be!

Why? Because the wedding is just a fancy ceremony for the transfer of property, human female property. And if her hymen’s not intact, why that just brings down her value! In the wedding, her tuxedoed father walks her down the aisle to the tuxedoed groom. I guess that’s why the groom’s outfit is so ordinary. For him, this is merely a transaction of sorts. A female is being transferred from one male-owner to another!

I mean, you can see the change right there in her last name, as the transaction also means she sheds the last name she’s had all her life to takes on that of her new master.

Alright, I realize this is all very archaic. Very few brides walk down the aisle as virgins. Marriages are expected to be equal partnerships nowadays.

But why do we hang onto these traditions from those archaic misogynistic days? Why do brides have to wear white? Why does her father have to walk her down the aisle? Why in some cases do the boyfriends still ask her father for “permission” to marry her? Why, a full century and a half after Lucy Stone, is it still unusual for wives to keep the last names they had their whole lives rather than taking their husbands’? Why do the children of that marriage always take their father’s last name?

Unlike many, I do not believe these things to be inherent parts of weddings and marriages. At least they don’t need to be. Celebrating a lifelong partnership does not need to be about human ownership, but promises to each other. Nothing to do with sexual history. Nothing to do with your own parents. Certainly not something that little girls need to be taught will be the single most important day of their lives.

That shit pisses me off. With girls, there’s always mentions of “when she gets married” practically from the time she’s in the womb. Only occasionally is this said of boys with so much authority, as if his wedding is the single most important thing in his life as opposed to a nice thing to happen (a bride and subsequent children a nice thing to acquire) but not totally necessary. For boys, what’s important is career and success. For girls, well, nowadays career and success are moving in as important for their futures, but they still often take a back seat to the requirement that her husband have the career and success. This stems from the days when girls mostly couldn’t or didn’t have careers at all, so marriage in fact was so important because she otherwise would not be able to support herself well at all. But those days are over and marriage is not so economically vital for women anymore, so stop fucking treating it like it is!

What is marriage? Well, that’s a hard question. I recall having dinner with two girls back in college where the question of “why get married?” came up, and we fell silent, unable to answer. (Both of those girls are now married, LOL) But what it isn’t is celebrating the woman becoming her husband’s property after being that of her father.

What is it? The sacred loving promise between two (or perhaps more) people. No economics. No property. Certainly no matter the genders of those involved. Just that sacred bond, of long term companionship. Don’t know about you, but I think this newfangled marriage without the misogyny, even merely symbolic misogyny, looks way more sanctified!