FLYING: Confessions of a Free Woman

Yesterday, I went to the doctor’s office again to talk about my headaches again, but this is not a story about that. This is a story about what happened afterward.

Armed with a handful of prescriptions that would all supposedly do their parts to ameliorate pain that has plagued my life for three years, I went to my local Target, where they have been filling my prescriptions since they opened, where everyone knows my name, and where, frequently, as I come in for something “heavy duty” for the pain, someone will sympathetically say across the counter, “those headaches are bad again, huh?”

Yesterday, a few people milled about. I had dropped off my scripts, and wandered through the mall, incredulous that just a few days after Christmas, people still felt the need to buy themselves something. It’s funny how we can build up in our minds that Christmas, like our birthdays, or like losing 10 pounds, or like getting a new job, or like the “geographic cure, i.e., moving across the country” will solve the basic problem that lies at the heart of ourselves. Our inability to make peace with who we are, what we are. To simply be. And, so, as I walked through the mall, I was feeling attuned to a lot of frantic misery as people shopped feverishly, and a lot of overtired toddlers voiced their complaints in the only ways they know how–whining, crying, tantrums–while their parents screamed at them that they were being naughty.

I retreated back into Target. I figured it was better to sit and wait for my prescriptions rather than to observe the bile of human misery.

My prescriptions were almost ready, they assured me. The woman ahead of me–an older woman, who looked harried, and worried, and whose hands flew this way and that–as if this were her reaction to life that had not treated her all that well, was asked if she could be helped. “We have to wait until my daughter comes out of the restroom,” she said.

A few moments later, the daughter emerged. Despite the heat in the store, she was wrapped up in her coat. It didn’t look as if she had showered in a few days. The first thing I noticed, though, was that she had her hand protectively placed over her lower belly. “Bladder infection,” I thought to myself. “Damn, those hurt.”

The mother began waving as soon as her daughter approached. “She’s here!”

The pharmacy rep stepped forward. “How much are these drugs going to cost,” the young woman asked through gritted teeth.”

“The first is $14.97 and the second is $74.55.”

“Could you ask the pharmacist which one I really need to take?”

The young woman came back in a minute. The conversation took place in hushed tones, but there’s not a lot of privacy in the crowded area near the pharmacy stand. “She said this one will take care of the infection, and the other one will help with all the nausea and vomiting.”

Take them both, I was thinking. Even if you have to give something else up, you can’t get better without them. I’ve had friends whose bladder infections have turned into kidney infections and then you’re in the hospital. It’s nothing to mess around with.

The daughter was clearly angry. Her mother did nothing, just fluttered her hands around. It was clear that neither of them had the money to pay for either.

I started thinking about my checking account. I got paid last week, but it’s the first of the month coming up, and I’ve got rent, and a whole series of bills that are on automatic repayment. If I paid for her pills, I’d bounce something. I wanted to step forward, save the day, pay for her pills. She looked awful.

“I’m not going to take either of them,” she said, in a disgusted voice. Clearly she was mad at the pharmacist. Oh honey. It’s not the pharmacist’s fault. It’s the fucked up system we live in. The people who run this country don’t give a shit that you’re suffering. But this was not the time for political speeches.

I watched her and her mother walk down the aisle, the younger woman limping in pain. I had no idea how she was going to make it through the night.

I do have insurance. I stepped forward, to pick up my four new drugs. “That’ll be $16.27″ the clerk said. “Really? That’s all?”

I felt guilty, and mad, and thought, once again, about how fucking obscene this system is.

I wonder if that woman is in the hospital yet?

Gail Collins’ column today most likely gave Suffragettes, Sappho, and all of our Feminist Foremothers the vapors today.

Seriously.

How else to react to the following:

The health care reform bill currently being debated in the Senate contains a provision known as the Bo-Tax — so called because it would levy a 5 percent tax on cosmetic surgery procedures. The idea is to tax those who indulge in medically unnecessary procedures in order to pay for medical necessities for everyone else.

This sounded like a refreshingly good idea to me, until I read that Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women, is against it.

“Now they are going to put a tax on middle-aged women in a society that devalues them for being middle-aged?” she complained to The Times.

The tone of Collins’ column is incredulous, as is my reaction to it. So many things to be concerned about in the Healthcare bill, and the President of NOW is objecting to the five percent plastic surgery tax?

O’Neill argues that middle-aged women face so much discrimination in the job market that many of them must lie about their age. In order to do that, they must appear younger than their years; hence the need for Botox, tummy tucks, and all the other things women do to themselves to erase the signs that they are passing out of their reproductive years.

Collins’ column is worth reading. And her questioning the fear that drives someone like O’Neill–that all women secretly fear  they are going to wind up as bag ladies, despite their wealth–is perhaps dead-on in its accuracy.

But I find myself unable to feel sympathy for these women.

First of all, plastic surgery is expensive and is not covered by insurance. So, an extra five percent is hardly Draconian. I doubt it will keep the privileged few who can afford it from getting it. And, if it’s true that middle-aged women are terrified that they will lose their jobs or not be able to find jobs without it, we are talking about women who are looking for jobs in the upper strata of the working world.

In other words, this sounds suspiciously like a white, upper middle-class feminist complaint. I thought that feminists had realized that they needed to embrace class and race as issues within feminism? If defending white middle-class women’s access to the Botox deprives a poor, white woman of an opportunity to get an abortion (because, say, someone trades their vote on the Stupak amendment for this Stupid amendment), how does that help bring women together?

I thought that, as older women, we were to have been taught to embrace our wrinkles. Our laugh lines. Our worry lines. Our creases. These are our badges of honor, they show we have lived, loved, and watched a world that is often unfair to us all.

My sense is that as feminists, we need to be fighting for things that affect us all, and I can’t help but see this as a problem that affects primarily white, upper middle-class women. Am I wrong?

The Guardian reports that a new drug, originally tested as an antidepressant, has been shown to increase sexual desire in women.

Women who took the drug during the six-month trial reported more satisfying sexual encounters and higher libidos than those who were given a placebo.

Doctors involved in the study said the drug may prove to be an effective treatment for low libido, a problem they estimate affects between 9% and 26% of women, depending on their age and whether they have been through the menopause.

The drug is flibanserin, and was tested in Germany as an antidepressant. Turns out, it was a lousy cure for depression, but women taking it reported a wonderful side-efffect: an increase in sexual desire.

The new drugs raises several questions for me.

1. How quickly will it be approved by the U.S. FDA?

2. Will insurance companies pay for this drug the same way they currently pay for male ED treatments?

But I have other questions, too. If both men and women go through periods of diminished sexual desire, (assuming that this is not a permanent condition), then can’t the decrease in sexual desire be seen as a natural rhythm in the life cycle? Are there times when nature simply doesn’t want us to have sex?

My most important question is this, however. We already have a horrible time in this culture accepting that women have sexual desires. We still categorize women by either the “girls-gone-wild” hook-up culture or the “Purity ring-wearing not-until-I’m-married” group. We think we’ve made progress on this, but evidence suggests otherwise. How quickly are women condemned for deviations from the sexual norm? How quick are we to label sexually active teens girls as somehow wrong in what they’re doing (even if they are being responsible and using birth control).

And what about the ultimate form of punishment: The withholding of contraceptive knowledge from sexually -active women as a form of social control. We insist on teaching abstinence-only education, try to limit young women’s access to contraceptives, and make it a crime to transport a woman under 18 across state lines to get an abortion. Given that there are few states left where one can get an abortion, we’ve de facto made it illegal to help young women get abortions unless it’s their parents who are directly involved. (And how come these same people who believe that these young women are too young to make the decision to have an abortion are therefore old enough to make the decision to bear a child?)

The same problems faced by young women are also faced by those women who do not have the financial means to travel interstate, or who do not have the money to pay for this medical procedure. And, if they do have the money to pay for the medical procedure, how much shit will they have to endure to get into see an ob-gyn who still performs abortions?

