tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75709773000338527042024-02-06T19:56:47.921-08:00Shut Up, Bitch!Thoughts on feminism, religion, politics, queer issues, animal rights, skepticism, and anything else that gets me going, from a secular humanist perspective.Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-37372788570424855302013-09-06T00:42:00.000-07:002013-09-06T00:42:42.787-07:00I Am a False Rape Allegation Statistic<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This was originally a comment left <a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2013/08/19/on-people-believing-the-extraordinary-claims-about-rape">on a post by Jason over at Lousy Canuck</a></i></span> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>(Jason's post is great, by the way, really a must-read in the ongoing, endless discussion about rape allegations, false accusations, etc.). Stephanie Zvan at Almost Diamonds then graciously <a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2013/08/23/i-am-a-false-rape-allegation-statistic/">hosted the comment as a guest post</a>. I decided to post it here, as well. </i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>PS & OT: I apologize for going so long without posting. Rather than list a bunch of reasons--which would just be excuses and rationalizations, in all honesty--I'm just going to try and get right into posting more regularly. </i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Trigger Warning: <u>Graphic</u></b><i><b> </b></i><b>descriptions of rape & the aftermath, police abuse, victim-blaming</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b> </b></span><u></u><br />
I was raped three years ago. Almost exactly: the beginning of August
2010. It was a violent, stranger rape, as I was walking home from work. I
honestly had no fear about calling the police. My dad’s a cop. I was in
shock, mostly, but certainly not thinking that making a report was
going to be worse than what had just happened to me. Plus, there was so
much physical evidence–deep tissue bruising on my arms, burns on my
labia, tearing that went from my vagina to my anus–it never crossed my
mind that I wouldn’t be believed.<br />
<br />
Two male detectives arrived at my house. I stammered out a request
for a female detective; it was denied. (I learned later that they
violated procedure by not accommodating the request.) They made me go
through what happened. I was in excruciating pain and dripping blood but
they didn’t want to take me to the hospital just then, and said the
hospital “wasn’t ready” anyway. So I described the rape. Then they asked
if I was taking any drugs. Well, just my medication. I thought it was
strange that they literally spent more time asking about my mental
health history and the types of medication I took, instead of the rape,
but at the time, again, I was in shock, and not thinking much.<br />
<br />
Long story short: I submitted to an invasive physical exam, described
the rape more times than I can count. They didn’t wait for my rape
counselor, that I requested, another thing I found was actually against
the law. (But when she arrived, she kicked major ass. And really helped
me through the process; I don’t know what I would have done without her.
A rape kit is extremely invasive, and I was already in terrible pain,
but she was able to get me through it.) The black light (to look for
fluid/blood/etc) was broken, so I tried to approximate where he had
kissed me, licked me, so the nurse giving the exam could swab those
areas. <br />
<br />
Oh, aside: the hospital wouldn’t provide Emergency Contraception,
although I did get a few pills to keep from getting STDs. (Not AIDS,
however–I was told the procedure was to only provide AIDS prevention if
you already <i>know</i> the rapist has AIDS, which seems a little hinky,
as it’s not exactly a question I could ask during the rape). The
detective, who drove me to the hospital, refused to stop at a pharmacy
on the way home, so I could get Plan B for myself. He said he “didn’t
feel comfortable” with that and I should “wait for my parents” even
though I was 24 and alone at home. Guess 24 is too young to make the
decision to try and prevent becoming pregnant with my rapist’s baby!<br />
<br />
Over the next few months, I submitted to multiple, horrific
“interviews” that really felt like “interrogations” as time went on. I
was also dealing with a serious medical condition at the time (I almost
died; my intestines ruptured, but that was almost certainly not a result of
the rape, just bad timing). But I still believed in the system. I still
didn’t want the man who raped me on the streets. I did everything they
requested, answered every invasive question (the were <i>really</i> focused on my mental health history!), even got on the ground and <i>acted out</i>
the rape for them, with the head detective on top of me acting out the
part of the rapist. Not only was I absolutely hysterical by the time we
were done, I’m positive that aggravated my PTSD for a long time after.<br />
<br />
And after all that, I was called in for an “interview” to discuss “a
new lead in your case”. They didn’t let my rape counselor in the
room–again, against the law, I found out later! For about an hour (I
think; my sense of time was not that great) they were no longer even
pretending to be supportive. They accused me over and over of making it
up. They had <i>very</i> flimsy “evidence” (which I won’t go into because it’s both complicated and ridiculous) but mostly it was their “instinct”.<br />
<br />
Because I have a mental illness. Because I was hospitalized after
attempting suicide. Because I “claimed” I had been sexually assaulted in
the past. (They asked if I had ever been raped in the past, and I volunteered that I had been molested when I was nine. I found out later this was another mark against me, that having previous sexual assaults--not previous <i>false allegations</i>, mind, just previous <i>attacks</i>--counts against your credibility, for some reason. Like I'm supposed to tell the rapist: "Oh, hey, sorry, you'll have to find someone else; I'm over my limit.) <br />
<br />
But mostly, it was because I was crazy. The lead detective was sure that I was just looking for
attention. My family had gone camping; obviously, I was angry at being left behind! (Even though I wasn't "left behind" but had instead declined the invitation, because I couldn't miss work, and also I would crawl across broken glass before I'd go camping.) He had a bipolar ex-wife, you see, and she made his life a
living hell. He told me how he understood mentally ill women, and how we
need to create drama. How we’re liars, and we crave attention.<br />
<br />
And over and over they accused me of lying. Alone in this tiny room
with two large, angry men, I was doing everything I could to keep from
having a panic attack. I couldn’t respond to what they were saying;
again, I think I was in shock. And they threatened me with jail time,
with a felony on my record, destroying my family, public humiliation (he
threatened to call the papers–something he did anyway, because, quote,
“the community needs to know there was no threat to public safety”). They said I would be charged with a false report, with terrorizing the
public (there was a public awareness campaign initially after my attack,
though I didn’t have anything to do with it. After the rape, I did
everything I could to maintain anonymity, and only told two
people–beyond my family and the cops–hat I was attacked. But…I did it
for attention, which was why I didn’t tell anyone? I’m just sneaky like
that, I guess!). Accusations, threats, anger, pounding the table, over
and over and over.<br />
<br />
The detective looked at me. His whole demeanor changed; he tried to
seem kind, avuncular. “Tell me you made the whole thing up. This whole
thing will disappear. Nothing will happen to you. You can leave, if you
just tell me you made it up. Tell me you made it up and you’re sorry for
lying, and I’ll let you leave.” I tried to hold out–but I didn’t last
long. Honestly, at that point, all I wanted in the entire world was just
to <i>get out of that room</i>. There are very few things I wouldn’t
have done, if I could only leave. So I looked at him and lied. I said,
“I made the whole thing up. I’m sorry.”<br />
<br />
To his credit, the detective was true to his word. (I now realize he
could have been lying, and since I wasn’t under arrest or being
interrogated–technically, I could have left any time, even though <i>I</i> didn’t know that–my words could have been used in court.<span style="font-size: small;">*</span>) That was all. He let me leave. Well. He <i>made me give him a hug</i> before leaving, but I was allowed to go.<br />
<br />
So understand: I am a “false rape allegation” statistic. When the detectives wrote their reports, sent the numbers off to the justice department to
compile the information, I am down as a liar, a false allegation, even
though no charges were ever filed against me. (Don’t know if that’s
because they didn’t think they could make a case against me, or because
they didn’t want to put a cop’s daughter on trial.) And you know what? <i>I am not the only person.</i>
It's horrifying, the number of women that I've met in support groups
and activist meetups who've experienced very similar things. They too, are
false allegation statistics. We were all raped.<br />
<br />
So just keep that in mind, when you quote the 6-8% “false allegation”
statistic. I know we have to rely on the only information we have, and I
use the statistic in conversations, as well. But I always remember that
number is certainly not an accurate representation. (Maybe it should
always come with an asterisk?)<br />
<br />
Please, remember my story when you see “false rape” statistics.
Remember my friend, who admitted to a false report charge in order to
keep her veteran benefits after being discharged (her rapist’s good
friend and direct superior handled the case; a discharge was
inevitable.) Remember the middle-aged woman I met, still traumatized,
who, as a teenager, recanted her story when her rapist (and stepfather)
threatened to kill her family. And the many, many others, all unknown,
all forgotten–even in the bare statistics, which are often the only
testament to our experiences. And we’re denied even that. Instead, our
stories, our traumas, are used to stigmatize and further traumatize new
victims. It makes me <i>sick</i> to know MRAs can take our numbers and
use them to justify their “bitches be lying” stance. I can’t put into
words how devastating that is.<br />
<br />
Are there false allegations? Of course. Jason, <a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2013/08/19/on-people-believing-the-extraordinary-claims-about-rape">in opening up about such a difficult topic</a>, has explained exactly that. And no one hates
truly false allegations like a rape survivor. But we should balance that
with the knowledge that the “official” numbers are not an accurate
representation of the truth.<br />
<br />
<b> </b><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">*</span> </b>This is why you <a href="http://youtu.be/6wXkI4t7nuc" rel="nofollow">never talk to any police officer under any circumstances without a lawyer</a>. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been arrested, charged, or read your rights. I could have put myself in jail with that lie.</span></i>Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-70438549878187819882013-02-28T19:26:00.000-08:002013-02-28T19:30:09.045-08:00What? "Shut up...bitch?"Quick post just to clarify something.<br />
<br />
Why is my blog called <strong>Shut Up, Bitch</strong>?<br />
<br />
Simple. I got told "Shut up, bitch!" just one too many times. In fact, in response to a comment left on another blog, before I had even transfered to blogspot and left my (fandom-oriented) blog on livejournal behind, someone left a comment that was just a link. This link went to a particular rap song on youtube which, at one point, was the #1 hit for "shut up bitch" (I won't link to it; if you really want, it's easy to find). <br />
<br />
And so I figured it was as good a blog name as any.<br />
<br />
I know that some people have a real problem with reclaiming slurs, and a problem with "bitch" specifically. That's fine. I would never force someone to claim a label they weren't comfortable with, or call someone something that offends them. But me? I like "bitch". I want to me <em>more</em> of a bitch. Hell, I'm conciously working hard (thanks to books like <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nice-Girls-Finish-Fat-Yourself/dp/1416592644/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362108420&sr=8-1&keywords=nice+girls+finish+fat">Nice Girls Finish Fat</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nice-Girl-Syndrome-Manipulated-Standing/dp/0470579900/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1362108433&sr=1-1&keywords=nice+girl+syndrome">The Nice Girl Syndrome</a>, both of which are awesome) to stop being such a <em>nice girl</em> and start being a <em>bitch</em>. (And, personally, I think a lot of women would be much healthier--not to mention happier and more effective--if they picked up one or both of those books. As much as I appriciated the help I got from <em>Codependent No More, </em>it's nice to read a self-help book for codependents that isn't filled with fluffy "just trust your higher power" nonsense.) <br />
<br />
So. That's why the name. If it's not your cup o' tea, great. It works for me, though.<br />
<br />
And with the more recent harassment I've recieved* from people who just want me to <em>shut up...</em>I don't think I'm going to be changing the name any time soon.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*Funny thing...almost all the harassment I've recieved has come from comments I've left on other blogs. In fact, the only really awful comments I've had here, the ones I've had to delete, came as a result of a certain youtube video made to mock me...for a comment I left on another blog! So I'm not sure anyone really cares what I say here! Regardless. I'm not shutting up, here or anywhere else.</span> <br />
<br />
<br />Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-17428825945233980782013-02-28T17:49:00.000-08:002013-02-28T17:50:39.068-08:00#barefacedbeauty<span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>Trigger Warning: Body-Hatred</strong></span><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></strong><br />
So Melissa Harris-Perry (who I love) issued a challenge on her show, <a href="http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/02/24/the-naked-truth-about-body-image/">during a larger segment about body image and eating disorders</a>, for fans of her show (those of us in "nerdland") to take a pic of ourselves sans makeup and share it on twitter, all to show that we (want to) love and accept our bodies as they are. I thought this was a pretty neat idea, so I <a href="http://t.co/4GzlOpY1De">participated as well</a>.<br />
<br />
I knew full well, however, that I was being ridiculous. I'm not much of a makeup person in my everyday life. Oh, I have every shade of lipstick and nail polish and I usually slather some on before leaving the house, but that's about the extent of my makeup routine, and it's a lot less about hiding anything or feeling ashamed about my natural body and more about, y'know, liking color. <br />
<br />
That doesn't mean I don't hide my real body. That doesn't mean I love or accept my body. Not even close. <br />
<br />
I've decided to combine a couple goals in today's post. One, I've wanted to explain for a while now why it's taken me so long to update my blog...and, ironically enough, those very reasons have been keeping me from updating and explaining my reasons. Two, I've been feeling a little guilty about my #barefacedbeauty picture. It felt like a lie. So I've decided to post my <em>real</em> picture here. <br />
<br />
(*cue minor panic attack*)<br />
<br />
Note: I'm putting this picture under the cut. It's not really nudity--I'm less exposed than most bathing suit ads--but it might be NSFW depending on where you are. And it's definitely not...attractive? Is that the right word? It's a picture of a stomach, a stomach that has gone through 15 abdominal surgeries, countless procedures, multiple tubes and drains, and 200 lbs of weight loss. And it looks like it. Each event left a mark that only very expensive--and, therefore, very out of reach--plastic surgery could fix. So view at your own risk, is what I'm saying, I guess.<br />
<br />
Oh, and if you couldn't already tell? This post is really self-involved and self-indulgent. So feel free to just skip; I wouldn't blame you a bit. <br />
<br />
Also, my post on <a href="http://thisbitchwontshutup.blogspot.com/2012/08/fuckability.html#more">fuckability</a> might be good background reading before going further.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
Okay. All ready?<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK_6p0n71ZcU9oAjknwTNA99y1yKqcQtoxQt3fVc4gk4lmXCPk99AUDqGj0Js_kBM5fP6eH3_GrsUCoJab7lQhO7J5C6egX6W_FC2ZozZQHwqjDKzof1vDrFwMXH77bneM7TgjFSGykQHI/s1600/belly+shot+Feb+24+2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK_6p0n71ZcU9oAjknwTNA99y1yKqcQtoxQt3fVc4gk4lmXCPk99AUDqGj0Js_kBM5fP6eH3_GrsUCoJab7lQhO7J5C6egX6W_FC2ZozZQHwqjDKzof1vDrFwMXH77bneM7TgjFSGykQHI/s320/belly+shot+Feb+24+2013.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
This is what my body looks like. <br />
<br />
And because this is what my body looks like, I spend a lot of time trying to hide it. I have expensive, painful binders and girdles to keep the bulges from showing as much as possible and give me clean(er) lines under my clothes. Clothes that are certainly not tight, at least around the abdomen, usually a couple sizes too big. I would never go sleeveless, never wear a shirt that might slip up and show a bit of stomach, certainly would <em>never</em> wear any sort of midriff-bearing outfit or swimsuit. Oh, yes, swimsuits...if I do wear one in public (which...huh, actually hasn't happened since the surgeries), it's one-piece and modest, skirted, almost always with a big t-shirt over top, even though I spent top dollar to get the suit with the most coverage, the most binding, to pull everything in tight and cover all that nasty skin. I don't dress for comfort. Ever. Unless I'm home alone, in my bedroom, away from people (even, often, my family). I dress to hide. I dress to conceal. <br />
<br />
And, yes, this makes me feel dishonest. On those rare occasions when someone flirts with me, my only reaction is panic. I <em>always</em> believe that no one would ever show interest if they knew what lay under my clothing. I feel like a liar, just by existing in public. But I wouldn't be able to make it out the door--even my <em>bedroom </em>door--without the lie firmly in place. I am terrified of people seeing what I really look like. No, that comment about this post triggering a panic attack <em>wasn't</em> a joke. I was totally serious. <br />
<br />
Loving your body, accepting your body, these are things I think most women struggle with, cis and trans* women alike. But having been TAB (temporarily able-bodied) and now disabled, I can say that the struggle is different. Even at my heaviest (340 lbs), when I was TAB, I believed that there were people out there capable of loving me--okay, you know what? let's cut the cutesy language--capable of wanting to fuck me. And I just don't believe that's possible, any longer. Not that fucking is all that important to me right now (my sex drive is rather low). But, like I said above, it does make it impossible to try and meet someone. I don't want to get close to anyone romantically, for fear that it might lead to a situation where she would finally know the truth I hide under the clothes and binders. And then she would be disgusted. No love is strong enough to overcome what I look like. And maybe this is just a silly notion, but I would rather that my first consensual sexual experience <em>not</em> be a pity fuck. <br />
<br />
And loving (or even just accepting) your body is hard when you're never sure what horrible thing your body is going to do to you next. I feel like I'm in a perpetual war with my body--which is a strange thing when I'm certainly no mind-body duelist, and I know that to be at war with my body is to be at war with myself. But the feeling remains. I spend my days trying to appease my body, engaging in intense negotiations: "I'll do <em>X </em>for you, if you just let me do<em> Y</em>. What do you want, protein? Liquids? Solid food? This herb? That pill? Please please please don't break down tonight, please, just let me have this party, this event, please don't throw up in public, please don't pass horrible smelly gas, please don't pass out right now just let me get through this evening, <em>please, just let me be normal</em>." <br />
<br />
What does it mean to love a body that ends up in the hospital almost monthly? What does it mean to accept a body that needs another major surgery every few months? <br />
<br />
I'm told by therapists, by the books for people with chronic illness, by all the smiling, concerned women on my TV, from news programs to Dove commercials, that I just need to love my body. <br />
<br />
I have tried standing naked in front of the mirror and telling the reflection that I loved and accepted her just the way she is. I ended up with a broken mirror.<br />
<br />
I don't know if I will ever be able to accept my body. Forget about loving it. And, because I am nothing more than my body, I am not a soul trapped within a broken shell (that will be magically healed when I reach heaven), I know that what I'm really saying is that I don't know if I will ever be able to accept myself. Love myself. <br />
