Monthly Archives: June 2010

NPFP Guest Post: Five Years Later

Welcome to RMB’s Naked Pictures of Faceless People, a series of guest posts from diverse anonymous bloggers. (Read more about NPFP’s origins.) These are the posts that are jumping to get out of us, but for whatever reason — safety, embarrassment, conflict of interest, protection of loved ones’ reputations or feelings, or so on — we don’t or won’t or can’t post at our own blogs. Anyone, whether blogger or reader only, is welcome to submit or discuss a potential post by emailing me at arwyn at raisingmyboychick dot com.

Trigger Warning: There is a trigger warning on this post for emotional descriptions of abortion and medical practitioner callousness.

Five Years Later

Next month is the five-year-mark of what turned out to be the most complicated and difficult and liberating and devastating experience of my life – my life as a mother, my life as a woman and a spouse, as a feminist, as a professional.

A few weeks after moving my family – spouse, preschooler, baby – from our funky but expensive city neighborhood to a distant but affordable suburb, I found out I was pregnant. At first blush this sounds like the beginning of someone’s “how we came to love our little surprise, without whom our family would not be complete, who gives us endless joy and whom we can’t imagine being without” story. That’s not this story.

My IUD failed, by virtue (apparently) of coming out unannounced and unnoticed. It turns out I didn’t know how to check for proper placement, or had somehow forgotten how in the months since it was inserted by my midwife, at my six week postpartum checkup. My baby was just over a year. I noticed I was late, trudged to the drugstore, peed on a stick in my new bathroom. I was pregnant again. For a split second, I felt total joy, and then immediately an overwhelming sense of dread and panic.

I knew, solidly and in my bones, that I could not complete my graduate program with yet another baby. I was years from finishing as it was, had just decided to move further from the library and my faculty so my children could attend a decent public school and have their own bedrooms. I faced a very, very clear choice: keep this surprise third child and quit my program and settle into a life I decidedly did not want in this new neighborhood and live there forever, having failed to enter my chosen profession. Or I could have an abortion, pretend like nothing happened, start my fellowship in the fall, finish according to plan, and have the life I’d plotted out and planned for.

I had the abortion. Scheduled it at a distant Planned Parenthood, where it turned out my husband could drop me off and then take the kids to the park for the morning. Although he didn’t pressure me, exactly (how do you pressure someone to do something they already want to do?) my husband was more on board than I was. He did not for a moment consider the offer I made: if he wanted me to keep the baby and quit my program I would do it, hands down, no persuasion required, but it wasn’t my first choice. I could not imagine ending a pregnancy he wanted to keep. But he didn’t. When I made the appointment for the abortion, he was only worried that it wasn’t soon enough, that I might change my mind in the intervening week.

It was horrible, although the staff tried to be nice. I couldn’t get anesthetic, because I had arrived alone and they didn’t trust me when I assured them I had a ride home. They lectured me on my carelessness, or at least that’s how it felt. When I said my husband planned to get a vasectomy, the doctor sighed. “Everybody says that,” he told me. It was terribly, terribly painful. When it was over, I was glad I hadn’t had the drugs, since all the other women (mostly very young, most I assume not stable mothers of two who could frankly have accommodated another child in their tidy suburban houses) looked miserable and out of it.

After a day or two, my husband told me he couldn’t talk about it anymore. He refused to listen if I wanted to talk. When I noticed I was drinking rather a lot in the afternoons, and told him I really wanted to see a therapist, he responded in a way that, looking back, was the beginning of the end of the marriage. He refused to let me access the health insurance, so that I could find a therapist. At first I thought he just was too busy to look up the information for me; I asked to call the HR people at his office and he wouldn’t tell me who I should speak to. If I called him at work to ask, he yelled at me. If I wanted him to sit down with me in the evening to show me how to find someone who took our insurance, he told me it had to be done from his office (which was a lie, of course.) Finally I gave up asking. I don’t know what motivated him in this particular bout of selfishness – he claimed later that he was worried I would blame him, and I thought, well, you’ve got that right.

I never went to therapy. I soldiered on. I did my fellowship. I curtailed the drinking on my own. I occasionally considered what it meant to have destroyed another human life. I am a staunch and ardent feminist; I am pro-choice in my thinking and my voting and my advice to others. I would counsel my own beloved daughter to do as I did. And yet the feeling of being someone who loved herself more than her unborn child has been hard to shake. I always thought of myself as a person who would choose her family, would choose her children, above all other things, but I am not that woman, it turns out. (Neither, of course, is my husband that man.)

