Deliciously Naughty

Belle de Jour is a Cancer Scientist

One of the most widely read sex blogs of all time, Belle de Jour has always had a secret; the identity of the author.  Her books were all written without direct contact between her and the publishers, and were the inspiration for the "Diary of a Call Girl" series on Showtime.

Today she was unmasked as Dr. Brooke Magnanti, a 32-year old developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology specialist at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health.

While I was never a huge fan of Belle's, I do have to say I'm doing a little dance at her unmasking.  Because she's been revealed as the exact opposite of everyone's stereotypes about call girls.  While I've known several escorts myself and have been railing against the stereotypes for years, there has never been such a public figure to point to and say "Yes, the sex trade can be harmful for some women, but for plenty it's not." 

Thanks for coming out and especially for showing the world that smart girls like sex too.

Roundup

I'm going to make this a fast one as the pet drama is still occupying the majority of my emotional energy.  We've made the hard call to put the cat to sleep later this week, and while it's the right call that doesn't mean it isn't one of the hardest things I've ever had to decide.

So...

National Coming Out Day was Saturday....big hugs and kisses to all my lgbt friends.  As someone who identifies as bi, I consider myself a member of the community, and I'm with you in the fight for equality.  I'm hoping for the repeal of don't ask don't tell, doma, and the passage of gay marriage in Maine this fall.  I was sad that I couldn't be in DC for the march with you, but I was there in spirit.  Coming out is often one of the scariest and most difficult things a person can go through, and I hope that the LM grows up in a world where that isn't true...where it is merely accepted as one more aspect of what makes a person who they are.  I promise that no matter who she grows up to love or what gender she identifies as, Sexyhusband and I will love LM.

Sexyhusband's birthday was this past weekend.  I send him big hugs, kisses, and naughty sexual acts once I have the energy.  You get to pick who ties who up ;)  Thank you for being a far more patient and understanding lover than I often deserve on any given day.

OK took their abortion legislation one step further and is now trying to pass a bill that says all abortion providers need to provide info about all abortions they perform, under the guise of preventing sex-selective abortions (where a woman aborts a baby based upon their sex).

Marge Simpson is on this month's Playboy cover.  Apparently it's only a lingerie spread, and it celebrates the Simpson's 20th anniversary...it occurs to me that it would have been more appropriate next year...for the 21rst anniversary?  That it's a lingerie spread is a bit plebian...I've seen far more of Marge Simpson than a lingerie spread on some fairly naughty cartoon porn sites, thanks to an ex who was into cartoon porn...

Question of the week, although it's been months since I've asked...

What's the most interesting sex story (broad definition of sex--sexual politics, sex scandal, whatever) you've seen in the news lately?

Reproductive Freedom...

For some time now, I have been choosing to donate my "free" time to a pro-choice organization.  I do this rather than go see a movie, do some shopping, or run errands that would be easier to do without my daughter along...or write, for that matter. 

Why?

Because it needs to be done.  Because I can.  Because it's my way of thanking all the women who have come before me to give me reproductive freedom.

Reproductive freedom is at the root of all female freedom.  When a woman can control her fertility she is less likely to end up in poverty.  When a woman controls her fertility she is acknowledged as a full person, capable of making decisions, rather than a passive vessel from which future generations will spring.  She has the freedom to work and to progress in her career, only taking child related breaks on her terms.  Economists agree that a key step in a country's progress is female control over fertility.

You may argue that in this day and age, control over fertility means access to the pill and other contraception.  I disagree, saying you need to include access to abortion to have full reproductive freedom.

Abortion isn't a pleasant procedure to contemplate.  In later stages of pregnancy, the procedure become downright gruesome. 

However, a woman should not be held hostage to her body because she was raped, had a contraception failure, or made a bad decision. 

The right would like us all to give these unwanted children up for adoption, which makes for a pretty fantasy.  Of course, that fantasy only works if you assume that every child, regardless of physical, emotional, or behavioral needs would be adopted.  That every child, regardless of the parent's ethnic background(s) would be adopted.  The truth is that children with special needs, children of mixed race, and minority children are not as desirable to prospective parents. 

Putting all that aside for a moment, it assumes something far more insidious...that women need only step back and gestate and all will go well.  Anyone who thinks that has never been pregnant.  Never experienced the literal growing pains of a uterus.  Never become diabetic with pregnancy (and as someone who stuck herself a grand total of 14 times a day-10 for blood sugar checks and 4 to give myself shots of insulin I can attest to what it's like to feel like a pincushion).  Never puked for all 40 weeks of pregnancy (I know what it's like to come close to being hospitalized because I was practically dehydrated from all the puking).  Never had the heartburn.  Never had their lungs infringed upon by a 3rd trimester fetus.  Never gone through labor. Never experienced the joys of having their vaginal walls tear as the baby entered the world.

It's also a pretty fantasy where no woman ever gets pre-eclampsia.  Never gets diagnosed with cancer while pregnant.  Never is faced with a situation where it's your life and death on the line.  Keep the baby and you both die, or abort the baby and you live...which would you choose?

There's no discussion of where restrictions on reproductive freedom would end.  These "pro-lifers" are often the same people rallying against "big government," saying that the government has no right to get involved in personal affairs.  But what is more personal than a pregnancy?  How would they force me to stay pregnant?  Would there be a law that all women of child bearing age take folic acid, just in case?  What if I forget to take my prenatal vitamin?  Chose not to control my pregnancy induced diabetes?  Would I be sent to jail for negligence?

What about miscarriage?  How would they prove the difference between a natural miscarriage and the ingestion of herbs known since time immemorial to cause "accidents" for pregnant women?  Would every D&C (such as I had after my first pregnancy did not pass naturally after her/his heart stopped beating) be cause for a police investigation?

I don't know how it ends, except that I suspect it would look a lot like "A Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood.

And so I volunteer.

Each time I volunteer I park my car near the clinic.  I scan the perimeter of the clinic for protesters.  The legal line is drawn on the ground in yellow paint, and I often see the protesters put a foot over it, or pace it like an angry lion pacing his too-small cage at the zoo.  A frequent protester is an elderly woman, who often gets away with more small transgressions because it would be bad press to have her arrested for every small infraction.

I enter the double doors and pass through a metal detector.  I hand my purse to a security guard for inspection.  I sign in using my first name and last initial only...for my protection.  I exchange my id for a badge that will open the elevator or give me a code to use on the numerical pad that changes the order of it's numbers regularly.  I know where the panic buttons are in case of emergency.  I know when to call 911. 

My path does not lead me through the waiting room, but I've been there as a patient.  There is an air of sadness, and quiet resignation.  No one is happy to go to the abortion clinic.  Relieved, yes...but never celebratory. 

I work in an area far removed from the medical procedures.  It could be any office.  There's a water cooler, a copier that breaks frequently, staplers that jam, files that need alphabetizing, and envelopes that need stuffing.  Like any non-profit, there's money to be raised and lobbying to be done on our behalf. 

But there are also industrial shredders, and no piece of paper is thrown away without first being shredded.  Those who dislike what happens behind our doors could harass a doctor, a patient, an employee, or a volunteer like me. 

When my time is done, I use my badge to descend to the main floor, and exchange a few words with the guard as I pass back my badge and sign out, receiving my ID once more.  I push the heavy doors to the street open, and again glance around to look for protesters before making my way back to the car.

I drive back to my sitter's home to pick up the little girl I love more than any other child in this world.  Because a morning away from her to help fight to secure her reproductive freedom is a far better use of my time than getting a manicure.

Uncircumsized cock is Un-American?

Oh, you Birthers...always giving me things to laugh about in a world where there are so many serious things to worry about, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the economy, whether my daughter will have reproductive rights, whether all people will ever get the right to marry....YOU think I should be worried about Obama's cock. 

Mmmm...Obamacock....

Sorry, got off on a tangent there...literally

Right...Birthers, for those of you blessedly out of the loop on this not-a-news-story (why is CNN always talking about them?)---are people who believe that there is a massive conspiracy, and that Obama was actually born in Kenya, and therefore is not an American, and therefore should not be President, and if we could all just go over to Sarah Palin's house and spy on Russia that the world would be better if aliens just came and abducted him...or something like that. 

Birthers have now decided that what makes a person a true, blue, red-blooded American is not the color of your complexion but how much foreskin you have. Commenters (and circumcised Americans) over at Free Republic struck on a revelation yesterday: if Barack Obama has not been circumcised, then he must not have been born in the United States. Why? Because all of their boys were circumcised.

Hey Birthers...Sexyhusband has something to say to you...

More on Doctor Tiller

I just read this article over at cnn.com

There's nothing about this case that doesn't upset and disturb me.

However, that there are people cheering his death...I literally feel sick to my stomach

Dinwiddie said Tiller's slaying was "absolutely" justified.

"He forfeited his life by taking the lives of innocent children," she said.

And in Iowa, Dan Holman, of the anti-abortion group Missionaries to the Preborn, told CNN that Tiller's death was something to "cheer."

"I was cheered by it, because I knew he wouldn't be killing any more babies," Holman said.

Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry told reporters in Washington that Tiller's killing was "wrong, period," and that anti-abortion leaders "are not responsible for George Tiller's death." But he added, "George Tiller was a mass murderer and horrifically, he reaped what he sowed."

Regardless of your stance on abortion...cheering a murder is just sick.  If you are pro-life then, in theory, you are supposed to believe in the sanctity of all life...not just the unborn.  That you can twist it up and say that being an OB/GYN who also performs abortions justifies murder makes me worry for the future of my country. 

I have had an abortion.  When my first child died in utero, a procedure called a D&C was performed.  Technically, any medical procedure in which an embryo or a fetus is removed from the mother (whether the fetus is dead at the time or dies because of the procedure) is an abortion.

There are many who would say that my procedure doesn't count as an abortion. 

I say you're splitting hairs.

And splitting hairs is what this debate is all about.

Something like 80% of all Americans support some exemptions if there was an abortion ban.  Rape, incest and health of the mother.

And let's examine that last one...the health of the mother.

-Who gets to decide which medical conditions count?  There are pro-lifers who claim that the "mother's health" exemption is used as an excuse.  Who decides if my condition is severe enough to warrant the abortion?

-What's the process?  How many doctors have to look at me?  How many people have to sign off?  How long does this process take?  HOURS matter, especially if the mom develops severe complications.

-If abortions are banned, how to we ensure that the woman can receive the care she needs in time?  There are plenty of instances where there are only hours left to save the life of the mother.  If there are only 3 doctors in the country who can perform the operation that would save her life, how does that doctor get to the woman in question in time.

-If you think that there should be NO health exemptions, does that mean that losing both mother and child is the right course of action?  I can point you at plenty of stories where that would have been the case.  The worst thing I had to think about when I was pregnant is what to do if a situation arose where it was my life or the child's.

Cecily sums up many of the issues with the health exemption....after having to abort her twins at 20.5 weeks of gestation to save her own life.

Other than having a medical termination, the options open to someone in my position are usually either a) emergency c-section, and b) induced delivery.

My doctor believed--given my particular circumstances--that it would be better for both my short term and long term health to not cut open my body if at all possible. My health was in a precarious state, and the option of a medical termination was the fastest, safest, and least complicated procedure to use. It also preserved the health of my uterus for future pregnancies.

Also, my doctor (you know, the man in the room with me, the one with a medical degree and my chart in hand? that guy) knew that inducing me, with my insanely high blood pressure, would be likely to cause me to have a stroke.

Please remember that even if my twins had both been alive, THEY WOULD NOT HAVE SURVIVED. Do not tell me they would have, because you are wrong. There have been NO DOCUMENTED CASES of babies born that early surviving--I don't care what pro-life websites you send me links to that say differently. THEY ARE LYING.

Trust me. Don't you think that I wanted those babies and would have done anything I could to save them? And don't you think that my doctor--who knew about my struggles to get pregnant and called the day of my surgery "the worst day of my professional career"--would have told me if that was possible?

Lastly, let's discuss, using me as an example, the difference between HEALTH and LIFE.

Where do you draw the line? Was my life actually at risk at the moment they chose to terminate the pregnancy? Well, my blood pressure was going higher and higher and they weren't able to get it under control with the medications they had available. My kidneys has begun to shut down and I'd stopped producing urine. But I was alive. I could have remained alive, possibly, under those circumstances for a while. Maybe they could have pushed it until I actually began to have seizures. Or maybe until I had a stroke. Or, maybe, since even after a stroke and having seizures I would have still been alive, maybe they would have to wait until after I felt into a coma. But wait! If I'm in a coma, I'm still alive, right? Even if my brain has been irreparably damaged, I'm still ALIVE. Right?

So, my point is, sure-- the "Partial Birth Abortion Ban" has a provision for the LIFE of the mother. But there is NO PROVISION FOR HER HEALTH. Or the health of her uterus, or her future children.

To sum it all up, if I hadn't had the procedure that I had, Nicholas, Zachary, me AND Tori would all be dead.

If you hate abortions...how about helping us prevent them in the first place? 

Ironically, because most pro-lifers are big abstinence fans, they are perpetuating the cycle.  Many of them are also Republicans, who constantly try to cut the funding and supports of programs like Head Start, WIC, and other services that help mothers who choose to have their children, whether they can afford to or not.  So basically, many  of them are all about the life of the baby in utero, but preventing that unplanned pregnancy in the first place, or supporting the single mom afterward...well, then they're on their own, aren't they. 

As for the women who would suffer irreparable damage having a baby conceived in incest or through rape?  Well, emotional health isn't of any import, is it?

And for the women who would die without the abortion?  They must have done something wrong or they wouldn't have gotten sick, right?

People spend so much time and effort protesting Planned Parenthood without ever understanding that the majority of the work PP does is to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place.  They provide care for women who can't afford OB/GYN's, who can't afford birth control, or whose insurance screws them on gyn and OB stuff.  Abortions are such a SMALL part of what they do.

Anyone who thinks that Dr. Tiller's death is anything but a tragedy...let us not forget that regardless of his job (which was primarily to be an OB GYN...he delivered far more babies than he aborted), a man was gunned down in cold blood in his church...you are horrible horrible people, and hypocrites. 

I am not speaking to the pro-lifers who agree that Tiller's death was a tragedy, but do not agree with his choice to perform abortions.  I am speaking to the wackjobs who are rejoicing in his death.  You disgust me.

NOT Helping....

Dear Pro-life people...

While I disagree with your stance on abortion, I find most of you that I've actually met in person to be somewhat rational individuals.

Unfortunately, it's acts like the murder of Dr. Tiller today that give your political position its face.

Can one of you somehow explain to me how "pro-life" people can justify murder?  Because?  Seriously?  It doesn't help your cause.

With less faith in humanity today than I had yesterday
DN

Abortion and public opinion

A recent poll would have me believe that I am now in the minority of Americans in that I'm pro-choice.

I call bullshit.

This post over at 538 does a great job of breaking down what's wrong with the poll from a statistical point of view.

The bottom line is that 80% of all Americans support at least SOME exemptions. 

The tricky areas as always are health of the mother, incest and rape.

I don't think any one who hasn't gone through it themselves can understand how painful the choice to have abortion to save your own life can be.  A specific blogger comes to mind, and when you read her entries about the twin sons whom she had to abort just two weeks before "viability" to save her own life, it puts a story and a face to the procedure of "partial birth abortion" that some Pro-Lifers would have you believe only happens when a woman decides late in her pregnancy that no, she didn't want a baby. 

In the cases of rape or incest, I am horrified that there are people who think that the life of the child is more important the mental health of the woman involved.  Having a daily reminder of a horrific event is not something most of us would be capable of handling. 

Beyond that, being pro-choice doesn't mean that you're pro-abortion.

Yes, I believe that abortion should be available and affordable no matter who you are or where you live.

I believe that a woman has the right to control her fertility and to make the choice to have, or not have, children.

But more importantly I think that we need to create a system so that fewer abortions happen in the first place.  Comprehensive sex education, cheap or free birth control readily available, and a lifting of the veil when it comes to sex and intimacy. 

There is so much rhetoric about when life begins and all of that.

I tend to frame it differently.  The abortion argument isn't over the life of the child, it's about the body of the woman.  Can or should a state be given the power over women's bodies?  If there is no legal abortion, that means that for the nine months of pregnancy, a woman's body is being held hostage by the state. 

