I am a radical feminist and I eat meat.  I don’t have any hang-ups about this, in fact, I see no contradiction at all.  If YOU have a problem with me eating meat and simultaneously being a radical feminist, that is YOUR problem.  Because far from me “backsliding” from pure proper PC vegetarianism into a right-wing Republican meat-eater who hates immigrants and the poor, rather, I came to the conclusion that eating meat was more in line with my feminist principles than denying myself and living in a constant state of anemia.  Your mileage may vary.

Please dear vegetarian feminist sisters, stop telling me “no vegetarian ever tries to judge non-vegetarians for eating meat or tries to convert them!”  Because I saw it done again, for the nth time, today.  Shame/ “How could you!” / don’t we all know of course that animal suffering is directly tied to female suffering/ etc.  Don’t act like you’ve never seen a vegetarian compatriot do this, or brag smugly about how “well I will be healthier and live longer than you, you meat-eating scum”, or “vegetarians smell nicer”.

Next time you’re tempted to make some snarky comment to a feminist sister over her improper, impure dietary habits, please remember how many women have eating disorders and how often vegetarianism is used to mask those eating disorders as a socially acceptable way to avoid the evil of having enough calories to survive on.

I have a lot to say about this but I’m on my way to school now – am going back full time, little time to write these days.  Yeah I’m still alive, sorry to let down all those people who link their hate-filled posts to me.  Yeah I see them.  No I’m not trolling your hateful blogs, you don’t deserve the satisfaction. Ha!

In just the last few weeks, the following brutal effects of the patriarchy have been reflected on the lives of women close to me (family or friends) in the following ways – and these are just the ones I know about:

One impoverished woman with a toddler and a worthless boyfriend who wasted her tax return on a wild night out at a strip club found out she was pregnant, but can’t afford an abortion and is trying to finish school so can’t deal with having another child right now.  So she spent the last two weeks trying various ineffective herbal methods of aborting based on things friends told her and things she found on the internet, until aforesaid worthless boyfriend finally got off his sorry ass long enough to get together some money for her to have it done safely.  Supposedly he was taking some nice happy new agey male contraceptive but “he got stressed out and forgot to take it for a few days.”  This is the second time he’s got her pregnant in a year.

One family member who has two children and has been married for 14 years is struggling with the thought of leaving him.  She’s very Christian and feels it is wrong but not only is he unemployed and spends all day at home playing video games instead of helping around the house with the kids or anything, he wouldn’t even file for unemployment, no, not even after she FILLED OUT THE PAPERWORK FOR HIM.  He just couldn’t be bothered to go down to the office to file.

One friend finally admits to a small circle of friends that a man we all know, who presents himself as a “good guy” and “protector of women”, tried to rape her a few weeks ago.

Another friend who was moved out of her home country by the common practice of patrilocality and still is not legally able to work, and thus has no money, and has no friends or social connections outside of his family, confessed to me today that she feels trapped to the point of being suicidal.

And to add insult to injury, the other night in an online setting some spoiled little brat boy said, “jokingly” to me, that “American women don’t do anything” (by which he meant that sexist stereotype of American women as demanding, greedy, lazy, selfish sluts obsessed only with their appearance and making men pay for stuff) and when I told him quite bluntly to go fuck himself he responded with that tired old 4chan line, “Go bake me a pie.”  I left the place where we were talking because I’m not dealing with any stupid male crap like this and another male followed me, asking (with concern at first) if I was okay, and proceeding to go on to tell me to “just calm down” and that I can’t take him seriously, he was just joking and he’s sarastic like that, don’t you know.  Because of course I was being unreasonable and should have acquiesced to this blatant devaluing of my person with a smile and a little laugh.  “Oh ha ha, you boys are so funny!” like a nice, normal girl.  Or something.

In other news, still can’t find a job.  Mother still sick.  Health still crappy, physically and otherwise.

Meh.

I was thinking about this and it occurs to me that this is a powerful anti-feminist meme that’s been force fed to us, the idea that there are two separate “gender roles” and that men are just as trapped and unhappy in theirs as women are.

When I was much younger I recall getting in a fight with a standard model liberal feminist (I was, then leaning towards radicalism, but was later subsumed but hey, I’m older and have learned better now) about the then emerging “men’s movement”.  If you remember the late 80s and early 90s these were the guys who would go into the woods and beat drums and cry on each others shoulders and talk about their dads and how horrible it was that they couldn’t show affection. I think the “Iron Man” book author started all this (his name escapes me too, a small mercy.)  I was deeply suspicious of this movement, considered it somehow  anti feminist but was shouted down by my friend and couldn’t, then, formulate exactly why I had the suspicions about it that I had.

Fifteen years later, it all crystallizes for me.  It’s a subtle trap they lay, and very effective.  the object of the game is to first off stop women from talking about their problems and swing it bck to the men, the poor men, their feelings, their needs.  They do this by listening (while pretending not to) and then co-opting women’s language for themselves, and twisting it.  So from these encounter sessions where men basically went camping together came some basic principles about men:

1. Men are forced into a gender role from birth that is just as confining as that imposed on women, and therefore;

2. the patriarchy hurts men too.

