trigger me, baby (thoughts on how FA is great for everyone but me)

Note-sub-1: Trigger Warning: for weight issues, dieting, eating disorders, and assorted mental and emotional hell.

Note-sub-2: Disclaimer: This entry is personal.  This is about the way I feel about myself and my life and I do not intend to imply anything about anyone else via any of the words I write below.  This is only about me, and a struggle that I am currently and actively engaged in.

Note-sub-3: On a lack of specifics: I am avoiding including things like numbers and pants sizes except when absolutely necessary, as they are exceedingly difficult for me to write, and often triggering when I read them elsewhere.

This is going to be difficult - but it is necessary, for reasons listed below.
Reason Number One:  I am gaining weight, and it's terrifying.

I exist with a moderate level of discomfort about my weight.  This moderate level of discomfort varies, from me being barely aware of how much I hate myself to being actively, passionately engaged in despising the image in the mirror.  When I gain weight, though, when things stop buttoning and zipping, my awareness is heightened.  I am suddenly consumed with my chin and my arms and the calorie content of one fucking tomato. 

It is not that those last however many pounds are that relevant, it's that the only way I am able to exist at relative peace with myself is to Not Think About It.  To not think about how I look, or how I walk, or what I am eating or what people think of me.  Jeans that won't button are hard to ignore. 

Reason Number Two:  It's the fucking holidays.

It's time to dress up and look pretty and go to swanky New Year's parties and...oh yeah, I forgot, only skinny people can do that.  All the formal dresses and strappy shoes and pixie haircuts and whateverthefuckelse - they're for skinny people. 

Looking pretty is the whole reason people go to those stupid parties - to look pretty and look at other pretty people while I, of course, am sitting in the corner in my hopelessly generic purple and green mother-in-law ankle-length dress from the thrift store because it's the only thing they had that fit over my ass, eating way too much shitty dip.

Party on.  I think I'll just stay home.

Reason Number Three:  It's the fucking holidays.

And it's resolution time!  It's time to admit that none of the shit I said I'd do last year actually happened.  It's time to admit that instead of losing weight this year, or the year before, or the year before, or the year before that, I've been steadily gaining, and it's only a matter of time befor I'm completely unable to even leave the house because of the stairs!  Wow, 2011 sounds swell.

Once I've admitted all of those things, it's time to plan.  It's time to add and subtract and divide, and weigh everything and make worksheets and go into HYPER SELF-BERATING MODE whenever I skip the gym or eat anything that isn't on my list.  This, of course, will last a week or two, result in no significant weight loss, and make me more miserable than I've been in at least a month.

Reason Number Four:  This isn't me.  Or is it?

I know how to lose weight.  In high school and college when I got above a certain number I'd opt for ridiculously simple plans.  I'd eat salad and hummus for a week or two.  I'd fast one day a week for a month.  I'd limit my portions of everything except fruits and vegetables. 

I'd go to the gym every single day, for an hour, or two, or three.  I'd have a week of 500 calorie days, while going to the gym.  I'd lose enough, and stop worrying about it for a while.

When I lost a scholarship and had to leave college, I spent a summer proving that I was in control of my life by losing a few sizes.  My mother told me I was too thin, and I felt like I'd won a prize.  I also thought she was being ridiculous, and I kept losing weight until I met up with the worst idea I'd ever had.

I settled into my first "serious" (what does that even mean?) relationship and stopped worrying about my weight as much.  For about six months I was genuinely happy.  When things went to hell, the way things do, my weight was a huge issue.  We argued about it all the time (or, he yelled and I cried).  Weight gain that started out slow and probably benign was then fueled by secret grocery store trips and fast food runs.  I ate in secret, in huge amounts.  He wanted to track everything I ate, took my ATM card and wanted every receipt.  I got around it.  He paid for a personal trainer and I followed up my appointments with McNuggets.

By the time I got my head out of my ass and skipped town, I'd almost doubled my weight from my lowest point.

And, yes, I left.  I moved on.  I am happy and well-adjusted and I respect myself, or something.  Except I never lost most of that weight, and it's been four years.

Reason Number Five:  I'd actually like to be healthy.

I would actually like to eat few processed foods, and be active and go hiking and biking and take some dance classes and YOGA.  My addled brain needs yoga.

I want to be one of those whole-grain-grass-fed-I-grew-this-lettuce-myself types.

