Crazy Request

Hi world,

Can I have a day off?  Just a little one.  Like, no calls from clients weeping, and no calls from clients raging about their practitioners.  My google reader literally has 3000 items in it, including ALL OF THE FUCKING NEWS from the last four days.

Also, can we please stop announcing shit like this? When I clearly don’t have time to properly address it?  I had an event to make happen today, I still need to go find hoes that aren’t ripped (clearly I need to go shopping for something cute), and figure out what I’m going to wear that doesn’t make me look like I’m eleventy-billion social classes below the swanky moneybags I’m hanging out with tonight.  Why must my entire wardrobe be of jeans and t-shirts?  Thank the FSM for the fact this is a wine tasting.

Oh, and I now have to go dress my husband.  This should be fun.

Doula is too a word!

Dear Microsoft Word & word-like programs that are not Microsoft:

Doula is too a word.  Please stop highlighting it — I’ve already added it to your internal dictionary.  I could understand you throwing a shit fit if I spelled it doulah, but I did not.

Also, you should go read my post on why I want The Gay Marriage to be legal.

Second Class Citizen Extraordinaire.

This was crossposted at Gaytheists.  The article has been edited (somewhat) by someone who was slightly more sober than I when I wrote it.  This has been a rough week for women’s healthcare and rights.

Originally this was a post about religious privilege and the health care debate.  I had a relatively thoughtful discussion about how we were in danger (and still are) of having religious faith healing and non-evidence based medicine having mandated reimbursement from insurance companies with the current healthcare reform.  I also explored, perhaps a bit prematurely, how religion has played a role in the healthcare debate regarding abortion, access to abortion, and restrictions on abortion.  That article is no longer relevant, and will probably not see the light of day, although portions of it have been adapted below.

Why, you might ask?  Well, because of a particular amendment to the healthcare bill that will prevent insurance customers that receive subsidies from the federal government or participate in the mandated exchange from receiving abortion coverage, even when paid for with private funds.  Supplemental insurance or out of pocket costs will be required for elective abortion coverage.

I suppose you could argue that this is a little outside the purview of this blog, but as  Quixote from Shakersville reminds us, “Rights are for all. When only some people have them, they’re just privileges. And privileges can be taken away.”  The same sense of privilege that allows religious people to feel as if it is acceptable to vote away marriage rights to a minority allows them to feel okay about deciding what a person may or may not do with their body.

Honestly, the DNC wasn’t going to be getting any of my money because of the wholesale debacle they’ve made in supporting gay and minority rights, but this fucking seals the deal for me.  Here’s a list of the Democrats that voted for the amendment, and attached at the bottom are the Democrats that voted FOR the amendment and AGAINST the healthcare bill.  Anyone in those districts that want to run against your rep?  If you’re in Michigan/Ohio, I’ll come campaign for you.

For those looking for non-drunken babble about health-care reform, you should probably check out Spare Candy, who has helpfully compiled a list of people much more rationally and sober than I, speaking about what the hell this means for women.  I’m done with the fucking news for the night.

Edit:  RHRealityCheck has a concise and pretty good breakdown of WHY the Stupak Amendment is a huge setback for abortion access. I presume theirs is also a non-drunken post.

Gaytheists!

Hey,

So in addition to ignoring this blog for Dragon Age Origins (yum!) and my client list that seems to be ever growing (I’m free for March, but not sooner), I’m also writing over at Reed Braden’s new blog, Gaytheists.org, where I get to continue to expound upon such things as religion, sexuality, gender identity, feminism, and funfetti cake.  So y’all should go over there and spike my readership counts, please and thank you.  Also, I guess there are some other really fun and intelligent people over there that you might find interesting and entertaining.

Don’t worry — I don’t know that they’ll let me bitch endlessly about the stupid fucking shit that people do in the name of religion as well as the horrible things we do to women, so I’ll be continuing to blog here, as well.  Just not regularly Just like normal.

Non-News Redux

Something I was having trouble articulating in this post:

These things that we get our no-duh moments from, we’ve moved the onus of proof onto the default position as opposed to the intervention.  Women would stand, move about in labour and eat as they please if we let them.  The medical industry comes in and fucks with things, thus making these perhaps default positions untenable, (i.e. strapping women down during childbirth because doctors used twilight sleep and midwives didn’t which is why you wanted a doctor, or not letting women eat because early anesthetics had a much greater chance of causing vomiting and aspiration of fluid into the lungs).  So now we spend a lot of time and money looking at “best evidence practices” because there are vestiges of techniques long gone that have become habitual and procedural.

