New Year, New Outlook

I don't really go for the whole "new year's resolution" thing.  An arbitrary date change is not the best time to commit to doing something you don't really want to do.  You should resolve to make changes when you decide those changes would be good things for you to do, not because the calendar says January 1.  That said, I actually have some changes I intend to make this year.  The timing of them is coincidental.

Part of this came about because my husband and our son were out of state for a week over the new year.  I was home alone with our daughter for that whole week.  I noticed that I didn't really have much trouble picking up around the house and keeping things clean.  Our maid service was supposed to come the day they left, but her daughter got sick, and she postponed until the following week.  Therefore, I was trying to keep things picked up so I wouldn't have to do it all in a rush when she came.  Also, and this is the significant part, I discovered that I am more likely to do things when there is no one else around who could do them.

In addition, I had been feeling a bit discontented lately, and disconnected from my husband.  We have been tossing around the idea of moving, and so I started thinking about what I would like if I were to live by myself and get my own house.  Then I thought about what life would be like living by myself, and I noted that I would have to do all the cleaning by myself, which I'd probably be able to do just fine because it would be just me.

I dreamed about being able to get my own tiny house and decorate it like a castle and take it to events, and about having just a moderately-sized house with an art studio where I could do whatever I wanted.  I even researched prices on RV's that I could turn into a castle and found myself thinking, "Why should I ask my husband about getting one of these?  I can afford one by myself, and then I could do whatever I wanted with it, and he couldn't object, because it would be MINE instead of OURS."

And then a light bulb went on.  I have spent my WHOLE LIFE trying to do everything in order to please other people.  I never do anything without checking to make sure it is ok with anyone and everyone else involved.  Living by myself would give me the ability to make my own decisions without having to worry about what anyone else thought.  But having had this revelation, I realized that I did not need to live by myself to make that happen.  I simply needed to stop relying on other people to give me validation and self-worth.

So my new plan is to pretend that OUR house is actually MY house, and that my husband is just visiting and cannot be expected to actually do anything, and everything is my responsibility.  A happy side benefit to that is that I am fairly certain that this will also improve my relationship with my husband, because I will be not only keeping the house cleaner (which is often a point of contention between us), but I will be a more confident person in general.  I will no longer be relying on my husband to "take care" of me, even subconsciously, which will remove some of his sense of responsibility from his shoulders, and I will feel like I have some control over my own life.

Another part of my new outlook came as a result of the horrible Newtown, Connecticut elementary school shooting.  Our son is 5, and I knew how easily this could have happened here.  For the next several days, my facebook feed was covered with news about the tragedy, so I learned all about it without ever reading a single article about it.  I avoided reading about it because that kind of news is terribly upsetting to me, and I didn't feel like I could take it emotionally.  However, I was still inundated with news about it because my friends kept talking about it.  And then came the people, not even a week after the shooting, screaming about how no one should take their guns away.  I could not believe how utterly insensitive these otherwise nice people were being.  And shortly after that came all the people declaring that the reason the shooting happened was because "god was not allowed in schools."  Utter bullshit.

My anger-ometer blew at that one.  I could no longer contain myself and found myself turning into an angry atheist.  How dare people blame me, even indirectly, for a crazy person killing children my son's age, simply because I don't want him to be force-fed religion in class?

I had an impassioned discussion with my husband, where I sat there in tears, NEEDING to see real changes happening politically in this country because what I was seeing was awful, and I simply could not take it.  I found myself spending all of my time, even work time, arguing with strangers on the internet.  The next day, after I had calmed down a little, I thought about my discussion with my husband and realized that I had an excellent solution to my problem: turn off the news.  Since I don't watch the news on TV, nor do I read news articles unless they are posted on facebook, expressly because I find most "news" to be depressing sensational drama which upsets me, I realized the only way to put the filter back on my life was to start deleting people on my facebook.

Rather than unfriending everyone, however, I simply unsubscribed from the people who post anything controversial, regardless of which side they were on, so I can still visit their pages if I want to and see pics of their kids, etc., without finding myself engaged in debates with THEIR friends.  My facebook news feed slowed considerably.

A happy side benefit to this was that I no longer spent nearly as much time on facebook, reading news articles that did nothing but make me angry, and getting daily updates on what people were eating for dinner.  Instead, I was suddenly able to find plenty of time to catch up on the long list of projects I had planned.  I made a dress for my daughter, a bathrobe for my son, carved a mold in soapstone and pewter cast a set of wind chimes, cleaned up my craft room, and got rid of a bunch of things that I no longer needed.