Anyone who has read "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood has seen what I believe is a very plausible imagining of how women's rights could be stripped away.  I believe that were abortion to ever be outlawed, it would be the first step down a road that could very well end in Atwood's Totalitarian Theocracy.

To tie this all back to the poll...you can throw hypotheticals at people all day, but the truth of the matter is that when it comes to abortion, you don't REALLY know how you'd react until you, yourself are in that position.  Once you have been, then you have the insight to speak. 

When Sex and Politics meet unexpectedly

I defy you to make it through this clip without falling over with laughter

Roe Vs. Wade is 36 years old today

The legislative decision that legalized abortions, Roe Vs Wade is 36 years old today.

In some ways we've come a long way from the coat hanger abortions that came before Roe V Wade...and in others we are backsliding closer and closer to a return to them.

In the past 36 years...

-Fewer and fewer doctors perform abortions as the practice can be life-threatening, as many doctors have discovered at the wrong end of a "pro-lifer's" gun.

-Various "types" of abortions have been outlawed, chipping away at choice.

-The Mexico Rule (or international gag rule) has been passed (and repealed, and repassed) by various presidents, refusing American aid to international programs that discuss abortion when talking to women about reproductive rights and health, regardless of the fact that control over fertility is one of the keys to financial freedom for women.

-Parental notification laws have limited choice to those over 18

-The morning after pill (Plan B) is not available as widely as it should be, and many women do not understand how to get it, where to get it, or how to take it.

-Abstinence only programs have dramatically misinformed our youth about STD's and pregnancy, leading to a group of young people who are missing critical pieces of reproductive information.

-Some states have so few abortion clinics that it's de facto impossible to get one (South Dakota especially, I'm looking at you)

-Virginia is trying to criminalize miscarriages (again-they tried last year and failed...let's see what happens this year)

-Let's not forget how Bush screwed us one last time on 1/19/08 writing the executive order which allows physicians, pharmacists, and other medical personnel the right to not do their fucking jobs refuse to help a woman who wants information about abortion...AND birth control

I am one of the lucky women who have never found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy (and sadly had to have an abortion procedure-a D&C-when my beloved first child died in utero 10 weeks into my first pregnancy) and thus have never had to make the decision.  However, as recently as this month, when Sexyhusband asked me if I would risk sex without a condom before my IUD was inserted, I looked him dead in the eye and said "only if you're okay with me taking Plan B in the morning".  There were times during my pregnancy with the LM that I contemplated getting an abortion if any of the scary tests had come back positive.

Yes there are families that want to adopt babies.  Let me be cynical for a moment and ask how many special needs babies are getting adopted?  Bi-racial and minority babies?  Babies with medical problems?

What about the life of the mother?  Uppercase Woman is, in her own word, the poster child for later term (aka "partial birth") abortions---one saved her life.  Would it make the "pro-lifers" happy if she and her babies had all died?  Would that be more "just"?

What about women who become pregnant through the tragedies of rape or incest?  Statistically, 1 out of 8 women will be raped at some point in her lifetime, and rape is the most frequently occuring violent crime in the US.  I can speak firsthand about how pregnancy can be a horrible, sucky, miserable, painful, crappy 40 weeks of your life.  The fact that I desperately wanted a baby was often the only thing that made the experience worthwhile.  I can only imagine the emotional damage had I gone through that because of a rape, to deliver a child that would be a daily reminder of the violent crime committed against my body.

On the 36th anniversary, I am grateful for what choices I still have...and recommit myself to working towards a world where my daughter will have one of the most precious gifts I can give her---choice.

Hey...Americans...VOTE

Dear California--NO ON 8!

I'm not really sure where my readers live.  I know some of you aren't American citizens, and I know where a few of you are because we're friends in real life or because you talk about it on your blog. 

However, some of you may live in California. 

We need to talk.

Proposition 8 is an attempt to legislate civil rights of a specific class of people.  I know this to be true because 40 years ago before Loving vs Virginia, it was my interracial marriage that people were passing state laws against, using the SAME arguments I now hear about gay marriage.

I'm a citizen of Massachusetts.  We've had gay marriage here for 4 years.  Let me tell you how that's changed my beloved home state....

NOT AT ALL

Well, that's not true...

1-The wedding industry is making more money
2-I have students whose parents are now recognized as legal spouses, and who can now see their family considered legitimate and equal to those of their classmates

Straight marriages have not slowed down.  Straight divorces are not up.  The number of kids coming out is consistent with the rest of the country, so gay marriage hasn't turned our kids gay.

Marriage is a CIVIL RIGHT for straights and gays alike.  We do not receive permission to marry from our religious institutions--we apply for marriage licenses at City Hall, the person who performs the ceremony and signs the license MUST be given authority to do so by the STATE, and the marriage is registered with the state.  Sure,  if you're religious, it has some significance there, too, but it's not your church that legitimizes your marriage in the eyes of the local, state, and federal government--it's that form you fill out with them.  I can genuinely say that getting married, and changing my last name to that of my husband involved a LOT of paperwork...most of it with government agencies or on government issued paperwork (City Hall, my voter registration, my passport, my driver's license, my social security card).

Please go to the polls on November 4th and vote no on 8.

If you can, donate money to the cause and read more about the no on 8 movement here.

Charging women for their rape kits is raping them a second time

I first heard about this several weeks ago and haven't been able to bring myself to talk about here. 

Firstly, if I'm going to work myself up over a candidate on this blog, it should be the one running for president, not the sidekick. 

Secondly, I have so much personal dislike for Sarah Palin that I knew the second I opened the floodgates, it would all come crashing out in a wave of disgust and anger.

Thirdly, it's just so hard for me to believe that ANYONE takes her seriously or believes she should be on the ticket...I keep waiting for the punchline to this joke...and it scares me that one isn't forthcoming.

But here's the thing...when you charge women for their own rape kits, you might as well tell them they deserved it, or, more to the point, just rape them all over again.

Which is what they did in Wasilla until the state told them they couldn't.  The Tina Fey clone says it was all the chief of police's business and she wasn't involved.  But when your town has fewer people than some high schools, and your police chief is engaged in a huge battle with the state, your ignorance of the issue is either (a) an attempt to get away with a bald-faced lie or (b) indicative of your complete lack of competence at being mayor of a town of 9,000--much less VP of the US.

Palin has gone on the record as saying she would deny women the right to get an abortion, even in the cases of rape and incest, even if it was her own daughter who'd been the victim.  I have to wonder if she didn't support charging women for the rape kits because in her eyes there was no point in using a rape kit--if they were knocked up they deserved it and they should keep the baby?  That there is no such thing as rape?  That it's the woman's fault?

The bottom line is that the personal is political.  My physical body is political, especially when you want to pass laws that could hold it as hostage to the state for 40 weeks, regardless of how the fetus in my womb came into existence.

McCain, bluntly, is on the same page.  He's fostered some kind of moderate image of a guy who isn't really pro-life...but he IS.  He also doesn't believe in birth control and won't publicly state his position on it or Bush's current plan to allow dr's to refuse to prescribe Birth Control to women if they find it "morally objectionable" (personally, I say if you can't morally prescribe birth control, go into ANOTHER FIELD of medicine, and stay the fuck out of OB GYN)

Abortion isn't my only issue.  Rape isn't my only issue.  Birth control isn't my only issue.  But they are vital ones.

My fellow Americans--when you pull the lever in November (or apparently cast your paper ballot any day starting now in some states) think about what kind of person you really want in the White House...the one who voted with Bush more than 90% of the time, who want small government--except in your bedroom where they want to get all up in your business, and who would love to go war with Iran?  If so, you need to get your head examined. 

Vote Obama '08 and pray that we can one day look ourselves in the mirror again...because we've become that which we claim to hate over the past 8 years.

Dear Hilary-an open letter to a sore loser

Dear Hilary

Thank you for the political equivalent of publicly masturbating in front of the whole country.

My lack of support for you is due to the fact that I vote with my brain and play with my cunt as opposed to voting with my cunt and playing with my brain. 

I would like to share with you the following thoughts, as you requested we do in your speech.

• South Dakota is NOT the final word in the primary season....Montana is as their polls closed an hour later than SD.
• Obama has reached the minimum threshold--this means he wins and you lose.
• You lose---translation---stop running your campaign debt up--it's over--you're not running against McCain, Obama is.
• "Ain't no Mountain High Enough" as your entrance song???? REALLY???  Was that meant to be ironic???
• "Simply the Best" as your exit song????  WHAT?????  You have LOST.
• There are medications, available through your excellent Senate provided health care plan that help people suffering from delusions.  Unlike the millions of Americans without health care, you have no reason to not be taking them.
• If you seriously think that Obama will pick you as VP after that little stunt, you are dead wrong.  If you really wanted the VP slot, you should have conceded gracefully and begun the process of unification behind the nominee.
• You are not the kind of role model I want for my daughter (my doctor thinks--we'll know for sure in 2 weeks).  I thought you were the best thing since sliced bread in 92-96--and then I really started paying attention and lost all respect for you in the intervening 12 years.  I even went to a women's college because I wanted to be like you.  You have betrayed the liberal roots of our party.  Shame on you

It's time to concede and grow the fuck up.

Thanks
DN

PS-Thanks to Sexyhusband for the masturbation comment

Support gay kisses on tv

I'd encourage everyone to call the 800 number at the bottom of this post--the call takes less than a minute--you only need to press 3 buttons to show your support of gay kisses on tv, even if you're not a soap opera fan.

I'm copying this from Perez Hilton's website.

The American Family Association (AFA) is 'taking action' AGAINST the committed gay couple, Luke and Noah, on CBS soap As The World Turns.

They don't want anymore of what they call 'repulsive' kissing between the two.

Yeah, well, we want MORE!

We must stand together to show our support for Luke and Noah and SHUT DOWN the AFA's campaign.

According to their site, the AFA "represents and stands for traditional family values" and believes "in holding accountable the companies which sponsor programs attacking traditional family values."

Here's an excerpt of the bigoted 'action alert' the AFA sent to members after Luke and Noah's latest kiss aired on the soap. 

Procter & Gamble has resumed using explicit, open-mouth homosexual kissing in their soap opera, "As the World Turns." P&G decided to include this type of content as a commitment to "diversity." P&G stopped showing such scenes some months ago, but has now decided to again help promote the homosexual agenda which includes homosexual marriage.

Gay activists are hopeful that the P&G effort will desensitize viewers to the homosexual lifestyle and help make the unhealthy and immoral lifestyle more acceptable to society, especially to children and youth.

View a scene from the April 23, 2008 episode by P&G. WARNING – content is repulsive!

"As the World Turns" is owned and controlled completely by P&G. No network made this decision. P&G alone made the decision to support the homosexual agenda.

P&G needs to hear from you today. We have provided a sample letter for you to send to Chairman Lafley, but strongly encourage you to add a personal message.

The AFA are a bunch of bigoted hate mongers!

Isn't infidelity totally against family values? Why no campaigns against infidelity in the numerous shows that glorify such 'sin'?

Luke and Noah are a committed couple–people in love kiss. Gay people are normal. We're you're brothers, sisters, mothers, father.

The AFA needs to stop drinking Intolerade!

P&G, who produce the show, have set up a line in response to the AFA's push.

Call P&G to register your support of Luke and Noah: 1-800-331-3774.

The Pregnant Man; a challenge to all our stereotypes

In recent weeks, the story of Thomas Beatie, aka "The Pregnant Man," has been everywhere.  I will confess that with my own pregnancy (and accompanying morning sickness) dominating my world, it took an article on Perezhilton.com followed by an article in this week's People Magazine for me to have heard of him, his wife, and their story.

This is the kind of story that I love because it gets us all talking about gender and stereotypes.

In the fifteen years or so that I've been really paying attention, I feel like our country has come a long ways in terms of accepting and understanding gays and the gay lifestyle.  Granted, the fight is not yet won, and we have a lot of ground to gain, but all in all that acceptance of gays is on the upswing.  I do not, however, feel that this is true of transgendered persons.

***********************************************************************

Before I give my take on Beatie, it is perhaps valuable to share my own journey of thought on the topic of transgendered persons in general.

My first experience with a transgendered person was through a friend, who confessed to me that her new boyfriend used to be a she.  He had, she told me, undergone the full gender re-assignment surgery, and now had only male genetalia.  I was profoundly confused and discomforted by this knowledge, and I wanted to understand what would motivate someone to do something so drastic to their body.  Gay, I understood.  But I couldn't understand why someone who had identified as a gay woman would want to then become a man.  I wanted to understand better, but I was smart en0ugh to know that my questions were intrusive, rude, and unless the man in question wanted to be a spokesperson for the Transgendered everywhere, were probably not welcomed.

That was close to 5 or 6 years ago.  In that time, I've tried to read up on the subject; blogs, autobiographies, and as I've met people, I've tried to learn more.

I don't know that I've come as far as I would like to.  I still make certain leaps and assumptions about gender.  I generally assume that someone has a fetish for crossdressing before I assume transgendered.  I still have some ambivalence about transgendered students and their plights at college campuses; which dorm to live in, which bathrooms can they use, etc.

However, I'd at least like to think that I've gained some ground.  If a person tells me what gender they identify as, I've gotten much better about accepting it and just referring to them as that gender,;although the historian/journalist/therapist/whatever in me wants to hear their story and the hows and whys behind their decisions, especially if they have undergone surgery.  I advocate for acceptance and accomodation for transgendered persons, and certainly would stand up for any legal rights they, as a community, were to advocate for.

****************************************************

For many, if not most, of mainstream America, the transgendered present a particular problem because they don't fit into our neat little binomial gender dichotomy. 

Thomas Beatie presents a double problem; firstly he is a man who has not finished undergoing the gender reassignment surgery but is legally male, and secondly he's pregnant. 

Is he a woman or a man?  Legally he's one, biologically he still has the reproductive equipment of the other.  He identifies as a man, but can you accept that when there's a hugely pregnant stomach in front of you.  Some therapists have questioned his commitment to becoming a man because he hasn't undergone the full gender reassignment procedure; which leads me to ask if that which makes you a man or a woman really is what's between your legs?

Is his story touching and a show of his devotion to his wife; that he is having the baby because his wife is physically incapable of doing so?  I'd argue yes.  In fact, I wonder if there isn't a psychic drain on him to be pregnant at all.  Being pregnant is a profound experience, and often a physically uncomfortable experience.  It's also a totally female-identified experience.  For someone who used to identify as female and who rejected it, it must be a psychically uncomfortable space.  I think it takes a deep and abiding love to put yourself through that for the one that you've committed to.

Perhaps the question on your mind is "why be so public?"  I suppose one hand it's impossible not to be-it's not like it looks like a giant beer gut.  There are only three documented cases that I've found of this (the other two cases I found on Google were in Asia)  and this is the first in the US.  Instead, Beatie says that they've elected to be honest to try and bring some positive attention to the community and to make life easier for those who might come afterwards.  I can't imagine that it's easy to be in that kind of spotlight, and I wonder if they ever regret the choice to accept or invite the publicity.

It's a difficult story for the average person to accept from start to finish.  For example Beatie talks about how difficult it was to find a doctor who was willing to inseminate him.  This argues that many OB/GYN's couldn't wrap their brains around the idea of a patient who identifies as and is legally male.  There are also those who question that their child will be brought up in a "normal" family; after all, didn't Dad give birth, making him "Mom"?

I've only had two comments on my question, but I think that in many ways the two commenters represent the views of many of us.  One questioned if they're claiming that the child will be raised in a traditional home because it's true or because it's what they think they need to say, and the other said she considers Beatie a woman.

Personally, I think that all of our lives would be easier if we could step back from the rigid lines we've formed over gender and sexuality.  I know that isn't going to happen any more than Kal Penn is going to show up at my door and offer to be my love slave, but both are still worth contemplating.

I think it takes a lot of courage to do what Beatie is doing, and I wish him and his family the best of luck.   I hope that they are eventually not unique in this experience, and that they eventaully are seen as trailblazing heroes (and not martyrs) to those of us who fight for tolerance and acceptance.

It does, however, ruin a lot of the jokes I like to make about how different life would be if men had the babies.

Sex Everyday?

I was reading on CNN that there's a minister in Florida who's telling his congregation to have sex everyday for a month.  He claims it will lower divorce rates.

Personally, I think it will lead to the opposite.