Somehow I can't separate the two.  Somehow the whole-grain-grass-fed-I-grew-this-lettuce-myself girl is really skinny, in my head, and reading ingredient labels and counting calories are the same thing.  And I can't go to yoga because everyone there is skinny.  And I can't take a dance class because OMG leotards.  And I can't go hiking because I am out of shape and I know I'm conflating these things, and I know that "capable of completing a challenging hike," is not the same thing as "comfortable with one's appearance in a leotard."  They're different, only they aren't, to me - no matter what I do it's all the same thing, the same people and the same words, it's just me being not good enough.

Reason Number Six: I am triggered as fuck.

Not just because of reasons 1-5, but also: because my cousin is going on a "weight loss plan" with her TEN-YEAR-OLD daughter.  Because I told my mom that I thought that was horrific and my mom just said, "Well, she does need to lose weight."  Because apparently the pantyhose I wear are too light, "since I gained some weight."  Because it's a constant theme of every holiday function, who lost or gained what on which program and why you should try it!

And how can I defend myself to them when I can't even defend myself to me?

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My resistance to Fat Acceptance is defensive, I know that now and I knew when I first encountered the idea.  I knew that my reluctance to accept this whole concept that Fat Isn't Bad stemmed from the knowledge that they were talking about me, too.

And I do a pretty good job of maintaining that cognitive dissonance.  So far, it is OK.  For everyone else.  I have no right to police or judge or really give a fuck about what other people do or don't do or how they look or don't look.  Totally.  Not.  My.  Business.

It's OK for other people to be fat - really, truly OK - it's just a modifier, not a quality judgement, it's no more indicative of value than eye color or hair color or nose shape - but it's still not OK for me to be fat.

If it's OK for me to be fat, then I will never, ever, ever lose weight. 

And I will always struggle in the ways that I struggle now.  I will hate myself in the morning before I leave the house.  I will hate mirrors.  I will hate shopping.  I will hate events that require me to dress up or dress down or have a costume.  I will hate pictures of myself.  I will hate dancers and runners and yogis and ice skaters.  I will hate everyone that I walk past in a day at work who is perfectly thin - people whose clothes fit well.  People who don't have to worry about how offensive their very presence is to all the normal, skinny people.  I will hate talking to people.  I will hate sitting and standing and walking and turning and raising my arms.

It's so exhausting, all that hate.  It wears me down little bits at a time.  Sometimes I fight through it, and sometimes I sit on the bed and cry because I just don't have the energy to choose clothes, look at myself in the mirror, and go out into the world anyway. 

But I can't let it go, not really.  I can't move on.  I can't just accept that I am stuck like this forever and ever and ever and that I will never really like myself, and never really be OK with my body, and never feel comfortable and never feel like I fit in.  I'll never feel in control, never do any of the physical things I like to do, that it will just get worse, and nothing will get better, ever.

And somehow, going back to reason #4 - if I am never able to be the person I was before that relationship, if I'm never able to heal from that damage, to purge what remains of that time, then he wins, doesn't he?

And if I sit here and bitch at myself and weigh my rice, then he wins again.

And I know that I've got it all twisted, and I know that I don't have a fucking clue, but attempting to articulate where I am, right now (I just started tracking all of my food yesterday) seems important.

the myth of a "moderate" pro-life movement - thoughts on the rape and incest exception

A friend posted this article on Facebook recently, and I was halfway into a comment on her post when I realized that I'd probably exceed the character limit without ever actually making my point.

She expressed horror that anyone would oppose abortion in cases of rape and incest.  I find the concept of a rape and incest exception is incredibly problematic for a variety of reasons.  Below are three.

1) It would be impossible to implement.

The legal system's response to allegations of rape is far below even remotely acceptable.  Who qualifies for this rape exception?  Women who report?  Women whose reports are taken seriously?  Does the rapist have to be caught?  Convicted? 

Sure, because pressing charges is not amazingly traumatic.  Because cops always listen.  Because judges don't use any possible excuse they can cook up to acquit.

What about incest?  I'm sure those parental notification laws would be really convenient there!

2) It's inconsistent and blatantly misogynistic.

If you fervently believe with all of your conservative, religious heart that abortion is equivalent to murder, of course you want it to be illegal. If you sit around on Tuesday evenings mourning for all the little lost babies (who would all, of course, have grown up to be white, cis, het, Christian Reconstructionist genuises who cured cancer and paved the way for the glorious return of Jesus Christ by retaking both houses of Congress) then of course you're out picketing clinics and harassing women who are foolishly attempting to fend for themselves and be in control of their own lives.

I don't agree with you - I think you're misguided to the point of being evil. But in the land of if...thens, you've got a pretty solid case.

If you believe that abortion is murder, except when the woman in question was victimized, then we need to take you back to logic school.