Women would naturally seek to control and/or limit reproduction.  Hence the supposed harvesting of silphium to extinction within the 1st century CE.  We then assume that women shouldn’t or won’t wish to limit this reproduction and ban it.  So now we spend an enormous amount of time and energy and money fighting to make sure that women don’t lose the ability to have agency over reproduction, and have studies that show legal banning or societal condemnation of this want doesn’t effect women seeking out the ability to control and limit reproduction.  So we spend lots of time and money and energy to figure out that, a ha!, if we give women the choice to control conception abortion rates decrease!

So, because of historical, societal or religious accidents, we confuse where the burden of proof should lie.  Admittedly, this comes from a pretty radical feminist point of view and is probably not the viewpoint that the obstetrician or the clergy hold.  But, then again, I’m of the opinion that women are people too, and can probably decide what’s best for them and their families.

Edit:  I also feel compelled to make it clear that I’m not advocating a stance that everything’s default position is the way it’s supposed to be.  That would mean might makes rights, at least 10% of women die in childbirth outright and the morbidity rates are ridiculous, and I’d not really exist.  What I am saying is that in the case of birth, technology isn’t always the answer and can impede things.

I’m now going to bed and stop rambling.  Discuss.

Today in Non-News [Abortion!]

It really amuses me when we have to have research done for things that are pretty obvious, but are of a controversial nature for whatever reason (a’la eating during labour, gays serving in the military, etc).  I understand why we have to have this research done, although I question whether those that would dispute the findings would find this a compelling reason to leave an intellectual position that they haven’t actually reasoned themselves into.

Today, we have a study that shows banning abortion doesn’t actually reduce the number of abortions that occur.  As a bonus — increased availability of contraception tends to drop the total number of abortions that occurs.  So the Operation Rescues of the world — please take note.  In addition to insighting violence against those providing reproductive health care that women may be heartbroken to avail themselves of, you’re not actually effective.  Those that wish to end an unwanted pregnancy will find a way to do so, even if it means using risky or life-harming methods.

Those of you who are uncomfortable with the idea of abortion — instead of fighting against abortion, spend your energy and money to support contraception education and availability.  That will go miles to removing the need for abortion, even if you yourself choose to not avail yourself to certain methods of birth control.

Edited to Add from “Medical News Today“:

The [Guttmacher] report also highlights that:

• 40 per cent of the women in the world live in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws, nearly all in the developing world.
• For example 97 per cent of women of child-bearing age in Latin America, and 92 per cent in Africa, live in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws.
• These proportions have not changed much in the last 10 years.
• While the incidence of abortion closely follows that of unintended pregnancy, it does not coincide with the legal status of abortion.
• Instead, abortion rates appear to be about the same in regions where it is broadly legal and regions where it is highly restricted.
• But what is different is safety: illegal abortions carried out secretly cause significant harm to women, especially in developing countries, said the authors.

HRC Fire? [Failure!]

For those of us who don’t have our fingers on the heartbeat of equal rights, this previous weekend was the National Equality March.  I had wanted to go, but am currently on call for a client, so I followed vicariously the twitter feeds of people at the march, and enjoyed the various blog postings that people put up.  And I was quite interested in the Human Rights Campaign dinner with Obama, to see how that was to unfold.

Turns out that Joe Solmonese (head of the HRC, funded by those seeking gay equality) apparently told the the LGBTQI groups to be quiet and quit demanding their rights be recognised because there were bigger things at stake than those of us not rich enough to attend the HRC dinner in the mob could understand.  And, paraphrasing Andrew Sullivan — Solmonese informed gay rights activists that they couldn’t complain until January 19, 2017 because the Obama administration had until then to delivery on the campaign promises that Obama and company made.  Sure, Obama made the statement that he will end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell at the dinner, but why is this promise different from the one he made while campaigning?

In addition to the other rather dubious things that the Obama administration has done, the ignoring of a group of people who campaigned, gave enormous amounts of money, and turned out to vote for him in high numbers seems a bit like the antithesis of democracy.  I second Andrew Sullivan’s call:

It’s one thing to understand that we need to have a mainstream civil rights groups that can negotiate with the administration as well as a grassroots movement that can yell and scream. I understand we all have different roles to play.  But when the role of the establishment is to betray the rest of us for their own access and black-tie dinners and coffee clatches at the White House, then the rest of us have to stand up and say “no more.” No more.

So I’ll just brand myself [Fuck you, Oklahoma!]