Now this sounds really appealing on the face of it.  It makes men the natural allies of feminism, warriors alongside us in a battle against an oppressive force.  “We’re not at war with each other,” it cries (mistaking the media coining of the term “the battle of the sexes” as a reality, instead of a reality-masking lie), “we need to work together to eliminate this horrible scourge! And since, you know, we’re working together, that means you have to help us fight our battles too.  After all, people make fun of us if we cry – that’s sexist!  Stand up for our right to have feelings!”

…and so on.

This fermented underground without my noticing until, in the late 90s, it began to rise to the surface, as scum always will, with the Men’s Right’s movement, which politically works to deal with all those nasty discriminations against men that are built into law and which don’t really exist.  The draft is a favorite red herring of theirs to drag out – the reality is that there is no draft in America and hasn’t been since one for over 30 years (no male in America who is not a senior citizen has even been subject to a draft), their sole duty they must adhere to is filling out a form with selective service when they turn 18.  They argue this *could* become a draft someday but given how enormously unpopular the last one was no politician is willing to risk political suicide by voting for another.  Yet they love to talk as though their lives are in mortal danger at all moments.  They also ignore female draft resisters AND those women who tried to force the matter of women being included by showing up at selective service Enter text here.offices and filling out card applications (which were thrown away).  They also ignore the fact that military service is often seen as a part of full citizenship, without which you are not taken as seriously by a military-minded entity like the modern State.

The other favorite red herring of theirs, of course, is the outright lie that judges give preferential treatment to women after divorce in matters of child custody, when the reality is that 70% of the time men are given custody of their children when they demand it, even or especially if they have been raping and beating the child and the mother dares speak up about it.  They want a return to the good old days when women almost never got custody of the children because they were seen as the man’s property, and if she does get the kids (like they are some prize to be fought over) he certainly doesn’t want to have to contribute any money to feeding them since he has no rights to her vagina anymore, because to expect him to do so is OMG SEXIST.

“Sexist” – that’s the other term, a kinder, gentler term like “domestic violence” instead of the more accurate “wife beating” term, invented because it sounds nicer and fairer – but it doesn’t reflect reality.

The reality is – there is no “battle of the sexes”, there is no “sexism” – there is violent oppression of women in every nation, in every religion.

The reality is, there is no “domestic violence” – there is male violence against women, children, and sometimes other men.  Men are in virtually no danger from women in the home, while men’s violence against women is one of the most common reasons they require hospitalization, men’s murder of women is the number one cause of pregnancy related death, men’s murder of women is the number one reason for women to die at work.  Yet even a simple google search trying to find this out brings you to a page of search results laden with “men’s rights” groups denying that domestic violence is primarily perpetrated by men against women or that it is as severe as it is.

And – back to the central point of my post – the reality is that there are no “gender roles”.  To claim that boys and girls are pushed into different “gender roles” is the first step by the new wave of the anti-feminist movement in denying the oppression of women.  Because of “gender roles” are these weird things “society” just made up and we’re all stuck in them, well then we just all have to make nice and stop having all these unrealistic expectations of each other!

The reality is that from the moment the doctor says, “It’s a boy!” the child is deemed to be a full human.  His “gender expectations” are that he will fully participate in society to the extent his class, race, and physical condition allow.  He is expected to grow up and have a profession, become educated, become an independent human being.  His life choices will be based partly on his place in society but also by his hard work and natural talents.  He will be encouraged to eat enough food to grow up strong and healthy and no one will think twice about him enjoying his food obviously.  He will be encouraged and praised if he is physically active and enjoys or excels at sports.  He will be encouraged or at least not strongly dissuaded from a healthy sexual appetite, unless he belongs to a particularly strict religion.  There are no doors closed to the average male, he will see adult men in every profession, at every level of government, at the head of every religion, in every area of business, in all types of sports, men everywhere, capable of becoming wealthy, capable of being widely admired, presented as the standard human who is understood and whose needs are a matter of right.

The male gender role is “HUMAN.”

In contrast, a little girl is oppressed from birth.  From the moment one is pronounced female, one is degraded.  Everything associated with women and the feminine becomes a symbol of mockery and weakness, from the color pink to a liking of flowers.  Among a girl’s very first playthings are toys designed to encourage her to become a “good” wife and mother and consumer of clothing and beauty products – toy vacuum cleaners, baby dolls that wet their pants and cry (sometimes while she is still in diapers and crying!) hair accessories, baby girl makeup and jewelry kits.  the assumption is that whatever else she may be interested in or want to become, that these interests will always be her first and foremost, her most “natural” position in society – the homemaker who thinks no further than her next shopping trip and what to make for dinner.  At increasingly younger ages, her natural healthy enjoyment of food is stifled, she is told a fat girl or woman is an object of scorn and mockery, the average girl begins dieting in elementary school now, girls say they would rather die than gain 50 pounds, and every year girls *do* die rather than eat enough to risk gaining weight – anorexia alone kills 20% of its victims, not to mention the lifelong health consequences for many survivors. (Yes I know anorexia is partially caused by genetics, but dieting behavior frequently triggers those genetics, and dieting is pushed on girls at younger and younger ages now.)  If a girl is physically active and interested in sports she will be channeled into less challenging women’s sports, and if her interest is too extreme or in an “unfeminine” sport she will be subtly or not so subtly discouraged from it.  If she persists and becomes a professional athlete she will never be as rich or successful as male professional athletes.  A girl will be simultaneously pressured into being chaste, sexually passive, virginal (by her parents and most religions) to the extent that all sex, including rape, will be considered her fault – and at the same time encouraged to be sexually available to prove her “independence” and adulthood, to dress in skimpy clothing that bares her body, to pose nude for her boyfriend, to always be sexually eager for her husband.  no matter what she does in terms of her sexuality, it will not be accepted by society.  A girl learns young that she will probably never be president, never have a place in most major religions (other than the lowest possible support role), is more likely to be a nurse than a doctor, is more likely to be a mommy than an executive.