It has been a complicated five years; I have made a series of choices in the interim that I don’t necessarily recommend, but that turn out to have been powerful in their way. I finished the damn degree, and am now more or less happily employed in the field which would have been forever closed to me if I had dropped out of school. The marriage is almost fully unraveled. I tend to think that would have happened either way. I wish, some days, especially when I spend time with a child who is the age my never-born child would have been, that I had created a happier ending for us. When my now school-aged younger child went through a phase of begging for a baby sister or brother, I felt grieved and sorrowful. I think occasionally about a trip I took to the park during the week before my abortion, pushing the stroller and guiding my daughter on her bike, knowing I was pregnant, knowing that this was the only time these three small beings would be present in my life as I did this everyday thing, and the sadness of it just washes over me.

——————————

Please support the Naked Pictures of Faceless People project by commenting on the posts. Comments which attack or attempt to guess the identity or any aspect of the identity of the blogger will be deleted, however. Protect and respect this space as though it were your own work on display here, naked and faceless.

Anonymous comments are welcome on NPFP posts. Simply put “Anonymous” or any pseudonym in Name, and either your own or a fake email addresses (ex me@me.com) as the email. NOTE: If you have a Gravatar associated with your email address, it will show up even with an anonymous name, in which case please use a different or a fake email address.

13 Comments | Posted on 22 June 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Parenting | Tags: abortion, Gender, Mental Health, relationships

Like this? Share it:

We bought a car: a story of boundary assertion, in which your humble reporter kicks douchebag ass

We bought a car today. And that’s not the awesome thing.

(Though it is fucking awesome: WE BOUGHT A CAR¹. After driving our former sedan into the ground — had her for 10 years and 200,000 miles, yo, and only just starting to show her age — we finally have a car with five functioning seatbelts, that can take both the Boychick and our German Shepherd, yet isn’t a giant road hog. I’m still in happy, happy shock.)

No, the awesome thing came because of the un-awesomeness of the “sales manager”², who was giving us a run-around, treating me like he thought I was an airhead, trying to bully us, then lying to us not once but twice.

I did not take his bullshit.

I — calmly, firmly — demanded his cooperation.

I challenged his lies, and he went off in a huff.

And then, while talking with the sales guys (who were smarmy sales guys, but not douchebags), who listened to our complaints about his treatment of us, and of me in particular (to be fair, I was being the vocal one), and told us we wouldn’t have to talk with him at all anymore, and they would make sure we saw what he was trying to hide from us³ — Douchebag Manager came back.

The ensuing conversation went something like this:

BROTHER-IN-LAW (the family’s mechanic)

I work in a dealership, I know these reports are written up and filed. I write them up for a living. It shouldn’t be a big deal to let us see it.

SMARMY BUT NOT DOUCHEY SALES GUY

Of course, of course, and we can get it for you, it’s not a problem, we’re on your side⁴.

DOUCHEBAG MANAGER

(DOUCHEBAG MANAGER walks over and interrupts, trying to join conversation.)

We’re a great dealership, we inspect all our cars, I already told you we replace everything that needs to be replaced, we wouldn’t sell you anything we don’t trust –

FEMINIST PROTAGONIST

(Turns to face DOUCHEBAG MANAGER head-on, putting herself between DOUCHEBAG MANAGER and the others. Looks DOUCHEBAG MANAGER straight in the eye.)

Please leave.

DOUCHEBAG MANAGER

…What?

FEMINIST PROTAGONIST

We’re having a good conversation here. Please leave.

DOUCHEBAG MANAGER

[OK, I don't actually remember what he said at this point. It might have been nothing. All I remember is the snorts of badly-suppressed laughter from The Man and my sister (sitting nearby keeping our two three-year-olds occupied), who witnessed the entire scene and swore later they would never forget the moment of utter awesomeness when his face screwed up in shock as he realized what I was saying.]

EXEUNT DOUCHEBAG.

And then we bought a car.

I? Kick fucking ass.

2006 Subaru Forester with 42,000 miles on it that even my super-cynical mechanic brother-in-law says was an amazing deal. It is exactly the car we wanted for several thousand dollars less than such usually goes for, and thus, unexpectedly, within our reach. WOOHOO! ↩
As Ben the sales guy said, he’s a manager, but not a the-level manager. ↩
For no good reason. It was just a fucking report. It was fine. ↩
I think between the two sales dudes talking to us tonight, I heard “I’m On Your Side{TM}” at least 50 times. I eventually started laughing every time I heard it. I thought about taking a vodka shot when I got home for every time I heard it, but then decided that death by alcohol poisoning was probably imprudent when we’d just acquired a major monthly car payment. Also, I don’t drink. ↩

19 Comments | Posted on 19 June 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body | Tags: boundaries, Gender, kicking kyriarchy in the khakis

Like this? Share it:

The Boychick’s Bookshelf: Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride

Welcome to The Boychick’s Bookshelf! In this series, I review children’s books of interest to parents who want to raise children free from and opposed to kyriarchy. These reviews will focus on books which showcase stories and lives beyond the dominant culture of white straight middle-class families, or which contain explicitly anti-kyriarchy messages (anti-racism, anti-ableism, anti-sexism, anti-heterosexism, anti-cissexism, anti-violence, anti-colonialization, and so on).

Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride

The Story

Step-Stomp Stride is longer and more involved than most books we read with the Boychick. It starts off with an introduction of Sojourner Truth (“She was big. She was black. She was so beautiful.” is the line that opens the story, and that sold me immediately on the book.) The first half or so of the book goes back to tell her story all the way from her birth as a slave with the name Belle, being sold away from her family (“This was the ugly way of slavery.”), her betrayal by her “master” John Dumont, running waay and gaining her freedom with the help of Quaker Abolitionists, working on her own in New York City, and finally changing her name and setting off to tell her truth.

The next half is a story of her life as a speaker and activist, working against slavery and “the unfair treatment of black people and women.” It bogs down in the middle, particularly the page talking about learning the Bible and dictating her story to Olive Gilbert. The last 10 pages are about the 1851 women’s rights convention where she delivered the extemporaneous speech famously known as “Ain’t I a woman?”.

Intended Audience

This is a very American story. I think it might stand up in other cultures, but relies on a certain fluency in the cultural history of slavery, the underground railroad, North/South dynamics, and, as I go into below, cultural and Biblical Christianity.

Changes in the telling

My only qualm about this book is it — reflecting Sojourner herself and the culture she lived in — assumes one is fluent in and familiar with Christianity and the Bible. The antagonists’ (the male ministers at the meeting in Akron arguing against women’s rights) speeches and Sojourner’s rousing refutation alike reference Adam and Eve, Mary and Jesus, the Bible, and of course God. For a Christian family, no explanations need be made; for a non-Christian family like mine, it works as a starting point for conversations about (the dominant) religion and its role, for good and ill, in culture and politics.

Right on!

I love this book. Like, seriously. How can I not love a book that tells the story of a woman who was “Big. Black. Beautiful True.”?

I love that big and black and beautiful are three words being used together. I love that it talks honestly and simply about “the ugly way of slavery”. I love that equal time and weight are given to her work for women’s rights and abolition, and that they are portrayed as two sides of one important goal: freedom. And I love the words. They bounce, and flow, and stomp, and stride, and as I read them aloud my voice slides into a Southern cadence. I love that the heroine triumphs with words; that truth — and telling it boldly — is so esteemed and celebrated.

But does it appeal? The Boychick’s take

The Boychick likes this book, though it isn’t his favorite. He loses interest a bit in places, and he’s young enough that I feel compelled to point out and name each of the arguments that the ministers give as the offensive fallacies they are, because he doesn’t quite have the ability yet to process that what I am saying now will be refuted (and well) in another two minutes. In another year (he’s three years old), maybe two, I think he’ll “get” a lot more of the book, though he does enjoy it, especially the cadence of the prose, right now. Summary: He approves, but with a recommendation for slightly older children (maybe 4 or 5 and up).

Buy it, Consider it, Skip it, or Compost it?

Buy it, especially if you or your family live in or come from the USA. Read it to your 4 or 5 year old, have your grade-schooler read it to you, or buy it now and save it for when your little one gets older.

Your Take

Have you read Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride? What do you think, and what do your kids think? Would you consider acquiring it now? Are there other books that address historical slavery and women’s rights you prefer? Do you know of any other children’s books about Sojourner Truth or her contemporaries, or similar figures from your culture?

———————–

Purchases made through the Amazon links offered here support this blog and compensate — quite minimally — my time and work as a blogger. I encourage you to support local, independent booksellers whenever possible, but if you’re to order online anyway, why not support an independent blogger?

1 Comment | Posted on 16 June 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, The Boychick's Bookshelf | Tags: Gender, intersectionalism, misogyny, Race, racism, slavery, USA

Like this? Share it:

I Am Fat

And honey, that ain’t an insult.

Watch the brilliance of Joy Nash in A Fat Rant and Fat Rant 3: Staircase Wit¹. (I found Fat Rant 2 to be too problematic with its portrayals of various compulsive disorders to recommend it, but I adore both of the other two.) I’ll wait.

***

Done? Good. Take a moment to compose yourself from the swoon. (It took me all afternoon. I’m still on a high.)

***

It’s — finally — warm and dry here in Portland. Shorts and tank weather. And I, fat pale flabby stretchmarked unshaven woman, am loving it. I’m sitting here now in a new sleeveless shirt-dress my mom got me, loving the fit and the feel and the color and the girly skirtedness of it, enjoying the breeze on my arms, smiling whenever I catch a glimpse of my shoulder “beauty mark” (aka mole), which has been hiding all the long rainy season.

