Why do we feel the need to make Jesus cute, or our pal? I have a hunch about why. The things He had to say were radical, often offensive, to the people to which He was speaking. The things He asked us to do are just about impossibly difficult. Love your enemies.

&e recommends just going ahead and reading this blog…
http://myecdysis.blogspot.com/2008/04/accepting-kyriarchy-not-apologies.html

Let me break this down for you. When people talk about patriarchy and then it divulges into a complex conversation about the shifting circles of privilege, power, and domination — they’re talking about kyriarchy. When you talk about power assertion of a White woman over a Brown man, that’s kyriarchy. When you talk about a Black man dominating a Brown womyn, that’s kyriarchy. It’s about the human tendency for everyone trying to take the role of lord/master within a pyramid.

http://myecdysis.blogspot.com/2008/04/apparently-feminists-need-acting.html

One of my favorite students ran into my office today and dramatically collapsed on my couch. Before I even asked what was on her mind, she sat up and shared her wisdom, “Do you know what my acting coach told me today? She said, ‘Listening means having your life changed.’”

http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.com/2008/04/yes-and.html

This is just sort of a general rumination on what some people call “constructive discourse/action.”

In improv theatre, or certain acting exercises in regular theatre, we used to have this trope called “Yes, and.”

some days I hate my country as much as the next one…
http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2008/04/28/fetuslove-canadian-style/

Anyway, what’s got LEAFer Bonnie Gembey’s oysters in a pot is a bill working its way through Parliament, Bill C-484. This bill would grant legal personhood to — say it with me — fetuses. The sentimentally-titled “Unborn Victims of Crime Act” would allow authorities to press additional, more bad-ass charges if a fetus (the “unborn child”) is aborted concurrent with a violent crime perpetrated against a woman (the “mother”).

I figure I might as well follow my tracks around the blogosphere. I haven’t got the nerve to comment places; I don’t know why. I’m really vocal on LJ. Ah, well. If I can’t speak, I can link. Right?

April was supposed to be a bit of a break after a 100k month that included starting-and-finishing a novel.  It’s been a break.  I’ve done very little except write some with B (and I’m only getting anything done because of her).  I’ve hated every minute of it.  This is one reason I don’t want to go to Homewood for two months.

I feel lost without my deadlines and lists.   I don’t like it a bit.  I love being productive.  The problem is that when I’m not, I forget that I can be.  Being productive and pro-active isn’t such a part of my paradigm yet, after years of illness, that I can drop any vigilance.  Today, I read over the calls from a publisher I like, made a list of the ones I wanted to do, and started putting them into my calendar.  I feel better already.

I am so tired of being inert.  It’s horrible.  I’ve been inert so long without having any choice.  I’m going to go for a walk later, maybe with Tirehead the Unwalkable (aka Princess Shira of WHAT IS A LEASH FOR AGAIN?!).  Someone’s got to clue her in on the idea that she is NOT a 75lb yo-yo with a tail.

So, yes.  I hate April.  I am so confused and I don’t even have anything to show for the month except for what I’ve done with B (and yes, it’s not bad and I should be happy, and I love doing things with her and she is fabulous) and a head full of bad TLC/Slice shows.  Maybe I’ll write What Not To Wear BDSM porn and call it all research.  You know.  Because I can.

————-

I’m an aggregator.   Lately, my mind has been awash with feminism, anti-racism, pro-porn/anti-porn, writing, and other thoughts.  I’ve been reading tons of new blogs.  I’m regretting the loss of a blog I was just starting to read, but I understand why it’s gone and I can put on my big white girl panties and go out and learn without it, especially given the reasons it’s gone.  The more I’m learning, the less I post, usually, unless something sets me off monstrously.  I’m still mulling things over around the abortion art project at Yale and I need to follow up on it.

Damn blogosphere with so much going on.  I don’t want to say anything singular yet,  because there’s all these new connections growing in my head and I want to just let them thrive in the dark.  At this point, it’s not that I don’t want to be told I’m wrong as I don’t want the subconscious underpinnings to be displaced.  I’m more than capable of altering my thinking, it’s just that when it comes to home truths, I think I need time to let it all get strong.  These are home truths.  Not just about other people, but about me relating to the world, and about my brain and my illness (can’t forget the research on neuroplasticity).

Then something will come along and I will shock myself with what I really think and how strongly I think it.  Sometimes, I wonder if me and I are two separate women living in the same space, one going out and surviving in the world and the other sitting in the safety of her room and learning and changing and developing opinions.  Suddenly, the latter speaks up, out loud and into the world, and the former says, “what the fuck are you doing, rocking the boat so hard?  I have to go out there tomorrow, and look what you did!”

