At work, I have to use an access badge to get into the main part of the office. Occasionally, however, I have been known to coast behind other people, especially when someone has already pressed the handicap door-open button, which keeps the door open for about 10 seconds. I usually do this when I’m hauling my purse, my laptop bag, and my lunch bag, where my badge is typically buried beneath Tupperware containers, countless Post-it notes, and random snacks.

However, starting this week, Workplace instituted a new security measure: Standing right next to the doors is a security guard, outfitted smartly in a navy blue suit coat. If, like my boss recently discovered, you walk out of the doors to go to the bathroom and emerge 30 seconds later to walk through the doors without using your badge, you will be verbally reprimanded by the guard.

The best part? The security guy stands behind a podium. A PODIUM. As my boss was telling us how he “wanted to immediately tackle the guy,” due to this ridiculousness, I couldn’t get over the fact that someone brainstormed this idea and thought, “You know what we should implement so people follow the rules? A podium.”

What ridiculous corporate things do you see at your workplace?

As for how the quitting is going; I’m doing pretty well. I have really cut down on the gum, which I am happy with, but Shauna has mixed feelings. She’s happy that I’m doing so well, she just thinks I should be chewing a little more gum. She’s probably right, I do get moody from time to time (ok, a little more often than that) but I’m doing all right.

The first week I chewed 32 pieces of the gum. The second:13. That’s right, 13 pieces. Damn, maybe I should be chewing more. Sunday I actually didn’t chew any. Not one piece. A quick look at the instructions again tells me that I should be chewing around 12 pieces a day (no more than 24) for the first 6 weeks. Maybe I wasn’t as addicted as I once thought.

You know what? I haven’t told you about “Monkey Ass.” That’s terrible of me, considering I mentioned it a number of times already. Monkey Ass is our little code word if one of us is getting too stressed from quitting. The initial thought behind it was since I’m quitting the nicotine and Shauna’s quitting the Dew, we’ll need a little time. Little breathers from each other. Now, it’s a good idea. The main reason is we didn’t want to kill each other. We didn’t even want to hurt each other. So, we came up with a way to let the other know that one of us was about to blow. The problem was, I always erupted before I got a chance to realize it and call a Monkey Ass. I’m trying, but sometimes it is just getting the best of me.

I know I’ve said this before, but I really don’t miss the nicotine. My body will probably tell you differently, but I really don’t. I do miss the smoking though. I catch myself watching other people smoke now with a smile on my face, almost like I’m enjoying myself through them.

I’m getting close now, I can feel it.

I totally agree feminist mum- we need to embrace partriarchy in order to overcome it, not sit around weighting for perepetia.

However, what if the son isn’t yours but you have to live with it? I’m currently in quite a serious relationship with a man and his son is already starting to gender stereotype me. He’s eight and always expects me to fetch him sandwiches or help him pee at the roadside. I’ve spoken to partner but he says it’s out of his control and that Jake’s mother is a feminist who has raised him to respect women. His ex-wife works in interior design PR for god’s sake, she has a cath kitson apron (which she was wearing when I popped round once) and her favourite film is Mystic Pizza. She is NOT a feminist.

I love this man; what should I do about his patriarchal offspring when it isn’t mine?

Abby and I have developed this highly elaborate game, which combines the childhood games of Hide & Seek and Tag, with a vicious attack scene reminiscent of Alien. It goes something like this: Abby runs up to me with that crazy, “I’m frisky! Look at my dilated pupils and bushy tail” look in her eye.

Then she taps me on the leg with her dainty, furry paw and bolts for her scratching post. This is my cue to sneak up on her, tap her on the side and run like hell into the bedroom, laughing like a drunken hyena the whole time. Because her expressions are just so hilarious to me.

When you “tag” her, she gets all indignant and pissed off. She also hates if you pant like a dog. I’m not sure how I figured that out, but it’s funny nonetheless. Never mind the fact that I look like a complete moron sitting on my bed, panting like an overweight sheepdog and laughing under my breath, nervously waiting for her to find me. She’s so stealthy that she usually sneaks up behind me without me noticing.