<br />
But, for today, I will take this step. I will pull back the curtain, expose the lie, at least in this one place. This is what I look like. <br />
<br />
Is this #barefacedbeauty? Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-23753266754073074152012-11-24T18:42:00.000-08:002012-11-24T18:42:31.229-08:00A Feminist Thanksgiving?<em><span style="font-size: x-small;">A repost from 2008</span></em><br />
<br />
<br />
This Thanksgiving, as my family sits down to their traditional dead animals, I’ll be munching on Tofurky and vegan stuffing. Whatever, I’ve been a vegetarian for eight years, I’m used to being the odd girl out every fourth Thursday of November. And, just like every Thanksgiving since I stopped eating meat, I know I’m going to get the comments and the jokes, even though it’s hardly a novelty after all this time.<br />
<br />What is it about Thanksgiving that brings out the super-traditional? Even in my fairly feminist household--my parents are proud of their egalitarian marriage, split the chores and childcare responsibilities pretty evenly, Dad had no problem moving for Mom's career, etc.--my dad and uncles and brothers will still watch the football game and chug (non-alcoholic) beers after the big dinner while all the womenfolk clean up the kitchen. No one even pretends that there’s an equal distribution of responsibilities. Sure, every year Dad ceremoniously asks if there’s anything he can do, but much like the ceremonious cutting of the turkey at the beginning of the meal, it’s all for show. The men have nothing to do with the preparation of the meal, and they certainly have nothing to do with the cleanup. Their role is to eat and digest, and compliment the gals on a job well done. I don’t know what would happen if this year Mom answered, “Sure, we’ve got dishes for thirty people to clean and about fifty pots and pans that need scrubbing…there’s the sink!” It’s as unfathomable as my meat-and-potatoes family deciding to share some Tofurky and forgo the bird carcass.<br />
<span id="more-15303"></span><br />And here’s the strangest thing: I know that come Thanksgiving, even with my feminist heart heaving with the unfairness of it all, I’ll be in the kitchen with my mom and aunts and girl cousins, cleaning up while the guys burp contentedly in the other room.<br />
<br />A couple years ago, deciding to make a statement, I informed my mother that I was watching football with the boys. I expected a little anger, maybe even a flat refusal, but my mom, perhaps knowing what was to come, had no problem with it. So for the first time since hitting my teen years, I sat out in the living room and watched the big game while the big clean-up went on without me. And here’s the thing: even though I’m a huge football fan, even though watching a game with Dad is one of my favorite ways to spend an evening, it wasn’t very long at all before I was back in the kitchen.<br />
<br />I try and justify my own lapse back into traditional gender roles. The cleaning isn’t hard at all, I reason, not with a dozen people pitching in. It’s a safe, female-only space, our own little once-a-year, consciousness-raising event. But the truth is, that I know it’s bogus. I know everyone should pitch in after dinner, and I know that it reinforces all the stereotypes I fight against the other 364 days of the year for the menfolk to all watch the game and the womenfolk to clean and gab.<br />
<br />But I also know that I’d much rather be in the kitchen chatting with my aunties, hanging with cousins I see once a year at best, and, yeah, pitching in on the cleanup, then hanging with the dudes in the living room. <br />
<br />
Go figure.Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-48894417257921624262012-10-27T20:51:00.000-07:002012-10-27T20:51:11.377-07:00What I Did On My Summer Vacation(Or: Why I've been MIA)<br />
<br />
Apologies for going so long without posting. I thought I’d let everyone know
what I’ve been up to.<br />
<br />
At the end of September, I was feeling really sick: heart palpitations, my
muscles were clenching, my face felt tingly and numb, I was slurring my words.
From past experience, I was pretty sure that I had a potassium deficiency;
unsurprising, as I had been throwing up pretty much everything for about a
month. I went to the ER expecting to get the usual treatment: some IV fluids
and medicine to stop the pain and vomiting, and a bag or two of potassium.
Like I said, I’d done this a few times before.<br />
<br />
Instead, my potassium was so low that I was immediately admitted to the
hospital. I had been trying to fix it myself by drinking a lot of banana
smoothies and Ensure, because I hate hospitals and I can pretty much do the same
thing for a intestinal blockage at hone that they do in the hospital (basically,
a liquid diet and rest, giving time for the intestine to decompress and go back
to normal). However, I let my hatred of hospitals and my fear of going alone
(my parents were out of town that week and I waited until they came back to go
in) keep me from seeking treatment for too long, and I had put myself at a
serious risk for a heart attack, among other dangers. <br />
<br />
At the hospital, they put my on a liquid diet, as I expected. They tried to
get potassium in through the IV, bur I was so dehydrated and my veins were so
bad after years of medical treatments that after the second day they couldn’t
get an IV--even the best nurses, the trauma specialists, the nurses from ICU who
used an ultrasound machine to try and find one. They also couldn’t get me to
keep any food down, even with the strongest anti-nausea medications. The doctor
decided, after a week, to send me to UCSF where they had better specialists and
tests that could be done. Also, I had two hernias that were causing a lot of
pain and trouble, and there was talk of getting them repaired on that trip.
<br />
<br />
At UCSF, they gave me the complete workup. They also tried to get an IV in,
and even their best people couldn’t get one started, so they inserted a PIC
line. They started me on IV food (TPN). There, they discovered that the
problem really wasn’t a hernia or an intestinal blockage, but that some of the
tissue that had been used to reconstruct my digestive system after my intestinal
rupture last year had become necrotic (died). It was why I couldn’t keep food
down, why I wasn’t absorbing the nutrients of the food I could keep down, and
probably some of the pain. <br />
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The head surgeon--a smart, capable guy with a decent bedside manner, but who
unfortunately was the most arrogant person I’d ever met, and that’s saying
something when you look at the number of surgeons I’ve had over the
years--decided he wanted to do a pretty intense operation. He needed time to
prepare and reserve an OR, though, so he sent me <em>back</em> to the original
hospital to basically hang out and get the IV medication and bulk up on the IV
food so I would be in the best shape for surgery. A week later, I would come
back for the operation. That week, I was pretty nervous. This was going to be
surgery number 15, so you’d think it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but this
surgery was going to be more complex and take longer, with all the assorted
risks that comes with, than most of my other surgeries. Also, most of my
previous surgeries were done on an emergency basis...they happened immediately
after discovering a problem, and I never really had time to sit and think about
the risks. There was another new risk, as well: I had 125 cm of small intestine
(the average person has about 22 feet). You need 75cm to be able function
normally (well, for a given value of “normal”); if they had to remove more than
50cm of intestine, I would have to be hooked up to IV food for the rest of my
life (or until they developed the technology to do a transplant). Along with it
just being an enormous life suck to have to be hooked up to an IV for 16 hours a
day (I did that for 6 months, thank you very much, and I feel like I lost those
months of my life), the long-term projections are not so good. It would
significantly lower my lifespan, and even when I wasn’t hooked up to the IV
machine, I would still be too tired and sick to get out of bed and go do stuff.
So this was a pretty terrifying possibility, and the doctor was not giving me
good odds. The surgery had to be done, though; if they didn’t take out the
necrotic tissue--even if doing so would shorten my small intestine too much--not
only would I not be able to eat or absorb food, I would die from the
infections. So I sat in my hospital bed silently freaking for a week.<br />
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(I’m putting description of the surgery below the fold, so skip if that grosses you out.)<br />
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Back at UCSF, I went in for surgery on Oct. 5 at 7:00AM. Unlike every other time I've been put under, I don't actually remember much between going into the OR and waking up in the recovery room. (Actually, I don't remember anything really that first day, which is odd...usually I wake up pretty quickly in Recovery and can have conversations and remember things. My parents said they sat with me and talked for hours, explaining what happened, but I don't remember that at all. Probably because the surgery was so long--therefore, more anesthesia--and because they put in an epidural.)<br />
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The surgery lasted over eight hours, and there were three main parts. First, they took out the necrotic tissue that was connecting my stomach pouch and the remainder of the stomach (they had been separated during the initial gastric bypass and then reconnected with some of my intestine after the rupture). They combined the two two stomachs, so now I only have one, though there is still a very small opening between the gastric pouch and larger stomach so I still have to eat <em>very</em> slowly and chew <em>very </em>carefully, or food will get stuck (which hurts like hell). Next, he pulled out all of my intestines and unrolled them, going through them piece by piece and removing any dead, diseased, or blocked tissue. This is the part that was the most time consuming, and the most dangerous. Luckily, he only had to remove about 25cm. Also, the previous surgeons had been incorrect in their estimation of how much intestine I had left; it was closer to four feet than three. It's still no where close to enough for normal functioning, but at least I can eat regular food and I won't need IV supplementation. Finally, he repaired the two hernias, pulled the muscle together, and then put mesh on top of the muscles to keep hernias from forming in the future. <br />
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I was in the hospital for 10 days following surgery, which is about what we expected. Usually, transitioning from IV medication (especially when I was on it for so long, over a month) to oral meds is very difficult, but the pain team was marvelous. I do have a lovely scar over 12 inches long that runs from just under my breasts to the top of my pelvis. My whole torso is rather hideous looking, actually, and not likely to improve much: lots of loose skin (asymmetrical clumps of skin, really, that didn't get pulled tight enough during surgery), a huge, thick scar that will only get thicker if past experience holds, no bellybutton, and indentations from the various tubes, drains, and other equipment I've had protruding from my belly over the last several months. I could just wear a belly shirt for Halloween to scare the kiddies; it looks worse than any Bride of Frankenstein costume.<br />
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But, I'm alive. I was also approved for disability this month. Now, it's certainly not a lot--I don't understand why people think it's so easy to scam a good living off the government; getting assistance is a hell of a lot of work, and even then it's only a few hundred dollars, not enough by any stretch to live on--but at least I am not entirely dependent on my folks to pay for everything. I still have to live with them for the foreseeable future, but I get on with my family pretty well, and they don't seem to think I'm an imposition, yet.<br />
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The surgeon thinks that I'm going to be all better, that after I recover from the surgery (which will take a couple months, at least, you don't just bounce back from major abdominal surgery) I should be 100%. I'm not holding my breath. Like I said, the surgeon is possibly the most arrogant person I've ever met, even though I do think he's very good. And I've heard this before. After the last surgery, I was told that I was going to be 100%, no more problems, by the end of the year. Then, in March, the doctors changed their tunes and told me that I was permanently disabled and I would never be able to live a normal life. That was a<em> huge </em>blow, to be told that all of my goals and dreams were never going to happen, and it took me a long time to make peace with that. Now they're telling me, whoops, we were wrong, you're actually going to be fine, trust us...and I'm not ready, yet. I'm cautiously hopeful that this will be the last surgery I'll need, that it will improve my quality of life, but I can't start thinking that everything is going to be sunshine and roses from here out. I'll see what happens, take life as it comes. <br />
<br />
Anyway, that's what's been going on. It's nearly impossible for me to write when I'm doped up, exhausted, or in pain (or all three), so that's why I haven't been able to update for so long. I have some stuff stored up that I want to write about (including a follow-up to the "GOP isn't Pro-Life" post), and hopefully I'll be more regular with posting in the future. However, I am still recovering, and I'm still on some pretty heavy-duty drugs, so I can't promise anything (or make any guarantees as to the <em>quality</em> of the writing). <br />
<br />
As with everything else in my life right now, we'll see. Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-38162545672279598842012-08-28T19:43:00.000-07:002012-09-03T10:55:00.836-07:00Is the Republican Party Pro-Life? A look at the new GOP party platform<strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">I have tried to back up every statement of fact that I make. For the most part, I have linked to respected unbiased organizations and news sites and resisted posting to blogs and advocacy groups, and when I couldn't find an original source, I tried to state that. That doesn't mean I <em>always</em> did; sometimes an advocacy group has a much better presentation of facts in a format that is easy to read and understand. You can judge for yourself the legitimacy of the information, but remember: you are always entitled to your own opinion, but you are never entitled to your own facts. </span></strong><br />
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Republicans are usually considered the "Pro-Life" party. They certainly are anti-choice, though of course there are a few pro-choice Republicans and more than a few anti-choice Democrats (remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stupak%E2%80%93Pitts_Amendment">Bart Stupak</a>?) But as a national party, the GOP takes a strong stand against abortion, and accomplished many legislative victories across the country, while for the most part, Democrats aren't nearly as committed. Oh, they say they're for reproductive freedom, and there are Democrats in both state and federal legislatures that fight for choice, but they don't have near the amount of victories (just an impressive string of failures) or passion as their Republican opponents. <br />
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But are Republicans really Pro-Life? I decided to take a look at the newly approved party platform. <a href="http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_home/">You can read the entire platform here</a>. I will be quoting the relevant bits.<br />
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<strong>Regarding Abortion...</strong><br />
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<em>Faithful to the “self-evident” truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or fund organizations which perform or advocate it and will not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.</em><br />
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Note that there is no provision for rape and incest victims, even after the whole party seemed to pile on Todd Akin. Now, Akins remarks were stupid, but when the party platform supports his policy position, these guys are just living in a big glass house throwing really, really large stones. I think they want all of us, the media, activists, to focus on Todd Akin. That way, we don't focus on the fact that they are doing the <em>exact same thing</em> Akin advocated (without all the mystical woman stuff--they don't even pretend to have compassion for rape victims). Maybe if we all focus on Todd Akin, we'll all forget that Paul Ryan <a href="http://www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/2012/aug/22/john-wisniewski/paul-ryan-and-todd-akin-co-sponsored-bill-limiting/">co-sponsored legislation with Akin that would limit abortion and change the definition of rape</a> as well as <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/20/712501/paul-ryan-and-todd-akin-partnered-on-radical-personhood-bill-outlawing-abortion-and-many-birth-control-pills/">co-sponsoring legislation with Akin that would have outlawed ALL abortion, regardless of circumstance, as well as many forms of birth control.</a> Look at Todd Akin. Look at Paul Ryan. Ryan is Akin with better speaking skills and less compassion. Regardless of their reasons and justifications (which, really, I couldn't care less about), if they had their way, the legislative outcome would be the same. <br />
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Note as well that in the GOP platform there is no provision for the <em>life of the mother</em>. According to the GOP platform, because a fertilized egg is a human being, we cannot induce an abortion even if the mother would die without one. How far does this go? <a href="http://rt.com/news/pregnant-girl-leukemia-abortion-024/">Are we going to see girls die of leukemia because abortion bans don't allow cancer treatments</a>? <a href="http://thegloss.com/culture/13-year-old-peruvian-girl-denied-abortion-now-paralyzed/">Are 13 year old rape victims going to be paralyzed for life because abortion bans keep them from being treated?</a> These are not made-up straw arguments. These situations really happened, are happening. Right now, they're happening outside the US. If the GOP has its way, the problems of these third-world countries will be right in the good o'l USA.<br />
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Think about that for a second. If the GOP gains the legislative and executive authority to implement their platform (and <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/06/map-state-abortion-coverage-ban">considering what's been happening in states with Republican control</a> this year, it's a good bet that if they <em>can</em> do it, they <em>will</em>) women will effectively receive a <em>death sentence</em> if they are insufficiently capable of being good incubators. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a pro-life position.<br />
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And this all ignores the fact that <em>abortion bans do not work. </em>Countries where abortion is illegal do <em>not </em>have no abortion, or even less abortion. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/12abortion.html">Women will continue to have abortions, at similar or even higher rates, even when abortion is illegal. The only thing illegal abortion does is kill women.</a> No unborn children are saved by abortion bans. In some countries, it seems that even <em>more</em> abortions are performed (but that's probably due to the lack of available birth control rather than the ban itself). Abortion bans <em>do</em> kill women, however: about 13 of maternal deaths in countries where the procedure is illegal are due to botched back-alley abortions. That's about 70,000 women a year. Maybe you think that's a necessary sacrifice, maybe you think that's what those sluts deserve. But don't pretend you're pro-life. <br />
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Oh, and if you think such a thing would never happen here? <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/texas-health-resources/reproductive-health/looking-mexico-alternative-abortion-clinics/">US women are already traveling to Mexico to seek dangerous unregulated abortion drugs and services.</a> Talk to doctors, read what life was like before Roe v. Wade. There's a reason women paint coat hangers on signs when they protest restrictive abortion laws. <br />
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Last point before we move on: what are we talking about by "unborn child"? At what point do we consider a woman to be pregnant, to be carrying another protected life? At fertilization? <a href="http://parentsagainstpersonhood.com/">That kind of "Personhood" legislation would outlaw IVF and many forms of birth control.</a> It's so extreme that it couldn't even pass Mississippi, one of the most conservative anti-abortion states in the US. Education about and access to birth control is the only thing proven to lower abortion rates. Is it "pro-life" to outlaw the only thing that can stop abortion? And if we're not talking about fertilization, what are we talking about? Implantation? When the embryo becomes a fetus? And who determines when and why there is suddenly a new life? Judging by the rest of the platform, I'm assuming science will play a very small part, if any, in the determination,<br />
