A shot of my daughter’s bouquet from her 6th birthday just about covers perfect. Here’s few more. picking the one to be my popinjay was hard. Make sure to click on them to check them out full sized too.

This will probably be an inflammatory post, so if you’re not in the mood for it, keep trucking.

Gender an racial rights/privilege is one of many ongoing conversations between my husband and I. For him it began when I handed him Guy Garcia’s The Decline of Men, and for me it primarily became and issue when multiple female in my life, over a period of a few months, informed me that I’m not an empowered modern woman because I stay home with the kids. The sticking point to that is their complete ignorance of the fact that I CHOOSE to stay home with the kids because I enjoy it and because it has so far offered me the opportunity to write and to try to build the career I want, rather than the career I have to take to pay bills. Choice is the key point there, and in my opinion being an empowered modern woman is about having the opportunity and the ability to chose what I want to do, rather than being forced into a role deemed appropriate for me, which includes so called feminists and empowered women who feel I should be the one out working and make the man stay home with the kids.

I don’t consider myself a feminist because everyone I’ve met who has proudly declared themselves so have, in my opinion, mutated the idea of equal right for women to mean reversal of rights, where men are forced into the situations women have been for years and women become the powerful, the oppressors. How is this equal rights??

Now I do not mean to imply that all feminists are like this. Clearly, based on the number of wacked out defenders of Roman Polanski, and the number of people who think Chris Brown must have only hit Rhiana because she deserved it, the states where domestic abuse is considered a pre-existing condition, etc we are still in the battle for equal rights. We need women and men fighting for fairness. But fairness does not come at the suppression and discounting of the “privileged” persons.

I admit this is rant is partly inspired by a certain other rant about the “feminizing of science fiction” (which I’m not going to link to.) I don’t understand why catering to a female audience would be, in any way, minimizing the strength of a genre any more that I understand why a female doctor in a practice would weaken the skill of the male doctors in the practice. I also know that the screed in question was not written by a logical, intelligent person so I’m not sure there’s even a point to reacting to it.

But more and more, I am seeing a wave of activists who don’t understand, or seem to want the equal in equal rights. Why is the idea of men’s rigts laughable? Why is it offensive?

My own experiences with GLBTQ activism is a perfect point. I joined a group in college and while some of the members where happy to have me, some blatantly told me I wasn’t really one of them because bisexuality didn’t exist. And when I started dating my husband, he tried to get involved (because he was involved with getting Fairness passed here in Louisville) and was outright rebuked, because he was straight. This, combined with a select few who tried to convince me that dating a man was a horrible thing because they were destined to abuse me and repress me and take away who I was, led to my falling out with the local GLBTQ community. Put simply, Jason and I were not allowed to be equal to them because we weren’t gay.

How is that Fairness? How is that equal?

In many of the ensuing reactions to the SF screed people have called “Men’s rights” a joke. I don’t get that. I know we’re engaged in a fight for equality for minorities and that by the nature the “privileged” white male (remember I don’t believe privilege is universal) must give up some of that power to balance the scales. But some does not mean all.

Another primary case we use in our discussions are the Dove commercials about female body image. I adore Dove’s drive. I completely agree that women need to think they are beautiful at every size, not at the size the media says we should be. I try to compliment my daughter every day, on her physicality and on her actions. I think there are many, many girls, teens and women out there that desperately need to know they are beautiful people.

But where’s the help for boys growing up with the same problems? Where’s the Tyra of male self esteem, to tell them they don’t have to be muscle bound emotionless hard asses to be male?

And I believe these things are linked, because if men weren’t chained to a gender image of their own then gay males and transgender males also wouldn’t be suffering as much for not fitting the stodgy “male” stereotype. Self image and self esteem ARE gender issues, but they are not female, or trans or gay issues.

We all know about anorexia and bulimia, but it is considered a female problem and we focus on building up the health of the women to battle these issues. Meanwhile over a million men also suffer from these eating disorders (numbers taken directly from the National Eating Disorder website). Why is it that we ignore these men?

Well that’s because unlike the women, who are seen as suffering victims in need of help (and yes, absolutely they are) the men are seen as pussies that just need to “man up” and get over it and stop being sissies. Yet this social ideal is common, and ingrained to the point of not even being thought of. How is that equal?

I have a son and a daughter and in raising them I face a lot of the same issues. How do I built their self confidence? How do I help them not be crushed by the world around them and the hardships they must endure?

Recently, much to my rage, a woman in my life has blatantly taken a pro women side when it comes to my children. My daughter is important, and addressed, and invited places and treated as if she is valuable, and my son is completely ignored, excluded from invitations, etc. This is not someone new to my life, this is someone who changed my son’s diapers and played with him as a toddler. The blatant sexism, regardless of which sex it is against infuriates me. I would never tolerate someone excluding my daughter in this way, so why should I tolerate it toward my son?

It is this base question that I see ignored in the gender battles these days. Man hating language, derision and debasing is somehow okay because “men have all the privilege”. What kind of excuse is that? Why is it okay to belittle, ignore and yes, in cases, oppress the majority simply because they are the majority?