My point is that, once again, our culture will send mixed messages to women. Now, those whose libidos are going through a temporary cool phase will be told to get with the program and take a drug. Those who want to heighten their desire and take advantage of the drug will be seen as “loose” women for wanting to enjoy sex. And, while insurance companies may pay for women to have sex, they won’t pay for the consequences of sex.

What a mad world we live in.

Being fat in Japan is no longer a matter of shame or embarrassment: the size of your waist is now determined by law.

Concerned about rising rates of both in a graying nation, Japanese lawmakers last year set a maximum waistline size for anyone age 40 and older: 85 centimeters (33.5 inches) for men and 90 centimeters (35.4 inches) for women.

Under Japan’s health care coverage, companies administer check-ups to employees once a year. Those who fail to meet the waistline requirement must undergo counseling. If companies do not reduce the number of overweight employees by 10 percent by 2012 and 25 percent by 2015, they could be required to pay more money into a health care program for the elderly. An estimated 56 million Japanese will have their waists measured this year.

An American journalist, living in Japan writes:

“I am back in Japan, living in Tokyo for a year, and one of my Japanese co-worker recently stopped joining the other men for lunch at restaurants; instead, he began bringing a small bento box. When I asked why, he said his wife believed he was getting fat and required him to eat her pre-approved portions.”

Not surprisingly, there are unintended consequences. Eating disorders are prevalent, especially among young women. When Ralph Lauren was criticized by the U.S. media after digitally altering an image of already-slender supermodel Filippa Hamilton to make her appear even skinnier, I was not surprised that a company executive said the advertisement had only appeared in Japan.

Maybe you are thinking, “Good. Too many fat people in the world. Maybe this is the way to get people to quit being so obese.”

I guess I don’t see it this way.

For me, regulating someone’s waistline is akin to telling a woman what she can do with her body when she is pregnant. It’s called privacy. It’s a matter between a person and his/her doctor. Your doctor may tell you that you need to lose weight to maintain your health. But the government? Mandating your weight?

I keep thinking about Ceaucescu in Romania, who, determined to see birthrates rise in his country, outlawed abortion. Women underwent mandatory pregnancy tests at work. And the orphanages filled to capacity with abandoned children.

How can a government tell a member of its populace what the limits of its body is? How can the government tell any woman that she must stay pregnant?

If the idea that someone could come up to you in a restaurant and tell you not to eat dessert because your waistline exceeds the national standard, imagine how it must feel to have a total stranger tell you that you must carry a baby to term?

For me, there’s no difference.

Privacy is privacy.

Body sovereignty is body sovereignty.

I’ve gone back and forth between entertaining the idea of having children and shunning it completely ever since it first occurred to me that I might someday be a mother. Being the youngest of three whose ages span three separate decades, I’ve got next to zero experience handling kids. If I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t dive in. So raising children has never been too serious a consideration.

There are two sides to the coin, as I see it. On one, you’ve got an adorable, inquisitive, toddling creature who absorbs knowledge like a sponge and has all the potential in the world inside of them. A delicate treasure toting stuffed hippos. Cuddly. On the other side, you’ve got a screaming, stubborn, volatile creature who has a megaphone built into its throat and a propensity to make its mother and father gray-haired, exhausted, and sexless. Red-faced, fists clenched. Not cuddly.

But when I spend enough time admiring well-behaved and glowy-cheeked children in the supermarket as I shop for whichever variations on pasta I will make for that week, I start to say things like, “aw.” Or, “what a cute baby. Look at the baby!” Or, if it’s serious, “I want a son first.”

Now, this last one is a sentiment I’ve held for years. If, in fact, I can get over the idea of labor, epidurals, my maternal family’s multiple brushes with death during childbirth, and the very scarring things I will probably say to my future husband in that window of time between water breaking and infant wailing, not to mention the whole experience of having an alien life in your belly (okay, I know, not belly) for almost a whole year and all the special experiences I’ll have as a super-duper hormonal pregnant lady, and if my future husband can get over those things too…well, if all of those things align, the idea of carrying new life is miraculous. A journey I’ll be blessed to take in the distant future. And I do, in fact, want a son first. Why is that?

I realized it Sunday night while driving home from a friend’s house. We’d had a long discussion about our experiences as artists, our hopes and purposes. Earlier that day, I’d eaten grilled hamburgers with other friends from my church and went swimming. Earlier than that, I’d played djembe for a couple of hours at church, pounding into the congregational music. From the beginning, it was a good day.

But in between each event, I felt like a soda can shaken to the point of explosion. My boyfriend was busy with his own activities, and less communication than usual led to me filling in the blanks with all kinds of misconceptions that were not in my favor. The storm was brewing in my chest. Apparently you don’t need to be pregnant to be super hormonal.

Maybe it was because of this, or maybe my mind just wandered and the dots really aren’t connected. But I realized for the first time, indirectly, why I want a son.

I don’t know how to be a good woman.

I had the idea that I could shape a son into a good man. That I could explain life from a woman’s perspective, and that he would grow to be a defender of the more often marginalized and objectified gender. Or maybe, if I’m honest, that I want to fix everything about men that hurts and agitates me. Zing.

But what on earth would I teach a daughter? I thought through the many ways I feel inadequate, the negative ways that I perceive my body and my soul. The ways I react out of those skewed perceptions. I thought about the way women are told that their power lies in sexuality while advertising mocks us for unending insufficiencies; how those who no longer allure per our culture’s very narrow definitions are discarded. Do I really want to bring another woman into such a raw deal? I wondered about my daughter’s ability to believe in herself when I don’t believe in myself. Could she learn to reflexively fight for her dreams when I decided mine were unrealistic? Could I teach her to be whole and independent when I feel like shards of glass searching for someone or something to glue me back together? And now, on the familiar verge of reacting to imaginary threats and spreading misery, do I really think I can teach someone what love is?

I used to think the fear of a daughter came from my relationship with my own mother, the ways I resented her unfairly, and knowing that my daughter will resent me, too, whether fairly or not. It’s a defeating thought, but even more defeating is the idea that I don’t even know how to be my own person, or one in which I take pride. I’m twenty-four years old. I know there’s no time limit on these things, and life comes in stages, but it’s frustrating to look back and realize I had a better sense of self four years ago than I do now. Life’s parameters were different, sure, and I was in that hopeful and free-spirited period of assembling my future. I chose detours and deconstruction, gradually relinquishing my joy in exchange for empty promises. I still fixate on the idea of retrieving my old self, but besides the fact that my naïveté is overly romanticized, it is an impossibility. I have to rebuild the structure. With energy I don’t fully possess.

A couple of things propel me. First, the memory of how happy I felt one sunny afternoon in college after a dance class. Walking over to my bike, I felt strong and very present. I knew myself and I liked myself. Though I was already in the process of traveling a path I now recognize as a long detour, for one moment, away from addiction, I felt good in my skin.

The second motivation is my relationships. I cannot love people when I do not love myself. I’ve tried, only to watch myself burn bridges in frantic self-protection.

Perhaps someday I’ll be a good mother. Before that, the life I mold is my own. And when the time comes, I hope that my first months of expectancy are filled with the calm of solidly knowing I am a good, steady, and whole woman, even in my imperfection.

Bitter? Moi?

Mais, non! I live in the greatest country in the world. Everything we touch turns to gold! Why, just look at all the great things we’ve accomplished in Afghanistan!

In today’s Guardian, we learn that Three Cups of Tea and The Kite Runner be damned, things are NOT better for women in Afghanistan.

Afghan women protest at the proposed new family law Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

(For more of my writing on this subject in the past, see When Will Women Matter; Faces; Will Women Pay for Peace in Afghanistan; and How Can I Bear It?.)

According to reporter Janine di Giovani:

Eight years later I returned, but the Afghanistan I found was far from jubilant. Despite the money poured into reconstruction and development, it is one of the five poorest countries in the world. There is 40% unemployment – nearly 80% in some parts of the country. A third of children under five are malnourished. Life expectancy is 43 – and it is one of only three countries in the world where women die earlier than men.

Did you read that statistic? LIFE EXPECTANCY IS 43 and women die earlier than men. 