————–

Some of you may have caught from my Twitter (the name is so appropriate) posts that I have been in a bit of a rumble with Mystic’s school.  The lead in is as follows:

• last Thursday, the school announces that they are ‘cracking down’ on inappropriate dress, due to the warm weather bringing out the belly shirts and short shorts
•  last Friday, Mys stays home and I take her out to buy clothing that specifically in no way contravenes the school board’s dress code.  Here I quote the relevant portion:
  • Clothing that is revealing and show an excessive amount of skin such as: muscle shirts, low cut necklines, inappropriate tops with spaghetti straps, bare midriffs, and open back are unacceptable. Shirst must be ‘tuckable’ and not excessively tight. Shorts and skirts must be a reasonable length. Low-rise jeans, short shorts, lycra and biking shorts are unacceptable. Undergarments should not be visible.

• Monday, Mys wears to school a short-sleeved, hip-length T-shirt that does not reveal her cleavage or the tops of her breasts, a pair of capri-style sweat pants, socks, and skate shoes
• Monday, Mys is removed from a class event because her shirt is ‘questionable’, sent out into the hall with other girls, and made to bend over so that the female guidance counsellor can check whether or not it is possible to see down her shirt
• Monday afternoon, I make a furious call first to the vice-principal in which I tell him in no uncertain terms how inappropriate shaming, harassing behaviour is no matter what a student is wearing.  He informs me that this is school policy.  I tell him I will be discussing this with the school board.  He gives me a ‘fine, go ahead and do that if you need to‘.  (You bet I need to, buddy, and thanks for the permission I didn’t need.)  He then apologizes if Mys has ‘felt badly’ about it, going on about how great a volunteer she is in the office, what a great athlete and student.  She is, thanks.  I knew that.  He also reiterates that it was a female employee who did it and that Mys wasn’t the only one.  Shockingly, I tell you, I am NOT mollified.
• Monday afternoon, I make an even more angry but civil call to the junior superintendent in which I tell her I feel my child has been harassed, outline the situation, and ask her to consider how she would feel if this happened to her at her job.  I tell her that the minimum standard of protection I expect my child to receive in school is the same protection afforded to her in her work situation.  She tells me the senior superintendent will be following up.
• Wednesday afternoon, I receive a message from the superintendent, but am out of the house.
• Thursday morning, I call back.  She is in a meeting but leaves it promptly to take my call.  The first thing out of her mouth was, “That won’t be happening anymore.”  You bet your damn ass it won’t.  I’m just glad it got worked out at this level.  When her email inquiry was not fruitful, she made phone inquiries to the principal and vice-principal and by the time she actually got to speak to them — SHOCKINGLY — they had already decided between them that this was a bad idea.  No shit, Sherlock.  I am not going to let you hide abuse my my daughter behind ‘but a woman did it!’  (Please link this point, and the whole incident, back to some of my fury at the excuses around the OSBP.)
• Tomorrow, I will be calling the school to arrange for the vice-principal and the counselor who assaulted my child to apologize to her — by her request.  She is also requesting that the counselor apologize in general to all the grade 7&8 girls because by her count ‘at least twenty’ girls were subjected to the same thing.  She does not have to return to school without an apology.  Hell, she doesn’t have to return at all, but I am not recommending that she return without knowing that she is respected.
  
• General point of pride — Mystic questioned the entire process when it happened to her and, on noting that the clothing check was more severe than the posted rules, asked the counselor what she planned to do with students who were unable to afford to buy new clothes to fit her agenda.  This was one of the things that made her most angry.  Not everyone can afford new clothes and they shouldn’t have to suffer for it.
  

So, now you’re a little bit caught up.  Enjoy!

Don’t panic. It’s only art.

Art major Aliza Shvarts ‘08 wants to make a statement.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

No. Wait. Panic. Not because of the art, not because it might be real, not because of the idea of someone having multiple ‘forced miscarriages’. Panic because of comments from theoretically pro-choice feminists that amount to: it’s evil to KILL SOMETHING for fun/art, there’s a limit to how many abortions a woman should have, having that many abortions suggests mental illness, immoral, and HOAX. (Try here and here for a start.)

Who knew there was a threshold past which pro-choice feminists start to sound like fundamentalists? I didn’t think it would be that bad. I didn’t think the responses would make me THIS nauseous or furious or this close to tears. Because, dear feminist friends, fuck you for your vile responses.