Sexism doesn’t affect all women the same way. In mainstream US culture, a conventionally pretty woman — of the right age and right race and right coloring and right height and right proportion and right shape and right weight and right features and right symmetry — is told she must bare herself to public gaze (perfectly coiffed, in stylish and “flattering” clothing), that the public (meaning men) might consume her beauty. But the rest of us? Must never be seen. Certainly if we dare to go out in public, we must never wear that which is deemed unsuitable for our status as hideously unattractive, lest we permanently shrivel the phalluses of any men casting their eye our way, or cause the sparky explosion of nearby electronics, or wilt crops, or whatever else it is the sight of pale flabby arms like mine is supposed to do.

These are some damn strong arms, apparently. I think I’m flattered.

The point is, while some women are fighting for the right to not have to do girl-drag, some of us are working hard to have our right to do that very thing accepted.

There’s a lot of privilege in the look-good-while-fat movement, to be sure. (Any time dressing well is seen as an obligation, there’s a problem.) And given the culture which, as Joy Nash points out, barely thinks we should be allowed to wear clothes, looking good as a fat woman usually takes either money or sewing skills and time, all of which reflect various privileges.

I? Would not be sitting here in this lovely shirt (dress, if I don’t bend over or if it’s a good underwear day), with two more lovely new shirts hanging in my closet², if it were not for the indulgence and bank card of my visiting mom.

But I have that privilege, and I get to — sometimes — shop at the fat boutiques, where I’m in the smaller or middle of the size range, where if they don’t have something in my size it’s because it’s sold out, where I don’t have to choose between tents and polyester frocks that will fall apart before I get it home which is what’s offered in my size in the shops I could afford to frequent.

I am fat. My unapologetic existence is subversive. Daring to go out in public, in revealing clothes — unskirted bathing suits and short little sun dresses and cut off shorts? Revolutionary.

Will you join me? Whatever your body size or shape, whether conventionally pretty or subversively beautiful or happily plain, be. Wear what you like. Be as you like. Dress up, dress down. Shave, or trim, or wave in the breeze. No apologies. No put-downs. No backing down.

Revolutionary.

Transcript for Fat Rant 3 available here. I have yet to locate one for the original, although it is also available with German subtitles ↩
Ok, sitting in a bag on my coffee table, but by the time you read this, they’ll be in my closet! I swear! ↩

34 Comments | Posted on 14 June 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy | Tags: Fat is a feminist issue, intersectionalism, isms, misogyny, Privilege

Like this? Share it:

Lessons from an almost-over family reunion

1. I am an introvert. No, really. I adore parties, love people, am a great conversationalist, have quite excellent social skills when I choose to¹, but holy fuck: if I don’t get enough downtime between activities or being around a crowd, the results are not pretty.

1a. Any group larger than two, or maybe three — counting myself — is a crowd.

2. The Boychick is quite possibly also an introvert, because his ability to use words and empathize and behave as a social, gentle creature — as he is 95% of the time around his immediate family — decreases in direct proportion to the number of people around him increasing.

2a. Except for his younger cousin, whom he professes love for when away from, but is cruel to in astounding ways when close to, regardless of who else is present. This is slightly made up for by his utter, and mutual, adoration of his older cousin. But it still makes me cringe and weep.

3. The one thing a restaurant really needs in order to be family-friendly is to have a kid-accepting attitude. Crayons help. Clowns are unnecessary. Candles are not incompatible as long as the servers are happy to take them away if asked. I’ve felt more welcome with the Boychick in a restaurant with chandeliers and candles and a wine list longer than my arm² than I have in some places with balloons and picture menus. It’s all about attitude.

4. The more busy I am, the more I need to write. The more busy I am, the less time I have to write. Next time, I’m putting it on the schedule, because as antisocial as it seems, it’s better than the alternative. (See also 1 and 1a.)

5. A seven day visit, no matter how stressful, may it worth it for the one late-night one-on-one two-hour conversation all by itself.

5a. But more of those connection moments would be better.

5b. Staying up late for a two-hour conversation, no matter how wonderful, seems like a Phenomenally Bad Idea the next morning, when the child(ren), who had been sleeping the whole time, wake up and demand that adults also be awake and chipper and ready for More Fun, regardless of how sleep deprived they may be.

6. If no one is making the decisions, no decisions get made. Herding cats might actually be easier, because cats at least know what they want and will tell you (even if it is “to get the hell away from here!”).

6a. Don’t ask me to make any decisions: see 1, 1a, 4, and 5b.

7. Never, ever, ever again will I schedule or agree to a visit during which The Man is in training the entire time, thus leaving me as the sole on-duty parent during days and days of Super Fun Activities, any one of which would challenge me, the combination of which about does me in.³

8. Destination reunions are sounding better all the time. How’s the Caribbean in February?