You would think, given those miserable statistics, that perhaps the United States and the Afghan government would be looking at ways to improve the lives of its people, especially its women.

Yeah, right. When things aren’t going right in a society, what’s the first thing that gets blamed? Lax morality. And who is responsible for lax morality? Yep. Us. Those daughters of Eve.

I arrived to meet women before the presidential elections next month and to talk about a new law, which if brought in, could have drastic repercussions for women. The Shia Family Planning law was signed last March by President Hamid Karzai in an attempt, many believe, to appease powerful mullahs. The Afghan constitution allows Shias to have a separate family law from the Sunni majority based on traditional Shia jurisprudence, and some think the law is linked to the August elections and the Shia electorate who would have to abide by it (they could form up to 20% of the electorate).

The proposed law led to furious protests from women’s groups. It sanctioned marital rape and brought back Taliban-era restrictions on women by outlining when a woman could leave her house and the circumstances in which she has to have sex with her husband; Shia woman would be allowed to leave home alone “for a legitimate purpose” only which the law does not define, and could refuse sex with their husbands only when ill or menstruating.

You see? The best thing for a woman who is not going to live very long anyway is to just have sex with her husband whether she wants to or not; to stay in her house; and to keep her fucking pie-hole shut.

Following international outrage, Karzai backtracked and said the law would be reviewed. This month it was amended and re-signed by the president, but has not yet been ratified by parliament. Human rights groups say it is unclear how much the amendments have done to improve the law. And the law has already achieved its aim – instilling fear and insecurity among an already traumatised female population.

Soraya Sobhrang, a human rights activist I met in her Kabul office, says, “The law will affect all women if it goes through. It opens the door for other repressive laws to be passed, for Sunni Muslims as well as Shia.” A young doctor friend, Najeeb Shawal, says he is seeing more female patients who were depressed since news of the law emerged. “They have the kind of hopelessness that comes with knowing your life is incredibly repressed. And might become more so.”

Congratulations. The law is already working. We love it when women are depressed. That means we don’t need to worry about them going outside and making a ruckus. Instead, they’ll just stay inside, and, if we’re really lucky, they’ll stick their heads in gas ovens or set their burqas on fire. Everybody wins!

By the way. Karzai’s original excuse for signing the law? He didn’t read it before he signed it. 

There are bright spots in Afghanistan:

Bamiyan is the home of the Shia Hazara, the third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. I am surprised by the “city’s” remoteness because there has been a huge outcry here from the women over the law: demonstrations, protests on the radio, grass roots organisations very quickly coming together. I meet one of the protest leaders in a small restaurant overlooking the holes in the mountain left when the Taliban blew up the ancient Buddha statues there in 2001. Batool Mohammadi is 27, black-robed, and heavily pregnant. “The law does not fit with humanitarian law,” she says. Batool, a Hazara, comes from the generation of Afghan women born after the Soviet invasion and raised during the Taliban era. She has only known war, conflict and repression. The small window of triumph after the fall of the Taliban – who brutally repressed the Hazaras – has given her a taste of freedom and she is not ready to give it up. “In an area as traditional as Bamiyan, one of the major problems with this law is that it will stop the trend towards modernisation.” As Batool leaves, she says that when her baby is born in June, she wants him or her to enter a world moving towards equality, not repression.

The governor, Habiba Sarabi, is the former Minister of Women and as a Shia will have to obey the law if it is passed. She meets us in her sparse office, a grim, Soviet-style building set on a windswept plain. There are plates of nuts and fruits and the governor, looking exhausted, nibbles dried apricot. At 53, Sarabi is no-nonsense. She is a chemist by trade and speaks good English. The daughter of an illiterate mother who encouraged her daughter to read and write, she tells me when she was young she was mocked as she walked to school alone. Having struggled so hard it was particularly hard to see her own daughter, now 24, denied education under the Taliban. The family escaped to Pakistan and Sarabi worked on human rights and women’s projects.

On the new law, she tries to be diplomatic, but I can tell she is concerned: “Fortunately, women raised their voice.” She is confident (perhaps overly so) that the law will not go through. But later, at her residence, when she curls her stockinged feet under her, she admits the wider crisis. Bamiyan is one of the few success stories in Afghanistan: it is poppy-free, the government functions well, and as she points out, “It is the safest place in Afghanistan. The rule of law is important here.” She has improved the education and health services (instigating midwife programmes, for example, in a province that has one major hospital). But can this last? If, following elections, Karzai succumbs to the mullahs (who exercise huge political power in Bamiyan and the rest of the country), for how long will it be safe for women? Even Sarabi finally admitted that if the law is ratified, it would affect her too.

But those women who have been unaffected by these new laws are rare. And a lot of women are frightened: who wouldn’t be?

Women who have managed to cross gender boundaries seem in a state of shock over the law. Jamila Barekzai is a police officer whose female colleague was killed by the Taliban last year in Kandahar for daring to do a mans’ job. When I go to meet her at the Central Afghan Police Headquarters on the edge of Kabul, next to one of the biggest Shia mosques in the city, she is wearing her olive uniform and heavy black eyeliner. She was transferred from Kandahar last year to Kabul when she thought she would be killed too. She takes out her mobile phone and plays a recording of an unnamed Taliban telling her to stop working, “or you will be taught the lesson we taught your friend”. She says she was mainly frightened for her children and touches the gun at her hip.

President Obama has committed more troops to Afghanistan, ostensibly for finding that guy (what was his name? the one who blew up the towers?) and gettting the increasing threat of terrorism from the Swot Valley in Pakistan under control.

But are women on President Obama’s radar? Are we going to be willing to trade stability in the area for the lives of millions of Afghani women who will once again be confined to their homes, illiterate, ill-considered, depressed, and basic sperm receptacles for their husbands? Is this the legacy that Obama wants to leave in Afghanistan?

Or can we start, right from the beginning, by saying to Karzai that yes, we know you have us by the gas hose right now because you have access to that pipeline we want, but hey, women are people, too.

Please, President Obama. If we are to go to war in Afghanistan, make it mean something. I do not want to have to write in five years that we have subdued the terrorists, but once again, we have paid for it with women’s lives.

President Obama, First Lady Obama, Secretary of State Clinton–anyone–everyone–who will listen: do not turn your backs on the women of Afghanistan. They are not collateral damage. We are not collateral damage of war. We are human beings. We have feelings. And bodies. And we hurt. And we ache. And we grieve. And if, once again, we are told that it is more important that we are treated like pieces of shit so that some problem may be solved, it may be that some of us may not be able to take that anymore.

So please.

I beg you.

On my knees.

For the women of Afghanistan.
Don’t. Forget. Us.

When I leave, someone tells me the Taliban spring offensive has begun, American troops are pouring in, and President Karzai is beginning his political campaign. I keep thinking of Batool, the pregnant activist in Bamiyan, and her baby, and her life in 20 years’ time. If the law does not pass and women continue rolling on, she has a chance. If not, she might still be wearing a burka and never learn how to drive.

—–

Governor David A. Paterson has directed that flags on New York State government buildings be flown at half-staff on Thursday,  July 16, 2009,  in honor of  a Fort Drum Soldier  killed in Afghanistan on July 9, 2009.
Spec. Joshua R. Farris of La Grange, Texas, died in Wardak Pronvince of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.  Spec. Farris was a member to the 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team of 10th Mountain Division.
” I speak for all New Yorkers when I say that we will forever honor the service this young soldier gave to our nation, ” said Governor Paterson.  “He was not a native New Yorker, but we consider all soldiers stationed at Fort Drum to be one of our own.  On behalf of the people of the State, I extend our deepest sympathy to the family, friends and fellow soldiers of Sepc. Farris.”
Governor Paterson has directed the flags on all State buildings to be lowered to half-staff in honor and tribute to our State’s service members who are killed in action.

And the beat goes on….

Please don’t ask me to write a history of violence against doctors and clinics who provide reproductive medical care to women.

If you are at all aware, if you have read a newspaper in the past 25 years, you know. You just know.

