This Class Can Go To Health

I hate my personal health class and it isn’t because my instructor is incapable of teaching or because she grades in biased manner.  It’s because the entire course is a little bit bias.  It’s so ridiculously focused on changing health habits of it’s students that it becomes insulting.  What if you’re of the population that is comfortable exactly as they are.

I can’t touch my toes.  I’m not a size two.  I go to the gym every two weeks when I need to blow off steam.  The last time I used my stove to cook something that wasn’t minute rice was probably 3 weeks ago.  On the flipside, I drink enough water for a small third world country daily.  I can bike the entire Monon trail in Indianapolis and back in an afternoon and feel pretty damn good.  I eat salads at least twice a day.  I don’t drink soda and I haven’t had caffeine in ten months.

I’m comfortable with those facts as they are.  I don’t feel the need to change a single one.  I can’t run a four minute mile like the guy I flirt with in class, but dare I suggest he’s  probably in a minority of the population.

 

Safe sex. Get married and be faithful.

This was posted to facebook with the hash tag of “#PursuingAbsoluteTruth.”  I think waiting til marriage to have sex is batshit crazy, an opinion I’m not real quiet about.

I don’t believe in absolute truth.  I think there are exceptions to every single rule. I think it’s utterly foolish that people of any given faith would think that there is absolute truth, about anything.  I think it’s even more foolish when they try to legislate laws on those absolute truths.

This stance offends me.  This stance is what legislates my rights as woman.  It’s the reason the local abortion clinic only does abortions one evening a week.  It’s the reason people like this think it’s ok to ignore science in place of faith. It’s offensive to more than just me though.  It’s offensive to anyone who is not a heterosexual married man or woman because it says if you don’t fall into that insanely narrow category, you don’t get to have or enjoy sex.

TIme, place and history

My state, and even my hometown has a history, and so does yours.  My hometown, like many places in the states, has a deep and intense history with the KKK and racism.   We teach this history, we learn it.  We learn how appalling it is and we learn how much hardship the people who were discriminated against went though. We learn how volatile the times were.  If I asked you*, you could tell me stories of the era from your hometown, and you’d  probably tell them with disgust in your voice.  We don’t teach these old horror stories because they’re fun.  They aren’t and for many people, myself included, they’re personal.  Personal loss is always part of these stories and as such, they have to be approached very carefully.  We keep these stories fresh year after year because those who never learn history are doomed to repeat it.

Apparently teaching it isn’t enough.  We are repeating it.  Look at the numerous gay bashings and hate crimes that are reported every single year all over the states.  Look at the hate groups funneling money into making GLBT persons less than people.  Look back at history and realize how stupid we’re going to look like ten, twenty, or thirty years.

you*=A reasonably educated person from the United States.

European Baby Boxes and It’s similarities to the girls who went away.

“Professor Browne thinks that the spread is greatest in countries with a communist past (and so an attitude that the authorities will take over child-rearing) or in Catholic countries where the stigma of unmarried motherhood is stronger.”  – Click me

The Girls Who Went Away is a book compiled by a woman whose mother gave her up for adoption in the days before Roe V. Wade, and a huge reason I’m prochoice, but that’s a whole nothing blog post.  The first chapter of the book is devoted to debunking the myths with unwanted pregnancy that surround the babies born in this era.  One of the myths it tackles is the idea that the women freely and willingly gave up their babies.

“Chances are the baby wasn’t unwanted.  It was a baby unwanted by society, not by mom.  You couldn’t be an unwed mother.  Motherhood was synonymous with marriage.  If you weren’t married, your child was a bastard, and those terms were used..  I think I’m like many women who thought “it may kill me to do this, but my baby is going to have what everybody keeps saying is best for him.”It’s not because the baby wasn’t wanted.  There would have been nothing more wonderful than to come home with my baby. -Glory”

“The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade”  by Ann Fessler, page 11

There are stark similarities between America before Roe V. Wade and the parts of europe that have such strong ideas about what motherhood is and isn’t.  It’s these ideas that make women ashamed to have been pregnant.  It’s these ideas that fed the need for maternity homes in the middle of the 1900’s and feed the need (to an extent) for these baby boxes.  Because when it’s easier to give up your baby than it is to face your family and society about having a baby out of wedlock, that’s just toxic.

The Real Problem with Slut-Shaming

I was in the grocery store last week and it was 90+ degrees.  I was wearing shorts and a tank top.  As I’m shopping, I hear this woman stop her 11 year old daughter, point to me, and say “We don’t dress like that.  It’s shameful.”

I have no problem with your choice to dress yourself.  I have no problem with your wishes for your daughter to dress modestly.  I do have a problem with you stopping, pointing, and then announcing to the whole store that I am shameful.  It doesn’t matter what I’m wearing(or not wearing), you have no right to call me shameful.  I could walk through the store in full on bondage gear, and you don’t have the right to point, stare, or talk behind my back.  I could walk through the store in stripper garb and you don’t have the right to point, stare or talk behind my back.

I think most people would agree that pointing out anyone in the grocery store as “shameful” is actually shameful in itself, but what I don’t understand is why it’s magically appropriate to do on the internet.