Anyone who's tried to have sex for a long stretch of time will tell you that several things inevitably happen.  The sex becomes wham bam because after three to five days or so, it becomes about maintaining the streak and not the sexual experience.  As a woman who is VERY wet on a regular basis, I can still tell you that after some number of days my pussy is just too sore to get wet, or that the lubrication doesn't matter and it just freaking hurts.

This is perhaps the most brilliant attempt by the religious right to get us to hate sex that I've ever heard of.  Like anything, overindulgence leads to derision.  It shows the kind of long term planning that only evil geniuses usually are credited with.  Think about it...if one eats nothing but chocolate for days on end, one will go out of one's way to avoid it afterward.  The same applies to sex; do it too much (and everyday for a month is certainly too much) and you'll get tired of it.  I might go so far as to say that I might actually tire of penetration entirely. 

Had they actually wanted to put the spark back into marriages, he would have told the congregation that they could only make out for a month.  Everyday the couple would make time to make out, fully clothed.  After the month, the partners would have been burning to rip each other's clothes off.  There's nothing like a little abstinence to make the body grow fonder.

That's the only kind of abstinence education I think anyone needs.

Ironically, the project also encourages singles to abstain. 

Considering my theory, I think the pastor will be unpleasantly surprised at the end of 30 days.

Edited to add...Rae commented and sent me to this website about a preacher who is encouraging hotter sex rather than sex everyday.  I'll try and post about it individually later this weekend, but for now I'll just say you guys should go check it out.  It's an interesting compare and contrast.

An Open Letter to NY NOW

Dear NY State Chapter of NOW,

I'm all for feminism and sisterhood.  However, it's hard to stand shoulder to shoulder with you after your press release dated January 28.

I'll be honest with you...I realize I'm betraying the sisterhood and all by not voting for the candidate with the vagina, but I just wasn't that crazy about Hilary to begin with.  I understand your need and desire to endorse her though, and I can agree to disagree with you.

But losing your mind when Kennedy endorsed Obama instead of Hilary was a bit....um, hysterical. 

Calling the endorsement "the ultimate betrayal" is a bit melodramatic.  The ultimate betrayal of women in the US is pretty cleanly laid out in a little book called "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood in which, post-nuclear attack, any woman capable of having a baby is turned into a walking womb.  Women can't read, hold jobs, or speak up for their rights.  They have been totally objectified, and even the sex is about procreation, not enjoyment.  Or as I like to call it, life under the Taliban or any number of dictators in the Middle East and/or Africa.  Wholesale endorsement of FGM would be a major betrayal.  Endorsing the other candidate is perhaps not what you wanted, but it's hardly the "ultimate" betrayal.  Unless Teddy-boy had written you a love letter promising to take Hilary to the prom, it's not even a betrayal at all. 

They accuse him of being another "white man who can't or won't handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hilary Clinton."  What about us white women who can't/won't handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hilary Clinton?  Personally, I think she sold out long ago, and over the past 15 years she's gone from a she-ro of mine to someone I don't respect.  I also don't like her chances of getting elected in a race against McCain, who is looking like the Republican to beat.

All in all, the press release reads like the kind of whiny email I'd send to guys after they broke up with me when I was 18.  You know "What did I do wrong?  Why don't you like meeeeee?  Why do you think my friend is preeeetieeeer?"  Snap out of it ladies!  We're not 18 (or at least I'm not) so let's try and be adult about this.

You know, there are women out there who claim that we shouldn't have the right to vote (*cough*AnnCoulter*cough*) and when you put out whiny gender-biased press releases like that, you give those morons some basis in fact. 

When the National Chapter feels the need to bitch-slap you and tell you to shut the fuck up already, you've gone too far.  Yes you want a female president--I'd like one, too.  Personally, I just don't this one.

Seriously...grow the fuck up and get over the fact that he didn't ask your girl to dance.

Thanks ever so much
D_N
(a feminist who thanks her lucky stars she's not a card carrying NOW member)

Vote

Today marks the Iowa Caucus, and the start of the 2008 election year.

As sex bloggers, we need to stop pulling on cock long enough to pull a lever.  You need to vote.  In the primary,  and in the general election.

The reasons are many, but at the end of the day, the issue of privacy will be a major part of the next four years.  Privacy online, privacy in our personal lives, and privacy in the bedroom. 

When Mike Huckabee, the man who just won the Iowa Primary for the Republicans, once compared Homosexuals and Sadomasochists to Pedophiliacs and Necrophiliacs,  I have a good reason for being scared.    When Dennis Kucinich the only Democrat who had the balls to stand up and say that gays should have the right to marry legally in all 50 states isn't even in the running, I have a reason to be concerned.  When Ron Paul claims that he wants government out of people's personal lives, but thinks we should extend fetuses all rights (thus banning abortion completely) and doesn't see that as a contradictory statement, I have a reason to be glad he's also not in the running.

We all have our personal views on taxes, foreign policy, and other non-social issues, but you can't ignore the implications of your candidates views on privacy on your life.  Who you can marry, who you can sleep with, what choices you can make about your body are all privacy issues at the end. 

The only thing that could have made the experience of losing my pregnancy last fall any worse than it already was would have been the government forcing me to go to Canada to get a necessary medical procedure when the miscarriage wasn't passing naturally, or having to undergo questioning by the police for potential manslaughter charges for getting a D&C (which is, technically, an abortion).

Think long and hard before you cast your vote, and then speak.  Even if you disagree with me, I encourage you to vote.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

(BTW-the first person who identifies the show and the episode I'm quoting the last line from correctly gets public recognition in the blog--Sexyhusband, you don't count)

The Full Body Project, or Fat Can be Sexy, Part 2

By now, I hope at least some of you have heard about The Full Body Project, a photography exhibit by Leonard Nimoy, which featured nude women.  Currently on exhibit at the R. Michelson Gallery in Northampton, Massachusetts through January, the photographs feature nude women in poses that mimic famous pieces of art and photography.  It's stirred up controversy as most portraits of nude women don't.

Why?

Because they're fat.

Apparently Fat Naked Women are so revolutionary, so rare, so shocking that we rate media coverage, and not just because it's Mr. Spock doing the photography.

The New York Times covered FBP back in May when the pictures first started circulating, and NPR did 2 interviews with him last week (sorry, both are only available as an audio files) to coincide with exhibit and release of the book connected with FBP.

I had heard about this exhibit a while ago and filed it away at the back of my mind as something to check out when I had time.  But as I was driving home last week, I heard an NPR interview (the second link above) with Leonard Nimoy about it, and in hearing about it again, decided to check it out.

Sexyhusband and I drove out to Northampton yesterday, and found the gallery with ease.  It's right in the middle of downtown Northampton, housed in a former bank.  The exhibit is on the second floor, and as it was a quiet Sunday afternoon, we had the two room exhibit to ourselves for most of the time.

From the first photo on, what struck me was the ease and joy these women felt in their own bodies.  With the exception of one photo, they are totally nude in all of the shots.  In my favorite, their eyes look out defiantly at you, daring you to ignore them.  In others they flirt with the camera, and in still others they allow you to see into the part of them that has been hurt by the kind of society that wants to make them shut up and put some clothes on.

Tears welled in my eyes at least once, and I was filled with happiness, awe, and sorrow.  Happiness that here were women of size, some easily outweighing me by at least 50 pounds, nude, happy, sexual, and visible.  I was awed by the strength of personality and life that Mr. Nimoy showed in these images.  And I was so filled with sorrow that these women were newsworthy; that a fat woman who embraces her sexuality is such a rare commodity in our culture that she is a newsworthy oddity.

One picture that has stuck with me is of a nude skinny African American woman and her plus sized shadow.  It's a visual inversion of the mantra that "inside every fat girl is a skinny girl just waiting to get out."  This shot reminded me that the percentage of American women NOT on a diet at any given moment is microscopic, and perhaps that this picture is truer than the mantra.  Perhaps inside every desperate, paranoid, eats nothing she likes to stay a size 4 or 6 or 8 or 12 woman is a plus sized girl who'd be much happier.

For Sexyhusband, it was equally moving in a different way.  Having married a plus sized woman, he has witnessed first hand the ups and downs of my own comfort with my sexuality and nudity.  There are days when my confidence is high, and I can work an outfit or nothing at all like nobody's business.  And then there are days when I feel heavy, ungainly, unattractive, and everything in my closet only seems to emphasize those negatives.  I hope he'll chime in on comments, because he had a lot to say about sex, women of all sizes, and society.

We purchased the hardcover book from the gallery, signed, which was exciting.  Unfortunately we had missed Mr. Nimoy by only a day, but prior commitments (and the remnants of a hurricane) made the drive to Northampton an impossibility on Saturday.

The woman who inspired FBP was named Heather MacAllister, who unfortunately passed away from ovarian cancer this past February.  She started The Fat Bottomed Revue in San Francisco, and all the models are or were performers in this burlesque troupe.  In the words of a friend, she "literally saved so many of their lives. She helped people who were suicidal and felt worthless and showed them for the first time that they could be powerful and sexy, even if they were fat." 

Heather also notably once said "Any time a fat person gets on a stage to perform and is not the butt of a joke — that’s a political statement."

I only wish I'd had the chance to meet her.  She sounds like an amazing woman, and I now count her as one my sheroes.

As a side note....If you want a chance to catch some of these ladies in action and are near NYC, at least one of these ladies is in Margaret Cho's show called Sensuous Woman, now playing through 11/17.

Which leads me back to the blog post, Fat Can Be Sexy, which, hands down, has gotten the most responses of any post I've written.

I wish I could show these images to every woman who's ever hated her body.  Who has ever been stung by the words "overweight" "obese" or "morbidly obese" by a doctor.  Who has seen a cute outfit and then felt her heart sink when she realized it just doesn't come in her size.  Who has thought she'd never have sex because no one would want her.  Who has used sex to make someone want her because she can't believe anyone would want her on her own merits, so she's easy as a way to validate herself.  Who has ever thought that she'd reel the guy in with her wit, since her body was of no help.  Who has felt invisible as she watches television or movies because there are few fat women out there, and the few women you do see are usually the sexless best friend, the butt of a joke, or without romantic entanglements.  Who has despaired.

If you look, and I mean really look at these women, you don't just see their size.  You see their sexuality.  Which just proves that sexiness starts in the mind, and then moves into the body.  These women's curves are erotic, and I want to touch them, make love to at least two of them, and learn their secrets.  These are erotic high priestesses who have learned the secrets of sexuality, and know it has nothing to do with the numbers on the scale.

In short, these are fat sexy women, and they prove better than I ever could using words, that fat women can be sexy.

What is frustrating is that as I read/listen to the coverage of this exhibit, the writers seem to miss the point.  In the NPR interview I listened to (the Here and Now one), the woman interviewing Mr Nimoy makes the comment that she showed the pictures to a doctor friend of his, who said 'I don't see beauty, I only see morbidity.' (A doctor friend of mine, when I recounted that comment said "I really hate doctors like that who only see a diagnosis and not the person in front of them")  At the end of the NYT article, they make a point of noting that Mr Nimoy finds the fat women beautiful, but isn't sexually attracted to them (why? because he'd be a deviant for that?). 

The bloggers who have commented on the exhibit are far more erudite and interesting than the official articles.  Susan Stinson shared my annoyance at the totally pointless comment at the end of the Times article.  Fat Feminism shows several pictures from the exhibit and comments on her own emotional response to seeing these pictures.  Rizzo wonders if one of the reasons plus sized women are so insecure about their bodies is because men who fancy their body type have been mocked and are afraid to be forthright about it.  All excellent points, by people who "get" the exhibit.

In closing, although the chances that he would ever read this are microscopic, I'd like to address Mr. Nimoy directly.

Mr. Nimoy,

Thank you.

As a woman who has struggled with her weight and her perception of her own sexuality from adolescence onwards, the war to see myself as a sexual creature has been ongoing for over 15 years.  In one exhibit, you both validated that war, and you showed me why I fight for my sexuality.

Seeing The Full Body Project was a life changing moment for me, and I am grateful that you looked at these women and saw beauty.

Thank you,

DN

If you haven't clicked the links  yet, PLEASE go to the full body project site, look at the pictures, and come back to talk about how sexy these fat women are.

The difference between benefit of the doubt and stupidity

I recently read a news article about a dentist in California fighting to keep his license.  And why is his license in danger in the first place?  Because he's arguing that "chest rubs are therapeutic" in the instances of some dental diseases.

One woman complained that he fondled her at least six times over two years.  She started wearing high necked shirts, but he still got under them and her bra.

At which point I wonder if she ever conceived of....I don't know...switching dentists.

I understand why women don't leave abusive husbands/boyfriends/partners, but under what circumstances would a woman not leave a doctor/dentist/whatever if he made her uncomfortable?  If a dentist puts his hands under your shirt (and it's not a welcome touch) pull the little sucky tube out of your mouth and tell him to take his/her hands off you.  Putting up with it six times and continuing to see that person for two years is certainly questionable behavior.

I'm not saying it's her fault, but I do wonder where the line between giving someone the benefit of the doubt and stupid behavior is.  I think she crossed it.

Breastfeeding is lewd and obscene

Breasts are sexy.  The bigger the better.  The more of your tits that your dress shows, the better.  Cleavage is a goal of many women and beloved by all, if you believe the evidenitiary support provided by the media. 

Except, of course, when a woman uses them for their actual purpose.

On one hand, you have the official position of the AMA, which is that breastfeeding is the healthiest source of nutrition for infants; exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, and breast milk as part of the nutrition of 6-12+ month olds.  There's official breastfeeding week (August 1-7 in case you were wondering).  Pennsylvania just became the 39th state to protect a woman's right to breastfeed in public without being harassed, asked to cover up, or asked to leave. (source: Bitch magazine, current issue)  Many hospitals don't even give out information on formula.

Personally, my allergist sat me down and explained to me in depth why I really need to breastfeed any kids that Sexyhusband and I have. (If you care-we both have very severe allergies, and Sexyhusband has fairly severe asthma, and breastfeeding will help our child build a better immune system and lessen the severity of their allergies, although it is still likely that they'll have some.)  Personally I might have preferred formula for the ease factor, but for the health benefits (and the fact that I can continue having a higher calorie count without gaining weight)...and keeping bigger boobs for longer (I never claimed I don't have a shallow streak), I've made the decision to at least try to breastfeed our kids.

So breastfeeding is good, healthy, and many women make the choice to give their infants the (theoretically, at least according to current research) "best" nutritional start that they can, right? 

Yeah, no.

Want to start a shit-storm on a parent blog?  Talk about publicly breastfeeding your kid.  I would bring your attention to this post by Suburban Turmoil (she actually has multiple posts on this topic, and all the comment threads are interesting).  There's also the issue of extended breastfeeding, which Mom 101 discusses here (by the way-I'd encourage you to read all her posts--she's amazing--her other breastfeeding posts are also really interesting).  Oh!  And of course taking babies to restaurants, and then having the utter NERVE to breastfeed them occasionally during the course of the meal, as brought to you by Megnut. **just added**-Or this video from YouTube in response to Bill Maher's remarks comparing breastfeeding to public masturbation (it takes until around the third minute, but then he spends three minutes on the topic). Don't just read the posts---the comments thread is where the real action happens.

Even when your state allows breastfeeding in public, don't think you're safe.  Even if you carry the law around with you.  Even when you're in a "family friendly environment."  Brooke Ryan was in a back booth in the "family friendly" Applebees, and was told to cover up (because when you live in Kentucky, you always have a blanket handy in the middle of summer, and especially when you're allowed to breastfeed publicly), and when she said she couldn't because she didn't have one, she was asked to leave "because someone complained."  My favorite part was when Applebees made a public statement about this incident--"I'm not sure the manager said cover the baby's head, I think he said cover yourself modestly. This was by no means intended as interference, but a request to do it modestly, which I believe is an appropriate response." Um, allow me to explain the mechanics of breastfeeding, wherein if you don't cover the baby's head, your breast is still exposed.  There's nothing to indicate the other boob was hanging out, or that she was being immodest in any way, so this made my eyes roll.  Granted, it's not like I advocated eating at Applebees anyways (the food sucks), but seriously?