The Wichita Eagle has a full page of reaction to Dr. George Tiller’s murder on its front page. Last night, mourners turned out to hold a vigil for Dr. Tiller. As usual, those who like to dance on others’ graves also turned out, with their hateful signs. These signs were similar to the hateful twitter messages that ChangeAgent has so masterfully documented over at her blog.

When President Obama said that he wanted to meet in the middle on the abortion issue a few weeks ago, I wrote then that I felt as if he had just thrown women under the bus. There is no middle with anti-abortion extremists. They are not interested in meeting in the middle. They are only interested in one thing: eradicating all abortion, all access to abortion. In many cases, they want to eliminate access to certain forms of birth control, (some–all forms of birth control), and, if they can’t get what they want by legal means, they practice terrorism.

Thus, yesterday was inevitable.

The anti-abortion violence of the 1980’s and 1990’s, when clinics and OB-GYNs were slaughtered–some in their own homes, as Dr. Slepian was, were horrible times. They have left us now, with the experience of going to Planned Parenthood and having to pass through metal detectors and bullet proof glass. If you are going into a clinic where abortions are performed, you have to pass by people who feel it is their job to judge you, no matter why you might be going to the clinic.

These people have no compassion. You may be having to go in for a D&C because your fetus has died inside you–you’re still a babykiller in their eyes. You may be the victim of rape. Babykiller. You may simply be too young, or too poor, or not able to care for a child–you’re a babykiller.

Funny, but I don’t see those same people outside urologists’ offices screaming at men that getting a vasectomy constitutes being a sperm-killer or a potential baby killer.

I wish I could write something eloquent, something full of compassion for those who oppose abortion so violently and ask, “can’t we all get along?”

But I don’t have that in me today.

I am mourning Dr. Tiller. I am mourning the women who decided today that they are too frightened to take care of their medical needs. I am mourning the areas of the country that will lose access to adequate medical care for women. I am mourning the messages that are being sent out–once again–to women that their bodies don’t matter. The only thing that counts about a woman’s body is that she can produce babies. And if she wants to not produce babies, well, if we can’t stop you legally, we’ll close the clinics, kill the doctors, tighten the noose so that you will have to travel thousands of miles to find help.

I grieve. Please don’t ask me to be rational or make sense.

I grieve. And I’m angry.

I grieve, but I will not hurt someone in return.

I grieve, but you will not silence me.

I will grieve, and then I will do whatever I can to fight for reproductive rights.

I repeat the pledge I made a few weeks ago: I will purchase Plan B contraception for any woman who needs it.

To the hate-mongers on television who equate abortion with murder: you condoned this, you encourage those who are unhinged to carry out your dirty work. You should be held accountable. I will not hurt you with violence. But I will write to your advertisers, and I will encourage those who advertise with you, to withdraw their advertising or ask them why they support terrorist sympathizers.

For this is what this is. Terrorism. Plain and Simple. Not done by “foreigners.” But by “Americans.”

There is no excuse for it. None.

And we will fight you. Peacefully. But relentlessly. We will not go back to the days of coat hangers and illegal abortions. We will not sneak around to maintain sovereignty OVER OUR OWN BODIES.

We are here. We are not going away. And you will not frighten us.

I got that feeling again last night. It swelled again this morning, when I read Nicholas Kristof’s piece (about how rape is not treated as a priority crime) in the New York Times. It’s that “it’s not your turn,” feeling. That “don’t be so pushy,” feeling. That “you’re being selfish; don’t you realize that there are much more important things going on in the world than you?”

As a woman, I’ve heard that argument more times than there are members of Congress. I heard it first as a little girl, when it was made clear to me that I need to wait my turn, to not ask for too much, to stop thinking that everything is about me.

The question last night was to President Obama, who was asked about his campaign promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act in his first 100 days. FOCA has not been signed, and last night, listening closely made me uneasy. Yes. The Obama administration has lifted the international gag rule. And yes, the courts have ruled that the Bush administration used politics over science to decide who could have access to the Morning After pill.

But President Obama, when questioned about FOCA last night, sounded suddenly like a man who was brushing off a question he no longer found all that important. Here is the full transcript of the exchange between him and the reporter:

REPORTER: As a candidate, you vowed that one of the very things you wanted to do was sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which, as you know, would eliminate federal, state and local restrictions on abortion. And at one point in the campaign when asked about abortion and life, you said that it was above — quote, ‘above my pay grade.’

Now that you’ve been president for 100 days, obviously, your pay grade is a little higher than when you were a senator.

Do you still hope that Congress quickly sends you the Freedom of Choice Act so you can sign it?

OBAMA: You know, the — my view on — on abortion, I think, has been very consistent. I think abortion is a moral issue and an ethical issue.

I think that those who are pro-choice make a mistake when they — if they suggest — and I don’t want to create straw men here, but I think there are some who suggest that this is simply an issue about women’s freedom and that there’s no other considerations. I think, look, this is an issue that people have to wrestle with and families and individual women have to wrestle with.

OBAMA: The reason I’m pro-choice is because I don’t think women take that — that position casually. I think that they struggle with these decisions each and every day. And I think they are in a better position to make these decisions ultimately than members of Congress or a president of the United States, in consultation with their families, with their doctors, with their clergy.

So — so that has been my consistent position. The other thing that I said consistently during the campaign is I would like to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion, or at least considering getting an abortion, particularly if we can reduce the number of teen pregnancies, which has started to spike up again.

And so I’ve got a task force within the Domestic Policy Council in the West Wing of the White House that is working with groups both in the pro-choice camp and in the pro-life camp, to see if we can arrive at some consensus on that.

Now, the Freedom of Choice Act is not highest legislative priority. I believe that women should have the right to choose. But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on. And that’s — that’s where I’m going to focus.

I’m sorry, Mr. President. I don’t care about the Right’s ANGER on this issue. I care about the fact that there are millions of women in this country who cannot get access to abortion because of the myriad restrictions that have been placed upon the medical procedure by legislators who have no business telling women what they can or cannot do with their reproductive capabilities.

I used to be a lot more moderate in my views. I used to be a lot more willing to listen to the other side’s arguments about what’s involved in abortion. But not anymore. Women die every day in childbirth. Women die every day from botched abortions. Women die every day in Africa from injuries, caused by rape, that are exacerbated by pregnancy. THIS IS NOT A MORAL ISSUE. THIS IS A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE.

Mr. President, this is also an economic issue. If you do indeed care for the working class and middle class who are suddenly struggling to put food on the table, don’t you think you should be worried about the women out there who can’t put food in one more child’s mouth? And don’t tell me she should be using birth control. EVEN WITH INSURANCE, insurance companies manage to get away with charging outrageous co-pays for birth control pills and other devices. (One pack of pills is $25 a month co-pay. That’s a lot of money when you’re struggling.)

If we were talking about any other health issue out there, would we be having this argument? Why, when it comes to women’s bodies and their rights to control their fertility, do these issues suddenly become about morals? Why are you, President Obama, backing away from a promise that you made so that you might spend some time trying to appease those people who do not want women to have abortions at any time for any reason? They are not to be reasoned with.

You cannot make them happy. You cannot make them like you on this issue.

Please stop. Please just do what you said you were going to do. Lift the restrictions on a woman’s health options.

PLEASE.

Maureen Dowd is mystified as to why Elizabeth Edwards felt it necessary to pen her memoir, Resilience.

John told her a little about Rielle a few days after he announced in 2006, and she told him to drop out to “protect our family from this woman, from his act,” she writes.

She said she cried, screamed and threw up when she found out. But she ended up going along, helping sell the voters on her husband’s character as a truth teller and charm as a loving husband and father. She had put so many quarters in the shiny slot machine of their mutual ambition. It was hard to walk away.

Just as it’s hard to walk away from her desire to prosecute her husband and his former girlfriend now in public, while still taking the marriage “month by month.”

Ms. Edwards also mentions how frustrating it was to be married to a man who appeared much younger than she, and she blames his charming, good looks for the pass that was made at him by Rielle. If she hadn’t made the pass, Edwards would have been a good boy. Like Dowd, I call bullshit.