I don’t know about you but I’m not trying to switch gender, or racial, or classist roles. I’m trying to eliminate them. I’m not trying to “show the white male what it’s like”. I’m trying to form a world where I have the choice and the opportunity and the respect.

This line between “They’re important/privileged” and “we’re important/privileged” only exists in our heads. It is not us or them. That kind of mentality can never result in equality and respect. We aren’t fighting a battle to put the majority in their places, we’re fighting to eliminate gender, race, religion, sexual identity and preference, etc as a means to define the worthy and the not.

I want to live in a world where jobs, whether it be in a traditional workplace or the job of raising the children and maintaining the house, go to the most qualified and most able person, not to the one who is a certain gender.

In my own life I chose to be the stay at home mom. I had more schooling and a higher paying job when Jason and I began our domestic voyage. I was forced to quit my job for medical reasons during pregnancy, but afterward it would have been almost as easy for me to rejoin the job force as for him to have. But not only did I want to be at home with my kids, if (again) afforded me the time to pursue things that I find empowering, and likewise being in the workforce allowed Jason to pursue things that he finds empowering.

This is not a case of “the man” forcing “the woman” to stay home, it’s a case of partners weighing the options and deciding what is best for them and the family unit (which just so happens to have a traditional shape, but the choices weren’t right for our gender, they were right for us as people). And that’s how is should be, a world where the choice is available and the individual rules over concepts like race and gender and their ilk.

As Ursula Le Guin points out in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” as long as one person remains oppressed and marginalized there can be no freedom, and no utopia.

I’ve been mulling this over all day, how to talk about this without getting completely self absorbed. But really is not to make excuses or whine or such, but to show that not all cases of being overweight are black and white cases of overeating and lack of willpower.

Seriously, that is so utterly ridiculous. It’s the equivalent of saying the solution to our health care problems is that people without insurance should stop getting sick or injured.

I’m putting this whole rant behind a cut, because it gets personal and that might be yawn worthy instead of interesting. Keep reading…

Come on now, it’s not a dirty word. It’s just become one by the same people who want to make us feel dirty for needing tampons, or blame our every little irritation on PMS.

Stacia Kane has a really good post about pap smears and the UK health system. (Mrs. Giggles followed up as well.) Unlike what Michael Moore would have you believe nationalized medicine is NOT the perfect answer. Our capitalism HMO way of life has some advantages.

Stacia writer that in the UK women are told, often by doctors themselves, that women don’t need pap smears until they are 25. Howeever Stacia admits that at 23 she was diagnosed with and treated for precancerous cells.

My mom died of cancer (not this kind) and my aunt has struggled with breast cancer three times, so this absolutely terrifies me. I have no insurance, but I go in for my exam every year because my health and well being is important to me. I pay $12 on a sliding fee scale at our clinic for an exam, the tests and a round of blood tests (we skip HIV because I’ve been in a monogamous relationship for ten years now, but we cover other things. And last time we did a round of thyroid tests since I’ve been exercising and changing my diet but not changing my weight.) I pay another $12 for a year of birth control.

In my book, there’s no excuse, and there is especially no excuse for doctors and lawmakers to superceed the wellbeing of women everywhere for cost (funny, isn’t that what they accuse the US of doing by testing?)

So consider this yet another public service message. Get tested, if you are sexual active or over 18. Your life could depend on it.

This week is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, which is why I’m doing a post on my own eating issues. While the only recognized disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia and binge/compulsive overeating, food and eating issues don’t end there. Many of us have a difficult relations with food and body image, no doubt complicated by how very physically-oriented our society is.

My own experience with food started out healthily enough. My mom may have made me a member of the clean plate club, but she also gave me a liking for vegetables and cereals, an adventurous palet and good over all nutrition habits.

But she died when I was nine and things changed dramatically. My siblings and I moved in with my dad who taught us the joys of a bachelor life. I went from eating out maybe once a week, if we were very lucky, to eating out for almost every meal. I went from living in a neighborhood where everyone had swing sets and backyards and moms traded time off with others in the neighborhood to living in an apartment complex with no other kids my own age, much less play ground equipment. Plus, my dad used cable as a baby sitter.

If the sudden lifestyle change and depression from the death of my mother was enough things began to get worse. I could say that my father didn’t know how to be a good parent, but the truth is he didn’t seem to care enough to learn either.

I developed issues with being a female. Those Tampon and pad commercials? Imagine being the only female in the room and feeling as if all the males are looking at you like you’re disgusting because that’s what your body did once a month. My mother was bad mouthed by my father, and all other women were quantified by what they could give him. He often tried to pass off responsibility for us to his girlfriends. And they, well apparently all of them had exs who abused them and about two thirds of them broke up with him to go back to their ex who beat them. They also looked nothing like me, and comments on my appearance weren’t commonly positive. Luckily, they weren’t common at all.

When I hit my teen years things got worse. First, suddenly I was being quantified by what I could give my father. Given past experience with his views of women, his expectations of women and my drive to get attention from my daddy this was a very bad development.