Even if your state allows breastfeeding, don't ever consider breastfeeding on a Delta flight.  Emily Gillette learned the hard way that breastfeeding, even in a back row, even next to a window with your husband next to you is disruptive to the safety of a flight.  Even if both the state that you're leaving (Vermont) and the state you're going to (New York) have laws allowing you breastfeed publicly without harassment.  The attendant tried to force her to cover up, and she refused.  Considering how much I screamed when my mom tried to put a blanket over my stroller to protect me from snow, I understand why Ms Gillette might have refused.  Because a screaming 22 month old is so much less dangerous and disruptive than one who is quietly sitting on her mother's lap, breastfeeding to help with the inner ear pressure created by takeoff.

Perhaps you've heard of Victoria's Secret?  They adore breasts, right?  Boobs are their business, right?  Not when there's milk leaking out of them.  In perhaps the most ironic and strange story I've heard of when it comes to moms trying to breastfeed in public, there's the case of Lori Rueger, who was denied permission to breastfeed in a Victoria's Secret dressing room.  Even though Victoria's Secret tried to backpedal and claim that the "official policy" is to always allow moms to breastfeed in the dressing rooms when they request permission to do so, the associate in this particular case told her she should "find a sitter the next time she wants to go shopping" or that she should go next door to Old Navy and "use their bathrooms."  Because an Old Navy bathroom is such a pleasant and sanitary place to feed your child.  Makes me glad I only buy bras at Frederick's of Hollywood and Nordstrom now.  By the way, breastfeeding publicly in Florida?  Also legal.

Do you use Facebook?  Social networking!  The DN is....constant updates?--fun!  Plenty of space to upload pictures of you-in bikinis, in dresses, in all sorts of breast showingish outfits.  A picture of you breastfeeding your newborn that you want to share with you friends and family?  It will be removed as "obscene."  Want to know why?  David shares his correspondence with Facebook on this topic.  I especially find it charming that Facebook does not allow breastfeeding pics, but allows over 350 "pro-anorexia" groups.  David later posted a screen shot of Facebook's pro-breastfeeding group page, which has a charming ad at the to help you know "where to find hot chicks online."  Personally, I chose to close my Facebook account, and in the "why are you leaving" comments I told them that I found their position on breastfeeding unconscionable.

Obviously, the post header was tongue in cheek.  My goal is to raise awareness of how twisted up we as a country are over breastfeeding, and to see what happens when I poll  the sex blogger community.  Perhaps it will have lots of support-after all, sex bloggers love their breasts, especially naked breasts, right?  Or does that partially naked boob with a baby attached to it in the mall make you squick?

Be honest---I want to get a discussion started.

Is breastfeeding publicly acceptable?  What constitutes modest?  Should a woman have to cover up?  Should she have to go into a bathroom or "private" space?  Should she just leave the kid home?  She she just whip it out and continue about her business?  Who gets to decide this?  What are the repercussions if women are harassed while breastfeeding?  Who's most important?  What do you think?

********Let's try and keep the conversation civilized, peoples*****************

This is why I really need to get cracking on my writing

In my continuing coverage of teachers penalized for doing totally legal thing, I bring to you the story of Stephen Murmer (aka Stan Murmur, the butt painter) who was fired for creating art on his own time, under a psuedonym because he used his ass (and other body parts).

This case is demonstrative of why I worry on occasion about maintaining this blog.  He used a different name, did not publically show his face (the one time he made a cable access appearance he work a mask and a turban over his head), and was still fired by his district.

The ACLU has taken up his case as he sues his former school district.

Good for him.

Teacher Contract Item #539--No Dates with Porn Stars

We all know I love to keep abreast of news regarding teachers and sex.  Yesterday I saw an associated press article about Jaison Biagini, a Pennsylvania art teacher and his resignation over a date with a porn star.

According to the articles I've looked up, Mr Biagini called into a radio show (the delightfully titled "Bubba the Love Sponge") and won a date with a porn star named Akira.  He was flown to Florida, had his date with her, and returned to tell the listeners all about it.

"Biagini, who taught art for 14 years at the school, said he entered the contest because he wanted to win the free trip and visit the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg. He described the date as being "all fake and staged."

While I have gone on record plenty of times to advocate for the rights of teachers to live their sexual lives openly, Mr. Biagini deserves an "F" for conduct and effort.  The Dali museum?  Really?  That was the best he could come up with?  The date was "fake and staged"?  Is that code for 'she didn't let me fuck her'?

I'm not sure what is more aggravating-that Biagini came up with a lame excuse, or that he had to resign over the whole thing.

Dude, you won a date with a porn star-who wouldn't go?  I certainly would go.  Sexyhusband would ask if I could come too, and then go.  But grow a pair and admit that you were psyched to meet Akira.  It's not her fault if she didn't live up to your prurient dreams of what she'd be like.  But don't try to turn it around and say you wanted to go to the Dali museum.  I'm a historian and if I could be flown to Virginia to meet a porn star I wouldn't claim that I was doing it to get a chance to see Williamsburg.  I've met fifth graders who think faster on their feet then that.

The resignation is a whole other kettle of fish.  I really wish that the teacher's contracts were a little more clear over what is and is not permissible.  We have learned that one teacher got fired for doing a porn movie back in the days before she was a teacher.  We learned that a substitute can get sued over porn pop ups on some other teacher's computer.  We learned that a union completely supported the NYC teacher who got to pose naked in Playgirl.  And we have learned that a date with a porn star equals pressure to, and eventual resignation.  Exactly what will and will not get me in trouble?  Can I go to a strip club, but not get a lap dance?  What if I get a lap dance, but I keep my hands to myself?  This is the sort of information we need in the contract, not seventeen pages detailing the policy on guns (which should be one line--Don't bring guns to school-you'll get fired, dumbass).

It's sad, really, that one night of "a fake and staged date" will cost Biagini his career.  And yet, I'm not surprised.  Welcome to my Dystopia.

My evolving relationship with sex

Sexyhusband pointed out an article to me today about a team of researchers who are publishing their findings about why we have sex.   The University of Texas team is refining their research detailing why we do and don't have sex.  You can participate in their survey here.  I took it, and thought they're at least asking interesting questions.

Some highlights from the article...

To come up with the list, Meston and Buss asked 444 men and women, age 17 to 52, to list reasons why they, or people they've known, have had sex. They then had 1,500 undergraduate students at UT-Austin rank the reasons on a one-to-five scale of how often they applied to their experiences.

Twenty of the top 25 reasons given were the same for men and women, and the No. 1 for both was "I was attracted to the person."

You needed to do research to find that out????

In all, Meston and colleague David Buss catalogued 237 reasons, the most popular of which predictably involved lust and pleasure. But others ranged from "I wanted to feel closer to God" to "I wanted the attention" to "I wanted to keep my partner from straying."

A few respondents even said they wanted to give someone a sexually transmitted disease.

I'm really hoping I never slept with any of those people!

Meston, who is continuing to collect data for follow-up studies, acknowledged that college students' out-of-control hormones tilt the results. Future studies will focus on other age groups, ethnic groups and religious people.

Again, I'm shocked, SHOCKED to hear that college aged students are engaging in lots of sex and for many different reasons!!!!!

Okay, snark aside, I do think it's an interesting discussion to start having with yourself.  Why do you have sex, why do you not have sex, and how has that changed over the years?  Obviously, I can only really answer for myself.

I have, unfortunately fortunately kept a journal for most of my adult life.  Let us go back and explore the evolution of DN, and why she had sex....

Age 18, the night I lost my virginity---I'm not sure what I'm feeling right now.  X and I took care of that pesky virginity thing.  I'm not sure if we made love or had sex.  Or if it matters which of the two it was.  I hurt. When he entered me it hurt a lot.  I bled.  I'm still bleeding.  Am I totally unreceptive?  I didn't feel anything.  I like being close with him, and I love the way he touches me.  But it wasn't great.  M told me that it would be better next time.  Am I slut?  Or was I just ready to try sex and X was the lucky man?  I mean it's only our second date.  I feel kind of like crying, but only halfway.  I just want it to feel better........Mostly I feel really young and inexperienced.

I don't think we'll need to call in Dr. Freud on this one.  I was 18, scared that I was the last virgin left, and I'd broken up with my first "in love" boyfriend (the one I thought I was going to lose it to) a month before.  I wanted to feel grownup and cared for, so I did what I thought would accomplish that.  Obviously it didn't. 

18 was the effective start of a little period of my life that is best described as having sex for validation.

Witness the journal entry a month after losing my virginity, after a really bad day--I probably haven't had sex in a month because no one wants me.

This is the exact attitude I was railing again in the fat can be sexy post.  I see someone in need of an attitude adjustment.  The sad part is, just an entry previously I'm talking about fitting into a size 16 and whining about it, and 3 sizes bigger and a boatload of confidence later, I just want to give my younger self a hug.

About a year later, I at least took a step in the right direction when I realized something about my freshman boyfriend.  "I wanted the security of a boyfriend.  I didn't love him.  I just wanted to.  He was cute and sweet, but there was no spark."

Unfortunately, that brief moment of insight was followed by the internet boys in other states.  I loved them soooooooo much, and every single one of them was "the one," especially the one who wrote me (bad) poetry.  It was really easy to "fall" for them because they were just one step down from hollywood crushes-slightly more real, but not really any more attainable.  But in a weird way, those relationships all helped to raise my confidence, little by little.

When I was 20, I was my boyfriend at the times first lover.   "I didn't have the intention of letting sex happen.  A little going down, some making out.  You know, all the great 'almost' stuff."  This was the first time I felt like I had some power or control in the relationship.  Unfortunately, I didn't learn that lesson that a woman always has power, and decided that it was because I was a year or two older than my boyfriend.

Before I went abroad, I landed my first completely casual hookup.  "Best of all, he took my mind off France for awhile."  I was learning that sex didn't have to be about validation (at least not all of the time) and could sometimes be about distracting yourself from something unpleasant happening in your life.  I realize that going to France isn't exactly unpleasant, but it was going to the be first time I ever flew on a plane and I was certain I was going to D.I.E.

Of course that summer was when I made my biggest sexual mistake, all because I wanted to nail a European guy. *headdesk*  Almost makes me long for the days of sex as validation.

From there we progress to dating my boss because I was 20 and stupid.  That led into having revenge sex to piss my (ex at least) boss/boyfriend off after he blew me off for New Years.

From there I hooked up with a guy who was sweet to me and would yell at me me when I put myself down.  The problem was that he was doing friends with benefits and I was falling for the only guy who'd ever really forced me to claim my own self worth.  Plus he gave amazing oral.    There were various other men in that period of time that I fucked for reasons ranging from "he's there and I'm bored" to "he's so pretty" to "he wants me"  (which was backsliding, I know). 

Then there are all the men that I don't remember, but I apparently had sex with them, according to my early 20's self.

"I doubt I have much to offer, but a new love affair might just put the spring back in my step and get me in a good mindframe for the long year ahead.  I don't have a lot of time, but hell if I'll be a nun."

I started to wake up to what I was doing around my senior year of college, and I said to my journal that "I jump into sex early-always.  I don't know if it's because of X (the guy I lost my virginity to) and now I feel as though I have to or ifts because I need to prove that I'm tough and don't need anything from them (sex as a protective shied?  you can't hurt me-you're just a fuck?) or I use it as a means of distraction so they won't get too close?.....Sometimes I feel like I'm behind all my friends who've been dealing with dating and sex for years longer than I have.  It's like intellecturally I can hold my own with any adult, but sexually I'm back in high school."

Perhaps it wasn't the most organized thought, but I was starting to think about why I had sex and attempting to identify and weed out the unhealthy reasons.

Then came a downfall.  I met a guy who had big red flags waving around him (just broken up with his girlfriend of 4 years) but because he was "out of my league" attractive, I jumped into a cycle of dating and sex/breakup/be "friends"/starting sleeping together/repeat for a little over a year.  I had no illusions that this was a BAD IDEA, but I did it anyways because I was so over the moon that a brutally hot guy wanted me that I just didn't care if I should want him.  So much for progress.  Luckily, I moved out of state, which finally broke the cycle.

I had one sexual affair when I lived in my new state.  A one night stand, again because the boy was just sooooooo hot that I had to have him.  Luckily, I/we weren't stupid enough to get on the same fucked up merrygoround I'd just gotten off of, and we're still casual friends today.

There's a big gap in my journals, and then I casually mention that I had sex with my first girl.  Two sentences and then I say "I have no interest in pursuing anything with another woman at this time," which is just so pretentious and adorable I have to laugh.

Over the next five years I finally grew out of sex as validation. 

It's funny because the older I've gotten, the simpler sex has become.  When I was 18/19/20, each encounter was such a huge deal and I analyzed it to death.  These days, the only sex I dwell on is the particularly mindblowing experiences.  I don't worry about my sexual orientation anymore, and I've long since learned how to distinguish between sex and love, something I obviously had no grasp of for the longest time.  Every time I fucked a boy I agonized in my journal over whether or not I was in love with him.  If I wasn't, I despaired if it made me slut. 

Reading through those journals really hit home for me, because it made me realize just how screwed up my relationship with sex was.  I also cringed, laughed at myself (I especially love the part when my 19 year old self declared that SHE was never going to get married or have kids because they'd shackle her to the earth when she wanted to soar--I just about fell off my chair laughing), and wanted to give my younger self a hanky and hug and to reassure her it would all get better.

These days, the reasons I have sex are much easier to understand.  They range from raging lust to I'm bored to I'm tired but can't fall asleep.

The reasons I don't have sex are equally easy these days.  I'm sick, or I'm too tired or stressed, and I don't freak when I'm not in the mood. 

I'll be honest that this entry went far off topic from where I was planning, but I've decided to keep it in all its rambling glory. 

I'd be especially interested if anyone else wants to share in the comments about how they've evolved sexually over the years.

Gay Marriage Survives

Last week the Massachusetts Legislature voted to uphold gay marriage, defeating the attempt by a minority of small minded bigots to amend our constitution.  Massachusetts has a fairly complex process to get an amendment on a ballot.  First the citizenry must raise a petition with 3% of the registered voters (in the 100k-120k range) signing it.  Then it must pass through two constitutional conventions with at least 1/4 of the legislature (50 people) supporting it.  Then it goes on the ballot, and if passed, an amendment to the state constitution is passed.

While the naysayers will whine that they didn't get a chance to vote, allow me to explain why it's fair.

1-The ballot initiative raised enough signatures through devious means.  It was made public a while ago that there were people in Harvard Square telling people that they were signing initiatives for other measures like ending dog racing.

2-Each election cycle Massachusetts residents have made a point of getting rid of anti-gay marriage representatives.  For all intents and purposes the Republican party is dead in the state.

3-More than 75% of residents polled recently support gay marriage

4-The anti-marriage proponents had their chance, the process was followed, and the measure was killed.  Suck it up and move on, peoples.

John Adams wrote the Massachusetts State Constitution with broad strokes to ensure equal protection under the law for all.  It led to early elimination of slavery, voting rights for women, and has consistently protected the civil rights of the underclasses.

Gay marriage has been legal here for 3 years.  Massachusetts still has one of the lowest (the lowest, actually, I believe) divorce rates in the country.  Straight marriage endures.  I'm proud to say that Gay marriage does, too.

Does "Abstinence Only" Education have a future?

On May 29, the Washington Post released an article called "Abstinence-only on shaky ground."  In it, they posit that Title V grant (50 Million a year for abstinence-only education) may not be renewed on June 30.

At heart, the issue is that we've seen enough studies to know that abstinence-only doesn't lower the rate of teen sex, and in fact only raises the number of students having unsafe sex.  So the answer should be a no-brainer; we stop throwing 50 million a year at a useless program. 

HOWEVER....

Parents and the current administration LOVE abstinence-only education.  It plays so well with the conservative base politically, so the Republicans have to support it.  Parents want to live in denial about their kids having sex the same way we want to live in denial about our parents having sex. 

Dems generally don't support abstinence only education and we have the majority in the House.  The Senate is iffy and we don't have enough votes to override an almost certain presidential veto. 

What I wonder is if we'll do a compromise or keep ignoring the white elephant in the room.

Cybersex, Online Sexuality, and Female Empowerment

Yesterday I found this article on CNN.com.  It questions whether women's sexual exploration on the web (such as posting sexual imagery of themselves on websites, engaging in cybersex, etc) is empowering or disempowering to young women.  Overall the message is that women who engage in this are "pleasing somebody else ....grasping for attention." and that "If you 'act like a man,' in that sense, you're trying to grab hold of that same kind of power, that same kind of lifestyle -- and claim male privilege...[but]...The problem is, you're still female and it's still a man's world."