I don’t know John Edwards personally. (And as a point of disclosure, he was the person I supported early in the primaries, until he fired Amanda Marcotte as part of his staff because of the feminist stuff she wrote on her blog.) But I’ve known the John Edwards of the world. Young, handsome men who marry women who are ambitious, maternal, nurturing, smart as hell, and someone who, in another life, might have been their mother. In such a marriage, a man like Edwards gets to remain the child, always being taken care of by his wife.

In the case in my extended family, the man in question let his wife work menial jobs to put him through law school, and then a year later, after she should have been enjoying the good life with him, he impregnated his legal secretary, walked out on his family, and refused to accept responsibility for the children he had had with his first wife. And he’s still a charming, handsome man who has hit on me in the past. I just saw through him.

But, back to Maureen Dowd. I know she’s a smart woman. But I don’t understand why she doesn’t understand why someone needs to write about their pain. Maybe Ms. Edwards is trying to embarrass her husband–it’s not as if he doesn’t deserve it–but perhaps she’s trying to exorcise her own pain.

We’re writers here. Many of us deal with the most painful things you can imagine by writing about them. And we don’t just write them in our journals and forget about them. We post them, because we need someone, anyone, out there, to get why we’re hurting.

It’s part of being human. We don’t have the extended families and communities where such matters might have been resolved by many nights of tears and friends and their comfort. Now, what many of us have is this need to reach out to strangers. To say, “this happened to me.” And to know that someone will read the essay/book/poem who has been through the same thing, and somewhere in this universe, a connection will have been made.

Dowd is smart, but when she writes something like this:

Asked by Oprah in a taping for Thursday’s show whether she’s still in love with her husband, she replied, “You know, that’s a complicated question.”

The really complicated question is what she hopes to gain from this book.

I want to ask her the question. WHY do you write. Is it a purely intellectual exercise? Do you not hope to make a connection with someone out there?

The way to our hearts is not always through our brains. If Elizabeth Edwards needs to write out her pain, regardless of whether anyone buys the book, who am I–or Maureen Dowd–to tell her not to do it?

The only thing I wish for Ms. Edwards is peace. If the book helps her get there, than more power to her.

I was at the mall recently. I loathe the mall, and yet, I find myself there fairly frequently. It is the closest place to my apartment for basic necessities—the Target there has a food market, so I can pick up eggs, or milk, or my prescriptions without having to drive downtown.

As usual, I was people watching. The mall seemed full of locals, and I started noticing something. Virtually everyone was carrying around extra weight. Lots of belly fat. Some of them were so slowed up by the extra weight that they lumbered. I started looking for lean people. There were a few, but as a percentage, it was less than 20 percent.

I know that we’re engaged in a national crisis over American obsesity. We blame television, and our sedentary lifestyles, and the availability of cheap, high-fat food. We drink too much soda. We eat too much candy and potato chips and fast food. We don’t exercise. It’s all our fault. We’re the richest nation on earth and we’re a bunch of slobs. Blah Blah Blah.

I’d like to offer some thoughts.

I have been re-reading Caroline Knapp’s brilliant book: Appetites: Why Women Want.   In it, Knapp (who died way too young at 42 of cancer) wrote of women’s appetites: for food, for sex, for material goods. She did not condemn desire. Rather, in a complex argument that I’m treating schematically here, she looked at how desire is twisted in our culture. For white, middle-class women especially, (and Knapp admits that her observations/experiences are based on her own position as white and middle class) thwarted desire lies at the heart of many of our cultural maladies.

It is the illusion of choice that thwarts the desire. It is the illusion that a well-educated, intelligent white woman is going to have access to real power in this culture that ultimately turns desire in on itself, twists it, cripples it, so that the thwarted desire becomes the source of suffering. In a way, it’s the Noble Truths of Buddhism. In another way, it’s what it’s like to be told you have power in America when you do not.

And Knapp argues that for women, who despite the seeming accommodations made for women’s liberation by the powers that be, are especially affected by this thwarted desire. As I said, she’s writing as a white, middle-class woman, and how this thwarted desire manifests itself in other groups of people is not in her expertise.

But her argument spoke to me.

Knapp was an anorexic. In a way, this provokes a “ho hum” reaction in me. After all, just how many more books do we need to read about white anorexia? But this book spoke to me because I also have an eating disorder. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve dealt with bulimia for the last several years. I thought it was a thing of the past. Occasionally, (but not for the past ten days, thank god) bulimia called to me. And sometimes, I answered that call.

It’s embarrassing to admit. What sane, dignified, intelligent person wants to admit that sometimes, after eating a meal, or a bar of chocolate, or an ice cream sundae, she would stick her finger down the back of her throat and vomit? Especially one who is the mother of two daughters and who is desperate for them to not emulate that kind of behaviour? I found ways of being secretive about it, including going outside and vomiting in the backyard, away from the house. In the dark. Alone. So no one could see. It wasn’t a full-scale relapse. But it happened often enough that I could smell relapse in the miasma of my own vomitus.

My bulimia is fueled by a few things. Basic brain chemistry, for one. My genetic line on both sides of my family condemn me to craziness of various stripes. I am beyond grateful that my brain chemistry can be treated with drugs, and I no longer worry about the fact that I have to take antidepressants. Illness is illness. Despite the fact that I am in the happiest relationship of my life, that I am in love, that I am loved, that my children are doing well, and that nothing, at this moment, seeks to harm me, I feel powerlessness and a need to run. It’s a potent combination, and there have been  days in the past where that combination has knocked me on my ass. Or, knocked me to my knees, bending over a toilet.

I will tell you one more thing before I get back to those folks at the mall. Every time I threw up in the past, I was entirely conscious of what I was doing. The conversation went something like this: “Throwing up is not going to solve your problems.” And the response in my head was always something like, “Fuck you. It’s going to make me feel better.” In a situation where I cannot seem to move myself out of the position I’m currently in, the fact that I could manipulate my body endorphins, exercise control over my food intake, hurt myself, was moving myself. It was power. False power. But power nonetheless.

I am starting to take my power back. I am working my ass off on some writing projects that I hope will get me somewhere I want to be. I am reaching out to people who I love. I am running, or biking, or hiking, and loving the world in which spring tentatively claims the frozen earth.

But,  I look around and I see a lot of folks who are obese. And I found myself wondering why there has been such a growth of obesity in the past couple of decades. And all the reasons in the third paragraph still apply.

But I think obesity is a metaphor. I could just as easily be focusing on the need to shop. Or the need to drink. To take pills. To obsess. But, just for now, I want to talk about food, because food, for me, is an issue.

I think that my problem with food is reflective of a larger problem in our culture. We, as a nation, do not know how to make ourselves feel better. We do not know how to move ourselves out of the positions that the vast majority of us find ourselves in. We have been gradually stripped of our power. We cannot afford to buy the toys that we could that distracted us. When I was a kid, many, many people had RVs, and boats, and a new car every year. Middle class folks. But the middle class is drowning, and the poor, well, the poor are long underwater.

So, what do we have? We have food. Cheap, fattening, sweet food. And our televisions. The solace of food is what many of us give ourselves because we have nothing else. We can see what we want: it’s there on our television sets every night. Taunting us. But we cannot have it. We send our children off to fight in an unjust war. We work our barely-getting-by jobs. We struggle to make ends meet. And we eat. It doesn’t change anything. But for those moments when that sweetness is on our tongues, we feel better in our powerlessness.

 I love turkeys not only because with their Crayola-box-of-eight-fat-crayons plumage and their plump brown bodies they’re just plain majestic, but, well, because turkeys are stupid. And they’ve proven their stupidity to me so many times that I anticipate the dumbness when I see them.

A flock has taken up residence in the field not too far from my house. Probably 12 birds in all. Two toms and 10 jennies. As usual, the jennies are my heroines: their focus is on finding tiny things to eat in the freshly shorn corn fields, bits of corn stalk still visible among the newly turned-over soil. Too early to plant–this morning’s snow proves that, but the birds are patient, scratching for a bit of something.