You have here invoked a hierarchy of evil deeds, in which killing an innocent being is less heinous than continuing the victimization of a rape victim via forced pregnancy. Not an entirely ridiculous premise - people are allowed to have their own values and assign them varying points on the "how horrified this makes me" scale.

Continue down the list, though, and your Horrifying Deed Index looks like this:

1) Most Horrifying: Forcing a rape victim to complete a pregnancy
2) Slightly less horrifying: Murder
3) Not horrifying: Forcing a woman who had consensual sex to complete a pregnancy

The only difference between 1) and 3) is the victim status of the woman in question. We have agreed that forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term is a horrible violation, but ONLY if that woman did not consent to sex. If the woman did consent to sex, then she deserves what we've already termed is horrible. We are punishing women for having consensual sex.

Anyone with any knowledge of rape culture knows that we do this anyway, as a matter of course, but the idea that the rape and incest exception is the more "moderate" position is frankly terrifying to me. If you're a "no abortion, ever" conservative, then you're "extreme" - but this position does make logical sense from some ideological standpoints. The "no abortion for you - you asked for it" conservatives are portrayed as reasonable and accomadating, when in reality their misogyny is just as frightening as that of their arguably more principled counterparts.

3)  It perpetuates the myth of a moderate pro-life movement.

Obviously, or hopefully obviously, I do not believe that abortion rights should be restricted.  But one of the most insidious things about encroachments on reproductive freedoms is that they come in pieces.  No one really believes that abortion should be legal and available BUT all women should have to hear a detailed description of the physical characteristics of the fetus.

The powers that push for those laws aim to chip away at reproductive choice a little piece at a time.  Chip, chip, chip, until the system is so complicated and the regulations so inane that no one will be practicing anywhere in your county, or your state, or the next three, and your choice isn't one at all.

Every single time a new law or regulation or requirement is passed, it takes a little bit of the decision-making power away from women who ought to be trusted to make their own decisions.  And every time we step back and say, "well at least they're not EXTREME pro-life," we're missing the point. 

There are only two positions here - women should be able to make their own choices, or they should not.  Women have the right to decide what is best for their lives, or they do not.  The seemingly gray area in the middle is a lie, and to believe that lie is to fall into a trap that strips our choices and our options away a little at a time, until we have none left.

quick thought

There is no -woman equivalent to the phrase "family man."

I am going to start using the phrase "family woman" and see what kind of funny looks I get, then politely ask people to explain to me why it sounds weird.

no longer home

I went to an all women's college. This is important.

I experienced my first year, poli-sci 101, "holy shit, it's all a lie!" political awakening in the wake of 9/11. I do not intend to downplay the significance of that event by using it as a backdrop for my own, nascent sort-of-radicalness, but this is important, too.

And for me, it was backdrop. I wasn't directly affected. I understood the pain and horror of that event the only way one so far removed can - through a lens, through a filter, through as much empathy as one can stand before bleeding from the ears. My awareness was nothing but a faint echo, a shadow, a vague unease.

Campus was quiet. People were slow and sad and lonely and worried and scared. And when the quiet faded, and the rage kicked in, I watched classmates and discussion partners and news outlets turn rabid. My first tears were not for the victims of the attack, but for a hallmate who suggested, on multiple occaisions, that we should "bomb them all" - referring to whom, exactly, I'm not sure - she was just referring to that other, that them.

what do I say? (TW for fat hatred)

My parents just returned yesterday from a week-and-then-some trip to Yellowstone with my maternal grandmother. I picked them up from the airport around 4:30 PM. A few initial pleasantries got us out of the airport, but once we hit the highway, the conversation turned to dinner.

Dad: "What do you want to eat for dinner, Mom?"

Grandmother: "I don't even...all we do is talk about food! Where do you want to go, what do you want, blah blah blah. All we did the whole time was eat and talk about food! I don't want to talk about food."

(Background: My mother and father are fat. I am fat. My grandmother is not. She is one of the very few people in family who are not fat. My mother, her sisters, my cousins - almost everyone except my grandmother is fat.)

My mother is getting that tense thing in the back of her neck. I am driving, and she's in the back seat, but I can feel it, because I do it, too.

why I am not taking any more business classes (part one)

I took this class - "Human Relations" last year. It was one on a list of several business classes I intended to take, knowing that it would please my management and hoping it might grant me more skill in navigating the political minefield that is corporate America. I wrote this right before the class had ended, but I think it bears posting here.

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This textbook, for the record, is a fucking joke. Behold: several of its most ridiculous quotes. I acknowledge that these are taken out of context. Believe me, or don't, when I say that the context doesn't really improve them much.