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<em>We urge Congress to strengthen the Born Alive Infant Protection Act by enacting appropriate civil and criminal penalties on healthcare providers who fail to provide treatment and care to an infant who survives an abortion, including early induction delivery where the death of the infant is intended. </em><br />
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<a href="http://women.webmd.com/induction-abortion">Induction abortions account for less than 1% of abortions in the US.</a> Contrary to the signs and pictures you get from pro-life groups, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,880,00.html">the vast majority of abortions (91%) occur in the first trimester</a> (look, I gave the conservatives a Fox News link--fair and balanced!) before the embryo is even a fetus. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_termination_of_pregnancy">Only .1 to .8% of abortions are 3rd trimester abortions</a>, and they are <em>always</em> performed because of either a threat to the life and health of the mother or because of fetal abnormalities that either have or will kill the fetus. These abortions have to be signed off by two separate doctors. The pictures that get thrown about of perfectly formed, beautiful aborted fetuses are lies, half-truths, and hyperbole for two reasons: 1) the vast, vast majority of aborted fetuses and embryos do not reach that stage of development, and 2) those that do have massive deformities and don't look at all like that, usually. You're talking about babies with their brain or lungs growing outside of the body, with organs that have never formed, with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlequin-type_ichthyosis">Harlequin-type ichthyosis</a> (don't click unless you have a strong stomach). For all the horrible invective launched against Dr. Tiller, he believed his clinic was his mission from God, and <a href="http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/08/14/working-tiller-staff-recollections-women-health-care-services-wichita">his beautiful, compassionate care to women in tragic situations</a> eventually led to his assassination inside his own church. He was not a monster that indiscriminately killed babies for profit, and it is sick that those who demonized him were never held accountable for their actions, and that his name is still slandered after his death. If you celebrate the death of this man, you are not pro-life. You barely qualify as human. <br />
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Oh, and any baby that survives an induced abortion is already, by law, required to be treated. Another call to action to solve a problem that doesn't exist. This is a common theme of the GOP platform. (It wasn't relevant, so I didn't post the section on voting restrictions, but that is a prime demonstration of how the party is willing to restrict rights in order to solve a non-existent problem. <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/04/24/the-myth-of-voter-fraud">You have a better chance of being hit by lightning than finding a case of voter fraud.</a>)<br />
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<em>We call for legislation to ban sex-selective abortions – gender discrimination in its most lethal form – </em><br />
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Well, look, another example of solving a problem that doesn't exist. <a href="http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/planned-parenthood-statement-hoax-campaign-39408.htm">Other than a hoax video made by activists that tried to prove Planned Parenthood encouraged sex-selective abortions</a> (the tape was heavily edited, but even so, the counselor was new and subsequently retrained. I believe that another counselor was fired, though I'm having trouble finding the original article) there is no evidence that this is a problem within the US. Yes, it is a problem in other countries, primarily India, but simply banning sex-selective abortion does little to solve the problem, and may cause more harm than good, <a href="http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-09-10/india/30138658_1_baby-boy-murder-case-rajbir-singh">as in the case of a 27 year old Indian woman who was brutally murdered by her husband after giving birth to a girl.</a> Much like abortion in general, this is a complex issue--but thankfully, not one we have to deal with in the US.<br />
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<em>and to protect from abortion unborn children who are capable of feeling pain; and we applaud U.S. House Republicans for leading the effort to protect the lives of pain-capable unborn children in the District of Columbia.</em><br />
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<a href="http://www2.ljworld.com/weblogs/cait48/2012/mar/10/the-myth-of-fetal-pain/">"Fetal Pain" is a myth.</a> It is scientifically impossible for a fetus to feel pain before the third trimester. Fetal Pain laws usually target abortions after 20 weeks, well before the fetus is capable of feeling pain.<br />
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I also find it astonishing that these "small government" conservatives who just love local government so much are <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m333GsnrdDk">interfering in the way D.C. chooses to regulate abortions</a> <em>(link goes to a clip from the Rachel Maddow show).</em> Not only have they overturned the ability for D.C. themselves to offer help for low-income women seeking abortions, they are now trying to limit abortion further. The bill to limit abortion in D.C. to 20 weeks was sponsored by someone from <em>Arizona</em>. The representative from D.C. is not only not allowed to vote, they wouldn't even allow her to <em>speak</em>. Yeah. That's democracy. That's a commitment to local government. That's small government. (Well. I've always said Republicans want a government so small it can fit into every woman's vagina.)<br />
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<em>We, however, affirm the dignity of women by protecting the sanctity of human life. Numerous studies have shown that abortion endangers the health and well-being of women, and we stand firmly against it.</em><br />
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Bull. Shit. <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/11/4/gpr110420.html">The most comprehensive examination of long-term data shows that abortion does not harm women's mental health.</a> Of course women may be depressed after an abortion, for both physical (hormonal) and emotional reasons. Guilt placed on them by their communities doesn't exactly help the situation. But there is no such thing as "Post-Abortion Syndrome" according to <a href="http://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/abortion/index.aspx">The American Psychological Association,</a> nor do they believe abortion itself contributes to mental health problems. The American Psychiatric Association has said the same thing. There is no evidence that abortion causes breast cancer (regardless of the fact that certain states are now forcing doctors to <em>lie </em>to their patients and tell them that it does, disregarding serious protest from medical organizations and local OB/GYNs). Every unbiased medical group, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/02/news/la-heb-komen-abortion-20120202">from the Komen Foundation to the NCI (and many others),</a> all agree that there is zero evidence to suggest a link between breast cancer and abortion. <a href="http://www.womenshealthspecialists.org/our-services/abortion/abortion-myths">To repeat: abortion is safe (less than 1% have complications, and it's 10x safer than childbirth) and it does not cause cancer or health problems later in life.</a><br />
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This is as much a myth as the idea that when a woman is "legitimately raped" her body can magically guard against the sperm and keep from getting pregnant. But, hey, there are many Republicans, including <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/romney-endorsed-by-praised-dr-john-willke-leading-proponent-of-idea-that-rape-lowers-pregnancy-risk/261358/">a Romeny supporter whom Romney subsequently praised</a> that also believe women can't get pregnant from rape, so it's obvious science and facts aren't really important, and mystical "just-world" thinking* guides what people believe about female reproduction. But there's a lot of unscientific thinking in the GOP platform (<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html">although the Texas GOP platform still wins on that front</a>), so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. <br />
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*<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis">The Just World fallacy</a> leads to people believing that "human actions eventually yield morally fair and fitting consequences, so that, ultimately, noble actions are duly rewarded and evil actions are duly punished." This is why people have so much trouble with the "why do bad things happen to good people?" concept. Why is this relevant? Well, if you believe in a just world, than a rape victim, already traumatized, will not get re-traumatized by a pregnancy. A woman who gets pregnant, then, was obviously not really raped; she <em>deserves</em> her punishment. And the women who have abortions can't get off scott-free with committing murder! There must be consequences, so obviously "in their bodies they received the punishment for those wrongs" (Romans 1:27 ERV). Breast cancer, mental health problems...to people who believe in a Just World, these are just the natural consequences for their actions. <br />
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Let's move on.<br />
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<strong>"Conscience Laws"</strong><br />
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<em>No healthcare professional or organization should ever be required to perform, provide for, withhold, or refer for a medical service against their conscience. This is especially true of the religious organizations which deliver a major portion of America’s healthcare, a service rooted in the charity of faith communities. We do not believe, however, that healthcare providers should be allowed to withhold services because the healthcare provider believes the patient’s life is not worth living. We support the ability of all organizations to provide, purchase, or enroll in healthcare coverage consistent with their religious, moral or ethical convictions without discrimination or penalty.</em><br />
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This is truly astonishing. There are no provisions for people who are dying. The only language that comes close is that health care providers can't "withhold services because the healthcare provider believes the patient's life is not worth living." Let's think about what this means for a minute. We're talking about pharmacists refusing to provide birth control or the morning after pill (<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/06/morning-after-pill-plan-b-abortion-implantation-personhood">which does NOT cause abortions</a>). <a href="http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/29/conscience-clause-gone-amuck-rape-victim-denied-morning-after-pill-by-prison-guar">There are so many stories of rape victims being denied emergency contraception due to conscience clauses.</a> If a woman is frantically trying to get her birth control or EC--rape victim or not--what happens if she is prevented? What happens if she gets pregnant? Do you think she's just going to happily settle into the idea of motherhood? More likely, she's going to then seek an abortion. That is an abortion that could have so easily been prevented. Is that the pro-life thing to do?<br />
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(To be personal: after I was raped, the hospital I was at denied me EC, saying they didn't have any and I could get it without a script at any pharmacy. The police officer who drove me to that hospital--which was far from my home because no local hospital had a Sexual Assault Response Team--would not let me stop to pick up EC, even though I begged him, telling him I didn't have transportation at home and my parents were away for the week. It wasn't until several hours later that a friend finally was able to pick it up for me. EC is best effective the sooner you take it, and I had to wait almost 24 hours before I was able to get it. Luckily, I didn't get pregnant. What if I had?) <br />
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Taking this further: what happens when a woman is in a hospital, dying, her fetus no longer viable, who needs an abortion immediately or she will die? Should conscience laws give doctors cover so they can leave this woman to die? And lest you think I'm creating a mythical strawman, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2011/05/26/abortion_saved_my_life/">this exact situation happened in Kansas</a>. How would her death have been "pro-life"?<br />
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What about gay patients? <a href="http://www.sgn.org/sgnnews35_13/mobile/page4.cfm"> Should pharmacists deny them HIV medication because of religious beliefs</a>? <a href="http://www.politicususa.com/conservative-doctors-nurses-pharmacists-create-death-panels-abusing-conscience-clause.html">Should hospitals be allowed to deny life-saving treatments to gay, lesbian, or trans* patients, or keep them from seeing their loved ones</a>? <br />
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(Denying visitors is also related to the "traditional marriage" language in the GOP platform, something else I didn't have time for because it wasn't really relevant. However, you should know there are real, serious consequences to these kinds of laws. I have heard so many heartbreaking stories of people being kept away from their spouses and children, left to die alone, because of bigotry and hate. Maybe it doesn't have a lot to do with being pro-life, but it sure as hell has lot to do with being a decent human being,) <br />
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Onward...<br />
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<strong>Abstinence Only Eduction</strong><br />
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<em>We renew our call for replacing “family planning” programs for teens with abstinence education which teaches abstinence until marriage as the responsible and respected standard of behavior. </em><br />
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This cannot be stated loudly or often enough, it appears. <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/FB-Teen-Sex-Ed.html">COMPREHENSIVE SEX EDUCATION IS THE ONLY THING THAT REDUCES TEEN PREGNANCY AND STIs</a>. Studies have confirmed this over and over and over. If you record abstinence like you do all other forms of contraception, by including the human failure rate (that's why the pill is only 98% effective, condoms are 87% effective, etc.) abstinence has one of the <em>worst</em> success rates. Teens who go through abstinence only education will still have sex, they're just far less likely to use contraception than their peers. More evidence? <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/04/10/461402/teen-pregnancy-sex-education/">States with Abstinence Only policies have the highest rates of teen pregnancy.</a><br />
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<strong>Stem Cell Research:</strong><br />
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<em>We oppose federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.</em><br />
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I had a lot to say about this, but every time I sat down to write, I ended up just paraphrasing Sam Harris. <a href="http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/sam-harris/57823">So I'll just give a long quote</a>:<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><em>Consider the present debate over research on human embryonic stem cells. The problem with this research, from the religious point of view is simple: it entails the destruction of human embryos. The embryos in question will have been cultures in vitro (not removed from a woman’s body) and permitted to grow for three to five days. AT this stage of development, an embryo is called a blastocyst and consists of about 150 cells arranged in a microscopic sphere. Interior to the blastocyst is a small group of about 30 embryonic stem cells. These cells have two properties that make them of such abiding interest to scientists: as stem cells, they can remain in an unspecialized state, reproducing themselves through cell division for long periods of time (a population of such cells living in culture is known as a cell line); stem cells are also pluripotent, which means they have the potential to become any specialized cell in the human body – neurons of the brain and spinal chord, insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, muscle cells of the heart, and so forth.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><em> </em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><em>Here is what we know. We know that much can be learned from research on embryonic stem cells. In particular, such research may give us further insight into the processes of cell division and cell differentiation. This would almost certainly shed new light on those medical conditions, like cancer and birth defects, that seem to be merely a matter of processes gone awry. We also know that research on embryonic cells requires the destruction of human embryos at the 150-cell stage. There is not the slightest reason to believe, however, that such embryos have the capacity to sense pain, to suffer, or to experience the loss of life in any way at all. What is indisputable is that there are millions of human beings who do have these capacities, and who currently suffer from traumatic injuries to the brain and spinal chord. Millions more suffer from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Millions more suffer from stroke and heart disease, from burns, from diabetes, from rheumatoid arthritis, from Purkinje cell degeneration, from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and from vision and hearing loss. We know that embryonic stem cells promise to be a renewable source of tissues and organs that might alleviate such suffering in the not to distant future.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><em> </em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><em>Enter faith: we now find ourselves living in a world in which college-educated politicians hurl impediments in the way of such research because they are concerned about the fate of single cells. Their concern is not merely that a collection of 150 cells may suffer its destruction. Rather, they believe that even a human zygote (a fertilized egg) should be accorded all the protections of a fully developed human being. Such a cell, after al, has the potential to become a full developed human being.. But given our recent advances in the biology of cloning, as much can be said of almost every cell in the human body. By the measure of a cell’s potential whenever the president scratches his nose he is now engaged in a diabolical culling of souls.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><em> </em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><em>Out of deference to some rather poorly specified tenets of Christine doctrine (after all, nothing in the Bible suggests that killing human embryos, or even human fetuses, is the equivalent of killing a human being), the U.S. House of Representatives voted effectively to ban embryonic stem-cell research on February 27, 2003.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><em> </em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><em>No rational approach to ethics would have led us to such an impasse. Our present policy on human stem cells has been shaped by beliefs that are divorced from every reasonable intuition we might form about the possible experience of living systems. In neurological terms, we surely visit more suffering upon this earth by killing a fly than by killing a human blastocyst, to say nothing of a human zygote (flies, after all, have 100,000 cells in their brains alone). Of course, the point at which we fully acquire our humanity, and or capacity to suffer, remains an open question. But anyone who would dogmatically insist that these traits must arise coincident with the moment of conception has nothing to contribute, apart from his ignorance, to this debate. Those opposed to therapeutic stem-cell research on religious grounds constitute the biological and ethical equivalent of a flat-earth society. </em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><em></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><em>Our discourse on the subject should reflect this. In this area of public policy alone, the accommodations that we have made to faith will do nothing but enshrine a perfect immensity of human suffering for decades to come.</em></span><br />
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Letting millions of people suffer and die is not pro-life.<br />
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<strong>Death Penalty: </strong><br />