At that point, she is so pissy that she lunges at me and bites my ankle, which results in me shrieking in fright and dissolving into giggles, while she makes her elephant-thumping dash back to her scratching post, which she kicks viciously with her back legs like a rabid kangaroo. Meanwhile, Jason sits on the couch and rolls his eyes, pretending not to know us. Good times.

And after the game, you can read these blogs. They are worth it.

https://sammyfl.blogspot.com/

http://andorsimko.gportal.hu/

http://rachelmom.blog.fc2.com/

You have never seen The Color Purple? :shock: Beloved I can understand because it was brutal. Seriously. So NOT a date movie.

With my mother’s permission I read The Color Purple when I was 14. I will never forget the first page. Ms. Walker let you know from the beginning what you were in for and dared you to take it.

You better not tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.

Dear God,

I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me.

Last spring after little Lucious come I heard them fussing. He was pulling on her arm. She say It too soon, Fonso, I ain’t well. Finally he leave her alone. A week go by, he pulling on her arm again. She say Naw, I ain’t gonna. Can’t you see I’m already half dead. an all of these children.

She went to visit her sister doctor over Macon. Left me to see after the others. He never had a kine word to say to me. Just say You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t.

I forgot one more of my favorites, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

Books help to normalize what some would sensationalize. It helps to take the taboo away from what the mainstream calls different and makes children in less conventional families feel validated, which is so important. Children thrive the best when they feel validation.

Also, I get very uncomfortable when people begin equating trans* w/ woman hating, b/c the two are not equal. It is about the gamut of humanity, and about how a person feels the most comfortable w/ themselves, and it is not for a person outside of that particular body to judge how that person deals w/ their own body. Being FTM is no more woman hating than being a gay man. I have seen this kind of thing used to draw lines in feminist circles where they don’t need to be drawn. Kind of like dividing our own forces against ourselves if you ask me (which I know no one has). Children need to lean that our world is made up of all kind of bodies and that the gender binary is a social construct. Books like 10,000 Dresses and the ones you listed help to show that. Books w/ gay characters aren’t going to turn children gay any more than Harry Potter books are going to turn kids into wizards or Twilight is going to turn them into Vampires.

I had both prenatal and post-natal depression. I actually did have a home-birth and my midwife’s behavoir during the birth was what started a really terrible bout of ppd (I blogged some about that in this post – http://musings-musings-musings.blogspot.com/2008/06/ah-happiness-myth.html). And I so remember the guilt. I remember it well enough to feel really pissed when other women get blind-sided by all the rosy myths about pregnancy and motherhood that no one can live up to. Ugh. I wrote some about that there. Anyway, I can really relate to your story. I’m so sorry you’re experiencing it. It was an awful, awful experience for me, but also, ultimately deeply healing. Counseling and medication really helped and I’m very much on the other side. Know that it does get better! And so does parenting (I couldn’t believe how much better life got once my little one started sleeping regularly!).

Well, yesterday was blog for choice day and I missed it. But by the power of twitter, and thanks to blue milk, I’ve managed to get my act together in time for today.

I have a confession, which is that I haven’t always been pro-choice. To be fair, I was raised as an evangelical Christian and my “only in cases of rape and incest” views were actually pretty damn liberal amongst my peers!

When I rejected the religion I was brought up into, I started to reject the “pro-life” stance I’d been taking. It happened slowly, mind you. I came, at first, to view abortion as a kind of “sometimes-necessary evil”. I supposed, that in some cases, say, where contraception had failed, or where economic circumstances were such that a baby would be born into breathtaking poverty, or where a baby would be so severely disabled they would have no quality of life or… well, you get the picture.

I thought of abortion kind of in the way my sister-in-law (a vegetarian) thinks of meat eating. Not particularly nice, and she’d never do it herself, but as long as it’s done as humanely as possible and as little as possible it was the best of a bad job.