The female “gender role” is “SERVANT/SEXUAL TOY”.

The two simply do not compare.

Men’s rights activists try to bring up anti-gay social attitudes as evidence that men must conform to a certain stereotype and that this is “oppression”.  Yet the main offenders of reinforcing this “gender role” are OTHER MEN – and taunting other men for being a “sissy” or “faggot” is only reinforcing a gender role inasmuch as being gay is seen as being less than a man, or being more feminine, which is understood to be a position of degradation everywhere.  At the root of homophobia is hatred of women – straight men imagine gay men performing the same slave role they force women into, and wish to dissociate themselves from that perceived taint of femaleness.  This is not an oppressive gender role forced on men by women, which is what a real “battle of the sexes” or “sexism” would mean – this is male self-policing.

Men’s rights activists also complain that being expected to actually work for a living is an oppressive requirement of the male role.  Give me a fucking break.  As if mothers and housewives don’t work harder than they do – for no pay.

“Gender roles” are a crock.  “Men’s rights” are a crock.  “Domestic violence” is a crock.  “Sexism” is a crock.

It’s time to stop playing nice to get along with the boys in hopes of winning them to our side.  No subtle leading them into a slightly less misogynistic viewpoint by pretending the patriarchy hurts men too – it doesn’t, not as men.  It benefits them – that’s why it fucking exists.  Even when it hurts men for being disabled, or non-white, or poor, it hurts non-white, disabled, poor women more than men of the same social strata.  Men always have a social benefit from being men.  They are more positively portrayed everywhere, they are considered the default human being.  men do not suffer from unnatural constraints of gender roles!  What is expected of men is CITIZENSHIP, ADULTHOOD, HUMANITY.

And the spoiled little fuckers complain about it.

Unbelievable.

(For the uninformed, that would be “Fat acceptance” and “Health at any size”)

I’m sorry to all the FA readers or proponents out there, but I simply can’t get behind the HAES philosophy, although it probably isn’t for the reason most people think.  Do I believe a large person with a high BMI can be “healthy”?  Yes.  Do I know that someone can eat mostly vegetables and exercise every day and have low blood pressure, low cholesterol, a good heart rate, no diabetes, and still be fat?  Yes.  I suppose that was the original intent of the HAES catch phrase and idea put out there, since most of the world seems to assume that if you “eat right and exercise” you will, of course, be thin.

There’s no (yes you read that right, no) scientific proof that this is the case.  You do see indications in certain experiments that going on a diet reduces high blood pressure and cholesterol WHILE ONE IS ON THE DIET.  There is no indication that the vast majority of people are going to be able to override their bodies desperate urges to feed themselves for a lifetime (this is why 95% of all diets fail), so as soon as they return to eating food with actual flavor that will adequately nourish them, the numbers go right back up.  Not that there is any real proof that those numbers rising means ill health is around the corner either.   The entirely of the belief that there are “bad” foods that will make your blood pressure, cholesterol, and weight go up and that in turn those numbers going up will make you sick are associations built upon associations – in other words,  there is no proof that eating a hamburger every day will cause you to have a heart attack before you turn 60.  Although that’s kinda gross and wouldn’t you want something else once in a while?  I digress.

So the FA movement came up with the HAES idea anyway to try to promote to a largely uncaring public that fat people don’t necessarily live any differently from slim people, despite the plethora of media images of fat people shoving high fat, high calorie, sugar laden foods into their mouth while lying on the couch all day.  And for that they are to be commended.  But I worry about a hierarchy developing, wherein I see such things as FA proponents proudly listing the “healthy” (low fat, low sugar, organic, vegetarian/vegan) foods they eat on their blogs, talking about how much exercise they get, bragging about how low their blood pressure and cholesterol are.

So are people who do not have “good numbers” allowed to be in the FA movement?  What if they make you look bad?  What if, like most Americans, I am a fat person who doesn’t engage in leisure time exercise for half an hour 3-5 times a week (something also not proven to make any difference in one’s longevity)?  Am I disqualified from speaking up in the FA movement?  And… what if I am not healthy?

Because I’m not.  I am not a child, I am not ignorant on the amount of calories, fat grams, carbs, protein grams, or anything else in my food (after living 25 years with an eating disorder I can probably tell you the calories in every food I like in my sleep), I am not ignorant about exercise, I have tried, multiple times, doing about every little thing anyone has ever suggested I do to “lose weight and get fit and healthy” and the reality is – I am NOT healthy, nothing I eat or do not eat, drink or do not drink, is going to change that.  I cannot, by manipulating my diet, solve my endocrine problems, my joint problems, I cannot undo my PTSD, I cannot make my migraines disappear, I cannot reverse the effects of trauma on my life.  I am chronically ill, mentally and physically, and there is no reason to think I will not always be ill.