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<em>Courts should have the option of imposing the death penalty in capital murder cases.</em><br />
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Do I have to explain why the death penalty is not pro-life? Really? Okay, for the morally impaired, I'll spell it out. 1) <a href="http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/The_Innocent_and_the_Death_Penalty.php">Many people on death row have been proven to be innocent.</a> One innocent person executed is too many. 2) <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-about-deterrence-and-death-penalty">The death penalty is not a deterrence.</a> 3) <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty">The death penalty is more expensive than life in prison.</a> 4) <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/opinion/09dow.html">The death penalty is racist.</a> But all of that shouldn't matter at all. By definition, executions are not pro-life. <br />
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I know this is a waste of time, though. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocKFSLsZnUo">When pro-life Republicans can cheer for executions, and the same guy that supports personhood amendments can grin when he talks about executing the most prisoners in the country, we know the term "pro-life" has lost all meaning.</a><br />
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<strong>War:</strong><br />
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<em>We must deter any adversary who would attack us or use terror as a tool of government. Every potential enemy must have no doubt that our capabilities, our commitment, and our will to defeat them are clear, unwavering, and unequivocal. We must immediately employ a new blueprint for a National Military Strategy that is based on an informed and validated assessment of the potential threats we face, one that restores as a principal objective the deterrence using the full spectrum of our military capabilities. As Ronald Reagan proved by the victorious conclusion of the Cold War, only our capability to wield overwhelming military power can truly deter the enemies of the United States from threatening our people and our national interests.</em><br />
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<em>In order to deter aggression from nation-states, we must maintain military and technical superiority through innovation while upgrading legacy systems including aircraft and armored vehicles. We must deter the threat posed by rogue aggressors with the assurance that justice will be served through state-of-the-art surveillance, enhanced special operations capabilities, and unmanned aerial systems.</em><br />
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<em>We will employ the full range of military and intelligence options to defeat Al Qaeda and its affiliates who threaten not just the West but the community of nations. We will have a comprehensive and just detainee policy that treats those who would attack our nation as enemy combatants. We will accept no arms control agreement that limits our right to self-defense; and we will fully deploy a missile defense shield for the people of the United States and for our allies.</em><br />
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OK, I'm sorry, I admit it. I'm exhausted. For the most part, I'm just gonna let this stand, except to point out that so far we have killed <a href="http://www.iraqbodycount.org/">108,423 - 118,475 civilians in Iraq,</a> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/aug/10/afghanistan-civilian-casualties-statistics">an estimated 12,000 in Afghanistan,</a> and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/11/obama-drone-wars-normalisation-extrajudicial-killing">551 civilians killed by drone strikes, though the number could be much higher,</a> not to mention the untold number of suspected terrorists. <br />
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This is not pro-life.<br />
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Maybe you say that war <em>is</em> pro-life because you're protecting American lives. Let's put aside the false premise of the war in Iraq, the fact Iraq was not a threat. Let's just focus on that last bit: <em>American lives</em>. What, the lives of the Iraqi children who have been blown to pieces don't count? The number of innocent babies born with horrible deformities because of the depleted uranium we use in our anti-tank weapons, they don't count? The kids playing at a birthday party until a bomb from overhead kills and maims them, they're just a necessary sacrifice? NO.<br />
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I hear a lot of "pro-life" people complain about how terrible it is that the government makes them pay for abortions (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Amendment">which, no</a>), but what about people like me who are sick to our stomachs that our tax money is going to pay for the bomb that blows up a nine-year-old girl in Yemen? You know, if it was a clear situation of self-defense, where it was my life or someone else's, I don't know what I'd do. But I <em>do</em> know that my life is not worth more than the life of a girl or boy overseas. The color of my skin or the fact that I was lucky enough to be born in America does not make my life more valuable that a person of a different color, of a different faith, in a different country.<br />
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The "pro-life" movement in America has decided to focus its attention on scared teenage girls who are just trying to make it through life the best they can, who are "killing" something that cannot think or feel, because they believe it's their best option. That is the enemy. Not the thousands upon thousands of children, mothers, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, babies and great aunts, thinking, feeling, loving people, who have done nothing wrong except have the misfortune to not be born in the US. Their deaths are ignored. Hell, sometimes they're even <em>celebrated</em>. <br />
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THAT IS NOT PRO-LIFE. It's fucking sick.<br />
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<strong>Conclusion:</strong><br />
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Let's review. Unsuprisingly, Republicans are committed to: ending abortion without any exceptions for the life and health of the mother; ending family planning, even though study after study after study has shown that the <em>only</em> thing that stops teen pregnancy and STIs (including AIDs) is comprehensive sex education and access to contraceptives; allowing doctors and pharmacists to not help patients if for any reason their "conscience" tells them not to, without any exception for patients who are dying; stopping life-saving stem cell research; supporting the death penalty; supporting unlimited arms; continuing our detainee policy that has been proven to both torture and imprison innocent people (including children) as well as encouraging anger towards us in the Muslim world; supporting military action has killed and is killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, as well as, again, encouraging hatred towards the US in the people whose homes and towns have been destroyed and their children blown apart. <br />
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Is the Republican Party anti-choice? Of course.<br />
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Is the Republican Party pro-life? The answer to that is an unqualified <span style="font-size: large;"><strong><u>NO</u></strong></span><span style="font-size: small;">.</span>Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-8182595246195956212012-08-28T13:37:00.002-07:002012-08-28T13:37:18.582-07:00FuckabilityOn Zinnia Jones Vlog, Heather had something to say about radical feminism and transphobia. <br />
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I think it's a great post for so many reasons, and I'll probably be back to discuss it more later. There was one thing, though, that jumped out and bit me. Probably because I'm too self-absorbed, it was the only part that was at all connected to <em>me</em>. I feel kind of guilty about this, because as wonderfully important Heather's video was, I'm not really going to be talking about radical feminism <em>or</em> transphobia right now. Later, definitely; there are so many good things in this video, and I do think it's a good for both the transphobic radfems and the feminists who hate radfems because they think they're all transphobic to watch. <br />
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Right now, however, I'm just going to limit this to what I have personal experience with: fuckability.<br />
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(Starting at 2:23) <em>The sex classing of women and requisite caste system of the class (more commonly known as varying degrees of fuckability, or even more commonly as a scale from 1 to 10) has inhumanely relegated trans women with a certain remaining organ to the undesirables. They are expected to be content with either fetishization or pity fucking, along with cis women of the overweight and differently abled varieties. This particular problem has recently been the birth of a massive online “cotton ceiling” debate. We’ll get back to that.</em><br />
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Yes, we will definitely be getting back to the "cotton ceiling" debate, but it will have to be in another post. I have some very strong opinions, again, as a cis lesbian radfem (gah, labels), but I hope it doesn't surprise people that the majority of the time I come down firmly on the side of trans women in this debate. Actually, it was reading some back and forth between trans women and radfem activists on the whole cotton ceiling debate that first made me want to give up the label "radical feminist" in the first place. I do <em>not</em> want to be associated with those people...but I also don't want to give up on the feminist philosophy and theory of activism that most meshes with what I see, how I feel, and what I believe will actually transform the world. But <em>that</em> is a discussion for another time.<br />
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Today, in what will probably be a self-indulgent, perhaps self-pitying post (you've been warned), we're going to talk about fuckability.<br />
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I posted a version of this in the comments section of Zinnia Jones's blog. <br />
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As an overweight disabled woman, this is something I really struggle with. I've lost weight in the past, I've gained it back. I know what it was like to be 340lbs, and I know what it was like to be 130. Of course, the only time I reached 130 was when I was literally <em>dying</em> and hadn't eaten in six months. I'm getting to the weight my doctors want me to be, but I feel disgusting. I got so many compliments on how I looked when I was near-death, even when it took all the energy I had just to walk from my car to the restaurant to meet friends. Now I'm back to getting the, "Have you tried Atkins? Do you want to go to Curves with me? You know, I gave up all white food and lost 15 pounds!" comments. I've written elsewhere about my struggle with weight. I'm trying to just focus on staying healthy, but I'm reminded every day, in so many ways, how unattractive I am, how I'm never going to find real love if I don't change my body.<br />
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But losing weight isn't even close to enough. Those who can't see under my clothes don't know this, but my family, my close friends, they know what's under there after I take off my shirt. I look at my body, have been told by friends, even, that no <i>normal</i> person would ever want to sleep with me. Why would they? After 14 surgeries--with the guarantee of more surgeries to come--I have thick, ugly, raised red scars that criss-cross my abdomen. I have bulges of skin where my body didn’t get put back together right after the surgeries that reconnected my organs and muscles. There are indents from tubes that were in place for months that will never go away. Right now, I have at least two hernias that like to pop out (I've named them Ralph and Amy), and the only way to keep them in is to either wear a thick medical binder or lie back with my legs up and stay still. Not very conducive to a romantic evening. Very occasionally I even have a stomach tube or other medical equipment protruding from my body. I'm free of all tubes, wires, and lines right now, but that's probably a temporary situation. They're already talking about putting an implant in my back, maybe inserting another stomach tube for a while because I'm not eating so well right now. It’s objectively disgusting and is not going to go away. Oh, it may change, now and then, but I'm permanently disabled, and without reconstructive surgery (which I will <em>never </em>be able to afford) my abdomen will look like this forever. <br />
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Only a freak would want me, only someone who would want to use my body. I know that there are people who fetishize the disabled, I know there are "chubby-chasers" (though people who are usually attracted to fat women are attracted, like most people, to symmetry, and I am far from symmetrical). And if I <i>did</i> find someone who actually wants a relationship, well, I’m told that of course I can’t be picky and I better be prepared to do everything I need to do to keep her happy, to make up for my hideous body. Because <i>that’s</i> the ticket to a healthy relationship. I have to take what I can get. It's never going to be about <em>me</em> finding someone attractive. I know the looks, I've seen them since high school, that come over people's faces when they realize that fat person has the <em>nerve</em> to be attracted to someone. To me, it seems like my choices are between celibacy and being used for sex (I chose celibacy, thanks), and my friends and family have only confirmed this. Well, except for Mom, who is sure that “God will bring someone special into your life," but forgive me for not taking that too seriously. <br />
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To be honest, celibacy really doesn't bother me. I don't have much of a sex drive, at all, and I don't see the need for one. Friends, some therapists, have all tried to push me to find the reasons why I don't want sex so I can "heal" but I'm perfectly happy the way I am, thanks. From conversations with my mother, I've learned that she doesn't have much of a sex drive, either, so maybe it's genetic. I've been identifying as asexual for awhile now, and I find the label suits me just fine. (I don't, however, engage much with the online asexual community because for the most part they're a bunch of entitled wankers. Just my impression, mind; there might be some very nice people and communities, but I haven't taken the time to sift through and find them.)<br />
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But I still want love. I still fantasize about having someone to cuddle with in front of movie, someone to talk to, to make dinner with, to hold me when I'm sad, to raise children with, to love forever and ever amen. Years ago I joked on facebook that "even my fantasies are codependent" but it's kind of true...the last woman I really crushed hard on was a beautiful mother of two hyperactive boys, her life kind of a mess, and all my dreams revolved around becoming a family, taking care of those lovely boys, holding her when she was sad, going on nature walks and reading books in front of the fire (after I cleaned up her living room). She talked to me because she knew I was a lesbian, and told me how she was starting to allow herself to experience her bisexuality. She asked me advice about the women she liked and dated (even though I have next to know experience). It was very clear, however, that she never even considered me someone to be attracted to, to love. Why would she? Really, who could love someone who looks like me?<br />
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I'm not trying to be self-pitying, truly. I have made peace with my life. I'm open to being shown wrong, but that hasn't happened yet. But the words of a friend from way back keep ringing in my head. She has CP, and years ago she said, "I can't go out with anyone who asks me, because I know that anyone who wants to go out with me has to be a freak." At the time, I tried to reassure her that it wasn't true, that she was a wonderful girl, and she told me I didn't understand. And it's true. I didn't understand, then. <br />
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I understand, now. I feel the same way. <br />
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As I mentioned in the comments, I have no idea if this is similar to what trans women feel. I know that there's a lot more fetishization in porn of trans women's bodies, and that makes a difference. I know that there is a self-loathing that comes from people--even people who should be allies!--telling trans people over and over that they're sick, deformed, malfunctioning, sinful, evil, predatory. I also know that with the sickeningly high rates of murder, trans women have a fear that I will never know. <br />
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I hesitate to ever say to someone, "I understand," when I haven't walked in their shoes, but maybe, in this, the best thing I can say, "I hear you."Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-86289031220776103092012-08-22T22:07:00.001-07:002012-08-22T22:12:01.028-07:00Thoughts on Prostitution and Pornography<strong>Trigger Warning: Graphic description of child abuse and rape.</strong><br />
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This is going to be bit rambly. I can't help that. I have a lot of thoughts, conflicting thoughts, and I'm going to try and get them out as best I can. <br />
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I have no personal experience with prostitution, or with what most people think of when they talk about pornography.I have been molested and raped: both times, pictures were taken. When I was nine, I was molested over the course of a year by a seventeen year old boy who was living in our house as he finished up High School. I was easy prey; I was homeschooled, extremely sheltered (I didn’t even know what sex was), a chubby, socially isolated outcast with few friends, and though my parents loved me, they both worked all the time On several occasions, he took pictures of me, partially undressed, in what I now realize were sexual poses. At the time, I didn't fully understand what was going on. I knew enough to be ashamed, I knew that I couldn't tell anyone. But J. told me I was beautiful and had me pose like the pictures on the magazine covers and movie posters, like a real woman.<br />
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Years later, when I was an adult, I was brutally raped just a couple blocks from my home, when I took a stupid shortcut through the park. The pictures were almost an afterthought; after he had bruised me, burned me, raped me, he pulled out a camera phone and snapped a couple pictures. The most I ever saw of him was through the glow of that phone, his bulbous nose and crooked teeth, not enough for a good description for the cops. Oh, the wondrous progression of technology. <br />
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I have lived in fear for years that those photos of me are on the internet, graphic snapshots of my humiliation and pain. I have no reason to think that they aren't. Sometimes I can't help thinking about the men who have, over the years, masturbated to those images of a scared, humiliated little girl trying so hard to be pretty, to be loved, to be a <em>woman</em>. I wonder if that rapist was able to get my face in the shot, or if I exist only as a headless battered vagina, if he could even get the pictures to come out when they were taken on a pitch-black night. I try not to think about it, which is really all that I can do about it. <br />
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People would be quick to point out that what happened to me wasn't really pornography, it was rape, and they would be mostly right. I didn't chose what happened, and I certainly wasn't paid for it. But I have heard too many stories from girls and boys and women who were forced to take pictures, like I was, so that men could continue to rape them in their minds over and over and over again. I can't entirely dismiss the comparison. I also can’t dismiss the similarities between what I went through and common images in movies and magazines. Would I still have been raped and molested without the multi-billion dollar porn industry, much of it saturated with images of raped and abused women? Maybe. But the boy who molested me wasn't an adult, wasn't any older than my baby brother is now (who seems impossibly young to me). Would he have known what to do without porn? Would he have even thought to take pictures? Again, maybe. There's no way to know something like that. Thinking of a society without porn seems even more fantastical than thinking of a society without religion. <br />
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<a name='more'></a>I have my own thoughts about prostitution and pornography. I dislike on principle the thought of someone selling their body for money--and, yes, I know the argument that goes we <em>all</em> sell our bodies for money, whether by cleaning tables or dancing on top of one, but prostitution feels different. And, yet, I'm a skeptic, I'm a feminist, I can't base my beliefs on what <em>feels</em> right, and judging what other women do with their bodies--or trying to force them to live the way I think they should--goes against everything I believe in. <br />
