Fuck yeah Sweden

Because shooting shit with foam balls is fucking awesome, regardless of what's between your legs.

Reblogged from feministing

 

"Bullying" is a euphemism.

"If we actually started calling bullying what it is and address it as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fat phobia, and classism, it would actually give children a better way to deal with the very same power dynamics they will face as adults, while also giving adults more responsibility to challenge the intolerance that is rooted within our society overall."

--Amanda Levitt, of Fat Body Politics

(via come correct) 

The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.

--Peggy O'Mara

(via Choosing Pancakes) 

Why do you assume your children are straight?

I think that more kids have 'crushes' on persons of the same gender than would report having done so as children when they're adults, because we're socialized to call those feelings 'friendship.'

This came up in conversation between me, Choosing Pancakes, and JB a while ago. I wrote it down because I really liked what I had said, and figured I would elaborate on it at some point. As I rant about a little in my guest post over at Met Another Frog this week, I hate that we live in a culture that assumes heterosexuality. Even more than that, I hate when people try to justify the assumption of heterosexuality by saying that the vast majority of the population is heterosexual. First off, majority rule should never be used to effectively erase the minority's existence from public discourse or recognition. That's just a fact. But secondly, and more throw-off-your-understanding-of-how-the-world-works-y, that argument ignores the fact that living in a culture that assumes heterosexuality socially encourages people to assume heterosexuality on a personal level too. 

Members of the LGBTQ community often respond to others' questioning about their sexuality with denial; I know I did. I honestly don't know how my friend CC even dealt with me, unless she recognized my denial/rejection as the early stages of self-acceptance; I remember having an incredibly problematic conversation with her sometime at the beginning of my sophomore year about how I'd be uncomfortable living with a lesbian (a disgusting blanket statement I no longer endorse in nearly any form, the one remaining form being living with a lesbian who was interested in me but whom I was not interested in, because that would just be awkward). I remember junior year being at a party and her flat out asking me, in front of KS, whether I was bi-curious. I brushed it off, but she could tell I was bluffing.

The ONLY reason we ever feel we have to bluff about our sexualities, sexual practices, and sexual orientations, is because we live in this society that drills into our heads from the earliest days that sex (and thus romantic interest and flirting and love) is something that happens between a man and a woman (insert whatever variations you were raised with regarding constructs like love and marriage here). In all seriousness, I ask you, what is the difference between best-friend-ship and "interest" when you're seven? Little kids know that they like being around certain other little kids, and I'm convinced that we'd have a lot of people who are both more versed in and comfortable with their sexualities if we didn't put a million constraints around that liking from Day One. 

Even the most idiotic advise we give to children about dating and relationships and flirting is gendered. I swear, I want to brand anyone who tells a little girl that some little boy is hitting/pinching/pushing/being mean to her "because he likes her" as unfit to be around children. You're actually just priming that child to accept physical and emotional abuse from men for the rest of her life, you asshole. But think about it--when boys fight with each other or bully each other, no one says it's because one of them caught feelings for the other. There is no idiotic insertion of romance in a spat between little girls. There is also no--perhaps fully warranted--insertion of romance into two little girls holding hands while they walk down the street. We raise our children to understand the same actions--the holding of a hand, the giving of a smile, etc.--as insignificant when between persons of the same gender, and as potentially meaning "EVERYTHING" when between persons of different genders. Yes, love and lust and romanticisim are contextual. I'll give you that. But our society demands that children be grounded in one particular context while regarding all others as deviant--if they recognize them at all.

I don't think I knew that romance and love and sex could exist between people of the same gender until I was in middle school. THAT is an act of erasure, no matter how you want to frame it, and it's not fair to anyone. Even if a child is going to grow up to only be romantically interested in persons of the so-called "opposite" gender--which is absolutely 100% perfectly fine--they should understand that interest as it exists along the spectrum of possible interests, not as the way interest works. 

The myriad ways in which I would fuck up a child.

KS and I had an interesting discussion about this once a while ago, and I've wanted to explore it in more depth. 

1. Mommy, what's race?

A social construction based on ill-conceived notions of biological difference. Race doesn't actually exist, but the significance Western societies have placed on race for the last 4 or 5 centuries means that people's lives are still significantly affected by these categories White folks made up. 

