March 30, 2012 3:02 pm

(Un)Quiet

I’ve been pretty quiet lately; I think a lot of it is due to me reading a lot of political blog posts and feeling really disheartened with what’s going on legally these days.

For instance, Kansas House legislators have approved a bill that legalizes discrimination against gays and lesbians. This is so morally reprehensible to me that I am finding it difficult to come up with something coherent to say about it.

Pauls gave an example to explain why she backs the bill, saying an employer should be allowed to fire a “cross dresser.”

So… what, a woman who wears pants? Seriously. This person is in favor of someone losing their job because they might not dress according to society’s gender norms.

For example, an employer could fire someone if they discovered the employee was gay. Or a landlord could kick a renter out of their home. The religious exemption extends past places of business to universities, where students or instructors could opt out of a school’s anti-discrimination policy.

It is absolutely NOT an employer’s business who an employee is in love with. It just isn’t. You just know the companies that would perpetrate this injustice would likely not fire the married employee having an affair with the new secretary. Because even though it’s adultery, it is not THE GAY so it’s okay. I just… Ugh. People are people. Who they love is nobody’s business but the parties involved. Legalizing discrimination hurts everyone.

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Then there’s that whole Sandra Fluke thing.

“What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex — what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”
-source

Calling someone (ANYONE) a slut and a prostitute for requesting that heath insurance providers cover prescription medication is so, so far beyond the pale that I’m surprised there isn’t more outrage. What he said is in no way acceptable. (Plus, he didn’t even get her name right.)

His statement that she was “having so much sex” she couldn’t afford birth control and wants the government to pay for it is patently untrue – her testimony referred to a friend of hers who lost an ovary because despite needing contraception to treat her ovarian cysts, she couldn’t afford the medication. To continue on and say that, for requesting such a thing, she should be required to film her sexual activities for others’ enjoyment? I am nearly apoplectic.

“So the woman comes forth with this frankly hilarious claim that she’s having so much sex – and her buddies with her – that she can’t afford it,” Limbaugh continued. “And not one person says, did you ever think about maybe backing off the amount of sex that you have?”
-source

Rush, this is not how the pill works. You take one pill a day, regardless how much (or how little!) sex you are planning to engage in that day. You do not take a pill before every sexual encounter. Frankly, it shocks me that a man (who, due to his widely publicized prescription for Viagra and his multiple marriages, is presumably having sex with women) would not understand the mechanics of taking contraceptive pills.

Also, why should she have to back off on the amount of sex she has? Slut-shaming is also not okay.

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Then, there’s all hoopla about required ultrasounds (often transvaginal) as part of a prerequisite for abortions. One such bill was recently withdrawn in Idaho (and you can bet your britches I wrote to my congressman about it).

“[…] What I was hoping that it would accomplish is that it would give the mother one more opportunity to see the baby before she made that decision. … I think the more information they have, the less likely they are to have an abortion.”
-Sen. Steve Vick, R-Dalton Gardens (a co-sponsor of the bill)

It’s infuriating to me that the men coming up with these bills think that women are not capable of recognizing when having a baby would be a bad decision for them. I know women who have had abortions, and it was the best decision for them at that point in their lives. Women do not blithely get abortions, and I’m not sure why there’s such a strong misconception that they do.

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This is a slightly more minor issue, but despite its (comparatively) high breastfeeding rates, Idaho is one of only four states that does not have a law protecting public breastfeeding, other than to say you can be exempt from jury duty because of it.

Surprisingly, for how awful the breastfeeding rates in Mississippi are, they have a pretty comprehensive set of breastfeeding laws:

Law allows a mother to breast-feed her child in any location she is otherwise authorized to be and excuses breast-feeding mothers from jury duty. Also prohibits discrimination towards breast-feeding mothers who use lawful break time to express milk.
-source

I was shocked to discover this lack of protection for public breastfeeding in Idaho a couple of months ago and it’s been weighing on my mind ever since. Anybody have any ideas how I can get this ball rolling? Despite watching Schoolhouse Rock in my youth, I don’t have the faintest idea how to get a bill introduced.

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All of this makes my heart hurt, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

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February 29, 2012 10:41 am

Meal Planning

I have finally figured out the key to family dinners, and me helping to prepare it (or preparing it entirely).

