Tearing at the Roots/ Dec. 2006

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Breathe.  Stop.  Let it sink in.

My room is a mess of small clutters.  Papers, cables, boxes filled to the brim but not yet sealed; never sealed. Could I ever seal them? I’m getting whiny and should stop.

Move-out is in eight and a half hours. Dad will come by with a truck from the store and give me an encouraging hug before getting to work.  I can’t expect much from him, but I can expect something, and it’s more than Mom will offer.

The walls are bare; painted a dusty light-blue, the wall along my bed–at my back–cluttered with small cards, a poster, train tickets.  I should take these down, but I won’t, not yet, not until the very last hour.  I will carry them with me, and these walls, and this dust, and this oppressive air, and the sourness between the woman who is my mother and myself.

Interview: Alissa Jo Rindels, Part 3

This is the third part of Alissa’s interview. In this segment, we discuss the larger context of her work, and how it relates to the mission of our site. We asked her questions pertaining to gender and personal artistic decisions. She answered us — as always — very honestly. As we wind down this interview, we’d like to thank Alissa once again for her participation and for the chance to talk about her amazing work.

What does “feminism” mean for you, and would you consider yourself a feminist?

Overall, I do believe in what feminism stands for. Everyone wants equal rights. I think feminism has gotten a bad rap, really; growing up the first thing I thought of when I thought of a “feminist” were the extremists who burned bras and were avid “man haters”.

The Modern Bully: Someone Else’s Problem

We have this image, in our collective consciousness, of what a bully looks like. It’s a kid, usually a boy, often larger than the other children. He will be either rich and athletic and perfect, or flawed, stupid and angry. Either way, he needs to make himself feel better. He needs to make other people feel worse. So he finds the weakest, and he destroys them. Or he finds those who threaten his position and he wears away at them until they are no longer a threat. The he continues just because he can.

The female bully has gained less notoriety because she is more subtle. Sometimes she takes the imposing form of the large, angry boy, but usually she is a social climber. She wants to be popular; if she is popular, she wants to stay there. She has learned that it is easier to destroy others than to depend on your own good qualities. So she spreads rumors and cuts down other children when they least expect it. She sows seeds. She speaks in a coded language fraught with layered meaning. She does not need to use her fists. Movies like Mean Girls acknowledged that this creature exists, and how she operates.

It is easy to recognize a child or teenager who bruises his fellow classmates. Women can always tell when another female is targeting someone. But bullying has changed, and it continues to do so at lightning speed. 

Unemployed? Just have a baby!

Mosaic: Babies aren't cheap

This headline made me stop in my tracks: “Forget the Job Hunt. Have a Baby Instead.” I read on, not sure what to make of the argument within:

Hey, girls! Here’s an idea for what to do if you’re unemployed: Have a baby. Your first reaction is probably that this is a throwback to the 1950s. But it’s not. This is the most up-to-date career advice you’re going to get for dealing with a down-in-the-dumps job market.

Penelope Trunk wants you to know that having a baby is way better than the usual means of escapism (read: grad school), that you can avoid leaving a job to have a baby if you don’t have a job to leave, and that “The biological clock trumps career aspirations.” Her arguments are facile, necessarily brief for this short column. She says grad school isn’t worth it, there’s no wage gap anyway(!), and, really, the clock is ticking so you better get baby-making right now.

In-Flight Entertainment

This chick's got the right idea.

I love kids. I want to have kids of my own. For the most part, I understand them and forgive them their foibles.

But, kids are people, too. And people are assholes.

I’m on the plane out west, sitting next to two kids, brother and sister, traveling on their own. When I got on, they were all settled in with their blankets, looking a little forlorn. I was quite willing to be their in-flight attendant, lend a helping hand if they needed it. I’d seen their worried mom at the gate. I was supposed to get the window seat but the kids got there first, and, really, aisle is better.

When the little girl (who is small enough to curl up sideways in a seat) had her shoe-clad foot against my leg, I wrote it off. Too young to know better.

Then, apropos of nothing, she turns to me and looks right at me, like I am her official babysitter. “I’m thirsty,” she says, looking at me plaintively. Mom made sure they had snacks, but nothing to drink.

“That sucks,” I say sympathetically. (Oh, shit, what if I just says ‘sucks’ to a Mormon child?) “I’m sure once we take off the flight attendants will bring you something.”

A while later, “Will you buy us a snack?”

Will I what?

Famous Last Words

via Flickr

Has anyone ever heard this phrase before? I’m willing to bet that if you have, you’re probably female. And it was probably after you said you were never getting married or you were never going to have kids, or both.

Even today, with as far as our society has come so far, it still has further to go. Women are still viewed as baby factories. Nobody believes it if you say that you aren’t going to have children. They come up with annoying little things to tell you that they don’t, too! Such as the one I used for the title of this piece.

I’m someone who really is not interested in ever getting married or having children. But, right now, I’m going to focus on the having kids part, because that seems to be the strangest out of the two for people to hear. They just can’t believe that a girl wouldn’t want to have children.

Women, and even young girls, are constantly under pressure to have children one day. I can’t count the amount of times that I’ve heard women say that all of their friends were having children, so they felt pressure not to be the last one to have a child.

I’m sorry, but what a ridiculous reason to have a baby.

Your Happy Little Accident, My Traumatic Mishap

The DailyMail is a paragon of trash, there’s no sense in pretending otherwise. It’s a tabloid. Thanks to the Internet, I can now browse their car wreck of a front page whenever I want. After this evening, I’m quite sure I never want to again.

The Daily Mail’s Leah Hardy opines:

Of course we women don’t want a male pill – it would end those happy little ‘accidents’

That headline makes my stomach churn. It implies deceit, selfishness, and a cavalier attitude that is unforgivable.

Imagine, for a moment, that you know of a couple who are undecided about having a baby. It doesn’t matter if it would be their first or fifth child, they just aren’t sure about having one right now. Maggie is on the pill, and every night she pauses before swallowing the next. She wonders, should she skip it tonight? Should she tell John she is ready for this, and just not fill next month’s prescription?

In the end, John makes the decision for her. He swaps her pills for candy. In two weeks, she is knocked up, and confused.

John has stolen Maggie’s right to choose. If this scenario doesn’t anger you, it should. If you’re pro-abortion, you’re probably fuming, wishing you could give John a swift kick to the nuts.