As exactly the type of young woman they're talking about, I feel compelled to respond and explore this question myself.

What is empowerment?  Empowerment is control, and the question is who has it when women are sexual online.

I would argue that web-based sexual exploration is empowering.....sometimes.

When done safely, cybering does allow you to experiment with your sexuality.  A major advantage to cybering is that, unless things have REALLY changed in the last year or two, you can't get pregnant from doing it.  You can also explore those sexual urges/fantasies that you're not quite ready to try out in real life.

My first encounter with cybersex was in college.  It was the late 90's and I thought my 14.4 dial up modem kicked serious ass as I sat in my white concrete walled dorm room and explored the world of chat rooms.  Exploring chat rooms naturally evolved into messaging, as the a/s/l requests and pinging from guys was nonstop.  I was curious about BDSM, but I neither had a regular partner nor a friend with benefits who I trusted/was interested in exploring it with me.  I met online "masters" who would cyber me through a scene.  When I had fulfilled my curiosity as much as I could in that medium, I changed my name and moved on.

In 2002 I was introduced to Literotica by an ex of mine.  Within a year I had posted my first online pictures.  None showed my face (and yes they're still there, somewhere-if you interested you can search for them) and the quality of the pictures varies, but it was an exciting experience.  I felt sexy and powerful taking the pictures and posting them.  When the compliments rolled in, it reinforced my identity as a sexual being even though, as a plus sized woman, I didn't fit the national standard of beauty.

Writing erotica expanded my exploration of my own sexuality, and brought in actual fans of my work.  Again, this was an incredibly positive experience for me.  Of course I got negative responses as well, but the good far outweighed the bad.  This was good for my ego and my sexual identity as well, and the eventual result is the blog you're reading today.  If I didn't think writing about my exploration of my sexuality was a positive thing, I wouldn't be doing it in public like this.

However.

The therapist quoted in the article wondered who we (women who engage in online sexual behavior) are doing it for, the potential for backlash, and a fear that women see sexuality as the only way to gain empowerment.

I hate to concede a point, but it takes a certain level of maturity and a developed sense of self for this type of exploration to be healthy or positive.  The first thing you need to understand, completely, is the message you're sending and you must maintain control of that message in order to be empowered.  Girls who dress provocatively at a young age don't actually understand the messages they're sending or what they're asking for.  At 16, hell at 18, I only thought I understood the messages I was sending and I (falsely) thought I was ready for the repercussions when I wasn't.  I agree 100% that 10 year olds shouldn't be dressing like 25 year olds on their way out to a club.   It's frighteningly easy to  lose control, as many teenage girls have found out when their cyberlovers have done harm to them.

The second important tenet of maintaining control is to do it only for yourself.  Applause is great.  I certainly am a comments whore.  It makes my day to get email feedback on a story I've written or a comment on my blog.  Flattering comments fluff my ego, and I smile a little wider at my reflection in the mirror when I get them.  However, I don't write this blog or post stories or pictures to gain anyone's approval in real life or in cyberland.  I realize that I am exploring my sexuality, and if others enjoy what I'm doing it's a bonus, not a raison d'etre.

As far as wanting attention-of course I want some attention.  If I didn't want attention I wouldn't dress provacatively or describe my threesomes in detail.  What's wrong with wanting some attention?  It's not my only source of attention or validation, so where's the harm?

Sexuality is empowering.  It's not a bad thing.  I got a huge kick out of going to clubs in my early twenties and rubbing up against guys on the dance floor and getting free drinks.  I wear fuck me shoes and short skirts for the attention it gets my legs, not because they're comfortable.   Push up bras do nice things to my breasts, but underwire poking into me is hardly my idea of the world's most comfortable clothing.  I don't make the mistake of thinking that my sexuality is the only source of my power, though.  I have a master's degree.  I'm a witty conversationalist.  I have plenty of friends, male and female, who have never witnessed my overtly sexual side and who still respect me (and respect is power).  In addition to that, I can make a loud classroom of pre-teens shut up with the power of my stare alone, which is great for the ego.

Women are constantly changing the boundaries of what's appropriate sexual behavior.  The web has been a big part of this since the late 90's.  Without craigslist it would be hard to be an independent  or dabbler call girl, as some of my friends are.  Without literotica, I might never have tried my hand and erotica, and I would certainly not be as comfortable with my sexuality as I am today.  Suicidegirls and NakkidNerds both post images of women that are outside the Hollywood standard of beauty, which shows young women that there is no one standard of how to look or act to be sexual.

The problem is that the world isn't changing apace with the boundaries we push.  If unmasked, it is unlikely I'd be teaching again, unlike the male teacher in NYC who posed for Playgirl and is still working with his union defending his right to do so all the way.  I'm excited for him, but I'm also bitter because if it were a woman and Playboy, it would be a totally different story.  The truth is that mocking or labelling a woman a whore is the easiest way to take away her power.  There wouldn't be the kind of abuse in the sex industry that women have faced if that weren't true.  If you don't believe me, go check out my friend Wendy's secondary site WHORE and check the stats on violence and sex work.  On some level, at least in Western society, we believe that a woman who steps so far out of place as to put herself on display in public in a sexual manner somehow "deserves it" when she suffers the loss of a job, her safety, or her children.

The double standard for women is alive and well, and as women, when we play online, it's something we need to keep alive at the back of our heads.  It's the big reason the word SAFETY keeps coming up when I talk to people about exploring their sexuality online.

Perhaps the most important thing is that we are aware of the messages we send, and we own that we're sending them.  Women who wear short skirts and fuck me heels and then get pissed at men for whistling at them need to get their Manolos confiscated.  Own your image and be aware of the perception it will cause others to have of you.  This is true online and in real life.  The most disempowering thing a woman can do is to blame others for accepting and reacting to the messages she sends.  To be clear, I'm not saying rape or unwanted advances are acceptable-women need to learn to say "NO" and men need to learn to respect "NO."  But getting worked up over a man staring at your chest when you wear a low cut shirt makes all women look a little stupid.

Let's keep it all in perspective.  Sexuality is good.  Exploring your sexuality through safe mediums like the web is good.  Sex does equal power, but it's not the only source of your power.  Wearing sexual clothes invites sexual attention-and that goes for men and women (if you don't want me checking out your ass, don't wear such tight jeans). 

To quote the eminent Eleanor Roosevelt-No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.

Don't give anyone that permission when it comes to your sexual identity and the ways that you choose to explore it and you will become truly empowered.

Since when is stripping news?

I haven't been paying a lot of attention the news lately.  Yesterday, a story on CNN's website caught my attention.  "Stripping for College Credit" trumpeted the headline.  Intruiged but wary, I clicked the link.  I was rewarded with Jenny Heineman's story.

The short version is that she was abroad and discovered the "underground world of sex workers."  To legitimize her interest in this world, upon her return to the US, she decided to become a stripper and write her thesis on her experience, which you can read part of in the above link.

Ms Heineman is getting a lot of airplay for this "daring" and "revolutionary" exercise in academic justification of a personal interest.

Yawn.

As an academic, the first thing that caught my eye is that she only got a "B" on the thesis.  For the unintiated, a B is a perfectly respectable grade, yes?  Not at all.  If you're going to apply to grad school, you'd better have an "A."  The "B" grade is a consolation prize-a weak effort. 

Reading the text I was able find online, I have to say that I don't think she had any new questions or brought anything new to the table when it comes to the gender/sex equation.

So why all the fuss?  Well, she's a slightly nerdy looking girl with her glasses on (who works at a coffee shop by day) and a fairly attractive stripper by night (and you can see all her tatoos--shocking!).  This makes good airplay.  That she was able to write her thesis on the topic also makes good airplay, especially in the more repressed Midwest.

Personally, if you want an interesting take on stripping, I'd suggest Diablo Cody's book, Candy Girl.

In some ways this piggy backs on last week's article about Media Exploitation of Sex Worker Pasts.  The media likes to take a relatively boring story and sexy it up.

The title of "Stripping for College Credit" while arguably accurate is ridiculously sensational.  I was hoping that some school had added stripping as a gym credit (now there's a class in which I could've gotten an "A" in my sleep with both arms tied behind my back). 

On the other hand, maybe I'm just too jaded.

I suppose it's good that a college could support this as a topic.  Sex work first needs to be mainstreamed and de-mystified before it can be widely accepted as a legitimate career path.  Perhaps it is work like that will help us get there.

Returning to the first hand, it's difficult to see that happening when the media coverage is so shocked and sensationalistic.  All you have to do is watch the clip and listen to the anchor's tone of voice as she narrates the piece.  The clips they chose of the girl and her professor are perhaps not the best or most articulate clips and ending with the girl saying "get to know your local stripper" like a demented cheerleader demeans the whole piece.

One step forward, two steps back, I suppose.

Media Exploitation of a Sex Worker Past

Reading the stories about Louise Wightman, it occurred to me how lasting an impression sex work can have on your life.  Ms Wightman posed as a pyschologist for several years, and has been prosecuted for practicing psychology  without a license.

But.

Every headline, article and news story about her kicks off with two words-"Former Stripper."

Should sex work affect your later life?

I have gone on record before this when the subject was Tericka Dye, a teacher who was fired for having done one porn movie when she was broke and had two small children to take care of.  In that case, I argued that a porn past should have no bearing on someone's ability to get a job in the future.

This case is a little different.  Ms  Wightman was in trouble for violating state law.  You need a valid PhD in Psychology to practice in MA, and Wightman didn't have one.  She was punished.  End of story.  What bothers me is that her status as a former sex worker was the consistent lead in, although her past as a sex worker had no relationship to the content of the story.  Unlike Dye, Wightman's past as a sex worker was totally unrelated to the larger story.

It seems too easy to dismiss this constant referencing of her sex work as a rating ploy.  It makes sense, but I wonder if that's really it.

Rather, I wonder if it isn't that we want to punish any woman who steps out of her proscribed role (that of the monogamous sexual receptacle)?  I worry that our society, for all of its propaganda that women can take control of their sexuality, deep down we really do see women as the people who receive sexual advances and either accept or reject them.  We see them as cravers of monogamy.  So when a woman doesn't do that, when she owns her sexuality, and profits from it, it threatens the social norm, and thus must be punished.

I feel Wightman's story was important.  However, her former status should NEVER have been part of the equation.  The insinuation was that she was dishonest because of her past.  A stripper is a dishonest person, so a former stripper would have no problem screwing over the public?

I'm angry because I feel as though this helps set a precedent.  If you point out a person's sex worker past (or present) it then allows you to dismiss anything they say or think they have little to no ethics.  How does sex work translate to low morality?

It's important to call these sources on this.  Keep an eye on your news and anytime you hear "fomer stripper" (or sex worker) question if that status actually has any bearing on the news.  When it doesn't, write an email to the editor/producer and complain.  Hold the media responsible for the messages it's sending about sex workers.

1984 is approaching

I want to preface this post by stating that I was going to talk about my wild spring break activities (or at least begin to talk about them) and my raging girl-crush.  Instead, when I drifted home in a post-coital haze I was greeted by an email from NARAL in my inbox, to let me know that the Supreme Court has decided to ban late term abortions with no exceptions for a woman's health.  Way to harsh my buzz, Supreme Court.

My thoughts and opinions are towards the end of the post-I think it's important first to give the details for those who don't know much about the procedure.

Here is some information on the D&X procedure (called "partial birth abortion by pro-lifers) and why it's performed and when, courtesy of the Ontario Consultants for Religious Tolerance.

1st Trimester: D&Xs are not performed during the first three months of pregnancy, because there are better ways to perform abortions. There is no need to follow a D&X procedure, because the fetus' head quite small at this stage of gestation and can be quite easily removed from the woman's uterus.

2nd Trimester: D&Xs are very rarely performed in the late second trimester at a time in the pregnancy before the fetus is viable. These, like most abortions, are performed for a variety of reasons, including:

• She is not ready to have a baby for whatever reason and has delayed her decision to have an abortion into the second trimester. As mentioned above, 90% of abortions are done in the first trimester.

• There are mental or physical health problems related to the pregnancy.

• The fetus has been found to be dead, badly malformed, or suffering from a very serious genetic defect. This is often only detectable late in the second trimester.

3rd Trimester: They are also very rarely performed in late pregnancy. The most common justifications at that time are:

• The fetus is dead.

• The fetus is alive, but continued pregnancy would place the woman's life in severe danger.

• The fetus is alive, but continued pregnancy would grievously damage the woman's health and/or disable her.

• The fetus is so malformed that it can never gain consciousness and will die shortly after birth. Many which fall into this category have developed a very severe form of hydrocephalus.

From the Boston Globe Article, I give you the words of dissenting justice (and only female Supreme Court Justice) Ruth Bader Ginsburg-

Today's decision is alarming," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent. She said the ruling "refuses to take ... seriously" previous Supreme Court decisions on abortion.

Ginsburg said the latest decision "tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists."

My thoughts

As the numbers prove, most women who want to get an abortion do so in the first trimester.  However, there are many birth defects that are not detectable until later in a pregnancy, and it's no one else's place to judge a family's decision to raise or not raise a child with those defects.  More to the point, if it came down to choosing between my life and that of an unborn, unviable fetus, you can call me a bitch but I (and my husband) would choose my life.  If the child has died in utero, am I supposed to wait an extra few months before they go in and remove it's dead body?  How psychologically damaging would that be?  What could possibly justify the health risks of waiting to remove it?

While I am uncomfortable with any ban on abortion, the decision to not include exemptions for a woman's health is irresponsible and scary.  This opens the door to banning second trimester abortions entirely.  And then how much longer will it be before we're overturning Roe V. Wade?  Today's decision was a green light to the anti-choice movement that overturning Roe V Wade is an achievable goal.

I'm not really sure what pisses me off more..

1-That the Republican party's platform is that of small government, which does not interfere with the lives of it's citizenry. (No, just my uterus)

or

2-That had we actually woken up to how horrible a President we'd elected earlier, we might have been able to avoid all of this. (Is now a good time to remind all of you that GORE won in '00?)

It is moments like this that recall in vivid detail the increasingly plausible plots of books like 1984 and A Handmaid's Tale.

I really hope that Sandra Day O'Connor is losing sleep over this.  I'm certainly not judging her on her decision to step down and take care of her ailing husband-I would've done the same in her place.  However, she was the one person holding back the tide, and with the appointment of Samuel Alito, she stepped aside and let the anti-woman anti-choice agenda overwhelm a nation that is split 50/50 on this controversial issue.

While the Supreme Court is a necessary and important part of our government, I worry that on many issues, it's simply a question of one person's opinion.  4-5 changed quickly to 5-4, and I don't like the implications.

As a woman, I worry that a panel of 8 men and 1 woman can make life altering decisions about my body and my life.  While I am not in a position to "need" an abortion (married, in decent middle class shape financially) and am, in fact, looking forward to the day I see the little plus sign on a pregnancy test, I am not safe from this decision.  Should something go tragically wrong with that future pregnancy, it could mean my life.  I'm not okay with anyone but my family and my doctor getting to make that choice-and today 9 strangers made it for me.

It seems incomprehensible to me that I could go from the happiness and heights of multiple orgasms to the depths of anger and resentment that I now feel in the space of two short hours, but there it is.

I can only hope that this is the wake up call that reinvigorates the pro-choice movement.  In the 30 or so years since abortion has been legal, we've grown complacent and smug.  If anything positive comes out of this horrible decision, I can pray that it's the sound of a nation's women (and men) waking up and realizing that we're not as safe as we thought we were.  At this critical juncture, the best thing we can do to combat the anti-choice movement and this sort of judgement is to elect a pro-choice candidates in '08.

You think your vote doesn't count?  It does.

I urge you to contact your representatives and let them know where you stand on this issue.  Don't just shake your head and move on.  If you think this doesn't affect you, I'll remind you of a poem by  Pastor Martin Niemöller

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

You can read Ginsburg's dissenting opinion in full here.

Other bloggers worth reading on this topic

• Bitch PhD
• Bradford Plumer
• Lawyers, Guns and Money
• Obsidian Wings
• Tapped
• Talk Left

My thoughts on Circumcision

I have to admit that before I met Sexyhusband, I always just assumed that I would have my sons (not that I'd have any, no sir--I was going to have girls) circumcised.  All but two penises (penii?) in my sexual past were circumcised, and it just seemed like what you're supposed to do.  I also had heard that if an uncircumsized man didn't have good genital hygeine, the extra foreskin would create a deathly smell and there wan an increased risk of infection for him and by extension, his partners.