Should I, and other disabled people, be shuffled to the bottom and hidden away because we are not “healthy”?  Is the FA’s insistence on HAES truly a counter-cultural message, or is it buying into the societal hierarchy of “health”, where those who are “fit and trim” are on top?  Isn’t HAES just saying that “deserving” fat people should be allowed at the top too?  Does it truly challenge the hierarchy?

I’m really only interested in challenging the hierarchy, the one that puts male, white, young adult, healthy/able bodied, “fit”, thin, rich, Christian, heterosexual people on top and tells everyone else that the more they deviate from these “desirable” qualities, the less they deserve to have.  To this end, I don’t see HAES as a valuable tool.

I never was too much into the personification of Ana (or Mia, depending on your personal food kink/disorder type).

But I’ve seen a few people in recovery jokingly speak of Ed (E.D. – Eating Disorders), as a non-glamourized personification.

And I was thinking about this other day and it occurred to me, living with Ed is so much like living with an abusive man.

You don’t want anyone to know Ed is hurting you. So you hide the harm Ed does. Ed leaves you bruises and you joke about how clumsy you are. But Ed is hurting you. His physical abuse leaves you bruised, tired, sore. Your very bones ache. You feel nauseated and sick. Sometimes he knocks out your teeth. Sometimes he cuts you. You wear long pants and long sleeved shirts in the summer and say you’re cold (which is true, because he denies you enough food with iron in it to stay warm). Sometimes Ed hurts you so badly you end up in the emergency room.

He controls everything you do, deliberately isolates you from your friends so you can spend more time with him, criticizes you constantly, picks on your clothes, your looks, your makeup, relentlessly points out every flaw. If you gain even one single pound he notices, and bullies you until you do something to take it off, and five more. Ed points out other women and tells you they are prettier, thinner, more desirable. Ed points out other joggers or bikers who go faster than you, even after you’ve been going for miles, and tells you that you’re lazy if you can’t keep up.

Ed keeps you from sleeping at night, bothering you, keeping you up late, reminding you of every mistake you’ve made that day, sometimes yelling at you until you get out of bed and promise to fix your mistakes.

Ed watches your every move, and if you sneak away to have some “bad” food, he catches you at it and screams at you till you cry, sometimes until you throw up.

If you tell people about how badly Ed is hurting you, he threatens to leave you, threatens you that you’ll never find anyone else because you are so worthless, you are nothing without him, and next thing you know you are telling everyone that maybe you were just being too hard on him, or denying it all again. Sometimes you can tell people what Ed is doing to you and they just don’t believe it. They insist you look well and fine, they joke that maybe they need someone like Ed around to help them improve themselves, they tell you a little constructive criticism can be motivating. Unless Ed hurts you so badly you go into the hospital, people just don’t want to believe he can be that bad – he’s such a charming guy.

But mainly you don’t complain about him because you can’t imagine life without Ed. He has made himself the center of your world. If Ed demands you quit seeing a friend, you quit seeing them. If he demands you quit doing something, you quit doing it. After all, before he came along you were just dumpy, ordinary, lazy, clumsy, selfish, but you had such potential, and well he recognized it, and promised you he’d help you become the beautiful woman he could see inside you – just as long as you went along with a few ideas he had for you to improve yourself. No pain, no gain – no beauty comes without a price – right?

One day you wake up and you realize your life is out of control. And maybe you need help to get away from Ed. So you leave, and go to someone for help. But Ed stalks you. You look up and see him when you’re grocery shopping, when you’re at a restaurant. You’re afraid he will come around if you are alone at night, when you are naked and defenseless in the shower. At first maybe he just talks to you. You can try to tell people about it but unless he’s actually physically hurting you they tell you just to ignore him or refuse to talk to him and he’ll go away. But he keeps coming back. Maybe even 5 years later when you think he’s forgotten you cross the street one day and there he is, behind the plate glass window of a store, staring back at you. Letting you know he’s there. Always watching. Always waiting.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/03/grace.coldcase.murphy/index.html

He killed her, right?  I mean come on.

All the usual excuses are there.  “There was no physical violence in the marriage!  He was a law abiding citizen!”

Please.  He killed her.  And I bet the “fight” was her saying she was leaving him.

If I turn out to be wrong I will be very, very shocked.

I don’t celebrate Memorial Day (American holiday for those of you elsewhere – meant to honor dead American soldiers), evil, God hating, man hating, war hating unPATRIotic as I am, no.

Why celebrate Memorial Day?  Well of course if you personally know a soldier in your family who died on the battlefield, yes, this day has a special meaning to you.  But if you don’t?  The guilt-laden signs are all around, rich with all the symbolism of the American military and how we should honor those who “died so we can be free”.  As if they personally, each and everyone, voluntarily joined the military out of the deep sacrificial goodness of their hearts because AMERICAN FREEDOM WAS ON THE LINE and they wanted nothing more than to defend it for the good of their loved ones and FELLOW  countryMEN.