Hi.  Anyone still out there?

So, yeah, I’ve been slacking.  I had that whole career change thing, and the moving thing, and then the client giving birth and postpartum crazy thing and the new kitten thing (eee!  New kitten named Eva.  Welcome to the family!).  I’m probably at a point where I’m going to be posting regularly again.

So the thing that drove me back to posting was this story I kept running across that absolutely makes my blood boil.  Every Single Time I Read About It.  I feel this pit of anger that I just can’t swallow down about this law in Oklahoma that posts women’s “confidential” information online as part of a government information gathering.

For those too lazy to click through and read the crazy (thanks Jezebel):

The law (which you can look at here — it’s HR 1595) mandates that a 34-item questionnaire be filled out by abortion providers for each procedure. The questionnaire doesn’t include the woman’s name or “any information specifically identifying the patient,” but it does ask for age, race, level of education, marital status, number of previous pregnancies, and the county in which the abortion was performed, information which opponents of the bill argue would be enough to identify a woman in a small town. The questionnaire also asks about the mother’s reason for the abortion, her method of payment, and even what type of insurance she has, as well as whether the fetus received anaesthetic and whether there was “an infant born alive as a result of the abortion.”

JJ, the Unrepentant Old Hippie asks:

If anti-choicers can’t change the law and can’t change peoples’ minds,  as it’s becoming increasingly apparent that they can’t, they’ll do their goddamnedest to  at least publicly shame and humiliate women who have the procedure.  What’s next, a scarlet letter?

You know what?  I’m seriously contemplating just saving them the trouble and tattooing myself with a nice big scarlet A.  Give me an A for atheist, an A for abortion, an A for apostate.  Make it somewhere nice and visible, and you can damn well bet I won’t be pulling punches when people ask me what it stands for.

“Oh that?  Well, it’s just what your crazy politically minded religious brothers and sister would have put upon me if they had their way.  You know, before they banish me, or decide that I need to be killed.”

I’m feeling a mite irrational about this whole thing.  I’m going to go take my damn nap and try to not hit the bottle of tequila while weeping in the corner at the sad sorry state of affairs in the US.  Fuck you, Oklahoma.

So close I can taste it

I am t-minus 13 days to my career transition.

I am deliciously excited.  It does mean that they’ve decided to work me until I drop at my current job, though.  Between my CEO’s media faux pas regarding health care and the angry customers that’s generated (do NOT take your anger out on the floral lady!  I think he’s a bit off his rocker as much as you do), and a VIP visit, it’s been stressful.

I will be sad to go, which surprises me.  But I want very much to work with pregnant women and birth and their new families, and this is a great way to do that and make a living.

We will resume our regular posting schedule in September.  Enjoy the heat while it lasts — at least here in Ann Arbor, the fall flowers have started popping a couple weeks early, which always seems to mean an early frost and early cold.

What is in a Name?

In less than a week, I’ll have been legally married for two years.  There are some things that have changed and there are some things that haven’t — my name is one of those changes that haven’t happened.  For the most part my life is better than it was two years ago.  My relationship with my mother-in-law is better than it’s ever been, my husband and I have managed to figure out a method to manage our finances, I’ve figured out what I paid job I’d like to do for the next ten or fifteen years and have taken steps into that career.

As I take stock of how things are, I am wont to play the “what if game”*, of which children are a frequent (if several years away) event.  I wonder how I’ll ever be able to raise a kid and give them the tools they need to be able to look critically at the world while not completely fucking them up.  I wonder how I’ll embody the values I hold dearly.  I wonder how I’ll do in balancing tolerance and understand with the need to assert personal rights and be free from others’ craziness.  How I’ll model an egalitarian household where merit is the name of the game instead of traditional gender roles.  This last one is of particular interest to me, and I don’t know how to do it when I’m finding these insidious and tacit reinforcement of patriarchy that I thought had been done away with years ago!

N and I had decided before we got hitched that we would have the same last name, whatever it was going to be.  We didn’t want to split the name down gendered lines (girls take my surname, boys take his), we didn’t want one parent to be “odd man out” (they would have taken my surname), so we settled on a combination.  No hyphen, and I would bring my mother’s maiden name, while he brought his father’s name.  We would both take it and that would be what we would give our kids.

Since we weren’t having kids any time soon, there wasn’t this huge need to get the name changed.  I’m getting certified as a birth and postpartum doula in short time, so we figured it was probably time to start that process.  Thus starts the journey down the rabbit-hole.