The truth is that I never really gave it a lot of thought.  The little thought I did give it had a lot more to do with aesthetics than anything else.  Having mostly encountered the "snipped" look, a penis with foreskin just looked...well....weird.  Watching a penis with foreskin become erect reminded me of putting on a sock, but you can't get the toes to line up so it's all sort of floppy at the end.  The mental picture this inspires makes me snicker, even now. 

As most men will tell you, a woman's laughter is not the appropriate reaction to an erect penis.

So, yeah.  Circumcision all the way.

The first uncircumcised penis I saw was in New York, and belonged to a hot guy I met at a get together.  We had one night together and then occasionally ran into each other online or in person.  Since it was hardly any sort of meaningful relationship (or a relationship, period) we never had any in depth talk about the whole foreskin/no foreskin debate. 

I remember that upon removing NYC's boxers, I was surprised and a little unsure of what to do with this unexpected extra bit at the end of Mr. Happy.  NYC gave me some advice, and I was soon manipulating him with zest. 

The second uncircumcised penis belongs to Sexyhusband.  I can't recall the circumstances of my first knowledge of his status, and sadly it's unmemorable enough that neither of us can remember if we talked about it before I saw it or what.  Apparently after the first one, it's all old hat.

I was, however, surprised that when we first started talking about having children that Sexyhusband was very definite that no son of his would be circumcised.  His take is partially ego centric (he's not, so why would he do it to his son).  He's done some research about the pleasure centers located in the tip.  Finally, his exact comment when I asked him for a blog quote is that "it's unnatural, a little...I grew this part of my body, why would you cut it off?"

As I don't possess a penis, I feel like this isn't a battle where I get to pick a side.  I'm fine with Sexyhusband's stance for our sons.  But the truth is, I'm not a hundred percent sure that if for some reason I was a single mom (and the kid wasn't Sexyhusband's---we're veering waaaaaay off into counterfactual land here) what I would do if it were only up to me.

Tomorrow, I promise not to talk about circumcision. 

The circumcision circus continues

NYC has jumped onto the circumcision bandwagon, starting a campaign to convince adult men there to get cut.  Perhaps it's the cynical bitch in me, but I think that the US is perhaps the one place where it's even less likely that men will buy into the campaign than in Africa.

While NYC is promoting male circumcision, today Eritrea banned female circumcision. 

So...class...anyone need help defining irony?

Links to follow tomorrow...I'm going to bed.

Don't want AIDS? Lose the foreskin.

Last week the WHO (World Health Organization) announced that men should be circumcised to better prevent AIDS.  Ironically (or maybe not so) it seems that while it lowers men's risk, it might raise the risk factor for women during the healing period post circumcision.

There were two thoughts that came to mind as I was reading these articles.

1-What adult male would willingly submit to circumcision, especially in a male-dominated culture?

2-So let me get this right--they're advocating male circumcision in the exact same culture where they're demonizing female circumcision?

Nice job doing the research, WHO.  I'd really like to see the ad campaign, because I think your chances of success are extremely low.

Keeping in mind that the campaigns to get men to use condoms were wildly unsuccessful because "real men" don't wear protection in the African cultures, it begs the following question; if wearing a raincoat emasculates you, just what does having your tip snipped do?

I just don't see this going over with any amount of success, do you?

Goodbye Keroack!

My second post on this blog was about Eric Keroack being appointed the head of Family Planning back in November.  Yesterday, my prayers were answered and the asshole resigned.

It is still unclear exactly what's going on.  We know that the state of Massachusetts is investigating him.

Unofficially what has been posted in the American Prospect Blog is that it has something to do with Keroack's theoretical home "practice."  The reporter there says that he called the number listed for Keroack's office and got a home answering machine.  It seems that his "private practice" doesn't actually exist. 

I wonder if it might have something to do with his organization "A Woman's Choice"?  Legal Momentum sent a pregnant volunteer into their offices for "counseling" and has reported that she was given outright incorrect information (such as telling her that getting an abortion can cause breast cancer later in life-there is no such link).  It's certainly potentially actionable if an organization that receives federal funding were to give outright incorrect information.

NARAL and other feminist organizations have already started an online campaign to plead for a more woman-friendly appointment next time.  I signed the petition and sent the email, but in my heart I know the odds aren't great.  Evelyn Kappeler (Keroack's Deputy) has been named interim head of the division, but so far I haven't heard much about her record on women's health issues.

North Dakota, you're dead to me

Dear North Dakota,

We were just getting over that big cohabitation fight, you jerk.  You promised that you would never violate my personal rights like that again.  I was still raw, but we were working on building trust again. 

You lying bastard!

Did you really think I wouldn't find out about it?  You really thought that were doing so well that I wouldn't check up on your legislative sessions every now and again?  Did you actually think that no one would find out about your new law prohibiting teenage girls from getting prenatal care without parental permission?  Dumbass.

I can't believe you actually said, "Vast generations have been born without the type of medical care and prenatal care that we have today.  It's great that people get the treatment early, but we don't need to do something that is going to take away the authority of the parents, who are responsible for paying the bills."

Are you fucking kidding me?

How are you going to feel the first time a girl dies because she didn't get adequate prenatal care?  What about the incest victim whose parents refuse to get her prenatal care?  She's just property until she's 18, right?  She doesn't deserve any rights?  And, seriously, it's the girl's parents who should be totally responsible for the pregnant girl's medical care?  Way to send a message to the boys and men of your state, creep.

How dare you pull this on me?  Did you think just because you're allowing teenagers to get confidential medical help for substance abuse or STD's that I'd let the whole 'no prenatal care without permission' thing slide?  No fucking way.

That's it, ND.  Pack up your world's largest historical quilt, your zombie golf player (which I never liked anyways, what do you think of THAT?), and give up your stupid attempts to claim Garrison as the walleye capital of the world (we all know it's really in Minnesota, who I think is waaaaay cuter than you) and go.  Get out of my life, I never want to see you again.

You're dead to me, North Dakota.

~DN

For more serious coverage of the same article, go read Bitch PhD (who you should read all the time anyways).

Internet Porn Laws and the Courts

On Thursday CNN posted a story about how a Pennsylvania Court struck down the 1998 Child Online Protection Act.  The act applied to commercial websites that allowed "children to access sites that are harmful to minors by contemporary standards," requiring them to have their subscribers prove via credit card number or some other means that they were over the age of 18.  At issue were the intentionally vague usage of "harmful to minors" and "by contemporary standards."

One might wonder if Hershey's website could be indicted.  After all, they promote the consumption of sweets which make our children obese, which is certainly harmful when you consider the large number of health problems a high BMI engenders.  Contemporary standards regarding health are exorcising all those yummy ice cream sandwiches and Coke machines from our school.  Doesn't the existence of Hershey's and their insidious "Create Your Own M&M Character Game", hurt our children and influence them to do things that are bad?  I would argue that it does, and we should slap the CEO and the webmaster with the 50K fine and the 6 month jail sentence the law allowed post haste.

The court argued that the wording was much too vague and that it's the job of parents, and federally mandated filters in public schools and libraries (if they receive certain types of funding) to decide what is and is not appropriate.

Personally, I would want my teens on sites like Scarletteen.com and would abhor the idea of them spending time on the Republican National Convention's homepage.  But that's my and Sexyhusband's point of view.  We respect that others may not want their children learning about sex, and upping the filters on their home system.

It was also pointed out that parents have more to worry about than Porn.  The number of abuse cases resulting from sites like myspace are overwhelming.  Having been in the room and hearing students talk (it's amazing how much I seem to resemble furniture to them) about their myspace profiles I can tell you that many of the "sexy 17 year olds" are actually 14 and have no fucking idea of what they're experimenting with.

In the end, the cleverest filters can be gotten around.  My friends and I figured out after about 15 minutes how to disable the v-chip so we could watch fuzzy porn and how to re-enable it before our parents got home.  All of know where our parents hid the porn, and occasionally indulged in it.  Kids today have figured how to use mom's credit card number to create an account on sites that require age verification without a charge, how to disable and then reenable the filters at home, how to clear parts of the history, or what their parent's passwords are so they can use an account that doesn't have the filters.  Oh yeah, and they know where YOUR porn is, too.

This law was impractical beyond the fact that it used language that was way too vague.  Firstly, it only applied to businesses based in the US.  If you didn't want your site to be held to this standard, all you had to do was move your main server out of the US.  Secondly, the proofs of ID it mentioned were superficial at best.  There are many under 18's with credit cards and many over 18's without them.  Not to mention that it isn't all that hard to "borrow" a credit card for five minutes.  Having a credit card is hardly solid proof that you're of age.  Thirdly, it only applied to commercial websites.  I could, theoretically, host this site on our server, and give step by step instructions in how to blow a guy (with pictures and video) and I would not be prosecutable since I'm not a commercial site.  Finally, most commercial sites require you to pay money anyways.  If your kid subscribes to Jenna Jameson's website and you don't notice the charge on your credit card--bravo to them for taking advantage of you.

The Internet is a vast sea of information.  But it isn't the state's job to decide what is and is not appropriate.  I shudder to think what this administration specifically would define as appropriate and inappropriate.  Allowing a law like this is the first step on the slippery slope to the sort of restrictions you find in China.  I congratulate the court for striking down a law that trampled all over the rights of adults in a sorry attempt to protect children.

We spend so much time trying to "protect" kids from sex, specifically, that it's no wonder that we have high teen pregnancy rates, high rates of STD infections in the 15-19 crowd, and all sorts of misinformation about sex out there.  Kids are curious about sex, and you really have no way of stopping them from finding out information.  Sexuality is an intrinsic part of being human.  And while I agree that six year olds shouldn't be conversant in the latest porn stars, I think it's unrealistic to think your teenagers aren't interested. 

As the judge said, "parents can protect their children through software filters and other less restrictive means that do not limit the rights of others to free speech." 

If you're a parent and want to "protect" your kids, allow me to give you some advice.  This advice is the result of overhearing how kids get around you.

• Don't allow them to have a computer with Internet access in their room.  Keep the computer that they use in a public space with the screen pointing outwards into a room like the living room where it's very easy to see what they're looking at.
• Change your passwords frequently, and for god's sake don't leave them on a scrap of paper next to the computer.  You'd be shocked how much I heard this one.  The kids knew their parent's passwords and it gave them unlimited access.
• Talk to them about your values and why you hold them.  I have said this one over and over to parents who have asked me, in my position as a teacher, what I thought about myspace and such.  Then they got all embarrassed or gave the kid an ultimatum and wouldn't discuss it.  Children from the age of 10 (the youngest I've taught for any amount of time) and up are capable of understanding what you're saying.  They know in a heartbeat when you're bullshitting them, and they don't always call you on it-but they do lose respect over it.
• Learn how to work (really work) the parental controls and lock them down to the level that you're comfortable at. 

No one ever said being a parent was easy.  But it's your job to parent your kids.  Don't take away my rights to freedom of expression because you're worried that your unsupervised seven year old will stumble across your stories on literotica.

Medically Accurate Sex Education

I've previously blogged about what sex ed can look like when it's fucked up by the moral majority.  I mentioned that my students were taking a sex ed course, thankfully not taught by me (me, teaching a room full of ten year old boys about sex--I suppose the seventh circle of hell could be worse, but I'm not quite convinced).  However, our sex ed teacher was fired for handing out condoms at the high school, so no more sex ed for us, either.

With that in mind, I decided to pass along a link to a petition that I received from NARAL today.  You can go here to petition your congressperson to support the "REAL" act.  I've reposted the body of the letter below.

It’s hard to believe, but there is no federal sex-education program. Yet, for the past 10 years, anti-choice activists have spent more than $1 billion of your tax dollars on unproven, dangerous “abstinence-only” programs that censor teachers from discussing contraception.

The Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act would establish the first federal sex-education program.  The legislation has been led by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT). Compared to President Bush’s abstinence-only programs that censor, mislead, and misinform, responsible sex education teaches young people about abstinence and contraception, and is proven to reduce unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases among teens. 

I don't usually urge people to sign petitions or pass along stuff like this, but this is the exception to my rule.  I truly believe that we owe it to our kids to educate them properly about sex and the choices they make with regard to their sexual safety, health and well-being. 

The cynical part of me doesn't actually think it has a chance of passing under this administration, but one can hope.

Who's afraid of the big bad word?

Three high school students were suspended for saying the word "Vagina" during a skit from The Vagina Monologues.  This was so ludicrous to me when I read about it that the following scene from "Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail" came to mind.

These girls are their school's Knights who say "Nee!"

The three honor students were told that using the word "vagina" was innapropriate because there were students younger than high school age attending.  The girls chose to ignore their principal's request, calling it censorship.  The parents and faculty at the high school have circulated petitions to support the girls, and Eve Ensler herself called up the girls to congratulate them for taking a stand.

I really have to wonder what is so terrible about the word "vagina."  Sure, it's not the world's most friendly word (as I've stated previously) but why does it seem to have this power (not unlike "nee!") to make others cringe before the speaker in pain and fear?

I'm just theorizing here, but I wonder if for men it's a scary word because it's the source of a woman's power?  I realize it's not politically correct for me to say this, but a woman's power is inherently related to her sexuality.  The most documented way that a woman gains (and loses) power is through her sexuality.  Marie Antoinette, Veronica Franco, Cleopatra, Theodosia, Madonna, Kate Millet, Betty Freidan, and Monica Lewinsky are all examples of this.  The vagina is also a mystery to most men.  The reason that the scene in "South Park, Bigger, Longer and Uncut" where they go searching for the clitoris (as if it were a mystical magical creature) is funny is because there's some truth in it.  The clit is the only body part, in men or women that is created solely for pleasure, and there are those who find that intimidating.

It's ironic that it's almost for the same reason that women are intimidated by it.  Women have been told that it's bad "down there."  We're given commercials that ask us about our "no so fresh feeling" and given douches that can make our pussy smell like a pine forest or some other bullshit scent.  If you grow up Catholic, you grow up with the idea of Original Sin (that Eve lost us the garden of Eden by giving into the temptation of the serpent and eating from the tree of knowledge) which will certainly give you cause to be ashamed of your body.  As adults we often downplay our looks because we're worried that if we don't, we won't be taken seriously.

I'm not arguing that the woman dressed in tight clothes with men trying to fuck her is the most powerful woman in the world, although she does have power.  What I am saying is that your self confidence is what fuels your power.  Knowing your body and being friends with your clit and your vagina enhances that self confidence, and makes you more powerful.  Being at war or ignoring that part of your body lessens you.

We have so many hangups that seem so silly when we take them out and examine them in the light of day.  What's so scary about this word? 

I think it's time to take a page from The Vagina Monologues show and ask all of you to say it with me.

Vagina.

Vagina.

Vagina.

Own the word.  Live it, love it, and for god's sake, stop cringing when people use it. 

Living in Sin

"Boy, I'd like to see the state come and try and split us up." -Helen Vetter, an 82 year old woman who lives with her 87 year old boyfriend.

No need to worry anymore, Mrs Vetter.  North Dakota has repealed its co-habitation law.  Normally this would be a story about getting a stupid outdated law off the books.  What makes it bloggable is that it took three sucessive legislative sessions to do it.  The two sessions previous to this one, organizations like North Dakota Family Alliance managed to convince the legislature to let the law stand.

While the law, which equated living with someone you're not married to with incest, rape and adultery, was not often enforced, it occasionally was.  Allow me to share the story of Debora Hobbs, who was a 911 operator forced to quit her job in 2004 because she was living with her boyfriend at the time.  She had lived with her boyfriend for 3 years prior to that, but was told by the sherrif that to keep her job, she would have to move out, quit, or get married.  She quit, and then sued the county.  According to this article from the Washington Post, in January of 2005, the legislature voted to keep cohabitation as a class 2 misdemeanor with a vote of 52 to 37, so I guess her suit was not successful.

This month the legislature again took up the measure.  The State Senate passed the law 35 to 10, and the House passed it with the much more narrow vote of 48 to 41.  The opponents claim that while they don't actually care if the law is enforced they want to keep it on the books to set a moral standard.

North Dakota apparently felt that the correct moral standard to set is the walk of shame.  Why live with a man when you can just slink out of his house with last night's mascara still clinging to your eyelid?  Why live with a woman when the state encourages you to fuck and leave?