The males are idiots. Two of them this year–I’m not sure how long that situation will last, at which point one of them will hang his tail down in disgrace and go off into the woods to lead a bachelor’s life for the season–but currently, it’s tail wars. Thursday–right before my flight over the handlebars of my bicycle–they were at it. The strut, I mean. Tails erect, each feather splayed, the two birds pranced and performed for each other. I wondered at the weights of their tails, how carrying those feathers must throw their balance off. Tiny little turkey heads atop round-ready-for-the-turkey-baster-bodies and those tails attached. I imagined the weight of kindergarten hands, tracing fingers with fat crayons to be cut out and magneted onto the fridge. Male turkeys never look quite real–they are always mediated through the eyes of my elementary school self, who came to see the turkey tail as an icon of November, and somehow sees those tails, still, made of construction paper, waxy with the rubbings of thick Crayolas.

Anyway, the real turkeys, not those from my childhood, preened for each other. As far as I could tell, the females never looked up, just continued with the real business of trying to find food, and hoping that when the males had sorted it out, one of them would come soothe the ache in her groin that told her it was spring and that it was time for life to begin again.

Death and destruction were everywhere this weekend, but I have excised them from my memory. I am worn down, and have made a conscious decision that for a while, at least, my focus, our focus will be on nature, the natural world, and not on the world of guns.

If you do not live in a land with seasons, you may not know that spring is an aural experience before visual evidence exists that life is returning. On my bike ride on Thursday, I had been listening to my iPod, but as I passed the swampy no man’s land between the road and the gulch, a piercing noise made me stop my bike and take the earbuds from my ears. Peepers. In full voice. I couldn’t see them, but it made no difference. If the Peepers were calling out their love cries, spring really was inevitable.

As my friend Jo said upon sight of the snowbells in Central Park last week, “Fuck you, winter. I won.”

Sometimes, that’s how it feels here. I can write odes to the stark pulchritude of a winter’s day, but often, I write those things to prove to myself that I can find awe in the awful. Seven months of winter wears one out. Thursday’s sun, its warmth, the Peepers, the turkeys, even my frickin’ bike accident, were signs that winter was receding. Even in years when it has snowed up until Mother’s Day, winter eventually goes away.

So this morning, it is snowing. I could tell before I even left my bedroom. Getting out of bed, the apartment was chill, which could only mean that the temperature had dropped precipitously overnight. The snow is temporary. The grief of this weekend’s events is temporary. Life is temporary.

But those turkeys? Those are forever. I give them the last laugh, and I bow in the general direction of their enduring power.

Strut on with your bad selves.

As is typical any morning, I woke up a couple of hours before anyone else, and I started reading papers on the Web. This morning, on the Guardian, one of the major stories is about a new wave of crime in South Africa that is being called “Corrective Rape.”  This abomination in terms is the belief that if a lesbian is gang-raped by men, the lesbian part of herself will be driven out, and she will emerge from the violence as a heterosexual.

I thought that I would devote an entire diary to this topic, but I found, this morning, that I just could not go there. Rape is epidemic: not only is rape a tactic of war in most of central Africa, I have read recently that rape is being used in Haiti to enforce social discipline, and now, in South Africa, to enforce heterosexual norms.

Not to mention the huge numbers of rapes that take place in the United States each and every day.

Instead, I went searching through things I’ve written before. I hoped to find something that would explain to me why, why, hatred of homosexuals and women continue to persist in this world. Why, for example, the fact that Obama is even considering not overturning the bigoted “Defense of Marriage” Act–a legal abomination if ever there was one.

So, what follows is my wrestling with what it is about homosexuality (and by that same logic–women’s bodies) that frightens fundamentalists so. (And I mean fundamentalists of the three major religions–all of whom have strictures on the female body and against homosexuality.)

This diary is not intended to offend anyone, and yet, I have a feeling it will. It’s not intended as a criticism of Christianity; it’s an attempt to understand why theocrats hate and fear homosexuality so much. If we lived in an Islamic country, I’d be making similar arguments, but the majority of the theocrats in this country are Christian. Therefore, I ask these questions of the relationship between Christ and those men.

The theocrats’ hatred of the body is a particular fascination of mine. It’s a topic that haunts me, and, as things get increasingly worse in the United States in terms of the attacks on privacy, and as I feel the water getting hotter and the frogs still not jumping out of the pot, I search for answers, for words, for a way to understand them, extend compassion to them, and change their minds. Yes. I want to be the queen of the universe and make these people see the light. I really want to release them from their fears, because I think they are a people driven by fear. Fear is the basis of addiction. And fundies act like addicts in ways that I’ve articulated before.

And so, I feel obliged to try to feel my way through the relationship between the erotic and the spiritual. The sacred and the profane. Here’s my thinking.

Attempting to find the connections between the sacred and the erotic seems a fool’s enterprise. Immediately, my own intellect begins to mock me, presenting images of lascivious priests, porn shop editions of the Kama Sutra, or jokes about the ResERECTION or the Second Coming.

But, when I can release myself from the shackles of my rational self, I can admit some things. I don’t know if god exists. But I do know that my understanding of the sacred, those moments when awe replaces fear, is linked to my understanding of the erotic-those moments when the distance between two bodies is breached by contact. The hum of flesh against flesh.

I recognize this aspect of myself, this desire, need, to find my connection to spiritual bliss in genital contact. After all, so many of the feelings used by mystics to describe their encounters with the divine have always sounded to my ear like descriptions of orgasm or its afterglow. When scholars make this argument, that religious ecstasy is sexual ecstasy sublimated, they are accused of reductionism. But what of persons such as me, who feel in ways that we are not always able to articulate, that sexual intimacy is as close as we’ll ever come to feeling the fire of the divine? Am I the only one who feels this way?

To speak about sex as if it is capable of elevating us is to risk being accused of not being spiritual enough, of living only on an earthly plain, of privileging the body over the soul. But why? There are few religions that celebrate the body as the gateway to the divine. Mostly, we are advised to subjugate the body to the spirit, to discipline it, to control it, to prevent it from carrying us into excess. And this has never made sense to me.

It has on an intellectual level. I understand the notion of dualities: sacred and profane, suffering and pleasure, good and evil, man and woman. As someone who has studied gender in historical context, I could riff for hours on the association of women with the body, men with spirit, and how both women and the body became the gateways through which evil, the Devil, sin found ways to enter the world.

I look at the scriptural justifications for the ways that Fundies behave in the world, and most frequently, they cite Leviticus, or other books from the Old Testament. Or they quote Paul, who was not Jesus. Or, as I read in an issue of Harper’s, they cite the kick-ass Jesus from Revelations. That kick-ass Jesus scares the bejesus out of me, but perhaps he is easier for certain men to relate to.

When I was in Florida a few months ago, I saw a plethora of bumper stickers that read “Real Men Love Jesus.” I’ve been thinking about that bumper sticker ever since. What it means. Real men don’t love the faggy Jesus; you know, the one who had feelings, who wept, who felt suffering on the cross, who urged us to love our neighbors as ourselves, who commanded us to love one another. Love one another. Not to throw stones, missiles, drop bombs. That Jesus may well qualify as a sensitive new-age guy, a metrosexual, a wimp. How can a real man love that Jesus? Loving that Jesus means loving that part of themselves, and well, real men don’t seem to do that.

I cannot speak for other women, but I can speak from my position as a heterosexual woman. When I have read many accounts of male experiences of interaction with the divine, the most frequent image is that of a piercing or penetration by the divine spirit. The metaphor is important for several reasons. I would argue that one of the reasons that there has been such an insistence on separating sex from the sacred is the fear that describing sex and the penetration of the soul homoeroticizes the relationship between men and their gods. I have never seen an instance where a male mystic refers to being engulfed by the divine.

In many hagiographies or confessions about the coming to the divine, there is a sort of negotiation that goes on. A negotiation in which the stubborn soul refuses the love of God, and then at some point, there is surrender.