We got older, parental involvement lessened, as did the number of trips we made to the grocery store. I became a latchkey kid over a year before my siblings, which led to them picking food up on the way home as per normal, and assuming I ate something at home. There was some pretty extreme favoritism going on benefiting my brother so even when we did go grocery shopping more than once he’d invite friends over and they’d stay up, literally, all night eating most of the food we had bought. There was no such thing as eating a portion and leaving the rest for everyone else. You ate the whole box of 20 corn dogs while you had the chance or else you might not have anything to eat two days later. You never knew who was coming home, whether they’d be eating, or bringing their own food, or what.

So I developed competitive eating problems.

You’d think since I moved out ten years ago and haven’t done without food for most of that time it would be something you could just get over, but it’s not.

Every time we eat, especially eating out, I feel like I have to stuff myself because I might not have access to food later, when I get hungry.

I feel like I must eat, even if I’m not hungry because I might not get another chance when I am hungry.

When I see other people eat, especially the people in my family, hungry or not I feel like I need to eat because they will eat it all and there will be no food for me.

Which means even though I like healthier food when I see other people eating junk food I feel the urge to eat that too.

I like salads, but they don’t fill me up the way burgers and fries or big greasy meals do, so I skip them, because I still fear there won’t be food if I get hungry later.

So I constantly make bad food choices because I’m scared we’ll run out of food.

Which leads to me being overweight (okay, so I’d probably always be big. It leads to me being more overweight than I should be.) Which leads to complications with my body image (especially when combined with the lessons learned as a child about women as a gender–and what they were good for–and about what was attractive and not attractive–five foot two Playboy models with augmentations, attractive; over five four or 120 pounds, not attractive.)

After I had my son I gained weight, then lost a lot of it. I got down to just over my ideal weight of 200 pounds (by 4 pounds). I got so excited I started exercising more. I started seeing how long I could go without eating. I wondered if I could get down to 150, or even 120. I cut myself off pretty quick, but I have to admit I’d scared myself. i never thought I was the disorder type (as if there is a type, but that’s how I put it in my head).

So I stopped exercising and dieting because I was scared of myself and I saw now that there were things going on that had nothing to do with my actual size. i knew I had to address those things first, and get a healthy image of myself in place or else I would find myself right back in the same situation.

By that point I knew I was pregnant with my daughter and i knew that I had to change something because I was not willing to pass my body image issues on to my little girl.

So I let it go and I tried very hard to change myself esteem and my body image without trying to manipulate myself. I needed to know that I was a good, valid person, without being size anything or the right BMI number.

I have to say writing helped a lot. It gave me something that I accomplished that I could be proud of that wasn’t physical. It wasn’t about me. Divorcing myself and my self worth from my work helped me build that line and now I can apply that line to other things.

Like I am not defined by my weight. I do not have to eat how others eat to be a whole person. I can eat a salad, if that’s what looks good, and I am capable of dealing with hunger if it arises later.

I’m not a fourteen year old girl looking into an empty fridge while my family eats McDonald’s in the other room anymore.

It’s still a fight. I’m wired wrong and there are days when it’s easy to remember that and easy to eat in a way that leaves me feeling good, satisfied and not gorged. And there are days when I can’t say no and I eat too much of foods I know leave me bloated, gassy and feeling horrible.

I think I’m beautiful now. I think I’m a worthy person. And yeah, there are days when I go to Walmart or open a clothing catalog and notice that size 14 is considered plus size now. When I see that they don’t even make some of the cute panties and bras or nightie in my size.

Or yes, when I see the media praising so-and-so for be gorgeous and size 2 and then I see people calling so-and-so a fat ass for being a size 2. When I see people tell us overweight folks to just stop eating as much, or go vegan. When Doctor fucking Phil tells some beautiful, not overweight woman that she’d never be overweight unless she was eating wrong on purpose. When the nurse tells me losing weight is just a matter of math, all I have to do is not eat as many calories as I burn.

It’s just not that easy.

Not when your body is telling you you should terrified that the food is going to run out.

Or in the case of the recognized disorders, your body is telling you that you’re hideously overweight, or wildly out of control. That you have to punish yourself because you had a fight with your mom today, or that you have to weigh your food in and food out to make sure the math is balancing.

For some of us, many of us, it just isn’t that easy.

Whether you have disorder or merely issues, it’s time to stop beating yourself up, or deluding yourself, whether you do it through BBW labels or punishing your body. It’s time to be beautiful and healthy and whole people, instead of trying to cut out the parts of ourselves that other people don’t like.

I dyed my hair again because it was looking really spotty and the root looks almost silver compared to the rest. Since this is something I’m going to play with I’m sharing it here.

Before:

After:

I used Revlon Color Silk #42 (Medium Auburn), mostly because it was on sale at the store. Jason says there’s no difference, but I think the color is slightly brighter and most importantly more uniform. The roots are covered except for bits around the ears and crown that I missed (I should have checked the mirror, but I was watching election coverage) and the faded streaks are gone.

Meh. I expected a bigger change. We’re debating just paying for a salon to do it, but I’m not good at spending that kind of money on myself, especially on something that only lasts a month or so.