Well what makes people different races?

Race is most often attributed to physical features, like the color of your skin, the structure of your face, or the texture of your hair. But it's silly because no "Black" people actually have black skin--there are some Black people with skin the color of honey, some with skin the color of chocolate, some with skin the color of soil, and some with skin the color of sand. We're a rainbow, but they call us all Black. Your great-great-great-grandmother was a woman with brown skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes--that doesn't make her any less of a Black woman than me.

Is it important to you that you're Black?

Very much so. 

But I thought you said race didn't exist. It seems silly to care so much about something made up.

Well, just because it was made up doesn't mean it doesn't affect your daily life. Like, your teacher made up rules for her classroom. You still have to follow them, right, even though they were made up. And it's nice having a community of people you can relate to--there are certain kinds of food or music or movies or just general culture that other Black people are more likely to have experienced than people of other races.

 So do all people of one race have the same culture? 

Well, no. People of the same race can come from very different cultures, if they're from different parts of the country or different parts of the world, or depending on how much money their family had growing up.

But then how do you feel connected to them? I don't understand.

 It's okay, my child, no one does.

2. Mommy, am I a boy or a girl?

I can't tell you that. Only you can tell yourself. Do you feel like a boy or do you feel like a girl? Or do you not feel like either? You don't HAVE to be a boy OR a girl--you can be whatever you want.

What are boys and girls supposed to feel like? What does it feel like to not feel like a boy or a girl?

Boys and girls and people can all feel however they want to feel. There's no way boys are allowed to feel that girls aren't, or the other way around.

 So is there any difference between being a boy and being a girl?

Most people raise boys and girls differently, but there aren't any inherent differences between boys and girls, except that MOST little boys have penises and MOST little girls have vaginas.

My teacher yelled at me when I used those words at school. She said to tell you that those words are too...va-va--vulgar for children. 

That's because your teacher thinks children are idiots. Most people do. They're wrong. I think it's absolutely pointless to not teach you about your own body and other people's bodies with the right terms. I'll write a note to your teacher.

Wait, but Mommy, you said MOST little boys have penises and MOST little girls have vaginas. So there are some boys with vaginas and some girls with penises?

Yes. And some of those little boys will grow up to be women, and some of the little girls will grow up to be men, and some of them will just stay exactly how they are. 

But at school there are bathrooms for boys and for girls. I don't know if I feel like a little boy or if I feel like a little girl. How do I know which bathroom to use?? 

Gendered bathrooms are cisgenderist and heteronormative. You should be able to use whatever bathroom you want.

But girls aren't allowed in the boys' bathroom and boys aren't allowed in the girls' bathroom! What about the little girls with penises? Which bathrooms do they use? 

Your school discriminates against them and makes them deny themselves every time they have to pee.

3. Mommy, what's sex?

Sex is a thing that happens between two or more people who may or may not love each other and may or may not be married (if they're even allowed to get married) and those people might be a man and a woman, or they could be a woman and a woman, or a man and a man, or they could not identify according to the gender binary, and there might be more than two of them. Sex often involves something called "penetration," which could be when a man puts his penis into a woman's vagina, or into her anus, or into the anus of another man. There is also oral sex, where a person uses their mouth and tongue to please another person, either by licking the vagina or licking and sucking on the penis. Sex sometimes makes babies, because when men have sex they make something called sperm, which are little swimmy things that look like tadpoles, which can join with a woman's egg inside of her to make a baby. But lots of times people have sex just because it's fun, which is perfectly fine as long as you're being safe. There are gross diseases that you can get from having sex if you're not safe, and you always have to be careful about making babies when you don't want them yet. The most important thing about sex, that needs to always be true no matter what kind of people are having sex or how many of them are there, is that the people having sex always have to both want to be having sex, or it's a very very bad and scary thing called rape.

4. Mommy, what's a church? My friend Bobby said he has to go there on Sunday mornings. We only go out to breakfast on Sunday mornings!

Churches are buildings for people who are religious. Religious people usually believe in a God, which is a being that created all of the people and the things in the world. That God is usually a man and he usually makes all sorts of rules that religious people have to follow. He usually says that if people follow his rules, he will reward them after they die, and punish all the people who don't believe in him or follow his rules?