In fact, most veterans of war were conscripts.  Until you get to the never ending stupidity of modern war-without-end on Iraq and other places overseas, and then they are “volunteers” – young men and women who come from depressed areas of the country and have little to no money for college and no real prospects for a career.  The military offers them travel, job training, college money, and rather than sit around their childhood bedroom chafing at their lack of a life, they bite, probably with encouragement from their family.  Then they get sent off to some imperialistic wank in a desert somewhere, feeling they made a huge mistake but unable to turn back on it, meanwhile being constantly screwed over, browbeat, and brainwashed by everyone around them into parroting the same lines over and over until they half believe them.  Then they are released and when they have PTSD or Gulf War syndrome the government acts like they are crazy and making it up.  So they end up back in the lower middle class, the lower class altogether, or even on the street.  So much for average citizens honoring their sacrifices – the VA can’t even be bothered to honor its own mentally, physically wounded soldiers itself.

For this I’m supposed to have some big debt of gratitude?  These are “freedom fighters” I should honor?  I’m sorry, I think of them as dumb, unlucky kids caught up in the war machine.  I don’t bear them any ill will.  But I simply don’t know any who really “joined up” for some high falutin’ ideals of God, home, and country.  My grandfather was a WW2 vet (he died when I was a baby, I never knew him) but I know damn well even he was conscripted.  And how many wars, since the inception of America, have truly been about preserving our American freedoms?  Iraq isn’t.  Afghanistan isn’t.  Vietnam and Korea sure as hell weren’t.  World War 2 we entered after an put up job of Pearl Harbor was deliberately orchestrated as an excuse to let us turn the tide of American opinion enough that we could enter the war.  Even then it wasn’t really an attack on American freedoms, but a power/land grab.  World War 1 also did not pose any threat to American freedom or sovereignty. The Civil War was a total travesty on both sides, the only good thing to come out of being the nominal end to slavery (quickly replaced, after Reconstruction, by Jim Crow Laws and the sharecropping system). Every other war we’ve been in was straight up imperialistic tendencies on our side.

If we were truly a country under frequent attack, with armed troops trying to invade us and impose their morals, laws, and way of life on us – as we are doing to others every day for at least the last 60 years – we would be right to describe fallen American soldiers as having fallen in the name of keeping America free.  but this is far from the truth.

Instead, I urge every young person with half a brain and any conscience to walk away from the army recruiting posters and their false promises of education and awesome career training.

Here is who I propose honoring as Americans who fought, risked their lives, and sometimes died defending “our” (as in, not just that of rich, white, landed men) freedom:

Susan B Anthony.   Sojourner Truth.   Andrea Dworkin.   Frederick Douglass.  Ana Mae Aquash.  Martin Luther King Junior. Johanna Justin-Jinich.  Fannie Lou Hamer.  Dr. Barnett Slepian.

There’s many more of course.  That’s just a tiny few.

There’s a lot of buzz about “choices”.  About women who “choose” to have abortions, about women who “choose” to be straight or lesbian, about women who “choose” to shave or not shave their legs.  About poor people who “choose” to be lazy and not work.

There’s some deeper philosophical divide going on here.  Are we all free agents moved by nothing more than our personal will?  If so, then everything bad that happens to everyone, outside of accidents or direct harm caused to a person by someone clearly more powerful than them in every way (let’s go with a neutral example of someone safely crossing a road in a crosswalk with a walk light on who gets run down by someone in a truck – clearly individual free will plays no part in the victim’s role there), all of those things are at least in part your fault.

Going by this theory, outside of being brutally raped, every woman has a total and complete choice to sleep with men or women as she so desires according to her personal inclination and political consciousness.

The other side of the theory is that we are all somehow products of society and free will is an illusion.  That we will act according to how we are raised and what is around us, influencing us.

The “truth”, I think, is somewhere in between.

I had a “choice” to have an abortion when I was 21.  Of course if I had made the “choice” not to have an abortion I would have been instantly relegated to the lowest ranks of poverty, the “father” having said in no uncertain terms that he would fight paying child support every step of the way and would have nothing to do with me or the baby, and not having any familial support since my family is a mostly a big group of insane abusers.  Of course, laws relaxing the strictures on abortion made my choice much easier than it would have been if I lived somewhere where I had to find some illegal, possibly untrained or dirty doctor elsewhere, where I would have had to fear for my life and health if I got one.  Possibly the certain spectre of loneliness and poverty might have seemed more appealing then.  But I had a “choice” to have an abortion (and thus continue on with my life) or to have a baby (which would have pretty much ruined any chance I had to do anything.)  Even at the time I was so horribly angry at having it so glibly passed off as a “choice”, as though I were choosing whether to wear a green or a yellow shirt that day.