Gradually my views started to change. But it wasn’t until I became pregnant and had a baby myself that I realised I really was totally pro-choice. Because pregnancy was awful; the morning sickness (and afternoon, and evening sickness, and night sickness), the exhaustion and lethargy and sheer inability to move on occasion; and then the labour, with the pain which was like torture to me and about which I still get flashbacks; then the episiotomy which had me weeing standing up for several weeks (and I still can’t use my mooncup even now); the pelvic floor problems, the occasional leakage; the sleepless nights… and this was all for a much-wanted and much-loved child.

(Don’t get me wrong, I know not every woman’s pregnancy is like this. There were some complications in my case – won’t go into them now – and I know for some women a pregnancy is a joy. I think if I ever have a second child it might be a different story.)

The thought of putting another woman through this, against her will? Seems like torture to me. And that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about being anti-abortion. Forcing women to endure pregnancy and labour against their will.

However, once you identify as “pro choice” you have some uneasy decisions to make. Are you pro-choice all the time? Are you, for example, pro-choice whe it comes to women aborting only female foetuses? Are you pro-choice when it comes to abortion for foetuses where the resulting child could have a disability?

And… are you pro-choice when it comes to the other choice, the choice to keep the foetus, and have a baby? Are you pro-choice when it comes to, say, a post-menopausal woman gaining fertility treatment to conceive a child? Are you pro-choice even in an over-populated world? Are you pro-choice even though you believe motherhood is a problematic, even patriarchal construct?

Are you pro-choice, all the time?

In part one of We Are All Alloparents, I talked about how difficult it can be to get through the day even as a TAB mother of one without the help of alloparents.

I’m very much of the opinion that alloparenting is one of many ways to stick two fingers up at the kyriarchy, and probably a feminist act too.

But why? Why should you care? Especially if you’re not the guardian of a child yourself?

Firstly, I wanted to look at the old “but you chose to have children” card that is often pulled out when guardians of children usually the mother dare to ask not to be discriminated against and possibly even helped because of their childed status.

Two things. First of all, you don’t know whether or not someone actually did choose to have children. Until contraception and abortions are freely available to all who want them, you can’t know for sure if someone really did choose to have a child. (And conversely, you don’t know for sure if someone really has chosen not to have children; they may have, but they also may not have been able to.)

Secondly, so what? So what if I chose to have a child? I also chose to rent my house from a private landlord rather than buy it or rent from a housing association. I still think I’m entitled to protection and rights in law even though it’s a choice. I chose to work part time at the local council; I could have gone onto income support or taken a full time job elsewhere. But I still should be entitled to, for example, union representation, even though I made that choice. Why does something being a “choice” immediately mean “and therefore you have no right to complain ever”?

But it’s not just that. It’s more than that. See, yes, in my case, I did have a choice. But here’s the thing. My child? Another human being? He didn’t have any say in the matter. He came into the world without a choice about it.

Even if you don’t think I’m entitled to any special rights because I made the choice to have a child, surely my child is, as another human being? I mean, children are people too, aren’t they?

And if you give a shit about standing up to kyriarchy at all, then isn’t standing up for someone in an oppressed group (and yes, children are an oppressed group – one day I will write that “adult privilege” checklist) one way of saying no, I’m not going to accept this “rule of masters” thing?

And if you give a shit about feminism at all, isn’t helping out another sister a worthwhile thing to do (and I say sister because it is usually the mother of the child who is in need of the help – usually, although not always)?

But it’s about more than that. It’s about the fact that alloparenting – assisting the parent and child who are struggling – is a great way to model to the next generation that this is what you do. That if people struggle, you don’t make it worse for them; you make it better. That you don’t discriminate against people because they’re acting in a non-kyriarchy approved way. That you don’t kick shit out of an already oppressed group. Aren’t these the lessons we want to impart? What better way then, than modeling those lessons?

And let’s not forget kyriarchy is cruel. And one day those children will become the “masters”. Do we want to be “ruled” by them? Or do we want to break that cycle?

