Oh, I do not think so.

What infants and toddlers and preschoolers need is attachment — loving, responsive care from people they know and trust, preferably have known for most or all of their lives but at least with whom they have [...]]]> “A mother shouldn’t leave her child until about the age of three”, declares a father.

Oh, I do not think so.

What infants and toddlers and preschoolers need is attachment — loving, responsive care from people they know and trust, preferably have known for most or all of their lives but at least with whom they have built a relationship. They need to have older people — adults, yes, but also teens, older children — who know them and love them and who they know and love, accessible to them when needed. The placement of that responsibility exclusively on the mother makes it not a joy, a task of life easily fulfilled, but a burden, under which so many of us are breaking.

Something is wrong with a culture that expects a six week old to sleep through the night, that tells a four month old her hunger is inconvenient and needs to be scheduled, that is surprised when a one year old doesn’t want to be left with a stranger. Some of us recognize this, and some have decided the problem must be because women are employed outside the home, have chosen to have lives that do not revolve around our children.

Not that we have moved away from our families of origin.

Not that we have built fences real and psychological between us and our neighbours.

Not that we have tiny families and a dearth of siblings and cousins.

Not that we have segregated adults and children, and alternately marginalize people with fewer years as second class citizens and exalt them as angels on earth (but never simply honor them as perfectly imperfect persons).

Not that we hold ideal a single family home, and define family as up to two parents and 2.5 children.

Not that we have taught half the population to deny and repress any nurturing potential, for fear of being “unmanly”.

No, it is, as always, entirely the fault of women. Of mothers, for daring to stand up for our humanity and our autonomy, for daring to do the work that earns power and prestige and some amount of protection, for daring to say we have needs and wants and goals too, for daring to take even an hour away to nurture ourselves so we have something to give to our children.

How dare we?

What some misguided whistleblowers (on the problem that is our parenting culture) have deemed is the solution — a mother, subsuming her own desires entirely to her offspring for a full three years each, minimum, accessible at all times of day, all days of the week, all weeks of the year — is just as unnatural and damaging as the model it rebels against.

We are not supposed to do this gig — which risks becoming labor and work and mind-breaking, body-destroying toil the less it is shared with loved ones — all by ourselves. We are not. That some can do it and survive, even enjoy it and would pick it first over any other idealized options, speaks far more to the diversity and flexibility of humanity than it does to the failure or unnaturalness of any woman who doesn’t choose or wouldn’t enjoy (possibly wouldn’t survive) 24/7/365 sole caregiving.

Kids don’t need one person, if that person is going to break if she has to clean up one more fecal-smeared surface.

Kids don’t need one person, if that person is snapping and yelling and cannot catch her breath alone.

Kids don’t need one person, if that person’s back is breaking from twelve hour shifts of bending and lifting and carrying and holding.

Kids don’t need one person, if that person has lost herself and her center and has no core around which her child can revolve, no life from which her child can learn.

Kids need people, people they know and love and trust, people who are with them and responsive to them day after day, who know their rhythms and their personalities and their needs and their wants, who have done the work of endless toiletings and feedings, who have assisted nap times and play times, who have tickled and carried, who have been there through laugh fests and crying jags. Kids need as many of those people as possible. Blood relation entirely optional.

One? Is a bare minimum. The kid might survive, even thrive (because humans are fantastically adaptable); and the parent might as well (ditto): but it comes at a high risk of burning out the carer, torching the relationship, scorching the child. And if that happens, there is no one for the child to turn to.

Two is better.

Three or four are better still.

Half a dozen is getting closer to ideal.

Half a dozen? Sure: a parent or two, a grandparent or two, a parent’s sibling or two, a couple teens or older kids: it’s not a big family, as primate evolution (or human tribal history) goes. But good luck growing it in this society.

(My infant only wants me. She’ll have nothing to do with her dad!

Has her dad been there? Does he know her? Does she know him? Did she hear his voice in the womb? Did she breathe in his smell within hours of birth? Did he carry or wear her her first day out of the womb? And the second? And the third? Does she sleep with his breath on her face, his heat keeping her warm, his body keeping her safe? Does he respond to her attempts at communication about her hunger and elimination? Does he help keep her clean? Does she know him?)