As far as a choice to be lesbian goes – i.e., a choice to not sexually interact with men that one consciously makes before one becomes sexually active at all – I literally never had that choice, unless you are going to somehow argue a 40 pound child has the choice to say no to an adult male.  But the near ubiquity of the sexual abuse of girls aside, I am not going to deny that heterosexual privilege exists.  What I will say is that it is difficult to impossible for most women to give it up, just as a matter of philosophy or politics, at such a young age as to never have gotten involved with a man at all.  I can’t speak for everyone here, I don’t know what makes some women able to ALWAYS say no to men.  What I know from my perspective is this:

When I was young the word lesbian was never spoken around me.  I never saw a lesbian, never saw two women kiss.  I literally did not even know such things existed.  I was in my mid teens before that was even presented to me as a concept.  Yes I was raised very religiously, but in spite of living in America in the 70’s and 80’s, there is still such invisibility visited upon lesbians that it was not hard at all for my family to shield me from all knowledge of such things.  In spite of this, I was having lesbian longings and feelings that I didn’t even begin to comprehend – but yes everyone and everything around me demanded, expected, assumed I would grow up, marry and have children – every book, every movie, every woman I know did so.  Without exception.  In the meantime the men in my family were sexually abusive to me and all the other girls.  By the time I was an adult, let there be no doubt about how ground down into the dirt I was, how unwilling I was to step out of line, fear, shame, and submission having been literally beaten into me.  I don’t pretend I’m exceptional or alone in this.  And the fact is, you cannot look at any woman and know if that has happened to her.

For me, coming out as bisexual almost as soon as I moved away from home *was* a radical act.  Stepping out of the tracks I’d been steered into was terrifying, even if it was for something some radical lesbian feminists roll their eyes at.  I still at that time did not meet any lesbians or see any examples of lesbian culture.  I did not until I was married with a child, in my 20s.  The idea that I had a “choice” to leave my husband and take my son to go live with strangers for social/political reasons then would have been completely unthinkable, even if I had had the money to buy a single greyhound ticket to travel several hundred miles to the only lesbian space I’d ever heard of – and then they may have not wanted my son there, as some such places do not.

Do I have a “choice” to eschew all contact with males, abandon my son, and live a life henceforth free of males?  Sure I do.  Is it a realistic choice? Was it a realistic choice to expect me to make as a traumatized, impoverished 18 year old?  If you, reader, suffered for your choice to come out as lesbian when you were very young, and I could not find the opportunity or the will to do so because of various mental, social, physical factors, does that make you better than me?  More pure?  Have I made “bad choices”?  Maybe, but I can say every step of the way I always made the choices that seemed most logical to me for survival.  Not “privilege”, not a pretty house and a boyfriend who made me popular and had a lot of money, because I’ve never had that.  Much of my life has been a struggle to survive by any means necessary.  My choices, and my options, have not been pretty.  On paper I look like a total fuck up as a result.  I have no college education, a spotty work history, no trade skills, a mental health history, no familial back up, and my health isn’t the best.  Often in my life my sexual/romantic partners have been the ONLY people on my side in any way.   Even when they have been outright abusive and I knew it I had no where to go that I could see.

Maybe I should have tried harder, suffered even deeper poverty and more abuse by others and steadfastly refused to sleep with men at all.  I could have been homeless most of my adult life then, instead of only for a year or so. Would that make me more ideologically pure?

Yes some heterosexual and bisexual women seek to use lesbians as play toys in their het relationships, as evidenced in personal ads everywhere.  Personally though I think personal ads are the absolute worst place to find any kind of relationship at all.  Seriously – have you ever met one single person who’s found love or even a long term relationship that was in any way healthy through a personal ad?!  I only ever read them to laugh at them.  Try to sum up what will knock your socks off in 100 words or less and it all comes out sounding trite.

*rant rant rant*

I know there have been long quiet stretches here of late, and yes, there will be more of those to come, I’m afraid.  On top of other, smaller crises like the sudden death of my last computer, etc., well the biggest thing going on in my life right now is that my mother is dying – and at a fairly young age too.  The news of her incipient demise was unexpected, sudden, and definitive, and the happy dysfunction of the entire family promises to make this as awful as it can possibly be.  So on top of just sitting around being a bit unable to cope with it, I will also have some travel coming up in the next months.

So uh, if you’re wondering where I am – that’s where.

According to the CDC, us fatties are costing all the good, deserving thin people billions of dollars.  (Only a fraction of what greedy, lying, thieving corporate bankers stole from all your pockets but hey – its more fun to hate fat people!)

The claim:

Overweight and obesity and their associated health problems have a significant economic impact on the U.S. health care system (USDHHS, 2001). Medical costs associated with overweight and obesity may involve direct and indirect costs (Wolf and Colditz, 1998; Wolf, 1998). Direct medical costs may include preventive, diagnostic, and treatment services related to obesity. Indirect costs relate to morbidity and mortality costs. Morbidity costs are defined as the value of income lost from decreased productivity, restricted activity, absenteeism, and bed days. Mortality costs are the value of future income lost by premature death.

Look at the wording.  “associated with” “may involve” “direct and indirect costs” “may include”  Sounds very sketchy.  Is it that fat people really cost us the 117 billion a year (adjusted for inflation) figure being claimed?  Or do costs associated with obesity related illnesses directly and indirectly maybe sorta kinda come to $117 billion?

What is an “obesity related” cost?  What is an indirect cost vs. a direct cost?  The CDC website didn’t have that information readily findable, but what is surely an impartial, caring source – Nutristrategy (trademark) – tells us a bit more:

Overweight and obesity costs total $117 billion in the United States. Direct cost is $61 billion. Indirect cost is $56 billion.