The third major change has to do with my work outlook.  I have disliked my job for quite some time.  I would like to quit and do something artistic, but unfortunately, the arts don't pay well and are remarkably unstable.  I am also over 35, and I have children, which makes it difficult to get into the music industry, which is the only arts industry in which I have training.  I am a decent programmer, but the idea of doing the same old thing at a new company just made me feel like crap.  However, last week, my team lead at work told me that our company is having money troubles, and that I may find myself laid off soon.

Financially, I am not prepared to drop to part-time at my current job, and working in another industry would mean I would be earning much less than I currently do, with just as much time invested as I currently invest.  I instantly found myself considering programming jobs, despite my previous aversion, because that's what would pay the bills.

I used to complain that I disliked programming because most of it is maintenance.  Once the project is released, you're not "done."  You still have to fix the inevitable bugs, change the way stuff works because the customer doesn't like it, etc.  And we have been in maintenance mode at work for a couple of years, with no end in sight.  It finally occurred to me that this was the reason for my discontent, not a dislike of programming.  I don't mind writing code that does things.  But I really hate being stuck in maintenance mode indefinitely.

I stuck with my old job because of the perk of being able to work from home.  However, at this point, I'm thinking I might not mind going back to work in an office, as that would also keep me off of facebook.  It has many disadvantages, but I suspect I would be able to get paid more at another company, which would make up for those disadvantages, at least temporarily, and perhaps other arrangements could be made at a later date.

In an effort to make another programming job more palatable, I had to tell myself that I need to not look to my job for fulfillment.  It is just a job, which pays me money, so that I can afford to do the things that actually DO fulfill me.  So many people do not have the luxury of a fulfilling job, so while it would be nice to do something that I found rewarding, I think I will have to give up on that idea, at least for now.  Maybe eventually, that will change.

For now, I will start taking control of my own life, stop asking for permission for everything, and accept that while things may not always be ideal, I can make things work, and still have things to be proud of.

So congrats to me.  Finally, at 36 years old, after having two children in my second marriage, I became an adult. :)

Santa Baby

Friends of mine at Temple Horses just made this video. Enjoy!

Stop trying to blame the Connecticut shooting on "lack of god in schools."

I keep seeing people posting a picture of a t-shirt that says, "DEAR GOD, Why do you allow so much violence in our schools? signed, a concerned student. DEAR CONCERNED STUDENT, I'm not allowed in schools. signed, God."  This makes me extremely angry.  Why?  Because I'm an atheist.  I also have a little boy, 5 years old, in kindergarten.  I live in a state that has a high number of people who own guns of all kinds, and where we spend less than any other state on mental health per capita.  Friday's school shooting could easily have happened to my son at his school.  But somehow, my friends and relatives seem to think that I, and others like me, am the problem.  Because I don't want my son force-fed christianity as part of his public school education, the shooting was my fault.  Never mind that the shooter's mother was apparently a regular church-goer.  Never mind that the shooter himself had mental health issues that were going untreated due to the difficulty of obtaining mental health services in this country (because, you know, "socialized medicine is evil and takes away our freedom!").  Never mind that despite his mental instability, he apparently had no trouble LEGALLY obtaining an assault rifle.  No, no.  The problem is that all those evil atheists are trying to keep us good christians from praying in school.  Cuz you know, as soon as an atheist is looking down the barrel of a gun, he OF COURSE immediately starts praying to a deity that he doesn't think exists.

There is so much wrong with this statement, it's not even funny.  First of all, as I've stated many times before, the law DOES NOT prevent students, or even teachers and administrators, from praying in school, or from reading the bible in school, or even from talking to their friends about god in school, so long as it is done on their own time.  Teachers and administrators can NOT lead the students in prayer because this would be discriminatory toward all of the students who do not share the same religious beliefs as the teacher.  I frequently read my bible and prayed in school as a child.  There were no consequences, because I was doing it in study hall and at lunch time, and not when I was supposed to be paying attention to the teacher in class.

Second, atheists don't believe in god.  They do not suddenly start praying to a god they don't believe in or "searching for answers/truth" when they think they are facing death or tragedy, any more than christians start contemplating the existence of leprechauns at those times.  If you want to argue that christians don't need to start looking for something to believe in because they already have god, then I will counter your argument with the fact that atheists don't need to "search for truth" because they have already found truth, and it doesn't contain god.  Atheists have no need to believe in god because their understanding of the world is sufficient.