To anyone who doesn’t believe me or agree with me:  Wait until you’re the girl who is “shameful” or your daughter is the girl who is “shameful.”  Because it’ll happen no matter how good you are, and you’ll realize how hurtful it is when someone else is trying to impress their morality upon your morality.  You’ll realized how far we need to go as a society.  I just hope you realize it before you’re the slut, because no one enjoys being the slut.

Girl, Did you know…

Saw this on facebook.  I’ve got some opinions about this.  But these pictures pretty much tell it for me.  I totally tried to post them, but it got all fucked up.  So click here. 

I did respond to her facebook post though, as any sex positive person should and here is my actual response:

“Hey, did you know that we have enough problems with men slut shaming us that women really don’t need to do it to each other?

Seriously, what you’re doing is much more offensive that some girls boobs hanging out of her shirt.”

Click Here for the FB comments, if you’re interested.

Click me for an even more charming graphic this young lady put together.

Christian Woman Writes Letter to 18 Year Old Self

Click me.

As a mostly agnostic person, I think this paints a really beautiful picture of faith.  You can nitpick it for gender stereotypes and the like if you wish, but I don’t think thats necessary.

Casting Crowns- Just Another Birthday

Click me(Music video)

“Sixteen finds me
Blowing out candles and making wishes
And all around me
Is everyone but the one I’m wishing for
And he sent me flowers
And gift-wrapped excuses
From a daddy whose daughter
Wants to see him again

And I know, I know
It’s just another birthday
But I guess I thought
This would be the one
When he would call me, see me
Hold me and free me
But it’s just another birthday

And I’ll be fine
I’ll be fine

Nineteen finds me
And I’m wild-eyed and wide open
I gave myself away to love
But backseat promises fade like a mist
I’m screaming at the midnight air
Everyone hears me but I don’t care
My heart’s clenched just like a fist
‘Cause, people, I didn’t ask for any of this
And I’m not fine
I’m not fine

In the company of strangers
In a cold and sterile room
All alone with a child inside me
And I don’t know what to do
Jesus, can You hear me
Come and heal my brokenness
Put the pieces back together
And be a Father to the fatherless

Twenty-one finds me
Blowing out candles and making wishes
And all around me
My barefoot princess twirls and sings
It’s so amazing
Looking back at all God’s brought us through
You are my happy birthday
And you were born to break the chains

Now I know, I know
It’s not just another birthday
‘Cause I’m here, she’s here
And look how far we’ve come
Since you’ve called me, saw me
Held me and freed me
Thank you, Lord, for another birthday
And we’ll be fine
We’ll be fine”

Allow me to count the ways this is freaking offensive.  The band Casting Crowns does a whole lot of songs about daughters who grow up with shitty fathers, and they all send the same message to kids with shitty fathers.  “I’m supposed to be a fuck up(until of course, Jesus takes pity on your fucked upness)” When you send this message to kids with dysfunctional family relationships, we shouldn’t be surprised when they grow up to become fuck ups.

Having a shitty parent doesn’t define you, it doesn’t define what you become.  The vast majority of kids with mostly absent parents grow up just fine, and you as a person with a shitty father you’re not that special.  Please, please don’t blame the fact that your parents didn’t love you enough for whatever bad things happened in your adult life.  Assume some personal responsibility.

A Few Notes on Modesty

I’ve been highly critical of modesty in the past and today I was reminded of what bullshit modesty is.

Guidelines from Pure Fashion

-Undergarments can do a good job of protecting modesty during the warm summer months.
– Try an extra lined bra for the months when it is too warm to dress in layers.
-Choose a bra that has a little padding in the event of a chill

Really?  Why are we fixating on the fact that part of a nipples anatomical function is to get erect?  Why is it a problem and why do we need to fix it?

Guidelines from Modesty: The Forgotten Virtue

-If an article of clothing is difficult to get into or get out of, it isn’t modest.

There are a fuckton of things in my closet that are hard to get in or out of that most people would classify as modest.  Bras, for instance.  I frequently stumble when putting on pants, or hoodies.

” I have two precious girls at home and I don’t want them to be meat for some guy’s eyes.”- a quote from her blog.  I have a huge problem with this quote, not because being modest is inherently bad, because it isn’t.  But when you put the responsibility on girls to not be stared at by boys, that’s totally backwards.  Teach your boys to not stare at girls like a piece of meat rather than teach your girls to dress modestly to avoid being seen like a piece of meat.

I repeat what I said earlier, modesty isn’t in itself bad.  The personal decision to dress modestly, whatever modestly means for you is not bad.  It is when institutions enforce modesty as part of their moral code when it becomes bad.  Because when modesty becomes moral code, being immodest begins to look a whole lot like slut shaming.

 

Mitt Romney- Anti-Gay Bully?

Mitt Romney outed as anti-gay bully

I think Mitt Romney is a pompous ass, for reasons that don’t stem from stupid things he did to classmates 40 years ago.  We all have skeletons in our closets.  The trick is to own those skeletons before they can be used against you.  I’m not going to judge asshat Romney for what he did when he was 18, but I will judge him for not stepping up to the plate and owning his previous mistakes.  I’ll also judge him for having a shitty political code now, but that’s beside the point.