‘It’s not art. It’s a HOAX.’ First, let’s look at this one, and I will put a FUCK YOU right by this one. It’s not a hoax. It’s art. CONGRATULATIONS, EVERYONE, FOR TAKING PART. Would you be so fast to call it a hoax if it were something else? What about liposuction? What if she said she ate only McDonalds and had liposuction every month. Would you be talking about it as performance art or deriding it as an immoral hoax? It’s not a hoax. It’s brilliant. Because many pro-choice feminists have just been outed for the fertility cultists and uterus polizia (thanks for the term, ~eyelid) that they really are under the surface. The hoax is every single ‘pro-choicer’ who responded to this with “I’m pro-choice, but…”

Let’s move on to this shit about “she’s stupid because she’s put herself in danger if it is real”. Step. The. Fuck. BACK. Let’s trade being a woman in an alley at night or a black man in a sundown town after dark with ‘artist simulating or having multiple abortions’.

What the fuck are you people fighting for if not the right of this woman and every woman to do EXACTLY what this woman pretends (apparently it was all artifice) to have done? Do you not trust your sisters? Are you only guaranteeing abortions to those who believe what you do? There really is a limit to the freedom you are willing to allow your sisters, isn’t there? It should not be dangerous beyond basic biological consequences for her to have as many abortions as she wants, for any reason. It is wrong for any of us to live in fear.

Doctors who PERFORM multiple abortions a DAY are heroes, doctors who have been shot, who have to be flown in by helicopter to clinics are not maligned as stupid, they are hailed as heroes. This woman therefore should be accorded the same status for placing herself in the public eye as a person who has (or has taken on the mantle of having) had multiple abortions and who is not sorry for it. She is a hero, to me.

To everyone mouthing words of concern about her health and future fertility, FUCK YOU as well. People have crucified themselves, immolated themselves, cut off their ears, their breasts, put out their own eyes, tattooed and disfigured themselves, and many of them call it art or heroism or martyrdom. ‘She shouldn’t have done it because she’s damaging herself,’ people are whining.

You know what’s damaging? Living under the sword of forced birth hanging over one’s head. That hurts every. damn. one. of us. Don’t dare lecture a woman for doing something that might interrupt her fertility. I’m sure that, immersed in the cult of fertility that we are, she’s thought of it. The same people who are outraged by a woman’s inability to get permanent sterilization at a young age are also… what? Mealy-mouthing over her choice to theoretically damage herself with multiple abortions for the sake of art.

What bullshit. Again, this is all about moralizing. It’s okay to have an abortion as long as you secretly are sorry for it? It’s okay if you only do it out of necessity? As soon as you say that, you throw us all into the furnace. I reject that utterly.

The argument that she is denigrating or using or making light of women’s real experiences with abortion is also pure crap. No, I’m not even starting to run out of steam on this subject. Fuck that as well. This from the same group that say an abortion should have the same social weight as a pap smear. Obviously if it doesn’t have that weight with YOU, why should the anti-choicers fall in line? You know this woman hasn’t really had an abortion? Why should she disclose her real status to you? She doesn’t have to earn a badge to talk about abortion, or to do art about abortion. She’s got a uterus, she did what she wanted with it. She hasn’t even looked sideways at yours. Step. Off. Get your eyes back where they belong, on your own hypocrisy.

To Yale, FUCK YOU, too. Fuck you for this: Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns. Basic ethical standards? What basic ethical standards are that? What mental and physical health concerns are we talking about? Are you rounding up the alcoholics, anorexics, cokeheads, insomniacs, plagiarists, overeaters, smokers, and nymphomaniacs in your program as well? These acts… you mean the ABORTIONS? The ‘forced miscarriages’? There are people doing worse things to themselves under your noses for the sake of art, people hurting other people as well, manipulating each other, driving each other mad, abusing each other, abusing themselves. Get your judgmental, authoritarian, hypocritical selves back in the ivory tower. Fuck you. This woman took legal actions, simulated or otherwise, on her own body and no other.

I wish this were true. I wish it were true because I wish it were that easy for women to control their fertility. I wish it weren’t all art. I’m glad it isn’t because I think that might keep Aliza safer, and I think she is brave to have done this. I don’t think it’s bad art. I’m sad that it worked so well and so many people danced the dance. I think the people who will be angriest about this are the ones who are going toe to toe with their own hypocrisy right now.

I support Aliza’s right to do this for real, because I will not throw my sisters into the furnace by applying my morality to OUR RIGHT to do what we will to our bodies. I support her right to do this as performance art, simulating the abortions/miscarriages she claims to have had, because it is her right (OUR RIGHT) to express herself in a way that harms no one. And I utterly reject any criticism of her beyond the unbiased, technical evaluation of her work as a whole. I hope she gets a fucking A.