Kids — the younger they are the truer this is — need to be with people they know, and trust, and love (who among us doesn’t, really?). They need attachment; this is immutable biological fact. They’ll make do with almost whatever we give them, but the more the better. It is only our messed up society — or the very rare, very exacting child — that says that this means all-mom all-the-time.

(Oh, the breasts. The sweet, sweet breasts. Yes, infants need near-immediate access to milk at basically all times; known and trusted lactating breasts are biologically expected to be on call 24/7. Only humans — and only some humans — would translate this as mother’s-breasts-only, and even fewer as mother-as-primary-minder-at-every-moment. But a ten, a twenty, a thirty month old gets ever less in need of such omnipresent access, even as their need for it sometimes, and their need for constant nearby presence of trusted caregiver(s), might remain unabated.)

Do you, caring mother, have to leave your less-than-three? Of course not. (If there’s no one around we trust our children to trust, why would we want to? If we have enough people to share the load with that it is still a joy and not a toil — however many that is for us, zero or a dozen — why would we want to?) But you could. If you wanted. If your child wanted. If there are other people your child knows will care for them.

And I promise — it wouldn’t destroy them.

But.

And.

So.

How we talk about our [...]]]> I have no desire or intention to police others’ bodies. We can talk about the social pressures that lead to high rates of cosmetic surgery, dieting, body hatred — but to confuse a need for systemic critique with a right to criticize individuals is one of the worst uses of feminism.

But.

And.

So.

How we talk about our bodies — our own bodies — matters. It affects how other people feel about theirs, and that matters. When we say “I’m too fat to wear a bikini”, we’re saying fat is bad, and those as fat or fatter than us also shouldn’t expose themselves. When we say “I can’t get away with going without a bra”, we’re saying to flop is not a subjective choice but an objective assessment. When we say “My hair’s an ugly mess unless I straighten it”, we’re saying everyone’s hair that’s curly like ours is ugly too.

Does that mean we have to pretend to a false enlightenment, never let a negative word slip our mouths? Does that mean we have to suppress our own truths and desires for the sake of others (always, for women, are we supposed live for the sake of others)? I cannot accept that either. We must be able to tell our truths, to take the dark things inside us out so they can be seen, to exert our rightful autonomy over our own bodies, to do as we choose with them.

How do we resolve this? Is it resolvable?

I propose this:

We start with I.

I feel. I fear. I want.

We reject kyriarchical assignments of some bodies, some ways of being, as wholly bad, or inherently good; we know better than to rely on what “everybody knows” about fat, and flop, and tresses. Instead, we get deeper: what are we afraid of? What are we reaching toward?

I feel better in a one-piece. I’m afraid people will stare at me if I don’t wear a bra. I want my hair to be straight.

Can we talk about where our senses of style come from? About male gaze and comfort in public? About the ramifications of hair choices? Absolutely. But we don’t have to. We don’t have to analyze every single choice at every single opportunity; we don’t have to let those analyses dictate our choices for fear of “giving in” to kyriarchy and all its bullshit. We can, we are allowed to, simply say “Fuck it, this is what I want right now.”

How radical is that? How much could we change the world by doing something just because we want to? What would happen if we reject the “need” for excuses, for justifications? Not “I’m too fat to wear that”, not “I ran a mile earlier, so this brownie is ok”. Just — I want to wear this. I want to eat that.  I want. Sometimes, that can be enough.

(bonus douchebaggery points for making [...]]]> How to lose my business in one easy step (today’s lesson thanks to Vistaprint)

It’s ridiculously easy, really. All you have to do is have a required drop down menu on your sign up form, with no opt out or Other or fill-in-the-blank option, with these three and only these three options:

• Mr.
• Mrs.
• Miss

(bonus douchebaggery points for making Mr. the default)

Congratulations! You’ve just lost my business. Way to go, Vistaprint!

This isn’t a Mrs-or-Ms fight, because I have no desire to police what other women choose for themselves, but about respect for the diversity of being. And the lack of said respect.