The negotiations between men and women are similar. And what is the point of the negotiation?  The point of the negotiation is surrender. What is it for a man to surrender to a woman? Is it to imagine what it is to be the glove, rather than the hand? To be the sheath. That is what vagina means, you know. Sheath. From the Latin. I find it fascinating that a part of the female body, the canal through which women bring forth new life, the first journey we experience as human beings-sliding through a fleshy tunnel into the light and cold-that the name for that conduit is not related to its function in birth, but rather, bears the name of a holder of a weapon. A scabbard-the covering in which you insert your sword.

Is this what men think of their penises as? Weapons? Swords? But a sheath is where you keep your knife to keep it safe, to keep it when you’re not using it for violence. It’s a place for it to rest until the next time it’s needed. When you place your sword inside its sheath, you’ve put down your weapon, you’ve disarmed yourself, you’ve made yourself vulnerable. You’ve surrendered.

In many of these hagiographies, men lay down the life of the sword for the life of the spirit. In many of the images of the warrior Christ, he bears the sword of justice. Perhaps I’m being oversensitive to phallic imagery, but I am speculating as to why the most fundamentalist of religious extremists hate and fear homosexuality so much.

What is the experience of spiritual surrender? In the accounts I’ve read, it’s the sense of penetration, of becoming whole, of feeling a divine presence move into your body. It’s not unlike the experience for women of heterosexual sex. I’m not a gay man. I don’t know if penetrative gay sex inspires the same feelings.

But I come back to the fear again. I come back to the fear of homosexuality. If your deity is male, and you want to be infused with his spirit, what is involved in that process? How can you maintain a distance between your experience of the sacred and more bodily experiences?

 In 2005, incensed that the FDA, which, at the time, was so under the thumb of the woman-hating, sex-hating, body-hating, science-hating Bush administration that it made a decision that Plan B contraception would not be available at pharmacies to those under the age of 18, AND, really pissed off that there were pharmacists who were claiming that their morals didn’t allow them to dispense the drugs,  I wrote the following, in which I offered to serve as a drug mule for underage girls:

The FDA got it half-right this morning. Plan B contraception has been cleared for over the counter dispensation, but only if you are over the age of 18. Younger than 18? You’re shit outta luck, unless you’re willing to go to the doctor’s office and get a prescription yourself. How you’re supposed to do that without your parent’s knowledge, since I’m assuming they’ll get the insurance bills, is beyond me. If you’re lucky, there will be a Planned Parenthood office in your town. But again, that will require luck.

So, here’s the deal. I am making a pledge, which I fully intend to keep. If you need Plan B contraception, and you contact me, I will go to my local pharmacy and get it for you. Your parents don’t have to know.  The CWFA will likely lobby Congress for a bill that will make my activities illegal, but I do not give a rat’s ass for what the CWFA thinks of me.

This is an act of civil disobedience.

I am a whore. Or at least, that’s what I think I’m supposed to accept these days. You see, I’ve used Plan B contraception–twice–because, for various reasons, I didn’t use birth control while I was having sex, and because, at 41, I do not want to get pregnant again, I resorted to Plan B. Pharmacists who want to dispense shame would think of me as a whore.

The pharmacists who refuse to dispense the medication, even with a doctor’s prescription, claim to be doing so because it’s against their morals to do so. They claim they’re saving fetuses. But really? I think they’re punishing women who have sex. Again.

Rather than fight them on this, allow them to cast shame on me for being sexually active and single, I’m just going to come out and say it. I am a whore. I don’t want to get pregnant. I have the wherewithall to fight you, but many, many women–those who feel shame about having sex in this culture don’t have the resources to fight you. And so I’m fighting this on their behalf.

Acquiring Plan B contraception is not as easy as it is made out to be. Several months ago, I started dating a man, things progressed quickly one hot, lazy summer afternoon, and we had sex. The next morning, I woke up, counted days, felt the familiar twinge in my side, and realized I was ovulating. Plan B seemed like a damned good idea. I called my doctor’s office. I asked the receptionist to have one of the docs phone in a prescription for Plan B. “We don’t do that,” she said, in an extremely tight voice. I could hear the disapproval dripping from her voice. I called Planned Parenthood, got an appointment for that morning. I had to pay a full appointment fee and then pay for medication. Not cheap. But I did it. And, I’m delighted to say, did not get pregnant that month.

A few weeks later, I was in to see my doctor for my regular check-up. I asked her why they wouldn’t phone in Plan B contraception prescriptions. “But we do,” she said. I told her what happened. It seems the receptionist had taken it upon herself to deny me Plan B. I have a feeling that said receptionist was going to be in big trouble after I left.

A few months after that, I had cause to use Plan B again. This time, my doctor’s office called the prescription in to my local pharmacy and I picked it up later that day. The pharmacist, who dispenses all of my pills, handed me the drugs with no hassles or lectures, simply asked me if I had any questions. What a relief.

Why am I telling you all of this? For several reasons.

First. Even for me, acquiring Plan B contraception the first time turned out to be a hassle and fairly expensive. If I had been in different circumstances, I may have given up before I got the medication, and then, voila, a few weeks later, may have found myself facing an unwanted pregnancy.

Second. It doesn’t really matter how many pharmacists are, in fact, refusing to dispense the medication. The fact that the ones who are refusing are garnering so much attention means that any woman who gets Plan B is going to have to worry that she’s going to get the pharmacist who’s going to refuse.

In the late 19th century, the Comstock laws made it a federal offense for certain information to cross state lines. In other words, magazines and mail that contained information about birth control was not allowed to circulate. Even though many of the methods of birth control we have now–condoms, diaphragms, and others–were available, the information that they existed could not circulate freely in the culture. Women often didn’t know that they had options.

Increasingly, it’s not that birth control is not available, it’s that the knowledge that it’s available is being repressed. If you live in a small town and need Plan B, are you going to know where you can go if your local pharmacist decides not to dispense your prescription? How can we help these women?

Finally, the pharmacist’s job is not to dispense shame. I don’t know what the figures are for men who’ve attempted to have their Viagra prescriptions filled and been denied. I can’t imagine that there’s been a lot of these cases. Because, when it all comes down to it, it’s still okay for men to have sex. But, because I have sex, and I want access to birth control after the fact, I’m a whore.

I think I’m going to have that embroidered on a pillow.

Needless to say, even among my liberal posters, my plan to start a Plan B underground was seen as usurping a parent’s right to be involved in their child’s sexual health decisions. But you know what? After your child becomes sexually active, you don’t get to be a part of that unless your child asks you to. I’m sorry to say, but that’s the way it works. Either your kid trusts you enough to talk to you about sex, or they don’t. And if they don’t, well tough shit for you.

Today, a judge finally declared that, at least in terms of 17-year olds, the decision to limit Plan B contraception to those over 18 was a “political decision.”

“These political considerations, delays, and implausible justifications for decision-making are not the only evidence of a lack of good faith and reasoned decision-making,” Korman said. “Indeed, the record is clear that the FDA’s course of conduct regarding Plan B departed in significant ways from the agency’s normal procedures regarding similar applications to switch a drug product from prescription to non-prescription use.”

See? This is why some of us are so damned pissed off about the way women are treated. You can buy cold medicine that may screw up your heartbeat, you can buy Tylenol and Ibuprofen, which in overdoses can be fatal, but be a 17-year old who just had sex and thinks, “I don’t want to get pregnant,” and the Bush administration decided you should remain screwed.

So, the question is, will the drug now be available over the counter to younger women?

You know the social conservatives “decried” the decision. Do you want to know why? The social conservatives argue that girls under the age of 18 could be forced to take Plan B contraception by those who are sexually abusing them.

I want you to think about that for a moment. They want to deny 14-year old incest victims from obtaining Plan B because it might be coerced, but, should a 14-year old find herself pregnant because she’s been raped, well, that’s just dandy. Go ahead and have the baby. That’s what God would want.

So, I’m repeating my promise of 2005. If you are under the age of 17, and you need Plan B contraception, send me a PM, and I will make sure that you get it.