"Pinstripes may make you appear as though you are trying to imitate male apparel." (141) So might pants, apparently, because they aren't even mentioned as an option.

"Men at work tend to talk to preserve independence and status in an organizational hierarchical social order. Women tend to talk for closeness to develop relationships, in which people seek and give confirmation and support." (160) Well that just about explains everything, doesn't it? Maybe if the women weren't so busy making friends, they could get some damn work done!

"Research supports that women are more emotional than men." (209) No citation, mind you.

"Off and often on the job...men are more willing than women to say directly what is important to them and state their expectations. Women generally trust that the other person will anticipate what's important to them without having to state their expectations." (304)

"Women [should] not date coworkers or other people in their industry, because if they do, they will be viewed as someone's girlfriend rather than a serious businessperson." (568) I find it amusing that here, and throughout the book, the author consistently uses "-person" terms, as if that makes up for the blatant stereotyping and double-standards.

"Women who perceive they will have problems managing solely because of their sex may be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy." (573) Because sexism is dead! Right?

I am, of course, not even getting into the two paragraphs of parenting advice, but I will leave you with this little tidbit:

"So, the question today is not, Will most mothers work outside the home? The question is, Will she leave work to raise children, and if so, for how long?"

Really, is that the question? Silly me. I thought the question was, How the fuck did you get this piece of shit published?

Published in 2008, that is.

Don't grind your teeth like that, gentle reader. It might give you a headache.

Good morning!

I have been rather lax in updating this blog - the best of my ranting seems to get used sitting out on the balcony over cocktails, waiting for the oppressive heat to drain away from the day.

That said, a new post will be up by the end of the week. Thanks to Shakesville, I've had some lovely readers stop by, and I'd love for them to have something else to read.

Sunday morning rape apology

Good afternoon, hypothetical readers!

This morning I learned something that I wanted to share. My family includes at least two antifeminist rape apologists!

I know you're jealous, and would love some rape apologists of your very own, so that you might also be berated and screamed at for your ignorance. In hopes of sating this desire, I present some of the highlights of our exchange.

The setting is my parent's living room, in which just moments before my mother and I had discussed cuticle maintenance. Just riveting, I know. The conversation migrated, slowly, as pesky conversations are wont to do, and we ended in the realm of bars.

Dark, until recently smokey, loud, crowded establishments in which people interact and sometimes those interactions are less than pleasant, right? Sometimes some asshole will, for example, touch other people in a way that is invasive, rude, inappropriate, etc.

"Well, that's to be expected, I think," my mother says, in her way of being so much wiser than I am because I am after all just the ignorant spawn.

Red flag. BIG ONE. In my face, flying about. "Oh, no." I say. "Let's not go here. This is a hot button issue for me."

late night thoughts (or, of course we can't eliminate patriarchy. and?)

This probably is obvious and silly to quite a lot of people. But I, in grand and selfish form, am not writing for quite a lot of people. I am writing for me, in order to puzzle out all sorts of vague and theoretical ideas for my very own self.

So here is the question, which I might ask a hypothetical radfem, who would hypothetically think I was silly and out of my league, and that perhaps I ought to just put on some more lipstick and continue furthering the interests of The Man, Inc., and meanwhile stop asking stupid questions and let her get back to her Important Business.

This is, like I said, hypothetical. No offense intended to anyone who does think I am silly, or asking stupid questions, or who must return to their Important Business. Please, return to it.

Ahem.

Now that we're quite alone, I ask:

If patriarchy is everything, if it determines everything and controls everything and none of us really has any agency and none of us can really escape or even have any concept of what it might be like outside of patriarchy or how we might make the world better because everything we do is just contributing to the system, like some evil feedback loop, then what the fuck are you doing?

Yes, that's it. I said it. What are you doing, hypothetical radfem? Spreading the anti-gospel that we're all in a world of shit, have always been, always will be? Convincing others that we're totally SOL and nothing can possibly ever change that?

Why?

Isn't everything you are doing, your activism and writing and reading and thinking and walking your dog on a bright Spring morning, part of that system? It's a secular predestination doctrine, isn't it? If nothing matters, then nothing matters. Not even telling me that nothing matters. Not even being right, or changing laws, or anything. At all. Because we have no power and no way of getting it.

Now I want you to understand, hypothetical reader (regardless of your radness) that I am ohsotempted by this kind of reasoning. Friends and family wail and gnash teeth, or at least leave the room, when I start in on this type of thing, because they know it might go on for HOURS. Nothing matters. I am a speck of dust. We are at the mercy of forces larger than ourselves. I am sad, lonely, and emo. Etc.