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One thing I’ve learned since becoming involved in progressive politics in how important it is to <em>listen</em>, especially to marginalized groups you are unfamiliar with (and though both anti-porn and pro-porn folks might both disagree, I think it’s hard to make a case that the <em>vast majority</em> of women in porn and prostitution are not marginalized), and most especially when your motivation is to “save” them. Yes, it’s important to be an ally, to fight with people against oppression and injustice, to stand up for people who are being victimized. But if you don’t listen, if you don’t take the time to try and understand a different perspective, you can do a lot of damage. At the very least, you can unintentionally hurt someone because you don’t realize that what you’re saying is hurtful (unfortunately, especially in racial and trans* issues, I’ve done this). There is nothing more condescending than telling someone you know better than they do what they <em>really</em> need, when you haven’t lived their life. It’s alienating, and it destroys movements. There is too much history of white, straight, cis feminists telling other groups what they need (and then fighting for that perceived need) instead of listening to the true needs and desires of those they’re supposedly allies with, that I am <em>very</em> weary whenever I find myself advocating a position for a group I am not a part of. I don’t want to be yet another woman charging in all willy-nilly on a white horse and accidently trampling those I want to help. <br />
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The other extreme, though, is not okay, either: I can’t only focus on helping those who look like me or act like me. There’s an unfortunate feminist history of that, as well: again, the needs of white, middle-class, cis, able-bodied women are the only ones given serious attention. Oh, we’ll occasionally talk about those “other” groups (as though they aren’t really, fully women), and then pat ourselves on the back for our inclusivity and sensitivity. I don’t want to let my fear of doing the wrong thing keep me from doing anything at all. <br />
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Any woman who has spent much time in the feminist blogosphere is probably familiar with the term “mansplaining,” either from hearing the complaints or seeing it for ourselves in the comments section. Seldom is a “woman’s issue” ever discussed on a news site or general blog for very long before a man (or three) shows up in the comments to tell the ladies what’s <em>really</em> going on, what’s really important. Any feminist who has had to deal with a guy trying to school you on the realities of being a woman--so sure his perspective is unique and valuable, telling you something you’ve never heard and that will of course change your life--can understand why I don’t ever want to be that person. And I’m sure that mixture of irritation and incredulity is familiar to a sex worker hearing someone who has never been in that industry telling her what her life is really like, and what she really needs. <br />
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Obviously, the solution is to listen. This is much simpler said than done.<br />
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I have heard from sex workers who say they love what they do and chose their life freely. I have heard from sex workers who were forced into it because of poverty, drugs, lack of education, lack of support, who hate everything about it and desperately want to leave. I’ve talked to former prostitutes who regard their past work like I do my stint at Home Depot, and other women who can’t talk about that period in their lives without crying. I’ve read interviews with porn stars who gush about how much they love their job, and watched interviews with women who shook as they sobbed a description of the degrading acts they performed. <br />
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Even in <a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2012/04/23/sex-workers-an-invitation-to-tell-your-stories/">Greta Christina's post for sex workers to share their stories</a>, (prompted by <a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/taslima/2012/04/09/sexual-slavery-must-be-abolished/">Taslima Nasreen's post that prostitution is always oppression</a>), there were sex workers, former and current, that talked about how and why they enjoyed their work, and sex workers that said that they hated it and did believe it was oppressive and wrong. Granted, there were many more that came down on the “for” side than “against” (though I would say there’s probably some selection bias, there), but isn’t it just as wrong to ignore those voices as it is to ignore sex workers who say they like what they do?<br />
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And here is where I say that I have no answers. I don’t know what the solution is. I have some <em>ideas</em>...listening to what sex workers (both for and against) have said, it seems that people are in agreement, generally, that decriminalization is important (<em>not </em>legalization), that we should work to eliminate child prostitution (and not punish children who, if they aren’t old enough to consent to regular sex, certainly can’t consent to child prostitution), and make efforts to provide options to women looking to leave the industry (rehab, job training, protection from pimps, a place to stay...unfortunately, most of the organizations that offer programs like these are religious), as well as working more generally to get rid of the stigma against women in sex work.<br />
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Other than that? I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure out where I stand on this issue, or if it’s even important (or appropriate) for me to have a position. Figuring out what inclusive feminism looks like and means is an ongoing process. I’m very open to hearing what others have to say. <br />
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And I’m trying not to let my past experiences and prejudices color my current understanding. That’s hard. <br />
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<br />Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-25943934425723963672012-06-26T13:14:00.000-07:002012-06-26T13:14:55.458-07:00Religiously Motivated Child Absue<em><span style="font-size: x-small;">This is an OLD post (about 5 years, now) that I pulled from the blog I kept back then.* It's still, unfortunately, quite relevent.</span></em><br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">[Trigger Warning: Descriptions of Child Abuse--ESPECIALLY in the linked articles.]</span></strong><br />
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I strongly recommend giving at least a quick glance at the series <b><a href="http://www.dailykos.com/user/dogemperor">dogemperor</a></b> has put together over on DailyKos about religiously motivated child abuse (<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/13/16852/9879">Part One</a>, <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/14/114136/732">Part Two</a>, <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/15/17423/4121">Part Three</a>). As someone who is a survivor** of this type of environment, I'm always amazed when people <em>don't</em> know about the culture of violence that many, many children are brought up in. Like all survivors of child abuse, people who grow up in households with religious child abuse believe (for the most part) that what they went through is normal...and, worse than that, they believe the abuse is justified by being a Christian, that they deserved it. If they are unable to get help and healing, they may start their own family believing that such abuse is the only way to truly raise good Christian children, and the cycle continues.<br />
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I think it is especially important for people to be aware of how isolated children in conservative Christian families can become. Because parents are justifiably afraid that teachers and doctors will report child abuse (or, as these folks call it, "discipline"), kids are pulled out of public and even private schools, and sent to pediatricians who are dominionist Christians. While my parents weren't so extreme, many children I went to church with <em>never encountered a non-Christian in a meaningful way</em>. They were homeschooled, played sports with Christian groups, went to church (and were pulled out of the youth group when non-Christian kids began to attend), were not allowed to participate in outreach activities, only saw Christian doctors, and were always under the watchful eye of their parents or a trusted, like-minded adult. <br />
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So, folks, when you see your neighbor abusing his or her child, don't assume that a trusted adult will catch it. For many kids, that may be the case: they'll see teachers, doctors, and coaches, all of whom are mandatory reporters (though there are news reports every day about how these stop-gap messures fail). Children raised in these very conservative, quiverfull-type homes, may never see an adult they can trust. Call in suspected abuse. You can do it anonymously. Better safe than sorry, and while a visit from a social worker can suck, annoying an innocent parent is a hell of a lot better than allowing a guilty parent to continue to torture their child in the name of God.<br />
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And that's today's PSA.<br />
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<em>* I changed this a bit in the repost. I wrote it back in 2007, when I was still a very committed Christian. At the time, I took great pains to say that this type of abuse is against Christian values, and no</em> true <em>Christian would abuse their child like that. I've since changed my opinion on this, and while their brand of Christianity still seems like a perversion of the faith I was brought up in, I realize that they have just as much biblical justification for thier position as I ever did, such behavior is perfectly in line with a certain type of Christianity. </em><br />
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<em>** My parents (my father especially) were quite abusive during my early years. I don't think they were abusive out of malice, but out of ignorance. They followed books like "Dare to Discipline" and the advice of older Christians who insisted that beating us would make us obedient kids. (Honestly, if anything I would say that it made us a lot angrier.) We were hit with metal spoons, slapped, pinched, forced to stand straight up (not leaning against a wall) for over an hour (and spanked if we leaned or sat down), left in dark rooms, and humiliated in public (that was and remains a favorite tool for dominionist Christians in like-minded settings...public humiliation and spanking of children in church is not uncommon). </em><br />
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<em>My mother, around the time I was eight or nine, realized that what she was doing was wrong, and stopped. She said that it was because she heard God telling her that their behavior was wrong. It was a brave step: she ignored the advice of everyone around her (including the pastor) to do what she felt was right. (Of course, I think that "still small voice" was her innate empathy and consience rather than the voice of God, but that's not an argument I can win.) She's since apologized to me, and that relationship has been more than healed. I recognize that I'm lucky in that respect. My father, likewise, stopped his abuse. He had an anger management problem (like a lot of cops) and was also raised in a very physically abusive environment (his mother used to hold his head under the bath water if he mis-behaved, among other things). So he took a step back from being the disciplinarian until he got that under control. My parents got a lot of flack because my dad didn't take the active roll in discipline, which other church members considered to be his job as the spiritual leader of the family. But he couldn't trust himself to discipline without it becoming abuse, so he did the right thing by stopping. By the time my youngest brother came along, my parents no longer used physical discipline at all, having discovered that other ways of parenting worked much better, and didn't violate their ethics. (Or, my mom would say, they started following God's direction in discipline. BLECH.)</em><br />
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<em>I've forgiven both my parents, and I have a good relationship with them, but some scars can never be erased, and that's why I'm so passionate about this issue.</em>Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-61845967905811212342012-06-24T23:05:00.001-07:002012-06-24T23:05:53.750-07:00Hating GodSince being out as an atheist, I have been accused many times of hating God.
No matter how many times I explain that it’s rather impossible to hate someone
that I believe doesn’t exist, the same allegation still comes up, many times by
the same person. Maybe there are people who honestly can’t comprehend that
some people just truly don’t believe in a god, and view my stated disbelief as a
sort of rebellion, a childish way of lashing back at God out of anger. They cannot conceive of never believing, because in their mind God is as real to them as the air they breathe, so it's impossible to accept actual disbelief from others.
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(Unfortunately, they don’t take this far enough to examine
<i>why</i> I might be angry with God if that were the case…usually
I’m told some variation of “you want to sin without feeling bad about it” or
“you’re angry that God doesn’t give you everything you wanted.” These are both
wildly inaccurate, and make me look like a petulant teenager, which might be why
some believers I've encountered are so dismissive and condescending towards me. I
want to explore both of these in more detail later, so stick a pin in them.
Right now, all I can say is that this characterization is just plain wrong. For
more insight, you can <a href="http://thisbitchwontshutup.blogspot.com/2012/05/why-i-dont-belive-in-god.html">read
a little about why I no longer believe in God</a>.)
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I also think that there are some believers who confuse my hatred of the
atrocities of religion, and my hatred of how some believers treat other people,
as a hatred for God. And while it would be too strong to say I hate
<i>religion</i>, because I do think that good things have come out
of religions (maybe <i>in spite</i> of the religion itself), I do
hate irrationality, intolerance, cruelty, evil, and the many, many other
negative effects that religions have had on our world. (I don’t have the time
for a total overview; that would take a book, many books. The best book I know
on the subject and one I recommend <i>everyone</i> read, religious,
atheist, or indifferent, is: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007MCMKV6/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=shupbi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B007MCMKV6">Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=shupbi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B007MCMKV6" style="border: currentColor !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />.)
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Yesterday, however, I came the closest I've ever come to truly hating God. <br />
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Not religion or the religious, not a nebulous god concept, but the good ol' God of Abraham and Issac and other people who'd feel totally justified sacrificing their kids for that bloodthirsty monster. The Judeo-Christian God. Now, it was only for a moment, a moment long enough for me to breathe and go, "Okay, calm down, now. He's not real. You're pissed at someone else and projecting it onto a non-entity. It's like being pissed at a unicorn because you're tired of being a virgin."<br />
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And so I took a second to think, and realized I was actually feeling a deep, white-hot rage for<em> </em>my <em>mom</em>. Now, I love my mom, and being angry with her is not a comfortable experience. It's not surprising I directed that brief flare of hate towards God. Easier target, and since he doesn't exist, I don't have to go apologize for hurting his feelings later on. Taking another second to analyze, I figured out that it was less anger than a huge load of hurt--tinged with jealousy--a profound pain that caused me to lash out irrationally. I didn't want to acknowledge how much Mom had hurt me.<br />
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I didn't respond to what happened. I changed the conversation. I doubt she knows that what she said gave me a second thought, much less actual hurt. And I don't know that I can ever have a productive conversation with her about it. I do, however, believe I need to blog about it.
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Here's the situation: Mom and I were driving along, doing errands, which is where we tend to have our most intense conversations. We don't get to spend a tremendous amount of time together because her work keeps her very busy (16 hour days are not unusual, and her hours vary every single day with little consistency on where she's going to be or what she's going to be doing). She's my best friend, but I don't spend near the amount of time with her that I would like to. We usually discuss ethics, politics, and religion (and most often all three at once). Because I read and watch news far more than she does, I'll often bring up whatever story I've been chewing on and we'll discuss it...which usually leads to a philosophical or theological debate about the rights and wrongs of the thing. (Aside: my mom doesn't think she's smart, and she feels bad about not having a degree, but that woman is a deep, rational thinker, and while I may strongly disagree with her religious beliefs, she is far from stupid. She makes me work hard for my positions and I've learned more about ethics and theology--history <i>and</i> modern application--than from any university class.)
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I brought up a story that's getting passed around facebook. (I have a lot of old friends and family friended, most of whom are still fundamentalist/evangelical Christians, so I have to put up with a lot of Christian--and Republican-spam. Most of the time, keeping in touch is worth it. Sometimes, I wonder.) <i>Anyway</i>, the story goes that a missionary mom and her children were captured by the evil, savage, godless natives. (That's not racist <i>at all</i>.) Godless Natives gave Missionary Mom a choice: renounce God and live, or they would kill her children, and her. So Missionary Mom did the godly thing, kissed her kids goodbye and told them to be strong, and let the Godless Natives torture her kids to death. Of course, this lovely story comes with a great moral: "What would <i>you</i> do? Would you be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for God?"
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<i>What the fuck.</i>
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First, Missionary Mom is not just making a decision for herself, which I guess is her crazy-ass right, but also for her children. Because she's not willing to <i>say some words</i>, her kids get tortured to death. Isn't God all-knowing enough to realize she's just saying it to save her children's lives? Isn't the whole point of forgiveness and Jesus' death and all that jazz that even if God <i>was</i> pissed (which, seriously, what the fuck, if you're serving a god that puts a few words above your children's lives, I can't even), couldn't Jesus just forgive you after? All forgiven, still going to heaven, and best of all, <i>your children haven't just been tortured to death</i>.
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And my Mom says, "She did the right thing. It would be the hardest thing I would ever do, but I hope I would do the same."
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That's when I hated God with a pure, deep, white-hot rage.
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It's not God's fault, of course. One nice thing about not existing: it gets you off the hook pretty effectively. It's religion. It's indoctrination from a tiny age into a religion that celebrates parents who sacrificed their children on God's command and martyrs that died for stupid-ass reasons. And it hurts.
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I don't think this story is real. I haven't seen any actual documentation. (If someone has outside verification, by all means, I'm willing to be shown I'm wrong, even though it would break my heart.) I don't think that three kids were tortured to death because of their mom's ridiculous sense of morality, that put a few paltry words above her kid's lives. But I'm real. I'm real, and it fucking hurts that my mom would rather watch me die a slow, horrible death, than ever "renounce God" --even if it was just for show, even if it was meaningless and she could take it back later. And when the anger and jealousy faded, there was just sadness.