Okay, so they don't specifically advocate that, but I didn't find a law that says it's illegal to fuck someone you're not married to (assuming they're not married to anyone else), so how else do you get your jollies?

New License Plate--North Dakota---The Walk of Moral Victory State

I've had some nightmare roommates in my time.  I was always grateful to escape their cleaning product closet of doom (he turned our pantry into his cleaning product storage area-no potato chips, only rows and rows of everything from Lysol to Tide to shit I'd never seen before or since), or waist high pile of dirty clothes (that I was worried would one day fall on my cat and kill her), or stupid questions (how do you get the shell off the egg now that I've boiled it?) to the relative peace and calm of my room.  As a married woman, I can tell you that escaping to the office for peace and quiet only allows you to confront your husbands massive mountains of opened mail mixed with computer drives with a few unlabelled cd's thrown in for good measure.  There is no escape from one another.

Living with someone forces you to confront, in glaring technicolor, just what kind of a slob your snugglebunny truly is.  Does he even own a mop?  Has he ever used the broom his mom bought for him?  How long does it take until he actually puts his dirty dishes away?  Can you hold out against the socks on the floor next to the hamper?  Do her tampons sitting right there in plain sight freak you out?  Does the assortment of unidentifiable paraphenalia she uses to apply her makeup make you want to grow a beard and pound your chest to re-establish your manhood?  For that matter, does the way that they want sex at 2 am (usually so cute on the weekend) piss you off on Wednesdays?

Marriage is an institute of the state.  If you want to understand exactly how it evolved as such in this country, the best resource I can provide you with is Public Vows by Nancy Cott, a surprisingly readable history of American marriage.  If you don't feel that the state needs to sanction your relationship and you're not particularly interested in religion, what reason do you have to get married?  Or, if you're Helen Vetter, you're in your 80's and need your deceased husband's pension?  Perhaps you've taken your own moral stance, like the  Rev. Robert Hirschfeld, rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst, Massachusetts, who decided to perform no straight marriages until your church accepts gay marriages.

Roadtesting your spouse is hardly the first sign of the apocalypse.  I'm glad to see that North Dakota has finally figured that out.  However, I have bad news for those of you in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia--it's still illegal there.

Let's file these under stupid

I was going to do a sex and politics entry today, but it's so hard to pick which of these stories I should cover first.  They all fall into the category of "seriously, you have nothing better to do than this?"

So, I'll let you decide.  There's a poll to the right of this post.  Vote and tell me which one you'd most like to hear me rip to pieces.

A teacher is being threatened with firing if he doesn't leave a community theater production of "The Full Monty" because he bares his ass for a few seconds in the production.  "Teachers are held to a higher standard," says an authority.

Some women apparently would take a closet of new clothes over sex.  No one asked me.  Although they didn't say what kind of clothes....

The legislation of North Dakota finally decided that it is not illegal to cohabitate with someone outside of marriage.  What makes it a stupid story is that it took the legislation three tries to finally decriminalize it (yes, they voted to keep the law twice since 2000).  Beware to those still living in Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia, where the law is still on the books.

Three high school students were suspended for saying vagina as part of a skit from the Vagina Monologues. 

In North Carolina your store can sell adult videos, or it can sell sex toys, but if it sells both, you're under arrest.

Teacher Fired over Porn Pop Ups

Have you heard about Julie Amero's conviction for showing pornography to 7th graders? 

Ms Amero is a substitute teacher from Windham, Connecticut.  She was subbing a 7th grade class at a middle school, and the story goes that she checked her email and left the class with another teacher to go to the bathroom.  When she got back, the other teacher was gone, and some girls were on the computer.

Amero says she chased the students away and started class. But later, she says, pornographic images started popping up on the computer screen by themselves. She says she tried to click the images off, but they kept returning, and she was under strict orders not to shut the computer off.

She has since been fired and convicted of showing lewd images to minors, which could mean up to 40 years in jail.  That's after they dropped six of the possible ten charges against her.

I have mixed feelings over the case, which is one of the reasons I've hesitated blogging about it.  I want to be wholly on her side, but I just can't be.  I'm not surprised that  she saw the images come up and tried to click them off and they kept coming showing up.  That's the nature of pop ups and it takes someone with some computer skill to get rid of spyware.  She says she'd been forbidden to turn off the computer.  So Amero claims she was unable to stop it.   Which is where she loses me.  However, the handling of this case is a mockery of our codified notions of "justice."

The first thing that bothers me about how this case is being handled in the media is that they keep calling her a teacher, when she is a substitute.  Don't think there's a difference?  A substitute teacher need only be over 18 and have a high school diploma.  They are, largely, warm bodies with little to no control over the students.  A certified teacher needs a BA (and I believe CT also requires a Masters), passed examinations in content and theory, and has a solid relationship with her/his students that's built over the course of a year.  This isn't to say that I don't respect substitutes, but calling Ms Amero a teacher without the sub qualifier raises people's expectations of her abilities.

The second major issue is that it feels as though Ms Amero wasn't given due process.  When someone is accused of a crime, the prosecution has to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the accused has committed it .   As you read more and more about the trial, it doesn't feel like that.  It feels like a witch hunt.

The parents are all up in arms that their precious children saw porn and the district needs a scapegoat-but who's really to blame?

Is it Amero?  Even if she was scared to turn off the computer, there's turning off the monitor, which isn't the same thing.  Beyond that, there's such a thing as extenuating circumstances, where you ignore what you've been told to do.  This would count as extenuating circumstances in my book.  So fine, she has the common sense of a goldfish.  Is it reason enough to send her jail over it?

The cops fucked up with their procedures.  They never checked for spyware (which was present  on the computer).  They said someone had searched for porn sites on the computer.  What no one has reported was whether or not they could isolate when that search occurred.  Ms Amero says she merely checked her email and then went to the bathroom.  I doubt that the other teacher would've looked for porn, but I would be money that a group of 7th graders  would be dumb enough to do it.  Beyond that, can they prove beyond reasonable doubt that it was Ms Amero who did the search?  I haven't seen compelling evidence yet.

The district had no firewall and no anti-virus software.  Shouldn't that mean that it's their own fault?  I've worked in several districts between my work as an aide, a student teacher, and a full teacher.  Every district had hard-core anti virus ware, pop up blockers, and wouldn't even let you view certain types of pages (in fact, my current district blocks Dooce for no reason that I can actually fathom) for a variety of reasons.  It's irresponsible of any school to not have this sort of front-line defense.

Ms. Amero's defense team for not telling the prosecution that they'd hired a consultant who figured out that the school had no protection, therefore causing that highly useful information to be inadmissible in court?

The kids?  I'm going to take a wild leap and say it's more than 70% likely they weren't supposed to be on the computer in the first place.  It's decent odds that they did the search to activate the spyware, and they're the ones who reported it and got the teacher in trouble.  I'm least likely to support this one, but I'm going to put it out there.

There are stupid mistakes, and we all make them.  Firing Ms Amero feels like an overstep--it's not like she was projecting it onto the whiteboard for a nice full image anatomy lesson.  Suing her is a bit extreme and 40 years in jail is just plain stupid.  This feels like an overreaction on everyone's part.

I truly feel sorry for Ms Amero mostly because as a substitute she's not entitled to protection from the union.  If she were a full teacher, the union would be having a field day with this and they certainly wouldn't have made the type of amateur mistakes her legal defense team has made.  By making a substitute the scapegoat the district, the cops and the parents all get to be righteous and one person gets more than her fair share of the blame.

I don't have much respect for her, but I do pity her.

If you're interested in reading more, Wired has an excellent editorial on the case

Why is my sex ed class so sticky?

Sexyhusband pointed me towards this column from yesterday's Washington Post. 

Think back to how you learned about the spread of STD's.  How much of an impact did it make on you?  Some adult standing at the front of the room trying to scare you into abstinence, or at least into thinking twice before jumping the hottie in the tight jordache jeans two rows up from you.  I'm guessing there were a lot of statistics given, none of which you wrote down because you were too busy trying to decide which member of New Kids on the Block was dreamier.  Or maybe, just maybe, you were asked to chew some gum.

No gum?

You obviously didn't go to school in Montgomery County, Maryland.  For the past nine years, high school students were asked to pass a piece of bubble gum around the room, each of them taking some time to chew it.

No bubble gum?  What about Ex-Lax?

Imagine your teacher giving you a piece of chocolate.  mmmmm----chocolate.  Sorry, anyways, the teacher gives you chocolate and tells you it represents a person you could have sex with.  You can choose to eat the chocolate or not.  BUT...three pieces of chocolate have ex-lax in them.  Do you still want to have sex with eat your chocolate?

Ok, as a teacher I'm tempted to do this one, if only to see the looks on their faces.

I get the point of these games.  More than spewing stats at them, it shows them, viscerally, how disease is spread and that you take a risk everytime you have sex.  Okay, that's all true, and it's something I'd want my kids to think about before they start hitting the sheets.

But let's just start with "ew" and move from there.

Firstly, I find it a testament to the power of peer pressure and mob mentality that these kids didn't flat out refuse to chew someone else's gum.  They're high school kids.  And in case you don't remember being a teen-they're really opinionated and usually don't have trouble refusing to do things.  Like their homework.  This game was played for NINE years, and it's only this year that parents are writing the school board?

Secondly, I'm reminded of this little known concept known as Separation of Church and State.  A religious group was funding this farce, and not the school department.  I know that the budget's tight, but really, you couldn't force ask the teachers to do it themselves?  You know...those people who are qualified to stand in front of a group of kids and transmit information, for which they are paid money?  I'm pretty sure that's my job description.

Finally, did it ever occur to someone that chewing the same gum as another person is sharing bodily fluids?  While few if any STD's are passed from kissing, you can get the flu, a cold, certain types of herpes, and mono from sharing spit.  Beyond being gross, it's not hygienic.  Considering how many times a year I get sick just from breathing the same air my little germ factories, I can't imagine how many students caught a cold from this activity each year.

So what have learned today class?  We've learned that some people when pushed to, will chew someone else's gum.  We've learned that ex-lax has the power to make chocolate less appetizing.  We've learned that Maryland is a fucked up place to have your kids learn about sex.  And we've learned that Deliciously Naughty has finally been pulled over to the dark side and begun to use her strikethrough effect.

Class dismissed.

BTW-in a charming tradition in the Northeast, my school is on vacation next week.  I'm out of town over the weekend and will possibly not be posting.  Check back often and leave a comment or two.

Mommy, I know what a hoohah is, but what's a Vagina?

I've never been a fan of the word "Vagina," as it is a cold and medical term for a warm and wet lovely place.  However, hoohah is by far a more offensive and infantile term, as urbandictionary.com tells us.  The original definition for "hoohah"  though is "an uproarious commotion" according to dictionary.com. 

Of course, all things considered, choosing hoohah (see  original definition above) as a substitute for vagina in this case is ironic.

For those of you who missed the blurbs in your local paper, some moron in Florida drove past a theater where "The Vagina Monologues" was playing.  Her niece apparently asked her what a vagina was, and she was so embarassed by the question that she called up the theater to complain and demand they call it something else.

I have several questions...

1-The little girl was old enough to be able to read the word "vagina" and decode it properly.  I would argue that this would put her at, bare minimum 6 years of age or older, most likely 7-8 or older.  How has a 6+ year old girl in this country never heard the word vagina?  She has one. 

2-Did the girl seriously ask her mom "what's this called" and her mom answered "a hoohah?" 

3-And in that case, does changing the title to "The Hoohah Monologues" clarify things for the little girl so that instead of asking "what's a vagina?," she can instead ask the better question of "What's a monologue?" thereby increasing her vocabulary further?

4-The aunt who was driving the car presumably also has a vagina.  Is her inability to verbalize what a vagina is the reason she was with a niece and not a daughter of her own? 

5-Will the law students putting on the show deman that the audience shriek "hoohah" instead of "vagina" at the start of the show?

6-Can I buy the aunt a ticket to the show in a public service effort to help her accept her own body as beautiful and to help her ponder the important question of "If you vagina could wear any outfit, what would it wear?"

7-Was the manager of the theater trying for a highbrow joke that no one is getting or did they really think that it's more appropriate to use a derogatory slang term rather than vagina?

3-Considering that "hoohah" is slang for either male or female genetalia, could people possibly mistake it for a new set of monologues from/about penises?

So many questions...not enough time to vocalize them all.

By the way-The Vagina Monologues is playing somewhere near you this weekend.  Go here to find the location nearest you.  All proceeds from the show go to a local women's shelter or other women-related charity.

Pregnant Inmates

Here's an article discussing the issues of pregnant inmates.  Specifically, that female inmates (even the pregnant ones) are given the same physical responsibilities of male inmates.  In many cases, it can cause the woman to give birth prematurely or miscarry.  There is an appalling lack of adequate prenatal care for these women.

While I'm not saying that pregnant women should get special treatment if they're in jail, I am saying that the physical limitations of pregnancy should be taken into account.  All inmates, male or female should be given adequate medical care.  Pregnant women and their infant children deserve better than adequate and certainly better than the subpar care that they do get.

Sorry for the lame post tonight--I just don't have the mojo working.

When is it rape?

According to this article in Time Magazine, the law in Maryland or North Carolina regarding rape is "when a woman says yes, she can't take it back once sex has begun--or, at least, she can't call the act rape."

"If the law doesn't recognize a woman's right to say no during sex, they say, there is no recourse for a woman who begins to feel pain or who learns her partner isn't wearing a condom or has HIV."

This scares me.  I am lucky-I have never been raped.  One in every six American women will experience sexual assault, and a rape occurs every two and a half minutes, according to RAINN.  In college I heard plenty of stories from my classmates about negative sexual experiences, many of which I'd have called date rape.  Most went unreported.  If the law isn't even on your side, how much less likely are you to report a rape?

This law is attempting to draw a legal line between a victim and a cock tease (although they wouldn't call it that).  The true victim of a rape is the girl who said no all along.  A cock tease who said yes, and then has the audacity to change her mind-well, she just got what she deserved.

I'm not going to go so far as to say that a woman has the right to do whatever she wants and expect no consequences whatsoever.  If I dress in a short tight skirt and high heels I know I'm sending out a signal that I want attention of a sexual nature.  HOWEVER, this does not mean I am obligated to fuck any guy who buys me a drink, dances with me, kisses me, or even gets a blow job from me.

Like most women, there are times when I have been engaged in foreplay and consented to sex and for some reason, I lose the mood.  Once or twice it was because a ragged nail scratched my clit.  On occasion, my head just falls out of the game and I start thinking about the laundry or my to do list or the new episode of Ugly Betty.  It's rarely the fault of my partner, although on more than one occasion it has been.  The point is that I've lost interest in sex mid foreplay, and I've asked my partner to stop. 

I can only think of one occasion when my partner wasn't empathetic to me.  I was accused of being a tease and the guy put on his pants, left, and never called me again.  Not that I was interested in repeating my experience with him.

What makes me annoyed is the same phenomenon I discussed in this entry, where I rant about sexual stereotypes-specifically the ones that paint men as sex-crazed animals and women as receptacles of that lust.  On some level, these laws seem to think that there is a point where men can't stop (and in fact a man is quoted as saying something along those lines in the article) and that they shouldn't be penalized for that.  This only furthers stereotypes about sexual desire and physical need.  Perhaps the men in these cases will start calling it the "blue-balls defense?"

At the end of the day, if a woman changes her mind, she deserves to have her partner stop.  Her partner can be annoyed about it.  But seriously, grow up and go masturbate. 

What about the circumstances described in the italicized quote-pain, refusal to wear a condom, HIV?  Those are situations where a woman should be applauded for saying no.

Everyone should feel safe to say it, and it should have impact.  If states like Maryland and North Carolina take that away, then who's to say where it ends?  Will we too one day have a case  like the one in Italy where a Supreme Court Justice will say "it wasn't rape...her jeans were too tight for another person to take off without help?"

No means no, no matter when you say it.

Thoughts on Prostitution

I've been giving a lot of thought to prostitution.  The pros and cons, the issues with legalizing it, and why feminists don't support prostitution.  Wendy did two entries on feminism and the sex trade recently and that spurred me to finally put the proverbial pen to paper on the topic as well.

