Faux Real

A short round-up before I go swimming.

Picture stolen from Brownfemipower, with recommended accompanying post: With their growing involvement in the struggle for Chicano liberation and the emergence of the feminist movement, Chicanas are beginning to challenge every social institution which contributes to and is responsible for their oppression, from inequality on the job to their role in the home. They are questioning “machismo,” discrimination in education, the double standard, the role of the Catholic Church, and all the backward ideology designed to keep women subjugated.

Blogging Feminism: (Web)Sites of Resistance

My Good Abortion: Abortion is not just the woman who will suffer a stroke — or die — unless her deeply wanted pregnancy is terminated. Not just the rape victim. Not just the 15-year-old girl whose father haunts her bedroom at night. Yes, these women desperately need safe, legal abortions, but six years ago so did I, and so do the thousands of other “normal” women who have straightforward D&C or chemical abortions every year. Yes, I too am the face of abortion: I, the married mother, the step-grandmother, the internationally-published writer whose books on parenting have sold tens of thousands of copies. I am a mother by choice. I have done the reproduction Trifecta — miscarriage, childbirth, abortion — in that order, and I had my abortion because I didn’t want another child. And I have never felt a moment of regret or guilt. Regret implies self-blame, and I didn’t do anything wrong. My abortion was a good thing.

The True Front of Progressivism: But I do know many who read “mainstream blogs” are invested in, for the most part, a different way of seeing things. You may begin to bristle at this implication, but those of the Brown™ who weed through their daily junk-comment-pitchforks as I do understand what I mean. This dynamic is evidenced, for example (though not necessarily a mirror of the depths to which the hate can travel), in posts like this, where a huge comment count commences because even through my satire, readers of a mainstream blog understand my views are attacking, apparently, bastions of conventional American thought, even if they are not entirely sure what is being attacked that bothers them so.

Quality of Whose Life?: In a paper published a couple weeks ago, Dr. Sherilyn McGregor of Keele University in Staffordshire points out that when environmentally sound living requres extra work, that work is usually “women’s work.” Her paper is a useful and readable summation, and if it weren’t encrypted read-only I’d paste some of it here. Still, this is not news to environmentalist women. What decisions are environmentalist citizens asked to make? Choosing the green laundry detergent and toilet paper and buying organic groceries. Carrying cloth bags to the supermarket. Using non-toxic cleansers. Adding corporate citizenship to one’s list of brand loyalty factors and schlepping the Seafood Buying Guide around. Sorting trash into the proper containers for recyclables, compost, and landfilling.

Amananta posted this article which included the question, “How many of you know what it is like to live on $26,000 a year?” Who the fuck is “you”?

21 Years a Mother: Kat sucked her thumb until she was 11 years old. When she was a baby she carried around a sock monkey named Monkey Man until it fell to pieces and was just a few pieces of cotton batting held together with some thread. When she was five she switched to a little bunny named Jellybean. She would hold him in one hand and rub his ear between her thumb and forefinger, while sucking her thumb. She rocked herself to sleep like that. One time I washed Jellybean and hung him on the line to dry. I looked out the back window and saw Katy standing there, holding onto Jellybean while he hung on the line, with his ear in one hand and her thumb in her mouth, a stupified look of contentment on her face. For years it was just Katy and me. We were together through the worst times a person can endure. Poverty, violence, sex drugs rock and roll–through it all we kept each other sane.

The Shape of a Mother