I haven’t been a Miss since I turned 18. I will never be a Mrs. And a tiny part of me still dreams of one day being a Dr, like my mother before me (though not an MD, sorry mom). I am, therefore, completely left out of those options. And I am only one relatively uncomplicated woman.

Think of all the other people left out of those options: People with nonbinary genders. Doctors, of all stripes. Clergy-people. Those from cultures who don’t do salutations, or don’t do those salutations. And probably many, many more that I am not thinking of at the moment.

And it’s not hard to do it right, either. (It’s as simple as anything to do it better; just have more options.) At the urging of many, I went to MOO, designed my business cards there, and then went to save them, just like I did at Vistaprint. And guess what? They didn’t even ask for a salutation! Email, yes. Name, yup. Password, of course. Salutation? Nope! No drop down menu = no problem. MOO can have my business, even if it’s going to cost me way more money than I was planning on.

I’ve seen drop down menus that worked pretty well, too, with dozens of options (I believe they included military titles, among others). Or, you could have a simple fill-in-the-blank. Even just an option to opt-out of having any title, even if you don’ t offer mine, will still, grudgingly, earn you my business.

But Mr./Mrs./Miss? My monies — and my recommendation — go elsewhere.

***********

Breastfeeding on business cards? You betcha!

And why order business cards at all?, I hear my inquisitive readers wonder. Why, to hand out (or, probably, mostly not hand out because I’m huddled in a corner trying to not panic) at BlogHer, of course. And what will be on these cards? The usual: my blog name, tag line, name, email, etc.

Oh, and this:

Because I freaking love this photo

Why? Mostly, as the caption says, because I freaking love this photo. I don’t love a lot of pictures of myself, but this one I very much do. And it’s one of the few pictures I have that I like, and are high quality, and show my face, and would work as a business card (that is, do not have my messy house as a backdrop).

Also because it’s the picture I use on here (the face), on Twitter (the breast and the kid’s head), and on Facebook (the whole thing).

But also because it is — not in spite of it being — a breastfeeding picture. A toddler breastfeeding picture, over which I get harassed on Twitter regularly (about every couple months, on average).

The Boychick is weaned. And while I feel ambivalent about that, one thing I miss being able to do is nurse in public. Not because I got my kicks out of it (far from it), or like pissing people off (I’m actually rather anti-confrontational), but because I view it as a public service. Every time we nurse in public, unapologetically, we normalize breastfeeding; we support women who may just be starting out or who aren’t certain about continuing; we make it easier for the next woman who comes through.

While I can’t do that directly anymore, I can still do it pictorially thanks to digital photography and ‘net avatars. And business cards.

And if that offends someone? Well, they probably didn’t want my card anyway.

…Which will be ordered through a company that doesn’t make me pick between three titles, none of which represent me.

***********

This week is the first-ever Carnival of Nursing in Public, and I encourage you to read and support the participating blogs. We’re also in the last few days of voting for the BlogLuxe Awards: I’m nominated in Most Provocative, Most Inspiring, AND Blog You’ve Learned The Most From. Go drop me a vote or three. You can vote once a day through July 12th. Thank you as always for your support!

Sex ed is every day.

Sex ed is teaching children, of any age, that their bodies are their own; it is making sure they know [...]]]> Sex ed is not something we do once. It’s not something we talk about “when they’re old enough“. It’s really not something to leave exclusively to schools, or chance, or experiential learning.

Sex ed is every day.

Sex ed is teaching children, of any age, that their bodies are their own; it is making sure they know what bodily autonomy is (whether or not they know the word), and that they have it, and everyone else has it too.

Sex ed is answering their questions about pubic hair, and armpit hair, and facial hair, and breasts, and penises, and vulvas. (Sex ed is making sure they know words like breast and penis and vulva because they’re a part of your every day vocabulary.)

Sex ed is telling kids that most women have vulvas but some don’t, that most men have penises but some don’t. (Sex ed is telling them that penises and vulvas and men and women aren’t the only ways to be.)

Sex ed is telling them that pads and sponges and tampons and cups are for catching menstrual fluid; sex ed is telling them what menstrual fluid is.