Oh no! Are we going to get punished?

No, because religion is another made up thing. I don't think God exists, and things that don't exist can't hurt me.

How do you know he doesn't exist?

Well, I guess I don't. I can't see any evidence that he exists, but I can't see any evidence that he doesn't, either. It just seems silly to me to live my life according to something I can't see even the effects of. And a lot of the rules God makes in the Bible, or the gods of other religions make in their holy books, make me really angry. They say a lot of bad things about a lot of different kinds of people just because of the kinds of people they are, which is hatred and discrimination. People use their religion all the time to take rights away from people or to hurt or even kill them. I don't think religions are good things.

So are Bobby and his family bad people for going to church?

Not necessarily. People can pick and choose the parts of a religion that they want to practice and the parts that they don't. So if they still make good decisions and don't discriminate against people or want their rights to be taken away, they can still be good people even if they're religious.  

etc., etc.

...My hypothetical child wouldn't be able to interact with people of hir own age group until college at the earliest. I imagine intense bullying, innumerable parent-teacher conferences about what's going on at home, possible suspensions for screaming "fuck the gender binary" or regularly using the "wrong" restroom. I would encourage them to explore crushes on children all along the gender spectrum, which could be dangerous. I would have to homeschool hir if I wanted to avoid having to counter-teach and make hir unlearn the socialization of the school and hir peers. The world would actively work to destroy my hypothetical child. I couldn't bear to witness that.

This little girl.

I WISH I had been as aware of social injustice and product manipulation when I was a kid. I loved playing with my brother's Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, and he would deign to play Ken when I was playing with my Barbies, and we both happily played with androgynous toys like Legos and K'NEX, but to actually ASK FOR products targeted at the other gender was beyond me in my youth. But this child sees through the lies and blasphemy to question gendered socialization, and I want to applaud both her and her parents. 

 

Problem:

Reblogged from Street Etiquette

I have a tendency to find images like this incredibly attractive. There's something about men who love kids. The problem, though, is that I don't want kids. They can be cute and fun sometimes, but are generally way more work and responsibility and commitment and time and money and dependence than I ever want to insert into my life. Le sigh.

MY FUTURE LIFE

IS THIS RIGHT HERE. (I'm sure you can guess which one I'm talking about.)

Reblogged from xkcd

 They say a child is the best million dollars you'll ever spend. I can think of a lot more fun things to do with a million dollars...

I might have a child one day

if I could get some kind of money-time-body-back guarantee that it would be this little diva:

Reblogged from As far as i'm concerned...

That right there is everything I wish my childhood could have been. Oh wait, that's right, one of the reasons I'm against children is because I don't want to actively or even subconsciously mold them into the child I wish I'd had the opportunity to be...

Big Scary Topic Time!

Three images:

A statistic: "while black women make up about 13 percent of the U.S. female population, they account for 30 percent of abortions performed in the U.S." This may be true--The Guttmacher Institute sounds kind of legit--but even so it results from a lot of systemic problems like the options presented to African-American women by both the heinous conditions of the cycle of poverty and government initiatives like Planned Parenthood, whose agents don't always tell women about all the choices they have.

And a confession that I am not comfortable with: When it came time for the ex and I to talk about protection and whether we'd been appropriately safe, one of my very first thoughts was What makes him think I would keep it, anyway? I legitimately stopped and looked around to see who could possibly have thought that, because it certainly couldn't have been moi. ...But it was. Almost instantaneously. From some place deep within me that I didn't know existed. And it was unequivocally the truth. If by some incredibly unlikely series of unfortunate mishaps happened that caused both of our forms of protection to fail and me not to notice in time to take a Plan B pill and I found out I was pregnant, I who have always been pro-life (having been a perfect candidate for abortion myself) to the point of the most heated of debates with people I love and respect, would not have carried the pregnancy to term. Although there are some who would argue that if all that happened to get me pregnant, I was "meant to have" this hypothetical child, I don't believe in anyone who's up there making up "meant to"s, and in that instant I understood the right to a choice. The right to not have my entire world turned upside down irrevocably. The right to live my life by my design. The right to not be screwed over after having tried to be safe. The right to not be sacrificed to a biological system I never asked for. The right to bring children into this world when (if ever) I am ready for them in every way, and not a moment sooner.