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When I was a kid, I accepted as normal and right that Mom put God before us. And lordisa knows she did...her service to the church has always come before her family. But, now, hearing such a vivid confirmation that she puts her imaginary sky daddy ahead of even my life...I dunno why this is bothering me so much. It's not like it's new information.
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Still hurts, though.Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-44841873601316265962012-06-01T00:49:00.000-07:002012-06-01T00:49:40.472-07:00Back in BlackSorry I've been gone for so long. My health has been not-so-good (understatement); sometime I may talk about that more. Scratch that: I know I'll talk about it in detail at some point, as going through health problems through the last year and a half as dramatically altered my outlook on life in several significant ways. But for right now, suffice to say that I've been in the hospital off and on for the last couple weeks while being in bed and rather drugged even when home. So, not a lot of chance to write.<br />
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I have caught up on some reading, however, and, again, will be talking more about some of what I've been reading over the next few days/weeks/whatever. One book that I just finished is "Sybil Exposed" by Debbie Nathan, an absolutely amazing book book about the Sybil case and the larger MPD phenomenon. Ms. Nathan doesn't pull any punches and documents the multitude of problems with how the situation was handled and the mass hysteria it caused, but she does it with deep empathy. There are no bad guys or good guys, just flawed people and even more flawed system that failed everyone involved. Brilliant book; I also want to talk more about some of the issues it raised, later. <br />
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One thing, though: the more I read about the history of psychiatry and even current practices, the more I feel that as a skeptic and a person with mental illness, I'm trapped between a rock and a hard place. I know that I need help, but I also feel that when it comes to the understanding and treatment of mental illness, there is a lot of bullshit and comparatively little hard evidence. Personally, I've been screwed by professionals who used unscientific treatment methods (the ex-gay therapist comes to mind, and the therapist who tried to convince me that I had repressed memories and needed to be hypnotized). I've been drugged to the gills by one doctor and told I was fine and didn't need anything at all by another doctor (both times leading to serious issues, including a suicide attempt). Right now I'm coasting on a bare minimum of medication--just one anti-depressant, given by my primary care doctor--and the support of friends and family when I become seriously depressed or anxious. <br />
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But that's not enough. This is not a lasting solution. It's not fair to rely so totally on my family to take care of me when I'm too depressed to get out of bed or shower, or too scared to leave my house. And it's not doing me any good, either. But I'm honestly terrified to find help. I don't want to go back to being so drugged I can't think, drooling and stumbling through life. I don't want to be mind-fucked by another well-meaning therapist. The two attempts I've made in the past couple months have been dead ends: a frankly weird-ass therapist who was overly invasive and straight-up lied to me on one occasion that I know for sure, and a doctor who diagnosed me as bipolar and obviously in need of hardcore mood stabilizers within five minutes of meeting me, without knowing my (very) complicated psychiatric and medical history. So, I do know I need to work to find someone. I'm just scared.<br />
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And reading books like "Sybil Exposed" doesn't do much to boost my confidence, you know? Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-75476363776050814512012-05-11T09:56:00.001-07:002012-05-11T09:56:14.567-07:00Stupid-ass Questions with Easy AnswersSo on one of the message boards I frequent, this gem popped up. Knowing this poor, poor woman was crying out to the group for a little help, I decided it was up to me (especially after I read the comments). I'm not much of an advice columnist, but we'll see. If this works, maybe I can branch out.<br />
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<em>I've noticed lately, pretty much since I've been on my weightloss kick, that when I see tremendously overweight people out in public, eating gross things ect. I get very judgemental. I really don't want to be this way, and I feel bad for thinking the way I do, but I can't help but think "It's not hard to lose weight, and you shouldn't be eating that"<br /><br />Is it wrong for me to feel this way?</em><br />
<em> </em><br />
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Dear IIW:<br />
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Yes.<br />
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With love,<br />
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Erin<br />
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<br />Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-80723474414675912642012-05-06T11:28:00.000-07:002012-06-06T12:46:30.999-07:00We've come a long way?<em><span style="font-size: x-small;">Repost of something I wrote years ago.</span></em><br />
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<strong>(Trigger Warning for Domestic Abuse)</strong><br />
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Several years ago, I was watching a history channel special on JFK. The show asserted that the reason JFK had won the election was because of two things: women and TV. Women voted for JFK because they saw him on TV, and he was cute. <br />
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At the time, I was living with my grandmother, who was in her eighties, and I remember asking her, "Grandma, did you vote for President Kennedy because he was handsome?"<br />
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"No, I did not," my grandma snapped back, startling me with the vehemence of her response. "I voted for him because he said that he would raise the minimum wage, and I had five babies to feed.”<br />
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“Oh, okay,” I answered, but Grandma was just getting started. I’d obviously touched a nerve.<br />
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“I voted for him because he said that he would pay women the same amount as a man,” she continued. “You don't know what it was like back then. No one talked about sexual harrasment. No legal protection. You could get fired just for being a woman, so you made sure that you worked three times as hard as the men, didn’t complain when the boss grabbed your behind, and didn’t whine about getting half of what the men got, even when you were working harder than they ever would. I used to tie the strings of three tampons together and put them all inside, layer my panties with two pads, because if I took a break I would’ve lost my job. It didn't matter if I was doubled up pain that would have sent any of the men home, I worked. There wasn't a choice. I worked right up through my first labor pains, and had to beg for my job back two weeks later. No such thing as maternity leave.”<br />
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Grandma shook her head and lit a cigarette. “You don’t know what it was like back then,” she said again. “You had no choice but to have babies, and then you got punished for it. They didn’t hand out the pill like candy back then. Back then, you had to be married, and you had to have your husband sign off on it.” She snorted. "*** sure wouldn’t let me on the pill; he wanted sons. And in my day, when your husband wanted to exercise his marital rights, you let him. So I had baby after baby, until he left.” <br />
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She stared off at the space behind my head, and I asked, gently, “Do you miss him? Did you love him? What was he like?” I had never known my paternal grandfather, or her first husband. It was a subject we never talked about in our family. <br />
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Grandma looked back at me, a twist to her lips suggesting that she was thinking hard. “I’m gonna tell you a story,” she told me, finally, “but you’re not to tell your uncles, you hear?”<br />
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“Okay, Grandma,” I said, eagerly. A story about her past? A secret from my family? I was totally up for that. <br />
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“I mean it,” she snapped. “I hear this from someone else, I know who has a big mouth, and it's the last time I tell you anything.” <br />
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“Pinkie swear, Grandma,” I said, and we crossed pinkies. <br />
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Grandma used her smoldering cigarette to light another, and leaned back in her big stuffed chair. I sat at her feet, waiting.<br />
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"When I was pregnant with your Uncle ____,” she said, “I got morning sickness worse than anything. I thought I was dying. I couldn’t keep anything down, and any little smell would set me off. So the doctor told me to have a couple crackers in the morning, then lay down until it went away. He also gave me some castor oil to drink. ***, he hated the smell of castor oil. Made me go out on the porch to drink it, didn’t matter that it was dead winter, and I near about froze each time. And ***, well, he wasn’t going to have his wife lay around in the morning while he got ready for work. He wanted his breakfast. Problem was, the smell of the food would make me sicker than anything. So sometimes I’d be cooking, and have to leave to go urp, and one morning, I burnt his eggs. And ***, he took that pan, boiling oil, eggs and all, and threw it at me.”<br />
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“Oh my god,” I breathed, horrified. I was a pretty sheltered child. My parents had an idyllic marriage, I’d seen them raise voices maybe twice in my life, and the thought of my dad ever raising a hand to my mom, or even treating her with something less than love and respect, was unthinkable.<br />
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My grandma pulled her shirt up, and I leaned forward to look. There, on wrinkled, paper-thin skin, a small, penny-round scar was still clearly visible. She tugged the sleave back down. <br />
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“Is that why you left him?”<br />
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“Left him?” Her laugh was short, humorless. “Angel Baby, he left me for another woman. Left me with four babies and one to come, and no idea how to support myself. I married him when I was fifteen, never even finished high school. And by that time, he’d moved us out to California, away from all the family back in Kansas.<br />
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“It’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she continued. “It was all different back then. There wasn’t no child support. I went to court once to try and get some money to feed the kids, and they laughed me out. Told me to get a laywer, like I had the money for that. They told me to talk to my husband, and maybe he'd forgive me. The court officer walked me out, grabbed my arm like I was going to fight, and told me I should try prostitution. Told me he'd be my first customer." Her lips were pressed tight together. It was obvious that even so many years later, the memory still stung. <br />
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"I was just lucky I got to keep my babies. And believe you me, I had to fight for that. Social services were inside the house every five minutes. And anytime anything bad happened in the neighborhood, well, you know it had to be my boys. ‘Oh, those boys, they don’t have a father.’ Like their father was anything to write home about.<br />
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"I saved and saved to buy those kids a TV. We had one of the first TVs on the block. And someone, they called social services. That woman came out and said that the only way I could have bought a TV was by whoring. So I took her back to my bedroom, where three of my babies were curled up in bed. I said, 'If you can find room for a man in there, you're doing better than me.'<br />
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“I never wanted charity, even when we split two hotdogs between us and called it dinner. I just wanted to do an honest day’s work and get paid the same as a man. I wanted to be treated like a lady and not a prostitute. I was a lady,” she said, firmly. "But men see you with five kids and no man around, they think you'll spread you legs for anything."<br />
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She lit another cigarette, and stared at me with her steely gaze, with the intelligence and strength that all her years and even dementia couldn’t take away. She took a long drag. “And that’s why I voted for Kennedy,” she said with finality.<br />
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***<br />
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Today, I was doing my homework while my dad flipped through the channels. Half-listening, I heard one commentator remark that Obama had won the election in part because he was so physically attractive, and women were drawn to him.<br />
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I was instantly transported back to that living room several years ago. I thought about my Grandma’s story, about when I had learned, for the first time, what life had really been like for women years ago, what life had been like before women like my grandma stood up and fought for change. <br />
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And I thought about how a commenter, in 2009, could still imply that women were voting with their vaginas, not their brains. <br />
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Times have changed. I have rights and opportunities that my grandmother couldn’t even dream of. <br />
But I’d be a fool to think that our work for equality was completed.Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-64561675280599561912012-05-06T11:11:00.000-07:002012-05-06T11:14:39.357-07:00What Boys Can Learn From Girls (or: Be a Pussy).<em><span style="font-size: x-small;">A repost of something I wrote years ago.</span></em><br />
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<strong>(Trigger Warning for homophobia, child abuse, and sexual assault.)</strong><br />
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<br />My brother is a decent kid, and I love him, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s homophobic. <br />
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To his credit, he doesn’t <em>want</em> to be a homophobe...he’s a good, progressive boy raised by a progressive mom, living in a progressive area (San Francisco), and he has a lesbian sister (me) that he loves. He’d never beat up or tease a gay kid--he’s stuck up for a gay kids, or kids that were perceived as gay/effeminate, at school and boy scouts, even--he’s totally supportive of civil rights for the queer community and voted against Prop 8. I’m not saying he should get a medal for this; treating gay people like, well, <em>people</em>, is the bare requirement for being a decent human being, in my book. But I say this to establish that he doesn’t hate gay people or wish us harm. <br />
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But he’s still homophobic. <br />
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I use homophobic in the literal sense, not the general usage of the term. He is afraid of gay people. Well, gay men. Like many 19-year-old, heterosexual boys, he’s a product of our porn culture, and really likes lesbians. At least the “hot” ones. (But that’s a different rant, for a different time.) Gay men freak him out. Though he’s known several out gay boys, he’s never had a gay friend, and doesn’t want one. He’d never dream of interfering in the lives of gay men, but he doesn’t want to be a part of their lives, either. <br />
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To his credit, he admits that this is a problem, specifically <em>his</em> problem and not something that gay people cause just by the fact of their existence. To his discredit, he doesn’t think that it’s possible to change the way he feels, and has no intention of making an effort to change. “It’s just the way it is,” he says. “Any guy would feel the same way.”<br />
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(Presumably, he means any <em>heterosexual</em> guy. It’s a little thing, but it really shows his deep bias against gay folk, even with his progressive politics. All guys are heterosexual. Gays are “other.”)<br />
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We had a long conversation the other day, during which I tried to get to the bottom of his homophobia. How can a kid who doesn’t really have a moral problem with homosexuality, who actively supports gay rights, who has been raised around gay people and has gay family, still harbor a deep fear against gay men? It came down to a couple of things.<br />
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First, he finds gay sex skeevy. Okay. I can understand that; I find a lot of sex gross, hetero and homo. Hell, the time I heard my parents having sex in the shower scarred me for life, but it doesn’t mean I’m afraid of my parents. After some thought, he agreed. Yeah, he thinks gay sex is nasty, but it doesn’t make him <em>afraid</em>. He just doesn’t think about it. Which is good, because frankly, I think that people who like to sit around all day long thinking about sex acts in general, and sex acts that gross them out in particular, are just perverts. (Here’s looking at you, Peter LaBarbera.) So that explanation doesn’t work.<br />
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The real answer, we discovered, is that he’s afraid that a gay man might find him attractive. He’s super uncomfortable with the thought of another boy checking him out. He has no idea what to do if a guy hits on him--what will he say? How should he act? And, of course, there’s an underlying fear of rape. Even though he acknowledges that it’s stupid (and arrogant), that he knows gay people aren’t roaming the streets looking to molest his ass, he’s still afraid. <br />
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The kicker of the conversation was when he looked at me and said, totally seriously, “You’re not a man. <em>You can’t understand</em>.”<br />
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Really. I’m not a man, so I can’t understand what it feels like to be checked out by people I have no interest in? I’m not a man, so I can’t understand what it feels like to be uncomfortable when someone I’m not attracted to hits on me? I’m not a man, so I can’t know what it feels like to be afraid of being raped? <em>Are you fucking kidding me</em>?<br />
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The first thought that entered my mind was: <em>Stop being such a pussy</em>. I didn’t voice it. I’m trying to eliminate misogynist language from my speech and writing. So the thought came in, I started to dismiss it, and then I began to deconstruct it. And I realized that, honestly, I was totally wrong. My brother didn’t need to <em>stop</em> being a pussy, he needed to <em>start</em> being a pussy.<br />
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Slur aside, I can’t stop thinking about how much my brother could learn from the average feminine experience--and, by extension, all the boys that he insists feel the same way he does. I don’t deny that male-on-male harassment and rape occurs, but it’s not debatable that it happens on a smaller scale than for male-on-female. Girls are inundated with our rape culture from the crib. We all deal with it, all the time.<br />
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The lectures, warnings, and tragic stories from the older women in our lives. The news stories. The PSAs. The lessons in school, from “good touch/bad touch” in kindergarten to a video on date rape in High School. Walking friends to their cars after work. Calling campus police to escort us to our vehicle after an evening class gets out. The endless “jokes” from stand-up to sitcoms to light-hearted comedies. Being told that in spite of it all, we’re really the ones with all the power, so what the hell are we complaining about? Being told that we’re uptight, humorless, and paranoid for complaining at all. Being told that it’s all our fault.<br />
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That might be all (as if that isn’t enough) for a scant few, but most of us know more. Most of us experience more before we hit Jr. High. We experience the trusted family member who touches us when no one is around. The looks we don’t really understand, but still make us ashamed, as our breasts start to develop. Being fondled on a crowded bus. Getting crowded, scared, objectified by a boy, then called frigid, dyke, stuck-up, bitch when we don’t take him up on his offer. The ex-boyfriend who won’t stop calling, coming around our apartments, leaving threatening messages, ignoring the restraining order, and the cops who say their hands are tied. The teacher who stares at our chests instead of our eyes when we talk, the boss who comes right to the edge of sexual harassment, just enough to make us humiliated and afraid, not enough for us to be taken as anything but hysterical or paranoid if we complain. Objectified. Used. Stalked. Raped. Blamed.<br />