Third, you may find your religion comforting in times like these.  Throwing around statements like, "Those children are getting the best christmas present ever!  They get to be with Jesus on his birthday!" or "God must have needed more angels," may be comforting to you.  To an atheist, these are appallingly disgusting things to say.  You claim your god is omnipotent and omnipresent (but yet somehow is not present in schools? Not sure how you make that work in your convoluted little heads.) but for some reason is "unable" to prevent this kind of tragedy.  So much for omnipotent.  If he IS omnipotent, then he CHOSE not to interfere and save those children.  Because it was, according to you, "part of his plan."  What kind of a sadistic douchenugget includes the violent murder of 6-year-olds in his plans??  If he is allowing this kind of tragedy to occur for the sole purpose of proving his point (that he is not allowed in school), then he is a jerk of the highest magnitude.  As a friend of mine put it, if your fire-fighter friend was visiting one day, and you had an argument and asked him to leave, and he did so (because he's a "gentleman"), and the next day your house caught fire, he would come back to your house and put out the fire, because that is his job.  It is what he is expected to do.  If he refused to put out the fire at your house because he was a "gentleman" and was simply doing as you asked by not coming back to your house, he would be vilified by all as a right bastard.  Why is your god held to a MUCH LOWER standard than people?  In addition, these statements assume that all of the children are christians.  They weren't.  One of them was jewish.  There were probably others who were also not christian.  So are those poor children now suffering in hell?  Is that a comforting thought to you, as well?

So yes, I am angry about that picture, about that statement, and about other statements that hold the same sentiment.  It could easily have been my son who died in that tragedy, and while I'm struggling with dealing with that concept, I am told that it is my fault for not wanting my son indoctrinated with a bunch of stupid made-up stories that paint a narcissistic abusive deity as the model of perfection and worthy of worship.  If that is what you truly think, FUCK YOU.  I have no more room in my life for you or people like you.  I do not deserve the blame for this.  It had nothing to do with religion at all - it was a crazy man with a gun.  He SHOULD have been able to receive the mental health services he so desperately needed.  He SHOULD NOT have been able to obtain an assault rifle.  Why don't you place the blame where it belongs?  On a broken insurance system in a country where people think their "freedom" means "I've got mine, I won't help you get yours, and just you try to take what's mine away."  I refuse to let people blame everything wrong in our country on "the atheists."  I am sick of the poor, persecuted christian complex from people who think they are persecuted because they can't force everyone to think the way they do.  You're all fucked up, and I'm not going to play your game any more.

Rape Culture

I've seen this image floating around on facebook, and I can't help but agree.  For what other crime do we blame the victim?  I also recently read this article about a woman verbally abused on a train because she wanted to read her book in peace.  Her abuser actually said that it wasn't his fault that she was pretty.  Really?  I mean, really??  Whose fault is it?  I guess we should punish her parents for having the lack of forethought to actually bring forth an attractive child into the world?  What kind of a person thinks this sort of logic is actually ok?  When we couple that with the fact that one in five women in the United States have been sexually assaulted, I don't see how anyone can deny that we are teaching our children that when rape happens, it's something the woman could have and should have prevented.

We've got politicians who consider rape just another form of conception and think it's perfectly valid to force rape victims to bear their rapists' children.  We've got other politicians who think women should prepare for rape in the same way that we carry a spare tire in our vehicles. We've got 31 states that allow rapists to sue their victims for child custody.  We've got children who actually think rape is acceptable under certain circumstances.  And then there are the rapists who don't think they are rapists.  Women are somehow expected to be nice to men, even when they are victims of unwanted attention.  If they say what they think and ask men to leave them alone, they are "bitches."  If they turn the men down nicely, the men get the idea that they are "too nice" and that "nice guys finish last," when really, it was just that the woman wanted to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible with minimal fuss.

Are that many men really that incapable of keeping their peckers in their pants?  Why is it my obligation to prevent myself from getting raped?  Why is society so disinclined to punish a rapist for raping and instead punishing the victim for being raped?  How are we any better than the middle eastern countries who insist their women hide under sheets - I mean burkas - to keep men from being tempted by them?  It is these very attitudes that teach our children that women should not try to look pretty unless they want to have sex with a man, that wanting to have sex with one man means that any man will do, that we owe complete strangers civility and conversation regardless of how willing we are to provide it and how forward they are with their advances, and that because men apparently have extremely poor impulse control, it's up to us to "not become a victim."

However, we are also teaching our children that men should expect women to "put out" if they've paid a certain amount of money on a date, that acting on their sexual desires is something out of their control, and that once they've got an erection, they are no longer responsible for what they do.  We make jokes about men thinking with their dicks all the time.  Maybe we ought to start pointing out that thinking with your dick is unacceptable, and that your brain can and should always be in control.  We most certainly need to stop blaming the victim for the crime.  We also need to make certain that rapists are punished appropriately and that they are actually sought.  Too often, the perpetrator is let off with a slap on the wrist, while the victim is expected to just get on with life as if it never happened, because why should they try to ruin the perpetrator's life?  Does no one understand that once a woman is raped, her life has been ruined far more completely than any rapists has?  Are people really that stupid?  That blind?  That willfully ignorant?  Or is it just that because it is so common, we're just supposed to get over it?