Direct costs include the cost of physicians and other professionals, hospital and nursing home services, the cost of medications, home health care and other medical durables. Indirect costs include lost productivity that results from illness and death.

Cancer costs related to overweight and obesity:
Breast cancer: Total cost: $2.9 billion, Direct cost: $1.1 billion, Indirect cost: $1.8 billion
Endometrial cancer: Total cost: $933 million, Direct cost: $310 million, Indirect cost: $623 million
Colon cancer: Total cost: $3.5 billion, Direct cost: $1.3 billion, Indirect cost: $2.2 billion

Type 2 diabetes costs related to overweight and obesity: cost is $98 billion (total).

Osteoarthritis costs related to overweight and obesity: Total cost is $21.2 billion. Direct cost is $5.3 billion. Indirect cost is $15.9.

Hypertension (high blood pressure) costs related to overweight and obesity: Direct cost $4.1 (17 percent of the total cost of hypertension).

Gallbladder disease costs related to overweight and obesity: Total cost: $3.4 billion, Direct cost: $3.2 billion, Indirect cost: $187 million.

Lost productivity costs related to obesity (BMI > 30) among Americans ages 17-64 is $3.9 billion. This value considers the following annual numbers (for 1994):

-Workdays lost related to obesity: 39.3 million
-Physician office visits related to obesity: 62.7 million
-Restricted activity days related to obesity: 239.0 million
-Bed-days related to obesity: 89.5 million

Unless they are only counting the costs of cancer only found in obese patients, and the same for the others – wait.  Are they seriously counting all diabetes 2 and 4 kinds of cancer as all being the fault of fat people?

I guess the easy way to figure that out is to check the sources.  The page cites the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for figures on diabetes costs related to fat people.

The annual cost of diabetes in medical expenditures and lost productivity climbed from $98 billion in 1997 to $132 billion in 2002, according to a study by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) published in the March issue of Diabetes Care. The direct medical costs of diabetes more than doubled in that time, from $44 billion in 1997 to $91.8 billion in 2002.

That’s right – even though thin people can have diabetes too, and even though this figure includes type 1 diabetes (the kind kids get for no apparent reason) all diabetes costs are your fault, fatties!  Even if you don’t have it!  And even though being overweight is only one of many risk factors for diabetes 2 – including your race, your genetics and your age.  And never mind the fact that not even all old people of a certain race and genetic background who are fat get diabetes.  And never mind the fact that some of the “increase” in diabetes is caused by a redefinition of the condition to include people with no diabetes symptoms – but who are “managed” with expensive treatments anyway.

Those breast cancer numbers?  Well in the first place, I looked around a while and couldn’t find anything citing the number she stated – the CDC claims the number to be much higher.  But also, there is NO KNOWN CAUSE of breast cancer.  The risk factors they have found that are associated with breast cancer – those would be a correlation, not a cause – are:  sex (men actually can get breast cancer, as they have a small amount of breast tissue, but its very rare); age (almost all women who get breast cancer are over 45);  genetics/family history of breast cancer; race; how young menstrual cycle began; whether or not you had children or when you had them; having taken DES back when they still prescribed it; having had another kind of cancer or radiation treatment for that cancer; having taken the pill within the last decade; taking hormone replacement therapy; not having breast fed your children for at least a year if you had children; and being overweight.  But again, there is no known cause.  A woman can be old, white, fat, child free, with a mother who died of breast cancer – and not ever get breast cancer.  And nobody knows why.  Blaming breast cancer costs on fat people is fucking ridiculous.

Endometrial cancer – the most common cancer of the female reproductive system – is thought to be linked to estrogen levels, but they don’t really know what causes it.  They think – but aren’t sure – that higher levels of estrogen can cause it.  Blaming fat people for endometrial cancer and the associated costs is therefore fucking ridiculous.

Colon cancer.  They do not know exactly what causes colon cancer.  The usual ricsk factors are present, such as being old, family history, other diseases of the intestines, oh and being fat – so they say.  Although it strikes me that since getting older is a risk factor for pretty much every kind of cancer, and getting older means you gain weight, couldn’t that be why people who weigh more are more likely to get cancer?  Oh wait I wasn’t supposed to notice that, was I?  That aside, a disease with no known cause and a wide variety of risk factors cannot be blamed entirely on obesity.  That’s fucking stupid.  (Can you tell I’m annoyed?)

Osteoarthritis – hey is it starting to look like they are blaming old women for everything here?  Again being old and being female are two big risk factors for osteoarthritis.  Yes I am sure being overweight can encourage or exacerbate arthritis on weight bearing joints like the knees and hip.  However, many skinny people have arthritis too.  Blaming fat people for costs associated with osteoarthritis is asinine.

And so on and so forth.

I found another source for this same claim and a little more of where it comes from.  Some dudes named Wolf and Colditz did some study back in 1995 and- here let me just quote directly the asininity of all this:

“The researchers based their estimates on weighted data from the 1988 and 1994 National Health Interview Surveys, inflating the results to reflect 1995 dollars. These estimates were those utilized by the National Institutes of Health at the time this report was undertaken. To estimate health care costs attributable to obesity, Wolf and Colditz used a prevalence-based approach including the obesity-related diseases of type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, hypertension, gallbladder disease, colon, breast, and endometrial cancers, and osteoarthritis.“

So this “research” proving we cost the innocent, upright, moral deserving thin people $117 billion a year in the US alone is based on a 14 year old study that was based on the examination of the results of a SURVEY?! – with figures inflated to 2008 dollars (haven’t seen their new scary number for 2009 yet.)  Wait no one can be that stupid, as to do such a thing and pretend it is both science and accurate economic analysis, right?