So, if patriarchy = gravity, a powerful and inescapable force, then what?

Well, then, I suppose, whether or not something is truly feminist and liberated is utterly beside the point, because nothing is. Then, I suppose, we must create a new kind of measure for our activism, our creative work, and our lives. We must ask new questions.

If we cannot ask, "is this act sufficiently feminist?" perhaps we might ask, "is there a way to make this situation better? is there a way to harm fewer people? to help more? to create more joy than pain? to make someone smile?"

We could ask, "can I contribute in a way that is meaningful to me? that will brighten my day, or my life? can I build something I might be proud of? can I create memories that I want to carry with me?"

Maybe these are the questions we should have been asking all along?

Hypothetical radfem is displeased, perhaps - "but you are merely a tool!" she says. "You are not empowered! You are not free!"

And neither are you. And neither is anyone. And so, perhaps there isn't really much use in discussing it anymore. Would you like some wine?

10 reasons why I don't really know what I think about Iceland's strip club law

So, Iceland passed a law banning strip clubs, which "will make it illegal for any business to profit from the nudity of its employees."

When I first read the headline, I thought, "Hmmm." And then I read this quote by Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir: "It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold," and I thought, Right. The fuck. On.

And then I headed over to Feministe, and read Jill's take, and I actually started thinking. Because, really, isn't this kind of the Central Debate of Our Day. Or any day? Isn' t this a Big Divisive Feminist Question? Even in my own head, it's a Big Divisive Question. And even if you know why, I'll tell you why anyway.

1) Because I am skeptical of laws that limit personal freedoms. At least in theory. I think we should trust people to be able to make their own decisions. I am concerned by laws that tell you what you can and cannot do with your body. I am concerned with the idea that women are just always victims, and categorically unable to make choices.

2) Because I am aware how often the "person freedom" schtik is used to support abusive, exploitative, power-hungry, victimizing people, organizations, and practices. Personal freedom means little to a lot of people. Personal freedom is money. It belongs to the people with the money and it is their prerogative to share it, or not.

3) Because I don't know where the line is between my right to self-determination and social good. Because there is a line; there has to be - if you deny that you're an absolute anarchist. We must all, to a greater or lesser extent, consent to have our freedoms limited if we are to live in a society, for the good of that society. Blasphemy, I know.

4) Because I am not a sex-worker, and never have been, and am perhaps not likely to be, and so any of my ideas or theories are necessarily based on second, third, or tenth-hand information, and therefore anything I have to say is really not at all relevant.

5) Because I hate the "you're not a real feminist because..." arguments, even if I join them sometimes. Because I hate the privilege inherent in saying, "that's not good for you, trust me I know." Because I don't know, and neither does anyone else who isn't you. Because I think that in a world that doesn't respect or honor individuals, that doesn't really often listen to them, we need to listen to them.

6) Because making sex work of any kind illegal is, to me, kind of beside the point. Because if you want to make sex work illegal because (you assume) women are forced into it due to poverty and addiction, you are not actually fixing the problems of poverty and addiction. You are, in fact, maybe making them worse by removing one potential method of income for some women. If you want to make it illegal because it's not safe, you're not actually making women safe. Because you're assuming, somehow, that sex work is the cause of the lack of safety, that the behavior of the women is the problem, that violence just happens, that it grows organically next to sex work in some kind of natural symbiosis, you're taking the perpetrators out of the equation entirely. AND because making it illegal probably won't stop it.

7) Because it's hard for me to accept that we are going to encourage any sort of gender equality in a society in which the unspoken last resort of women is to sell their bodies, in which women bought and sold and on display is just part of daily life, in which the constant message is that we're valuable first and foremost for our bodies, for what we can provide, for how available we are to eyes and hands and other things.

8) Because we live in an increasingly global world, and even if one suddenly found NO representations or realities of objectified women in Iceland, it wouldn't fix anything. Those representations and realities are everywhere else. Because I don't know how taking away those representations will actually change the minds of the people who make up culture, of the people who buy and sell and create and destroy and write the scripts, for all of us, all the time.

9) Because, as Jill writes, "at the end of the day you can’t regulate or legislate respect."

10) Because patriarchy is like air. It's everywhere, in everything, it not only permeates the atmosphere it IS the atmosphere. There is nothing separate from it, nothing that can really escape or live in isolation from it. I believe this. I didn't used to. Advertising, books, movies, history, music, religion, fashion, humor, wars, resources, politics, business, street names, social systems...it's like air. And therefore nothing we do can really be apart from it, and none of us can really be immune. It doesn't matter what we do.

On that nihilistic note, I suppose I will end.