Men need to understand that women are not possessions.  We do not owe you anything.  If we choose to give a part of ourselves to you on occasion, that does not mean that you have free reign over us at all times.  If I don't want to have sex with you, I don't have to.  If I don't want to show you my body, I don't have to.  If I don't want to kiss you or hug you, I don't have to.  If I don't want to even talk to you, I don't have to.  Even if you bought me dinner.  Even if I've had sex with you before.  Even if I'm wearing a short skirt and heels.  Heck, even if I'm naked in your bed.  If I tell you to stop, you had better stop.  Because you are better than that.  You have a brain in your head.  Use it.  Learn a little bit of self-control.  Because women deserve the right to feel safe all the time, and in order for that to happen, it's our attitudes and thought patterns that have to change.

Pro-Life or Anti-Woman?

I honestly can't figure out why any woman would vote for a Republican candidate.  Pro-life, you say?  But yet you don't want to fund welfare programs for single moms to take care of their kids because "she should have thought of that before having more kids."  How is she supposed to keep from having more children if you make contraception more difficult to obtain (by allowing employers to prevent a woman's insurance from covering it and by taking away funding from Planned Parenthood, which is one of the few places a woman can go to get cheap or free contraception) and you also take away her choice to have an abortion?  The "pro-life agenda" that is the Republican platform makes no sense unless you are a rich, white male.

Let's just go over the scenario from beginning to end for a divorced 20-something woman, assuming the Republicans have their way and everything they stand for gets passed.  Let's even throw in the added constraint that she is believes in waiting for sex until marriage, because hey, that's obviously what Republicans think all women should do, even if they can't manage to hold themselves to that same standard.  So hypocrisy aside, we'll just say this hypothetical woman is the epitome of "moral rectitude" and is quite chaste.

Our hypothetical woman cannot obtain birth control because her employer is Catholic and she can't afford it on her low salary, which is only a little over half of what her male coworkers get paid, but she can't fight that because the Republicans don't think there's any problem with paying women less if it encourages them to stay at home with the kids.  And why should she bother if she isn't sexually active?  Heck, she doesn't even have a boyfriend, so marriage is not on the horizon.  She has two children from her previous marriage, but her ex is a deadbeat abuser who only sends her about a quarter of her state-mandated child support every other month.  (Side note: we're also assuming she doesn't have any other problems like dysmenorrhea, endometriosis, etc., where the birth control pill is a common method of controlling symptoms.  It's not like she could afford it anyway, since it's not covered by her insurance due to her employer's religion.)

She meets a friendly young man at a coffee shop and goes on a date with him, leaving her children with a close friend for the evening.  While on that date, despite wearing conservative dress (because we all know that if you're wearing something sexy, you're just asking for it, right?), her date slips a roofie into her drink while she's in the restroom, tells the bartender that she has had too much to drink, and takes her home, where he rapes her.  When she awakes from her drugged stupor, she realizes what happened and immediately reports the rape, but is then "placed in protective custody" for three days to prevent her from being able to go out and get a Plan B pill.  The officer thinks that it causes abortions and wants to prevent what he believes is murder.  Even if he hadn't done that, she is unable to afford it because again, it's not covered by insurance, and she doesn't have the cash, having just spent her last $20 on groceries the day before.  While she is imprisoned, she ovulates.  The sperm from her rapist, which can live for up to 5 days, fertilizes the egg, it implants, and she is pregnant.

When she misses her period, she takes a pregnancy test and finds out that she is pregnant.  She doesn't want this child.  She can't stand the man who raped her.  She can barely afford to feed the children she already has, much less a third.  She did not choose to have sex and therefore did not choose to get pregnant.  She doesn't want to be reminded of that tragic night.  But abortion has been made illegal in all circumstances, even in cases of rape.  She has no choice but to carry to term.  Every day, she is reminded of that horrible date gone wrong, as she is throwing up from morning sickness, as she is feeling round ligament pain, as she starts having trouble getting around, as she suffers from insomnia, even if she doesn't develop hyperemesis, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, or any number of other problems that can adversely affect a woman during pregnancy.

When she starts to show, people notice the lack of a wedding ring on her finger, and she gets dirty looks while in the checkout aisle at the grocery store.  When she pays with her WIC card, she overhears someone complain about her being another lazy welfare mom.