And so much more. <br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/a%20href=%22“http://www.darkness2light.org/KnowAbout/statistics_2.asp">One in four of us are sexually abused by the time we reach the age of 18, usually by a family member or friend of the family</a>. <a href="http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims">Conservatively, one in six of us are raped in our lifetimes; every two minutes, another person is sexually assaulted</a>. <a href="http://www.umich.edu/~sapac/info/stats-sh.html">Sixty-two percent of us are sexually harassed in college</a>, <a href="http://www.sexualharassmentlawfirms.com/Sexual-Harassment-statistics.cfm">and an estimated 40%-70% of us are sexually harassed at work</a>. <a href="http://www.umich.edu/~sapac/info/stats-stalking.html"> Eight percent of us will be victims of stalking</a>.<br />
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And yeah, I’ll get personal. I’ll be a face to these statistics. When I was nine, I was molested repeatedly over a period of a year and a half by a trusted family friend who was living with us. When I was in Jr. High, I was sexually harassed almost every day. Two years ago, I was raped while walking home from work. These are the “big” things, the events that make people gasp and pity, but I’ve also endured the “little” things that all of us girls experience, that may be little, but add up to a hell of a lot over the years. Hearing my mom say that rape is the worst thing that can happen to a woman. Having men at church use the “greeting time” during the service to cop a feel, and being admonished when I wouldn’t let people hug me. The boss who made me clean up the erotica section of the bookstore every day when he found out pornography bothered me. The boy who called me a “stuck-up bitch” when I turned him down, the endless men who have stared at my breasts instead of my face. And on and on and on. I can’t remember every time that I’ve been humiliated, disgusted, or frightened. I don’t have the time or space to list all the times I do remember. And I’m certainly not unique; I don’t just have bad luck. I’m a woman.<br />
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There’s no sign that perverts wear. There’s no mark that distinguishes the would-be rapist. And yet, how ridiculous would it be for us to act like my brother, to accept fear as a reason for not wanting to interact with men at all? I’m a lesbian: I have no desire for men. And I have every reason to be afraid of them. But people would think I was a crazy person (not to mention hateful) if I were to casually admit that all men made me uncomfortable, or afraid, or if I said something like, “well, I support male rights, of course, and I’d never want to <em>hurt</em> a man, but I could never be <em>friends</em> with a guy.” <br />
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Honestly, I’m in awe of us girls. We wake up every morning and go out into the world, even knowing how vulnerable we are, the odds that are stacked against us. And, for the most part, we don’t let it interfere with our lives. We’re able to look past the evil done to us and see the good that lies in most of <em>man</em>kind. We take a chance and befriend and love those who are most likely to hurt us. We get knocked down again and again and get right back up, and we don’t let the actions of the bad men affect our opinions of the good ones. <br />
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Really, my little brother needs to start being such a pussy. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(About statistics: Yes, anyone with Google can find a whole bunch of different numbers. These are all rough statistics pulled from a variety of sources. Regardless of whether it’s one in three women who are raped, or one in five, it’s still too damn many. And I believe that the very lack of concrete numbers shows the enormity of the problem.)</span>Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-61418346063481789192012-05-06T10:43:00.002-07:002012-05-06T11:15:13.611-07:00Anorexia<em><span style="font-size: x-small;">Repost from my livejournal.</span></em><br />
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<strong>(Trigger Warning for disordered eating and sexual assault.)</strong><br />
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Anorexia is a weird thing. <br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/" name="cutid1"></a>For a girl who was 300+ lbs throughout high school, anorexia was always the terrible disease I longed to catch. I tried being anorexic--not dieting, I mean, I tried cultivating a fear and hatred for food. Didn't work, for the obvious reasons. So I had a gastric bypass, which may or may not have been about as destructive (my intestines ruptured; I nearly died). It got the job done, and I made the decision with my eyes wide open about possible deadly consequences (though no one mentioned intestinal rupture!), so I don't waste time regretting my decision. Anyway.<br />
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A gastric bypass isn't a magic bullet, especially when you are very heavy pre-surgery. The first year, it's impossible <i>not</i> to lose weight, but after that, you're on your own. I got down to about 180 lbs, then went to rehab and shot up to 230 lbs pretty quick. Since I had lost over 100 lbs, I was still considered a success story, but it certainly didn't feel that way. So I resolved to try and lose weight again, and began actually doing healthy things, like limiting food intake and exercising. All for the good.<br />
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That changed after I was raped.<br />
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Weight loss became an absolute obsession, totally all-consuming. I would weigh myself three times a day, maybe more. A gain of an ounce or two -- not even talking pounds -- would send me on a tailspin. I limited myself to 500 calories a day and would hyperventilate if I went over that number. Of course, I dropped the weight very quickly, losing nearly 80 lbs between August and December. But because I was heavy to start, no one saw my rapid weight loss as something of a concern--except for my therapist, who kept pushing me to see an ED specialist because he felt like I was out of control and out of his depth (and OMG when he threatened to stop seeing me I thought my world was crumbling; I cried for hours). <br />
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My baby brother, actually, was the first person in my family to notice. Everyone else bought the "I'm not hungry" line, but he flat out accused me of being anorexic, and tried hard to get my parents to notice. My mom just didn't want to hear about it. Her strategy for my anorexia was the same as it was for my depression and anxiety--to tell me to "get over it" or "stop thinking about it." Real helpful. But mostly, I just accepted the praises of everyone around me for dropping the weight like a good girl, even as a I could barely walk because I was so dizzy. <br />
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My dad said after my intestines ruptured, he tried to explain what happened to me. I still had a tube in my throat so I couldn't talk, but he tried to explain the whole rupture and subsequent surgeries. When he got to the part about them having to undo the gastric bypass best they could, I freaked. Just lost it. He rushed to assure me that because of my intestines being gone, the chances of my gaining weight back were slim to none. How sick is it that, though, that the thought of gaining weight was more of a concern at that point than, like, the very real possibility that I might die or need a transplant or the myriad other horrible things looming at the time?<br />
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I wasn't able to eat for over six months; I just lived on juice and IV food. Now I've got to start eating again. My dietitian is trying so hard to convince me that I need to eat lots of high calorie food, because I'm dropping weight. But I'm fucking terrified. No, I didn't get over the eating disorder just because so much other shit happened. They have me drinking Ensure, and I can barely chug down a bottle, because it contains almost as many calories as I would allow myself in an entire day. I still know the calorie content of most foods, and I add them together throughout the day without even thinking about it, just getting more and more nervous. I try and I try to force myself to eat. Sometimes I do okay. Sometimes I just can't.<br />
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One positive step is that I moved the scale to the garage. My therapist allows me to weigh in once a week. No more three times a day freak out crap. I've been mostly successful at this, but I gained a couple pounds this week and I'm so upset. I stood on the scale and cried. They were <i>good</i> pounds, necessary pounds, but I can't help wanting to still be the 129 I was at the hospital (lowest weight so far), instead of steadily gaining up to where the doctors want me (around 150). <br />
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It's hard, and there are triggers everywhere. Our whole society promotes disordered eating. I'm still working with my therapist on this, but I wonder sometimes if you ever can get over anorexia. Will I ever go back to how I was before, or if once that flip is switched, is it switched forever?Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-45015361115154356792012-05-06T00:19:00.001-07:002012-05-06T00:19:17.674-07:00This Slut VotesSo a group called <a href="http://www.thisslutvotes.com/index.html">This Slut Votes</a> has started to try and organize against the recent epidemic of anti-woman Republican legislation. <br />
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I fucking love it. <br />
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This might not be a surprise, considering the name of this blog, but I'm a big fan of reclaiming language. You wanna call me a bitch? Bring it. If your definition of "bitch" is "woman who disagrees with me and doesn't snivel about it" than, fine, you got it, I'm a bitch. After I heard my brother say, "I usually don't use this word, but Hillary Clinton is such a <em>cunt," </em>I was, like, if Ms. Clinton is a cunt, than I sure wanna be one, too! <br />
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Not everyone agrees. That's fine. I understand that some people who've been hurt by such language in the past don't like to hear those words thrown around, or feel that "reclaiming" does more harm than good. I've seen it argued that taking on "slut" is giving into the male-pleasure dominated porn culture, and that it can never truly be an empowering word. <br />
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But I don't think that's what's going on here.<br />
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"This Slut Votes" is less about making slut an empowering word (I doubt you really could...that's a discussion for another time, though), and more about showing that we're not going to let divisive shaming tactics work. <br />
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Slut, as both a slur and a concept, has always been a way to divide women. I think if there's anything good coming out of the whole Rush Limbaugh/Fox News reaction to the contraception debate, it's that the virgin/whore dichotomy is being destroyed. We're all sluts, now. We can't call (or let others call) some women sluts, and pretend we ourselves are "good girls" anymore. In the eyes of many on the right, it seems, unless we're willing to be a perfect virgin until marriage (walking that impossibly thin tightrope between being feminine and attractive without slipping into slutty), submissive to our husbands, and perpetually pregnant, we're sluts. <br />
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I love the idea that this debate can topple one of the biggest walls of the patriarchy...the dividing wall between women, erected to keep us for standing together, as we compete for male attention. Many women are terrified of being called sluts. Stigmatizing other women gives them the ability to point the figure, to say, "I'm not like that, I'm a good girl." Sluts get STDs, sluts get abortions, sluts get raped, sluts get used and discarded. If I'm a good girl, those things won't happen to me...and if they do, it's not my fault, I'm different. (See: <a href="http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/anti-tales.html">"The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion",</a> the common rationalizations very pro-life women use when they themselves need abortions.) Separating the world into sluts and good girls keeps us from working together to solve the problems that concern all women. (It's also just a dick move.)<br />
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When the feminist movement of the '60s was getting started, it was a common tactic (still is, actually) to call a feminist woman a lesbian. And a lot of women were very upset by this, and bent over backwards to show that, no, they were straight, really, they loved men, they weren't like those <em>dykes</em>. Until many of them realized that by doing so, they were by implication saying that being a lesbian was an awful, bad thing. So a lot of them took that label. "Really, that's all you've got? Fine, if a lesbian is a woman that loves women, call me a lesbian. I don't give a fuck. It doesn't change a goddamn thing; you still have to treat me like a human being." Instead of letting themselves be divided, instead of giving into the temptation of demonizing other women for male approval, they instead stripped the word of its ability to insult. (Note: not all women, of course...there was a lot homophobia within feminism. Feminists are not a monolith.)<br />
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So I'm an asexual lesbian. Maybe most people wouldn't consider me a slut. But, apparently a slut is now anyone on birth control...and golly gee, I've been using hormonal birth control in one form or another for most of my adult life. I'm a slut now! And you know what? That's great! I've wasted too much time judging other women for clothing choices or sexual practices that weren't my cup of tea. I'm not going to waste anymore time, or lose anymore chances to meet and work with women I might otherwise stay away from, based on some highly subjective notion of proper female behavior. <br />
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Regardless of whether you call yourself a slut, I hope you do the same. (And I hope you vote.)Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-61545985549249881842012-05-02T16:07:00.001-07:002012-05-02T16:07:47.055-07:00Weight Reality<em><span style="font-size: x-small;">This is a repost of something I posted on facebook.</span></em><br />
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People on a message board I frequent (at <a href="http://myfitnesspal.com/">My Fitness Pal</a>, a very cool website with some assholes in the community, like everywhere) were talking about how they hate seeing fat people in public, and how fatties just gross them out, and how awful they feel when they see a fat person buying unhealthy food at the store, etc. I was so angry that I just had to reply. Here it is:<br />
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It is impossible to tell from looking at someone what their lifestyle is. Even when I was at my heaviest (300+ lbs), I still worked out and tried to eat healthy. Hell, I was a vegan! I have a medical condition and am on medication that makes weight loss almost impossible (which is why my doctor recommended a gastric bypass, which helped but didn't magically fix). When moving hurt, I still made time to exercise in a healthy way, and I was able to keep my blood pressure and sugar levels in a good range (a better indicator of health than pant size). Weight is incredibly complex...experts and studies confirm that it is so, so much more than "eat less/exercise more." Genetics, medication, health conditions, and past lifestyle choices all play a huge part. And heavy people have often been on many, many diets...most of which, studies show, fail, and then cause excessive weight gain and slow metabolism later in life. The assumption that someone who is overweight doesn't take care of themselves, or if they just worked at it they could lose weight, is <em>false</em> and fed by our weight-obsessed society. <br />
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Class and money play a huge role. Have you ever tried eating a healthy diet on food stamps? It's almost impossible. My mother tried to feed a family of six on a very limited food budget...she would have loved to have fresh fruits and veggies in the house, but when a package of Top Ramen was cheaper than an apple, and actually satisfied the hunger of her children (an apple is a great snack, but doesn't cut it for dinner), she chose the item that didn't make her kids go to bed starving. Processed food is terrible for you and causes weight gain, but that's what poor people buy, because a) it's cheaper, b) it lasts, and c) it's quick to make, and when you're working 2-3 jobs and going to school (as my mom was), you don't have time to cook healthy dinners. So please don't judge the mom whose shopping cart is filled with items you personally disapprove of; you have no idea what they're going through.<br />
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And you really don't know what someone's lifestyle is like based on a quick glance in the grocery store. A couple years ago, my mom sent me the store to pick up candy and other desserts for a church party that evening. While standing in line, the person in front turned around and sneered, "You'll never lose weight if you keep eating like that." Well, considering the food all had milk in it, I wasn't planning on eating <em>any</em> of it. And she seriously thought I was gonna take 15 bags of candy home to eat? Is that really what people think fat folks do, sit around all day eating bags of candy? <br />
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When I was the low girl on the work totem pole, my boss sent me out to get food from Costco for everyone. So I was getting several hot dogs and snacky things. When I was walking back, a woman said, "No wonder you're fat," with a horrible, smug and disapproving look on her face. Yeah, like I was gonna eat four hot dogs on my own, and anyway, it's none of her business! I was a lot less confident then, so I was in tears by the time I got back to work, and told my boss I couldn't do the food runs anymore (she was pissed on my behalf and totally agreed...they never made me go again). I was so hurt. It takes courage to go out and try to be happy when you're very heavy, and it just takes a little comment, someone reminding you that to the rest of the world you're hideous, to make you want to go home and slit your wrists or never go outside again. <br />
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I have on several occasions been used by mothers to fat-shame their children. It's horrible on two levels: 1) because they're talking about me like I'm disgusting and the worst thing someone could be, which is SO dehumanizing and hurtful, and 2) because they are using me to scare and shame their daughters, passing on the torch of body hatred, and teaching their kids that it's okay to make rude comments about someone's weight, because<em> fat is the worst thing you can be</em>. Quick example: when I was a cashier, a girl was bugging her mom for M&M's. The mom said to her daughter, "Do you want to end up fat like <em>her</em>?" (pointing at me). I quickly finished ringing her up, then had to take a break because I started crying. (I'm a lot tougher now, but, like I said, I used to be more sensitive about my weight.) <br />
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This is just one example of many over the years.<br />
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It's the reason I always made my little sister get her own popcorn at the theatre. She (skinny girl that she is) likes a lot of extra butter. I told her that I just can't deal with the looks (if not the comments) that I get as a fat girl ordering extra butter. It hurts; I'm not going to put myself in that position. Or if I was celebrating a special occasion or was at a restaurant I really liked and wanted a dessert, sometimes I just didn't order (or made someone else order) because I couldn't stand the looks I would get. People didn't know it was something I rarely did. They just assumed that, hey, fat girl orders cake=she must eat cake all day long and that's why she's fat. Even if I just ordered the same thing my skinny friends ordered.<br />
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I have struggled with starving myself (which is the worst thing you can do to lose weight; it just made me unhealthy and more fat), with self-injury (taking out my body hatred on my stomach with a knife), with depression, with social anxiety. Some of it can be traced to the terrible things people have said to me during my life. I'm stronger now, I understand that the people who say and do those things are really just ignorant and scared (they don't understand the complexity of weight loss; they are scared of gaining weight themselves). But it took a lot of therapy and education for me to get to this place, and I still struggle with disordered eating and self-injury.<br />
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In conclusion: you don't know what someone's lifestyle is by just looking at them, and you don't know what medical conditions might be the cause of their weight. And you don't know how hurtful even your non-verbal actions can be. Get educated, and have some compassion. Pant size is a terrible indicator of a person's value as a human being.Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-37066279259772345192012-05-02T15:55:00.000-07:002012-06-20T12:43:57.379-07:00God Saved Me?<em><span style="font-size: x-small;">This is a repost of something I posted on facebook.</span></em><br />
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I need to talk about something that is deeply upsetting and problematic to me, but I'm afraid that it's going to offend people that I care about. So let me state up front that offending people is not at all my intention. <br />
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A year and a half ago, I nearly died. That's not hyperbole; it's fact. It took three emergency surgeries before the doctor believed I even had a hope of surviving, but for the first couple days, my loved ones were told that there was a good chance I wasn't going to make it. In fact, if I had been older, not in good health otherwise, or were it three years ago (before the technology used to save my life was invented), they wouldn't have even attempted to save me. I would have died. <br />