I have been a feminist since I was too little to know what a feminist is.  A favorite story that my mom has trotted out over the years is how when a little boy tried to kiss me I responded by kicking him with my shiny mary jane.  I purposely chose a college based upon their reputation for women taking male-dominated majors (at the time I was an international business major, which changed eventually) and moving onto grad school.  I've always believed in female equality (and that the ERA should have passed) and strongly feel that the 14th amendment isn't enough.

So with this history as a self-identified feminist, it has been challenging to juxtapose my stance as a feminist and my views on the sex trade.  NOW and many other organizations like it claim that prostitution is exploitative to women.  They cite cases that support this view, such as streetwalkers who are under the control of their johns and child prostitutes.  It is hard to deny that women who are turned into drug addicts by their johns, beat up by their johns, or raped repeatedly every night are being exploited.  They are.  Little girls should be playing with dolls and learning how to french braid their hair (or play baseball, whatever) instead of how to give a blow job.  These are women who are being exploited.

But a little voice pops up in my head and asks the following-"What about all the women who aren't exploited by being a prostitute?"

As a historian (like I said, the major changed), the courtesans of Renaissance Europe come to mind.  By virtue of their societal position, they were the most educated women of their time.  To be both mental and erotic companion to the high ranking men of their time, they learned languages, read the classics, learned math and geography among others.  They were the power behind many a throne.  They published books.  They were undoubtably powerful women.  You can make the argument that the Inquisition went gunning for them, and that would be true, but there is a period of several hundred years where they had power.

Let us examine a more current phenomenon.  The dabbling prostitute.  With the advent of the internet, girls have the ability to set themselves up as an independent call girl.  They set the rules for screening, their rates, and decide how often they'll take clients.  These girls can do it as an add on to their day job, or as their day job.  Having met a few of these girls in real life, and as a reader of girls who blog about this, I can tell you that they are strong and smart businesswomen.  They are not the pathetic picture that NOW paints, but rather the girl next door.  To be blunt-they could live across the hall from you and you'd never know it.

What about the high end escort?  There are plenty of women today who call themselves modern day courtesans and charge upwards of several thousand dollars for a weekend with them.  They have clients.  They live luxurious lives.  Eventually most of them make enough to retire with a sweet nest egg.  Again, hardly exploited.

From a purely free market perspective, prostitution is all about supply and demand.  There is demand.  It is ridiculous to think that you can make the supply go away.  It is, quite frankly, relatively easy money to earn.  The girls that I talked to in person averaged 250-350 an hour for their time.  They all told me that once you build your client base, you can raise your rates to 500 an hour, no problem.  If there wasn't such a high demand, girls couldn't get that kind of money.  Making it illicit and/or illegal might even have driven the prices up.  I don't know what girls in Holland charge, so I can't make a comparison on that basis, but I think it's an interesting theory.

In many ways, the sex trade is perhaps one of the most empowering industries a woman can work in if she's smart.  It is a female dominated profession (no disrespect meant to the call boys-in fact, air kisses, but we're chatting about the ladies at the moment) and the clientele is largely male.  Women set the prices.  The actual act puts men in the vulnerable position-they're naked and coming while the woman coolly remains in control.  From that perspective, you would think that feminists would embrace it. 

It's disappointing that the reason feminism hasn't embraced the sex trade is largely political.  If they side with the prostitutes and support the decriminalization of prostitution they'll be accused of rending the moral fabric of our world.  So they choose to instead take a stance against women's oldest profession by pointing to the women who are exploited and saying that's why they're against the whole enchilada.

I do call myself a feminist, but as with all things, I don't feel that I have to fit a mold entirely to identify with it.  I'm also a feminist who worships high heeled shoes, loves a good double ply cashmere sweater, drools over expensive purses and looks damn good in a short skirt.  So while I agree that child prostitution is exploitation and should be stopped, I can't agree with the standard feminist response on the rest of the prostitution question.  Yes, it's sad that some women are taken advantage of by pimps, but wake up people-how many women are exploited by men who aren't their pimps?  Many street girls would probably turn their pimps in if they weren't more scared of the cops.  Which leads us back to the decriminalization issue.

Prostitution should be decriminalized.  I don't think that anyone should tell grown women who they can and can't have sex with and whether or not they can accept money for it.  Sex is a commodity and as long as men are willing to pay for it, why not earn $300+ an hour for providing that service?  If it were decriminalized, many of the abuses that happen in the industry could be dealt with fairly. 

It just sucks that I doubt decriminalization (at least in the US) will happen in my lifetime.

Why are baby girls in India dying?

My husband's family is Indian.  Wanting to learn more about the culture, I've taken to reading travel and culture essays as well as the history and literature of India.  Something that is not unique to India, but is a problem in both India and China specifically is the death of baby girls both in utero and shortly after birth.  This high mortality rate for baby girls is creating a gender imbalance in both countries.  When the boys of these nations grow to adulthood, there will not be enough women for each of them to marry.

Why this imbalance?  I can only really answer with regards to India.

This issue can be viewed through two lenses-that of class and that of culture.

Culturally-a daughter belongs to her husband's family once she marries.  In Sexyhusband's great-grandmother's day, her very name could be changed by her husband's family (and in her case, was).  This is less true today, as Sexyhusband's cousin is still very close with her parents.  That doesn't mean that her kids won't belong to her husband's family.  They will.  Her brother is under great pressure to marry as when his father dies, he will be the head of the household as will his sons after him. 

We can't talk about marriage without discussing dowries.  Technically they're not supposed to happen, but they do.  Dowry is money or goods given to a husband's family as payment for taking an unmarried girl (who is a burden on the family after a certain age) off their hands.  Dowries are expensive, as are the two or so weeks of wedding festivities.  Thus girls are expensive, with little rewards.

Finally, at least for Hindus (of which the majority of Indians are), a son is required to light the funeral pyre of his parents and send their souls to heaven.  A daughter can not do this, according to religious law.

Class-As I mentioned, daughters require dowries and expensive weddings.  In a country where 90% of the people live in poverty and make less in a year than most of my readers do in a month, weddings and dowries often require families to take out crushing loans.  They would rather take out the loan than suffer loss of honor.  So when a poor family already has two daughters, a third would be impossible to keep.

The "middle classes" (the wealthiest 10%) can afford these weddings, but often choose not to have many daughters.  The blessing that a bride receives on her wedding day is "May you be the mother of a hundred sons" or "May you be the mother of a thousand sons."  If a woman gives birth to daughters, she has yet to succeed as a wife and mother.  Some mother in laws will even beat or at least verbally abuse their daughter in laws for not producing a son.

It was common for middle class women to get a Chorionic villus sampling (CVS) test.  This is used on women over 40 here in the US to test for Down's Syndrome and other genetic defects.  It also can tell the sex of the child with 100% accuracy at 10 or 11 weeks.  By contrast, the ultrasound that all women have isn't done until 20 weeks, and you can only tell the sex of the child if they are positioned in such a way that you can clearly see the genitals.  At 10 weeks, you're still in the first trimester and can safely abort the fetus.  This isn't the case at 20 weeks, at which point you need to finish the pregnancy.  This practice has been outlawed, but many doctors can be bribed to do it anyways.

It's almost impossible for the Western mind to comprehend the practice of selective abortion, or of allowing a newborn baby girl to starve to death (refusing her nourishment is most common).  In some ways, understanding why a poor family might make this choice is easier once you've seen the kind of squalor they live in.  A poor family in the US, or even a homeless family living on the street has a better quality of life.  Diseases like hepatitus, typhoid, and malaria are all common as is AIDS.  Unemployment is high. 

I am not saying that I think it is acceptable, but I began to understand the quality of life issue better for the poor once I visited India.  It's not all dhosas and the Taj Mahal.  It's also filthy squat toilets that are little better than a hole in the ground.  It's unreliable electricity (if you even have electricity).  It's bathing in polluted rivers. 

There is a change underway.  Life for Indian women is radically different than it was 100 years ago.  But there is still a lot of work to be done.  They view women like Americans viewed Blacks in the 1940's-technically equal under the law, but socially an underclass.  Even career women put their role as wife and mother first.  Kiran Bedi, a high ranking Policewoman (and the first female one historically) has been quoted as saying that if she didn't send her child to school with a home made lunch, she'd have failed that day even if she ended it by locking up a career criminal.  The kind of change that would result in a Western style feminism is radical in the extreme.

The religious aspect will be the toughest to change.  Hinduism is 2000 years older than Christianity.  I haven't seen anything in Catholicism recently that would lead me to think we're getting female priests or a female Pope any time soon.  So asking Hindus to accept that daughters could light their funeral pyres and send their souls to heaven is seen as equally ludicrous from a top down perspective, even as every day people are starting to question the role of women.

Until women are valued, baby girls will not be valued.  As long as baby girls aren't seen as valuable, selective abortion and female infanticide will continue.

Name Change Misogyny

Bitch PhD had a post up about this couple who got married.  The reason it's blog-worthy is that the husband, Mike Buday, wants to take his wife Diana Bijon's last name.  LA County would like to charge him over $300 for the privilege, as well as require him to advertise his intent in a paper for four weeks, and appear before a judge in addition to the $70 marriage license application fee.

For those of you who aren't married or have never been married, allow me to explain how this process works for women.  Sexyhusband and I went to city hall, paid our $25 application fee and filled out the paperwork.  There was a section that asked me (the bride) what my last name was going to be after the marriage.  I had debated the issue at length, and finally decided to be Mrs. Hislastname.  So I filled in Hislastname where it said "last name after marriage."  We got married.  We went on our honeymoon.  A few days after we got back, we got an "official" copy of our marriage license.  I trotted down to the Social Security office, where they gave me a free name change.  As of that moment, in the government's eyes I was Mrs. Hislastname.  No $300+ fees, no newspaper advertising, no judge.  Just a wedding and a free name change.

Because I'm a woman.

Mr. Bujon isn't a woman, so he has to follow all sort of nonsensical procedures.  So he's suing, with the help of the Southern California ACLU.  His point is that it's ridiculous that men don't have equal rights to change their last name in a pain-free way after marriage.  He's not trying to take away women's right to do this, merely to extend that right to men as well.

For his efforts, Mr. Bujon has been told that he's emasculating himself.  "Men don't change their last names," he's been told in addition to being laughed at. 

It makes me truly wonder how far (or not) we've come when a man is mocked for wanting to create a combined identity with his spouse that isn't Mr and Mrs Hislastname.  Historically, it was important that women become part of the man's family (and, until very recently, his actual property) because their children would inherit his lands and such.  Women were the vessel to bring forth more sons, to solidify allegiances between families, and to combine property.

In this "modern" era, none of this is true.  Therefore, one might argue that the families that choose hypenated last names or new last names altogether are the most egalitarian, as women taking a man's last name is a holdover from "less enlightened" times.  From my own experience, when people talk to a couple getting married, they're always interested in what the woman is going to do regarding her last name.  No one talks about what the guy should do because of course he'll keep his name. 

If our goal (and it should be) is to create an equal society, men should have the same options at the time of marriage as women.  Any man who's open to changing his last name at the time of marriage should be applauded, not ridiculed.

More on Teachers & Sex

Considering the traffic my article on Tericka Dye is getting, I need to get something off my chest. 

There's something I didn't reveal when writing about teachers and sexual identity.  But, as I figured out a few days later, all you had to do was click on my Literotica Author Page to see three poems that blew my "secret" out of the water.  My poorly kept "secret" and what proved my point more eloquently than my post?  That I am a teacher in a public school,that I wrote a post about teachers and their fears regarding sexual authenticity, and then demonstrated that fear by hiding my day job from my readers.

I've spent the every day since posting about Tericka Dye grappling with the conundrum of whether or not to keep my "secret identity" secret for my job's sake.  I pondered whether or not to stay silent, and let people read between the lines of my post.  I contemplated the fear I felt/feel, and what was motivating it.

And then I got more and more pissed, and said "Fuck it.  Throw me a coming out party."

One of the reasons I have grown less enthusiastic about teaching over the past year or two is that I do have to keep my two lives very very separate.  If I were to get an erotic novel published, that is something I could NEVER mention to a work friend, and I'd have to be careful who I told in general.  There is a strip club that is on my black list because I know a former student's mom bartends there and I could never be comfortable tipping girls on stage or getting a lap dance there. 

I pray fervently that I'll someday make it as a writer (or that my income from writing and freelancing will make it worth our while for me to stay home with our future kids rather than pay the cost of daycare) and will be able to leave teaching entirely.

There are things I love about being a teacher, and I'm a damn good one.  But increasingly, it's just my job, and this-writing-is my passion.  And the more I look at writing as a career, especially erotica, I begin to feel trapped by a job that I once loved.

So why not get a new job?  The truth is that if I left my chosen profession, I'd take a ridiculous pay cut.  I'd be lucky if I took only a ten thousand dollar pay cut by switching careers.  Right now, when Sexyhusband and I are saving for a house, to cover time for me to be a stay at home mom, and creating a safety net for ourselves I need the biggest possible paycheck.  So switching jobs doesn't make sense.  Getting a different degree would take a long time, and I've yet to find something I'd want to study for 3 or so years while earning a different Master's (or 5-10 for a PhD).

In the meantime, I stand before you and apologize for being scared before.  I'm proud I'm a teacher.  I'm proud of this blog.  But I still don't ever want the two paths to cross.

Time says "Two Mommies is One Too Many"

Time has printed an article by Focus on the Family head Dr. James Dobson entitled "Two Mommies is One Too Many."  This disappoints me.  I remember the days when Time was actually considered a reliable news source.

Dobson opens his article with a denial that he's decrying Mary Cheney's pregnancy for political reasons.  Instead, he is upset with Ms Cheney for choosing to create a family that does not fit the model of what's best for the "nation at large."  He says that it's not that Ms Cheney and her partner Heather Poe won't love their kids, but rather that "The two most loving women in the world cannot provide a daddy for a little boy--any more than the two most loving men can be complete role models for a little girl."  Dobson then cites two pyschologists' work that would support his theory that two different gendered parents are necessary for a healthy child. He appeals to us to "look inside our hearts and see the place where we know that a traditional family is best".  Dobson babbles on about the bible and such, finishing with "the traditional family, supported by more than 5,000 years of human experience, is still the foundation on which the well-being of future generations depends."

Gag me.  With a spoon, even. 

Women can't possibly teach boys how to follow football and two men couldn't possibly teach a girl to cook.  Thanks for the throwback gender stereotypes, Mr Dobson.  Gender stereotypes aren't anything other than helpful.  I mean, how else are we going to learn our place?

The backhanded praise for single/widowed/divorced moms in comparison to gay parents was particularly vile.  It reminded me that when the Irish first arrived in the United States, they were considered to be socially equal to the free blacks, with whom they competed for jobs.  They were not considered "white."  However, when Italians began to emigrate to the US, the people in power then decided that the Irish could be white in comparison to the Italians who were "swarthy."  It's kind of like saying to single mothers "Yes we hate you and you're inferior to us, but we like you better than the gays, so you can almost join our club-maybe you can clean it or something."

Ms. Cheney has nothing but my respect.  She made the choice to move to Virginia so that she and her partner can raise their child near his/her grandfather, even though VA has passed laws that deny any rights whatsoever to Ms. Poe.  I can hardly see Dick Cheney as a loving grandpa, but that's because he scares me.  This decision took nerve because Ms. Poe will not have many rights under the laws of Virginia.  Poe may not be able to take her child to a hospital, attend a parent/teacher conference with Cheney, or should something happen to Ms. Cheney get custody, unlike if they made the easier choice to live in MA and have a legally recognized marriage.

Just as gays should have the right to get married, why should we deny them the rights of parenthood?  This article is one more example of the ridiculous rhetoric that gets thrown around any time that gay issues arise.  I'm not hearing any concrete statistics from opponents of gay marriage and gay families.  I just keep hearing the same bible verses and am told to look in my heart and I'll just "know" that the traditional marriage and family is what's "right."

I looked into my heart, Mr. Dobson.  And all I saw was happiness for Ms Cheney and Ms Poe.  I saw that my marriage is still strong despite my friends S&J having been married for two years.  I saw that you are a small person with a loud voice.  But I will shout so loud that when my voice joins with all the others who agree with me, we will drown you out. 

Best of luck, Ms. Cheney and Ms. Poe.

Here's a  Boston Globe editorial from today's paper to support them.  Nice to see a news outlet not condemning them.