When she finally gives birth, it is long and painful, resulting in a c-section.  She now has permanent physical scars ultimately resulting from her rape, and every time she sees them, she is reminded of that night.  She asks for a tubal ligation, since she's already open anyway, but she's at a Catholic hospital and they refuse because she's "too young and unmarried."  Her insurance wouldn't cover it anyway, because again, her employer is Catholic.

Let's say she decides to keep the baby.  When she sees her, she falls in love and can't bear to give her up.  She certainly can't afford to raise yet another child on her low salary, and no child support will be forthcoming from her rapist.  But due to all of the hoops she has to go through to get the assistance she needs, she is unable to get that assistance.  The Republicans don't want their tax money going to lazy, single moms who can't keep their legs together, so she doesn't qualify.  She considers adoption, but it has gotten much harder to adopt out these days because people don't want to raise someone else's potentially damaged children.  They might have "issues," and that would be "hard."  Plus, there are thousands of unwanted babies, and there just aren't enough couples who want to adopt to go around.  The rest wind up in orphanages, where they are unloved and only minimally cared for, as the government has severely restricted the budget for their care.

Then suddenly, she receives notice that her rapist wants custody of her baby.  Perhaps the calloused individual would say, "Look at that!  A solution to her financial problems!  Give the baby to her father!"  But I know of no mother who would entrust the raising of her child, especially a female child, to her rapist.  She tries to fight in court, but she can't afford a lawyer, and since rape is "just another method of conception," joint custody is granted.  She is now forced to have regular contact with her rapist and leave her infant daughter in the care of someone who has previously taken advantage of an incapacitated female.

In order to make ends meet, her older children start working in a factory, alongside other poor children, including those from the orphanages.  The Republicans have done away with child labor laws in order to "help" the poor.  They do bring in a little bit of money, but because they have to spend all of their non-school hours working, they have no time for homework, and their grades start to slip.  By the time they reach age 16, they are barely passing, and they just drop out of school to work.  They grow up minimally educated and unable to obtain a high-paying job because they can't afford any sort of higher education, even trade school, because it costs too much and the government charges too much in interest on the few student loans that are still available.

Tell me, is that justice?  Is that the kind of country the Republicans want us to live in?  Do they want us to return to the way we were 200 years ago when robber barons controlled everything and the poor were merely expendable cheap labor?  If Republicans are so dead-set against allowing women reproductive freedom, how can they then condemn the poor for needing help supporting their children?  They would take away all of our choices and leave us as nothing more than breeders of a limitless cheap labor supply.  Perhaps to the Republican party, that is all we are.  They are so focused on the "baby" in the womb, they seem to forget that the womb has an owner, that the womb is a body part inside of that owner, and that that owner should be guaranteed bodily autonomy.  If a man can force a woman to birth a child against her will, women are reduced to slaves.

Republicans are determined to not only prevent women from making choices on when and whether to have children, but they also refuse to provide those women with the means to raise those children when they arrive.  You can't have it both ways.

"But your example isn't very likely," you say.  How is that relevant?  Even now, 32,000 pregnancies a year occur from rape.  That's 32,000 women who would be forced to birth a child against their will, possibly more if these laws get passed, because at the same time as they are anti-woman, they are also pro-rapist.  Just because that is a small percentage of the overall population does not make their pain any less real.  We've passed laws for a much smaller percentage of the population in the past.

The pledge of allegiance says, "liberty and justice for all."  It doesn't say, "for all except women," or "for all except the poor."  The fact that there are cases where an abortion is the best choice means that we can't make blanket laws that cover this issue.  It must be a choice, left up to the individuals involved, because there is no way that the law can allow for all of the contingencies that might arise.

When it gets right down to it, why do we even have laws about abortion and birth control at all?  The only people who should be involved in these decisions are the woman, her family, and her doctor(s).  The government does not have any right to regulate what happens in any woman's uterus.

To be anti-choice is to be a misogynist.  It says that you know better than a mere woman what she should do with her own body.  It says that you desire the ability to make her choices for her, and that you do not believe that she is capable of making a wise decision simply because she is a woman.  How any thinking woman can fall in line with that is completely beyond me.

Hello!

A lot of things have been bugging me lately, and I feel the need to shout at people and explain my position in such a way that I feel like I am heard and understood, whether or not people agree.  Since I am too much of an introvert to feel comfortable taking on the monumental task of garnering votes and funds to run for office, I have decided to start small, with a blog.  I will likely cover a large range of topics, from atheism, feminism, and marriage equality to parenting and relationships.

These will be my opinions, which have been developed with careful thought, introspection, and research.  Feel free to disagree, but it must be done respectfully.