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Almost immediately, I was told in one way or another, "God saved your life." <br />
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To which I have to respond: "I don't have the words to convey how offensive that is." <br />
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(Let me try to find the words.)<br />
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<a name='more'></a>First: The doctors saved my life. I had amazing doctors who worked around the clock (during the holidays, no less) to keep me alive. There were numerous nurses who kept me alive in ICU. One example out of many is the ICU nurse who worked her ass off to get my fever down. She could have covered me in ice packs, but she knew I was in such agony that doing so would have just been horrible. So she spent the night changing cold washcloths, keeping a fan on me, and gradually brought down a dangerous fever without further contributing to the pain and terror I was in. (I learned of these stories after the fact, because at the time, I was completely out of it. I was not aware of much, and when I was awake, I was having horrifying hallucinations. I don't remember much of those first days, beyond pain and fear.) <br />
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Here, I want to quote the philosopher Daniel Dennet, <a href="http://richarddawkins.net/articles/280-thank-goodness">who wrote a letter</a> after his life-threatening heart attack and stay in in the hospital. While some of what he says is specific to his own medical emergency, the general feeling is applicable to my situation. He expresses exactly how I feel, far more adequately than I could:<br />
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<em>To whom, then, do I owe a debt of gratitude? To the cardiologist who has kept me alive and ticking for years, and who swiftly and confidently rejected the original diagnosis of nothing worse than pneumonia. To the surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and the perfusionist, who kept my systems going for many hours under daunting circumstances. To the dozen or so physician assistants, and to nurses and physical therapists and x-ray technicians and a small army of phlebotomists so deft that you hardly know they are drawing your blood, and the people who brought the meals, kept my room clean, did the mountains of laundry generated by such a messy case, wheel-chaired me to x-ray, and so forth. These people came from Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, Haiti, the Philippines, Croatia, Russia, China, Korea, India—and the United States, of course—and I have never seen more impressive mutual respect, as they helped each other out and checked each other's work. But for all their teamwork, this local gang could not have done their jobs without the huge background of contributions from others. I remember with gratitude my late friend and Tufts colleague, physicist Allan Cormack, who shared the Nobel Prize for his invention of the c-t scanner. Allan—you have posthumously saved yet another life, but who's counting? The world is better for the work you did. Thank goodness. Then there is the whole system of medicine, both the science and the technology, without which the best-intentioned efforts of individuals would be roughly useless. So I am grateful to the editorial boards and referees, past and present, of Science, Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and all the other institutions of science and medicine that keep churning out improvements, detecting and correcting flaws.</em></blockquote>
I will never be able to thank all of the people who contributed to saving my life and helping me recover. But I am alive because of them; more than that, I am thriving because of them.<br />
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The second thing I want to address is this: What the hell is so special about me?<br />
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God saved me? He looked down from heaven to Marin General Hospital and decided, what, that the girl in room 304A gets to live today? But the 42 year old mother of three with cervical cancer down the hall, eh, screw her. How insanely arbitrary, how unfeeling. How could I believe that there's something about me that God decided deserved His personal touch, but my roommate who was in a car accident was just doomed to spend the rest of her life drooling with a tube down her throat? "God obviously has something special planned for you." But the girl with the brain tumor, her hopes and dreams and ambitions just didn't pass muster? Seriously? <br />
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Somewhere in the world, there is a four year old girl who has been hungry every day of her life, and she is dying from an excruciatingly painful intestinal parasite. She has only known fear, pain, and hunger. Her tiny life will be extinguished in a sickening way. Your God is fine with that. But when a privileged 24-year-old girl, a girl who has never known hunger, a girl who has experienced joy and love and the benefits of living in 21st century America, she gets divine intervention? I would give my life with no hesitation if it would mean that little girl could have food, medical care, an education, a life. The thought that God would save me but leave that little girl in her misery is fundamentally sick. <br />
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There is nothing special about me. I don't say this because I have a low self-esteem; it's just the objective truth. I have done things that I'm proud of. I also, like everyone, have done things that I'm ashamed of. I've hurt the people around me. Right now, I'm 26 years old, living at home, basically contributing nothing while consuming more than my fair share. I hope to accomplish good things in the future. I hope that I will be able to help others. But there is no reason that I deserve to be saved, while others die. <br />
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On a side note, because this also comes up: while I love my parents more than I can say, while I think they're amazing people, there is no reason that they deserve to have their daughter live more than another parent. The mother who watches, heartbroken, as her children starve and die from easily treatable diseases, she is no less worthy of divine help than my parents. <br />
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I think people need to think through the implications of what they're saying. Knee-jerk, cliche responses can often carry meanings we don't intend. And I find, "God saved your life for a reason," to be incredibly offensive, though the people who say it don't intend it to be at all.Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-59434274211537588722012-05-01T21:08:00.000-07:002012-05-01T21:08:43.657-07:00Why I Don't Belive in GodIt wasn’t because of a tragedy.<br />
<br />It had nothing to do with those who call themselves followers of Christ, and yet do evil.<br />
<br />It’s not youthful rebellion, or a way to get back at my parents. (Note: I mean, it's really, <em>really</em> not. My biggest regret about losing my faith is the hurt it causes my folks. I get really fucking tired of this assertion.)<br />
<br />It wasn’t because I wanted <em>carte blanche</em> to run my life as I wanted.<br />
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It wasn’t because I wanted to be different.<br />
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It wasn’t because I wanted to cause trouble.<br />
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It wasn’t something I went looking for.<br />
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And when I finally accepted it, it was with deep reluctance, and I still wished there was some way to go back.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />I’m talking about why I am no longer a Christian.<br />
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I have been getting some questions about why I no longer believe in God, and I’ve been putting off giving a more public explanation, even though I know friends and family would probably like to understand what seems like a sudden and dramatic change. I finally decided to just write up a blog post to point people to. There's just not enough room on facebook.<br />
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I’ve been hesitant, for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a more formal “coming out” as an atheist. Secondly, I don’t want to offend anyone, and by explaining why <em>I </em>don’t believe something, it can seem as though I’m demeaning those who still do believe, which is certainly not my intention. So let’s get that straight from the get-go: if you’re looking to be offended, you might be, but if you’re looking to understand me and other atheists like me, keep reading.<br />
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Let’s clear up some common misconceptions from the beginning. People sometimes have some assumptions in place when they hear someone has declared they no longer believe in God. So let’s address them.<br />
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1) I did not become an atheist because of “bad Christians.” I’ve been around the church all my life. I’ve seen some of the worst and some of the best. I know Christians are human, and I certainly don’t blame the church for some of its bad apples. <br />
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2) I did not become an atheist because of some tragic event in my life. There have been many tragic events in my life, and none of them became the catalyst for my atheism. If anything, they pushed me closer to God. I might have acknowledged my atheism earlier, if it wasn’t for bad things in my life drawing me to the comfort of belief (or other’s belief for me) in God, the belief that everything would work out in the end, that I was in God’s hands, part of His plan. <br />
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3) In fact, there was not one “thing” that “made” me an atheist. Rather, it was an accumulation of many things over a number of years that contributed to my current state.<br />
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4) I didn't want to be an atheist. Losing my faith was the hardest thing that has ever happened to me. The personal toll sometimes seemed more than I could bear. I wanted to believe so badly (and prayed for belief, with no avail). But, ultimately, the evidence against God is overwhelming, and I have to acknowledge that I can no longer pretend to believe if I want to live with integrity. Though it would be so much easier to believe, you can’t force yourself to believe something you know isn’t true. <br />
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<strong>A little backstory:</strong><br />
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There were many things that just didn’t work for me over the years, things that I was required to believe in to be a Christian, tenants of the faith that just didn’t make any sense to me. I had pushed these doubts aside. I wanted to believe, truly. But there was a lot about Christianity—and I’m talking about the basics, here, stuff I’m going to get to below, not the politics, not the external, debatable fluff—that didn’t make any sense to me.<br />
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Oh, I knew the right answers. I knew the answers to all the questions I had. If someone came to me—hell, people did come to me—with all the doubts I was having, I knew all the right things to say. But they didn’t make any sense internally. So I pushed all my doubts behind a wall and desperately tried to forget them. For the most part it worked; I was a good Christian girl. And faith means believing in God, even when you don’t understand. Believing in the mystery. It would all be revealed in heaven. Trust in God. <br />
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Part of the problem was that I began to seriously study my religion. And what I found astonished me. There was so much cruelty in the bible. My supposedly loving God ordered genocide and rape, condoned slavery, made women chattel. I thought seriously about the church's problem with gay people, and the more I thought, the more pissed off I got. Hell stopped making any sense whatsoever, and the justifications I heard just made me sick. And as I learned about the origin of the bible, the vast number of contradictions, errors, and probably forgeries it contained, it became harder and harder to regard it as the backbone of my faith. The doubts were overwhelming, and the pat answers from childhood and apologetics books weren't doing the trick anymore. <br />
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The more I learned about the world around me, this pale, blue dot in the vast cosmos, the more doubts came, the harder it became to push them back. The more I learned that I had been lied to as a kid about the basics of science (the age and formation of the universe, evolution), the more I wondered what else had been a lie. And I found science to be far more fascinating than any stories I had been told in Sunday School. I saw the world with new eyes. Everything fascinated me, from the stars in the sky to the grass below my feet. I hungered to learn more, and I devoured everything I could get my hands on. It was amazing, and it was <em>true</em>. Unlike everything I had been taught in church, science could be proved. The wall holding back all those doubts started to crumble. That scared the crap out of me. <br />
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So I started trying to shore up that wall any way I could. I poured myself into church. I thought if I was having trouble believing, maybe doing devotions twice a day would help. Maybe I should start going to mass every morning. I thought about becoming a nun, devoting myself entirely to God. I thought about being a missionary. If all I did was serve God all day long, maybe I’d stop feeling like this, like I didn’t feel God was even there anymore. I prayed, many times a day, the prayer from Mark 9:24: "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (TNIV) <br />
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And then, one day, I got up. It was a normal day. Nothing that special. It was mid-afternoon, when I realized, “I don’t think I believe in God.”<br />
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It was a shocking thought, but it was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders.<br />
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“Yeah,” I thought. “I don’t believe in God.”<br />
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And the walls came tumbling down. <br />
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It was an internal shift, a click of integrity in my consciousness. I hadn’t believed in God in some time, but I had been desperately professing belief in the hope that true belief would be forthcoming. This was acknowledging to myself something I had known all along. It was immensely freeing.<br />
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One further thing to add: I used to believe that all of my doubts, all off the issues that I will explore in this blog, would have ultimately been okay if I had ever felt like I’d one genuine spiritual experience. I don’t feel like I have ever felt the presence of God. I know that other people believe they have. I have wanted that experience my whole life. I’ve thirsted after it. I’ve prayed. I’ve fasted. But I don’t feel like I’ve ever felt God—the Holy Spirit—present in me. I used to feel that if I had experienced that, truly felt God, than everything else would have been meaningless.<br />
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However, when I nearly died last year, I experienced <em>very</em> vivid hallucinations. I believed things, insane things, terrifying things, with all of my being. Even after recovering, after getting off some of the heavy-duty drugs, it took a long time for the fear and certainty to fade. I experienced the cognitive dissonance of strongly believing two opposing things at once, and it was not fun (understatement). All that to say, I no longer trust personal experience, from myself or testimony from another. Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570977300033852704.post-41614852403904932532012-05-01T20:44:00.001-07:002012-05-01T20:44:47.145-07:00Atheism, Agnosticism, and HumanismLabels, labels, labels. <br />
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I dislike "atheist" as a label because, a) it really doesn't tell you anything other than "I don't believe in God," b) makes god belief the default, which I think is a mistake, and c) the word comes with a <em>lot</em> of baggage. <br />
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But it's because of that baggage that I don't hesitate to tell people I'm an atheist. People need to realize that atheists aren't immoral, baby-eating pedophiles who want to kill and rape with impunity. They also should know that many atheists (most atheists that I know, actually) used to be sincere Christians. In fact, in my experience (all anecdotal, of course, though I'd be interested to see someone study this) often an effort to be a <em>better</em> Christian, studying apologetics and church history, biblical criticism and exegesis, leads people first out of fundamentalism and biblical literalism (which <em>cannot</em> withstand serious, honest scrutiny), and then out of belief all together.<br />
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I have come out as an atheist to friends and family (and, more anonymously, online), for much the same reasons that I came out as a lesbian. First, I dislike being dishonest, and I'm bad at it. My mom and I are very close, and I can't keep a secret for long. I couldn't play the game anymore; much like when I was playing at being straight, I knew all the right things to say and do, but it didn't take long before play-acting started making me sick. Also, as I said, I know that most people who hate atheists (and gay people, for that matter), do so because they don't know (or think they don't know) any. Just by being honest, I can open people's minds, a little. <br />
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But calling myself an atheist is starting to feel dishonest, too.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>II don't believe in the Judeo-Christian God, for sure. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence to show that the claims in the Bible are flat wrong, from archeology and history to science to just basic logic (when two--or more--contradictory things are asserted as true, we know for sure that something is inaccurate). The God of the Bible is a logical impossibility. He's also, as written, a moral monster that I wouldn't worship even if there was proof that he existed. (Yes, I know, your God is love and Jesus died for you because he loved you <em>this</em> much, but I still get caught up in all the, you know, genocide and rape and slavery and misogyny, and have a hard time getting past that. I'm weird that way.)<br />
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But when it comes to belief in some sort of supernatural god? I'm agnostic. Now, I'm pretty sure there is no such being, and I think the world can be explained better with a naturalistic worldview, but if there was proof that such a supernatural being existed, I'd be an idiot not to change my mind about things. After all, reason and evidence is what dragged me out of Christianity, kicking and screaming. I don't think we can know for sure that there is no god, no supernatural entities, because, by definition, they would be outside our ability to test for. It's unfalsifiable. That doesn't make it true, by any stretch of the imagination, it just means that I can never say with certainty that there is no god, and I have to be willing to be convinced by good evidence. I do think it's <em>highly</em> unlikely, so for all intents and purposes, I live like an atheist. Therefore, I call myself an atheist.<br />
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It's sad that if I identified as agnostic, that label would come with a whole set of assumptions that irritate me. People, atheist and religious alike, see agnostics as wishy-washy, fence-sitters, intellectually lazy, cowardly, and believe we simply haven't taken the time (because we're lazy cowards, you know) to look at the evidence and come to a decision. And, of course, theists and atheists alike believe that if we just looked at the evidence, we would obviously come to <em>their</em> decision. That's just obnoxious. Maybe I'm weird, but I'd rather be considered a baby-eater than an intellectual coward. <br />
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And, like 'atheist', 'agnostic' doesn't tell you anything about my values. It doesn't tell you much about my belief system at all, beyond my lack of belief. <br />
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I'm a humanist. I claim that. Sometimes I modify that with a 'secular' preface. I strongly believe in humanist values, I live my life as a humanist, and I do think that the world would be a better place if everyone was a humanist (as if). Seriously, take a second to read <a href="http://www.americanhumanist.org/humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_III">The Humanist Manifesto.</a> What could possibly be objectionable in that?<br />
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So I'm an agnostic atheist humanist. Or whatever. Labels annoy me, but, unfortunately, they seem to be necessary in this society. I try to avoid labels when possible, but I use what feels right in context when a label is needed. I've progressed a lot in the last couple years...from being 'Evangelical' to 'Spiritual' to 'Skeptical' to 'Atheist' and now I'm trying on 'Humanist'. I honestly can't say where I'll be next year. <br />
<br />Erin Branscomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08129938129680200473noreply@blogger.com0