Okay here is a slightly more explanatory paragraph of their method:

Anne Wolf and Graham Colditz used an epidemiologic approach to quantify aggregate medical spending attributable to obesity (excluding overweight).They calculated the relative risk of disease for obese versus nonobese people for type 2 diabetes; coronary heart disease; hypertension; gallbladder disease; musculoskeletal disease; and breast, endometrial, and colon cancer. They then applied the relative risk estimates to published estimates of disease costs to determine obesity-attributable medical spending. They found that such spending equaled 5.7 percent of US national health spending in 1995 ($51.6 billion). However, because their disease costs were based on data from as far back as 1985, their spending estimate may be outdated.

So, in some cases they included all disease costs to the obese, in some cases they decided what percentage of it is the fault of obese people, even in diseases where THERE IS NO KNOWN CAUSE.  Obesity is only a risk factor in all of the diseases listed – and it is hard to explain this to people anymore because there’s so much hype thrown around, but a risk factor is not a cause.  A risk factor for a diease is merely something observed that happens to many people around the same time they develop a disease.  It could mean iot causes the disease but the relationship is unclear.  It could mean the disease causes the risk factor!  THEY DON’T KNOW.

So on the basis of obesity being a “risk factor” somehow mysteriously related to various diseases that have a long list of risk factors associated with them, the researchers blamed 5% or so of all health costs in the US on people being too fat.  Well I don’t know, 5% doesn’t really sound like all that much to me, considering how much they pulled straight out of their asses to try to inflate the “costso of obesity” as high as possible to include everything they could possibly imagine might possibly be caused by fat people.

And you may think, so okay, some fatphobic morons came up with some shoddy research claiming the rising costs of healthcare rest on my pudgy shoulders, so what?  Why does it matter?

First of all this matters because changing one’s weight to a more socially acceptable weight, while relentlessly marketed to us, even by the government, as something within our control (they call it a “lifestyle choice”), there is no evidence, anywhere, that has ever been collected, to suggest that this is true.  Consider this bullshit study trying to “prove” people can take off significant amounts of weight long term if they just do the right things:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16002825

“There is a general perception that almost no one succeeds in long-term maintenance of weight loss. However, research has shown that approximately 20% of overweight individuals are successful at long-term weight loss when defined as losing at least 10% of initial body weight and maintaining the loss for at least 1 y. “

So – if a woman who is 5′6″ and weighed 170 pounds (defined as overweight)  goes on a diet and loses 10% of her body weight – 17 pounds, putting her at 153 pounds (defined as “normal and healthy) and manages not to gain it back within a year, that is considered long term significant weight loss?  And yet even such a modest short term weight loss is only managed by 20% of dieters?

The study goes on to cite The National Weight Control Registry.  The name alone gives me the creeps.   here is their index page blurb:

The National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), established in 1994 by Rena Wing, Ph.D.from Brown Medical School, and James O. Hill, Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, is the largest prospective investigation of long-term successful weight loss maintenance. Given the prevailing belief that few individuals succeed at long-term weight loss, the NWCR was developed to identify and investigate the characteristics of individuals who have succeeded at long-term weight loss. The NWCR is tracking over 5,000 individuals who have lost significant amounts of weight and kept it off for long periods of time. Detailed questionnaires and annual follow-up surveys are used to examine the behavioral and psychological characteristics of weight maintainers, as well as the strategies they use to maintaining their weight losses.

Nice that they say its a “belief” that fat people can’t lose weight – and yet they only have 5,000 people they track out of the estimated 150,000,000 Americans we are told are overweight.  They include people who have only kept their weight off a year and people who have lost as little as 30 pounds.  We are told this is significant and long term weight loss.  The average person they research has kept off 66 pounds for 5.5 years.  THESE ARE HIGHLY EXCEPTIONAL PEOPLE.  They are literally the exception that proves the rule.  Millions of people sign up with weight watchers every year, many with Jenny Craig, many with other diet programs large and small.  Yet they only found 5,000 people who lost “significant” amounts of weight “long term”.  And this tiny percentage they claim as “proof” that long term significant weight loss is something anyone can achieve.  It’s not true.

So being fat is something that almost no one can change about themselves for any significant amount of time.  Yet partly because of studies like this one that blames us wrongly for $117 billion a year in medical costs, thus encouraging anti-fat bias, fat people are denied jobs, denied promotions and raises – particularly among women.  Because of the lie told to employers that fat employees will cost them more money and take more time off work and are less productive – beliefs supported by these outdated, inaccurate, shadily conducted estimates – we experience very real, serious penalties for something we cannot change about ourselves. Being punished for something you can’t change is cruel, angering, unjust.  Having put up with this kind of treatment for two decades now, I’m at my wits end.

Fat is a feminist issue, people.

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