I was born to a father who chose not to stay, his departure the resounding chorus of my young life… Why not? Why? The lesson I learned from him was this: we can’t wish someone into being who we need them to be.

At fourteen, I was gifted with a stepfather who made a different choice. The one who absorbed my teenage sass with patience and wit, the one who sat faithfully in the stands beside my mother, cheering when I aced a serve or nailed a 3-pointer or made a diving centerfield catch. And that mother, my mother, the dark-eyed beauty. The one who was both Mom and Dad growing up, both Provider and Caretaker, both Friend and Rule-Enforcer, both Bold and Beloved.

Whatever a “traditional” family might have been, we weren’t it. But what we were in the years before I turned fourteen was a magical and mighty trio of females. We were flour-coated cooking lessons in the kitchen and kites in the field behind our apartment. We were ice skating in the winter and halter tops in the summer. We were hiking in Brown County and boating on Lake Tippecanoe. We were love, laughter, kindness, concern, boundaries, encouragement, food, friends, and fun. We were each other’s guardians, the Three Amigos: Mom, Carrie, Me.

Helen Reddy’s “You and Me Against the World” was one of my Mom’s favorite ballads. She would sing along when it played on her 1960s Victrola, dancing with us across the family room carpet. “Sometimes it feels like you and me against the world. When all the others turn their backs and walk away, you can count on me to stay…” She meant it, my Mom. Always and forever. Unconditionally.

On Mother’s Day, we bought her cards and gave her homemade presents. On Father’s Day, we did the same. She was everything. Our Alpha and Omega.

When I was seventeen, I sang in Pop/Swing Choir beside a skinny, persistent, mulleted 16-year-old boy who wholeheartedly attempted to charm his way into my life. I resisted, and then I relented. And after our first date, there was no looking back. He was not my type — spindly thin, long-haired, musical, whip-smart. It was the jocks I sought. But as most 16-year-olds can attest, I didn’t really know what I wanted until I found him.

We dated for seven years before we got married on a crisp, colorful autumn day. Our pastor said to us, “This union must always be the most important one in your lives. Many others will come and go — colleagues, friends, children — but this is the relationship that must be first and last, always. Someday, your kids will grow up and move away, and you will be back to two. When that day comes, don’t look at each other and wonder, Who are you?” We took that advice to heart. He is my Alpha, my Omega.

Two years after the wedding — even though we mutually agreed on a 5-year plan — we welcomed Sam. Within the next four years came Gus, Mary Claire, and George. He brought those babies to me in the dark of night for feeding. He changed their diapers, stroked their fevered heads, wiped their runny noses, and rocked them to sleep.

Chris is, by most accounts, a better human being than I am. He is patient and smart and resourceful and hard-working. He’s a fabulous cook and a solid friend and a rock star father who guides his kids with both love and discipline. He’s a math wizard, a handyman, a visionary, a giver. He is kind and gentle with me and to me — even when I don’t deserve it. Especially when I don’t deserve it.

I always pined for a father of my own when I was little. For someone to throw a baseball, to dance with my beautiful Mom in the kitchen, to protect me in the darkest of nights. What I got instead was this man. My husband. The one who gets me 100% of the time, even when I don’t get myself. It is not lost on me that perhaps what I most deeply wanted the universe to deliver was a father for my children. Not my own father, but the father of my own. When I watch him with our kids, teaching, instructing, laughing, loving, it takes my breath away. If I close my eyes, I can still recall him sleeping on the couch, a sweaty baby resting comfortably on his chest. His big, strong hands holding tiny starfish fingers. His hair graying to the rhythm of our growing kids.

There are so many things I love about him: his booming voice, his loud laugh, his signature dance moves, his eyes, his wisdom, his wit, his wild morning hair, the feel of our fingers interlaced.

There is never a moment I don’t feel wrapped in his love or devotion. Even when we argue, even when the words I throw at him sting, he continues on, steadfast. I have not once doubted his commitment to me, to us, to this family.

He was worth the wait.

Happy Father’s Day, Chris.