Go ahead and call me a hypocrite. I feel like one. My only defense is that I didn't understand until I could legitimately see it happening to me and could visualize all the other lives that would be affected (ruined?) by such an accident. If we had done everything we could and been failed by that which we relied on, I just...I couldn't give up my whole life, everything I've worked for. I've come so far. I don't even like kids. And I know what it is to grow up and feel like you ruined your mother's life, what it is to have a single mother who wasn't ready for you, what it is to be afraid to get too close to the men your mother brings into your life because there's no telling how long they'll be around. And come on, me, with a kid? I AM A GROWN-ASS WOMAN KID! 

...So why do I feel like such a bad person?    

Stuffed Animal Roadkill

I saw something so sad today it almost made me want to cry. As T, E, and I were driving back from the beach in Long Branch (side note: SOMEONE PLEASE REMIND ME TO NEVER EVER EVER SPEND THE WARM MONTHS OF THE YEAR AN HOUR FROM A LARGE BODY OF WATER EVER AGAIN. WHY HAVE I DONE THIS TO MYSELF?!) this evening, we passed what can only be described as stuffed animal roadkill. 

It was an adorable little stuffed monkey. He looked like he was soft and fun and would be nice company on a desk or a bookshelf...he was so small that he could get lost in a bed and not be very conducive to snuggling. But he was the cutest thing ever. So brown and fuzzy. And he was lying on the side of the road, discarded like some ungrateful child tossed him out the window. A seam had opened on his back and fluffy white stuffing was spilling out. IT WAS LIKE HE WAS BLEEDING.

If we hadn't been in the middle of a superbusy highway, I would have screamed for T to stop the car so I could run out and save him and stitch him up and give him a loving home. As it were, I could only tell T and E the horror I had just witnessed, prompting T to comment on the irony of the fact that we have been entirely desensitized to actual roadkill but my heart had gone out to this poor stuffed animal. He didn't seem to deserve such a cruel fate. Kids can be so mean. Whatever child abandoned that poor monkey is the second person I wish I could have slapped today.

Yesterday as I was walking to the Princeton Public Library to get books because I've redeveloped my bookwormish ways, I saw a little girl walking next to her grandma and a youngish guy who was either her older brother or her dad, it was unclear. That's not important. The girl couldn't have been more than 2 and a half or so. All of a sudden she says to her grandma, "I don't wanna walk." And her grandma just picked her up and started carrying her on her hip. And for a small moment I wanted to be a small child again.

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Three: Your Parents

Dear Mom and Dad,

...This is weird. The whole, thinking about the two of you as a unit thing. I've never really had much occasion to do that before. I'm not sure how much I like it.
I guess that's kind of weird too. I'm sure I did when I was younger, but I can't even remember wanting us to live together as one big happy family. To this day I can't understand how you two were ever together, or how I even exist. I mean, I have exactly 3 photographs of the three of us together in the last 20 years. Like, come on. 
My relationship with each of you has its highs and its lows, and each has its own strong points and its own ISSUES, but I can honestly say that both seem to be improving baby-step by baby-step as time goes on. I hope that pretty soon we'll be able to leave most of the traditional parent-child stuff behind and both consistently behave like adults.
I'm sorry that I sometimes go too long without calling either of you. I don't mean to worry you; life just gets busy sometimes. I'm not sure if you guys know this, but I usually try to call both of you on the same day, so it doesn't seem like I'm favoring one of you over the other. Is that silly?
Daddy, I'm sorry I don't let you ask questions. I'm working on being more forthcoming with you.
Mommy, I'm glad you're finally letting me be independent, but a) I wish you wouldn't worry so much, and b) sometimes I wish you asked more questions. I don't know if I'd answer them, but as much as a rag on Daddy, it's nice to be asked.
Haha, I guess the weirdest thing about our messed-up little family is that my relationships with the two of you are almost mirror images of each other. I guess in a perfect world I'd like to see our relationships come back to the middle a little, but I think that's going to take a lot of growth on all of our parts, so we'll see.
I love you both.

<3,


Maya


PS--Don't go anywhere, okay? I may not be a kid anymore, but that doesn't mean I won't need help, guidance, and an older-wiser-someone-to-lean-on. <3