Sex ed is knowing that when a kid is cranky and you need a moment’s respite, YouTube has abundant birth videos as well as cartoons.

Sex ed is setting boundaries around your body: “Yes, you may kiss my face, but please don’t lick my mouth; yes, you may pat my breasts but don’t brush my nipple; yes, you may watch me pee, but don’t touch my genitals.”

Sex ed is setting boundaries around behavior: “It’s fine to touch your penis/vulva/clitoris/testicles, but not while nursing/on the plane/in public/in front of your Grandparents.”

Sex ed is exposing children to the multitude ways of building a family: sex, and IVF, and adoption, and blending, and donors. It’s exposing children to the multitude variations of what family means: two parents of different genders or same, one parent, more parents, grandparents, others; families without children, families without blood relation, families without legal protection.

Sex ed is kissing: the way we kiss our kids, the way we kiss our partners, the way we kiss our parents; it’s the kissing they see in movies and the kissing they see on the streets and the kissing the see when we leave the door open, or they hear and wonder about in the dark. Sex ed is what we tell them about all the ways of kissing.

Sex ed is the other things they hear in the dark, and in the day time; sex ed is in where and how much and when we enact our sex lives, or not. Sex ed is the bed-side drawer we keep off limits (or don’t), and it’s the answers we give to what’s in there.

Sex ed is demonstrating that our bodies can give us pleasure; it’s hugs and back rubs and gentle touches. Sex ed is never teaching them to accept unwanted pain.

Sex ed is honoring their nos; sex ed is teaching them how to say yes.

Children are always learning; they are learning from what we say, and from what we don’t. If we say nothing, they are not learning nothing, they are learning that some things are unspeakable. Sex ed is not a one time course (though those can be great); sex ed is not a conversation to schedule, or put off, or plan out: sex ed is every day.

Do it well.

*****

Sex and sexuality education resources. Learn, so you can teach your kids:

Scarleteen (highly recommended)

Go Ask Alice

girl2girl

(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, [...]]]> 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.

Now to my topic, which is [...]]]> First, the good news: Tiwonge and Steven have been pardoned! (Warning on link for misgendering.) Although psychological violence continues to be done to Tiwonge via misgendering, and their life is likely to continue to be hard, I am glad that these two are being spared, and I wish them well.

Now to my topic, which is not so much about them as about the conversation we in the West are having about them:

Tiwonge Chimbalanga is a woman. (Whether she’s a trans woman or an intersex woman or a woman according to her own cultural ideas that Western thought is not capable of understanding is irrelevant to this particular conversation: she is a woman, and that is all we need to know here.) Steven Monjeza is a man. Therefore, calling them a “gay couple” (much less “Malawi’s first openly gay couple”) is both inaccurate and highly offensive.

But.

I’ve been seeing a lot of commentary, on Twitter (with its limitations on characters) especially, calling them, therefore, a “straight couple”.

I have a problem with this.

Acknowledging that Western¹ ideas of sexuality and gender are not universal and therefore are likely to be inadequate to conceptualize or express this couple’s reality, how we talk about them reflects on us. And the language of “gay couple” and “straight couple” doesn’t reflect very well.

Our best information on Steven, from his own words, is this: “I have never had sexual feelings for ladies, but I had them with Tiwo”². To Western understanding, this implies either asexuality or homo/bisexuality³ — which is to say, not straight. And as a not-straight person, I really, really hate being referred to as being part of a “straight couple”. It’s not a matter of denying the reality or privilege of my relationship, or wanting to score “queer points”, but that it feels wrong, and, intentionally or not, erases my identity.

The problem is that we use the same words for orientation as for relationships. Unquestionably I am a part of a woman/man couple, and I have abundant privilege therefore — but I am not straight, my relationship is not the same as it would be if all parties were straight, and I do not, as “straight relationship” implies, have straight privilege. We need a way to talk about relationships which does not by implication of orientation erase the identities of people like me, like Steven — for never is there a “bisexual couple”, or a “pansexual relationship” or a “queer relationship” (unless the genders of one or more participants is understood to be “queer”, or outside the binary). No where in “straight couple” or “gay couple” do we allow for anyone who does not fit neatly into the gender binary, for that matter⁴.