Meal planning.

(“Duh!” you are saying. I know.)

Meal plan calendar

Apparently, all it took was me printing out a calendar and writing in dinner ideas. (I like the ones from Waterproof Paper, as they are full-page, free from ornamentation, and have spaces big enough to write in.) That way, if I know Thursday is “Stir Fry Night,” I can start the rice and chop veggies before Daniel gets home, so when he arrives all he has to do is throw the veggies in the wok for a few minutes.

It has revolutionized my life. For real.

My problem was that it would get to be 5:15pm and I would start asking myself what I/we should make for dinner. If you are not already aware, this is a horrible time to plan dinner. I’m at least kind of hungry by then (I eat lunch at noon, usually) if not flat-out starving, I have no energy after taking care of Wesley all day, and I’m really bad at coming up with ideas for what to eat.

The nutrition planning solves all this! If I know what dinner will be, I can mentally prepare for prepping it instead of running out of steam by then, it makes Daniel less grouchy because he doesn’t have to come home from a long day of work and then spend forever making dinner, and we all sit around the table like a Real Family instead of scattering about the house with TV or the computer or a book.

I only plan about two weeks at a time, and stuff does get shifted around due to plans changing or too many leftovers or whatever, but it’s been a good system so far and I’m very pleased with it.

Some of our dinner ideas are: Spaghetti, stir fry, quinoa patties, “Moroccan food,” homemade pizza, and different soups.

So! If you are like me and have trouble thinking of things to make at dinnertime, spend about 15-20 minutes every two weeks to write down some dinner ideas, and you too can have a revolutionized life!

6 Comments >

January 16, 2012 11:34 am

Extraction

This showed up in my feed reader today and I felt compelled to respond:

Can I tell you how sorry I feel for the child born of a mother who says she didn’t give birth to the kid? That s/he was “an extraction,” like an infected tooth or a cancerous mole? What is that going to do for his or her self-esteem? Has anyone thought that far ahead yet? What a horrible set-up for loving parenting, starting out thinking your baby was “extracted” from your body.

I suppose I see where she’s coming from. The author is making a case for viewing your c-section as a “metaphor for the beginning of a new life” rather than something to “terroriz[e] women” with. I’m sorry she thinks I’m not setting my child up for loving parenting by describing what happened during his birth, but I think that statement is nutty enough that it almost doesn’t warrant a response. If anything, I’d be more likely to show loving parenting to try to mollify the circumstances of his birth a bit.

I’ve talked before about how I felt as though I played no part in my child’s birth. I’m a little… confused? I guess? as to why the author is so hostile about this feeling. I was anesthetized, strapped to a table and “blindfolded” from what was happening with a giant blue sheet, and then someone used a scalpel to cut me open and then people pulled a baby out of me.

My part in this was… what now? You can call it a metaphor for new life if you want, and it is, but it was also an extraction. I was actively prevented from participating in my birth, and yet somehow, feeling this way and talking to other women that feel similarly is “extraction crap” started by “a sadist.”

She then goes on to play the Guilt Olympics by describing impoverished women in Somalia that would love to have a c-section to avoid an obstetric fistula, or women who end up with stillborn babies while birthing vaginally. I am not sure what this has to do with the price of tea in China but I think it’s totally inappropriate to try to make me feel better (?) about my c-section by telling me that there are loads of people would love to be in my position, while simultaneously telling me how I should feel about my position.

In the comments, she’s accused of not having compassion for the women that believe their babies were “extracted,” and responded:

I have compassion… I feel sorry for the women who don’t feel they’ve given birth. Very, very sorry for them.

THIS is the attitude that makes me feel “less than,” not other women’s descriptions of surgical birth.

Then there’s this:

Quit being dramatic, you Extraction Queens. Find a way to get over your selfish belief your birth wasn’t real because of the location the kid entered the world from.

I don’t believe my child’s birth wasn’t “real” – I have the scar to prove it. I just believe I played a very little part in it.

Let me grieve for the birth I wanted, describe the birth I had in the manner that seems appropriate to me, and keep your misplaced pity for my child to yourself.

4 Comments >