None of the alternatives I’ve encountered have seemed satisfactory. My so-far favorite — male/female/mixed relationship — is a step up, but still highly problematic in that it assumes binary gender, and would lump together relationships involving people with nonbinary genders (who do not, generally, receive societal approval and relationship privilege) with binary woman/man relationships (who do).

What I want are new words, words which allow us to describe the ways in which some relationships are privileged above others⁵ but which do not state or imply anything about the orientations of the people involved, which do not assume one man and one woman as the default (nor casts them as diametrically opposed, as does “opposite-sex couple”), which acknowledge that man and woman are not the only genders possible.

Given the beautiful complexity of humanity, I’m not sure that entirely unproblematic language is possible, but I am completely convinced we can do better than this. We have to.

Here are the basics of the story, from Questioning Transphobia:

Today [20 May 2010], Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, whom the media calls “Malawi’s first openly gay couple” even though Tiwonge identifies as a woman and her partner as her husband, were given a maximum [...]]]> Trigger warning for descriptions of misgendering, violence, and degrading situations.

Here are the basics of the story, from Questioning Transphobia:

Today [20 May 2010], Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, whom the media calls “Malawi’s first openly gay couple” even though Tiwonge identifies as a woman and her partner as her husband, were given a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison with hard labour after being convicted of gross indecency and unnatural acts.

This is being reported everywhere as a “gay issue” — and to be sure, any group purporting to care about LGBTQIA¹ rights (which is to say human rights) should damn well care about what’s happening to these two people — but what this is, among other things, is a woman’s issue.

It is a woman, sent to a men’s jail, who:

…arrived in court noticeably ill. [Her] lawyers said [she] had contracted malaria in the hideously overcrowded jail, though the defendant later blamed guards for trying to beat [her] into a confession.

(Pronouns corrected, quote from New York Times, Feb 13 2010)

It is a woman who was made to strip completely in front of her employer:

Jean Kamphale, [Ms] Chimbalanga’s boss at a Blantyre lodge, testified that she accepted “Auntie Tiwo” as a woman and assigned her cooking and cleaning chores. But after the article in The Nation appeared, she made her employee disrobe and refused to let [her] stop until [she] was naked from the waist down…

(Pronouns corrected, bolding added²)

It is a woman who not only has been arrested, beaten, had her partner renounce his love for her, and sentenced to hard labor, but has been consistently misgendered by news media, both mainstream and “alternative” (trigger warnings on both those links). Even when she is quoted as saying “I am a complete woman”, writers continue to use inappropriate language and gender, to declare her given name “real” rather than the name she lives with daily, to misrepresent her gender and her sexuality.

Some activists, defending their misgendering, have said that as Westerners, we cannot impose our concepts of “gender identity” on to Tiwonge — and it is true that our concepts of gender and transsexuality do not directly translate, but it is no less true that our concepts of sexuality and homosexuality do not directly translate. We have to make do with what we have, and what we have is her saying, repeatedly, that she is a woman.³

Given that the Malawi government has also been consistently misgendering her, is homophobia at play here? Yes, indubitably.⁴ But homophobia only becomes an issue because transphobia has erased her gender. And when that psychological violence is perpetrated against a woman, that’s a woman’s issue.

Should that matter? Shouldn’t it be enough that this is a LGBTQIA issue, a trans issue — and, most simply, an egregious human rights violation? Of course. But while mainstream media and the majority of queer activists are making this out to be about “gay rights”, it is important to remember that at the center of this storm are a woman, and her man, who are being punished simply for wanting their relationship recognized.

There are many ills being done here. Don’t add to them: honor Tiwonge’s womanhood, and insist that your news sources do as well. It may be little comfort to her at this point, but it means so much to so many women, all over the globe.

*****

Further reading:

Questioning Transphobia — Be sure to watch the video, if you are able. (There’s no transcript of it as of yet that I am aware of.)

Gender DynamiX

Akimbo

TransGriot