In November of 2005, I underwent a hysterectomy. I was 42, and I had suffered from a condition that weakened me. In the weeks leading up to the decision, I blogged about it. I needed to. I was frightened beyond measure that losing my uterus would somehow take away some essence of my femaleness. I was terrified that I would never know sexual pleasure again. I was especially scared because I had been told when I was younger that women who had hysterectomies did so because they were too sexual, and this was their punishment. It was a lot of crap to work through.

I’m combining two blog posts I wrote. The first was written just before my surgery. It goes like this:

Karen Novak, one of the most brilliant people I know, frequently says the kinds of things that wind up staying in my head, tucked away in some back room, and then, sometime later, re-emerges when that piece of wisdom crashes into some life experience I’m in the midst of.

In this case, we were talking about time. About whether it was possible that men and women had different conceptions of time. She argued that men see time as linear; women see time cyclically. “We can’t help it,” she said. “Every month, we are reminded that we are part of a big cycle. We bleed. We stop bleeding. We ovulate. We bleed again.” Time gets broken up and its repetitive nature is literally written onto our bodies. Men, as far as I know, have no regular reminder that time is cyclical. I imagine that it moves forward for them.

Okay. I know that this reeks of essentialism, the kind of essentialism that makes me crazy. But, I also think there’s some validity to what she said. And while all women do not currently menstruate, or no longer menstruate, the cultural reminders of women as monthly, cyclical creatures is there all around us.

On November 18, I will no longer be among the women who bleed. I’ve alluded to health problems before in this forum. For reasons that may elude a lot of you, I want to talk about the fact that I’ve chosen to have a hysterectomy in just over three weeks.  And I use the word “choice” deliberately. My uterus is a sick organ. It is making me sick, to the point where I have been in the hospital recently, so anemic that I could barely stand. I’m experiencing chronic pain. Two weeks out of the month, I feel like an overripe kumquat—squishy and swollen—and, if kumquats had feelings, my guess is that being overripe would make them as cranky as I’ve been. Cranky, and sad, and angry as hell that I’m a hostage to my body.

And yet. It’s my uterus. The organ within which I carried three pregnancies and from which I delivered two healthy children. The organ that, every month since I was 13, has made its presence known. It’s not like my liver or my spleen or my heart. I mean, I know they’re there, doing their jobs, but it’s not like those organs send out an all points bulletin to the rest of my body that special attention must be paid to it.

And my uterus is such a political organ. Our culture is engaged in an all-out war about what women may do with their uteri. Whether my uterus belongs to me, or as some would argue, it belongs to the government or my neighbor or anyone else who is anti-choice. And, truth be told, hysterectomies get a lot of bad press. Once upon a time, doctors removed uteri like they took out tonsils—if you were done with it, what the hell did you need it for?

I admit. As women I’ve known have chosen to have hysterectomies in the face of health problems, the thoughts that have gone through my head have been uncharitable. They were downright arrogant. They went something like this: “You are a victim of the male medical establishment. If a man had a small problem with his prostate, would we advise castrating him?” I really wanted to believe that most hysterectomies are unnecessary, that women have them because it’s more convenient to take out a uterus rather than work to fix a problem, that women’s reproductive organs are only valuable if they’re producing babies.

And then this happened to me. And so, I’ve avoided this surgery. I’ve tried alternative treatments. I’ve been determined that I should hold on to this part of me. And then, some other voice started speaking to me. The one that asked me questions like, “If this was your spleen causing you this many problems and pain, would you even be having this conversation? Wouldn’t you have gotten the damn thing taken out immediately?”

My uterus is not the essence of my being. I’m not a “womb-an.” I have a disease that is going to get progressively worse. Its symptoms can be treated—in my case, unsuccessfully—but its cause cannot be eradicated without removing the organ where the disease is.

And so, I’m making this choice. To be healthy. To make a decision in which I choose not to suffer any more.

So, that was the first blog post. I underwent surgery on November 18, 2005, and then spent about a week convalescing. I had lost a lot of blood during surgery, and I was weaker than I expected. I was also a bad patient.

A friend of mine, a nurse, who had offered to take care of me while I was laid up, got so tired of listening to me whine about how much I wanted to get out of the house and go to Target that, three days post-surgery, she took me to Target. Within five minutes in the store, I had passed out. She got to say “I told you so,” and I got to learn that my body is not superwoman’s. 

We still laugh about this incident now. My stubbornness. Her exasperation. My being wheeled out of Target in a wheelchair.

I wrote my next blog post about the experience about six months later. I had kept to myself that right before my surgery, an anonymous e-mail had shown up in my inbox. A woman was furious with me, claimed that I was making it okay for women to subject themselves to mutilation, and that I would suffer dire consequences as a result.

I wanted to tell her that I had tried everything: an IUD, hormones, iron supplements, but the reality was that my uterus had become the focus of my existence, because on any given day, the amount of blood that pouring from it could affect even my ability to stand.

I remember when I got the letter, I showed it to my best friend. I also called my gynecologist, Heidi, whom I would trust with my life, and I had her read the letter. They were both angry on my behalf. And I was angry, too.

           How dare this woman send me a letter bomb a few days before surgery that I was already terrified of having? How could another woman (calling herself a feminist) be so cruel?

Anyway, this is the blog post I wrote later, to show people that I had come through with flying colours.

Shortly before I underwent a hysterectomy in November, I received an anonymous letter via e-mail. I had not been shy about my need for surgery. I am more than aware that my uterus is a political organ. I fear that just as SCOTUS has recently ruled that there’s no need for a “knock-knock” before violating civil rights, so too, it will soon be permissible to enter a woman’s vagina without her consent. Or, as the case is more likely to be, to tell a woman that she can’t make decisions about what may or may not enter and lodge inside her uterus.

And so, knowing that the personal is political, to quote what was once a revolutionary statement but which seems to have lost its meaning, I chose to write about my decision, and my fear, in undergoing this procedure.

Thus, someone out in the blogosphere decided to send me a letter, under a pseudonym, in which they denounced my decision to be public about what I was about to undergo. In the letter, the person described to me how I’d been duped by the male medical establishment, how six months after my surgery I would begin to suffer the horrible effects of various blood vessels dying in my pelvic region, how I would feel like shit. And worse, this person pointed out, I would be responsible for the positive push I may have given other women to have the same operation done. That by talking positively about my decision to have my uterus removed, I was contributing to the ruin of other women.

All of this vitriol arrived just a few days before my surgery.

And so, given that it is now over seven months since my operation, I feel that I should check in with the world, and let other women know what the effects have been of having my political organ removed.

I feel fantastic. The condition that necessitated surgery was adenomyosis, a condition in which I bled profusely throughout the month. It was unpredictable, and frequently, in the middle of sexual intercourse, I would start hemorrhaging. I have never been squeamish about sex during menses, and I’ve been fortunate that I’ve had partners who were also not turned off by blood. So, the blood was not the issue. The issue was the constant pain, and the weakness caused by anemia. I felt sick all the time. My uterus was approximately the size of a 13-week pregnancy, and for someone who is tiny like me, it meant that my stomach bulged. Again, no big deal. But I felt permanently bloated.

We tried other therapies to alleviate the problem. They didn’t work, and in fact, made things worse. One night, after having hemorrhaged for the entire day, and now, too weak to stand, a friend took me to the emergency room. My gynecologist came in to see me, and we decided then that there was no point in putting off the surgery. It was time to overcome my fears and do what was best for me.

My biggest fear about hysterectomy was about sex. And so, I want to talk frankly about that here.

I was deathly afraid that I would no longer be able to have orgasms, or if I did have them, that they would be pale shadows of their former selves. For me, orgasms build, and when they reach their crescendo, I feel contractions deep inside of me–intense, starbursts of pleasure that I had always assumed was the result of my uterus responding to the electricity racing across my flesh. How would I experience that level of pleasure if there was no uterus to contract?

I was haunted by the idea that I would lose a sensation that is of paramount importance to me. Perhaps it makes me shallow, this desire to feast at the full banquet of sex. But I believe that there are few things that are freely available to us, and for me, sex–both the connection I feel to another human being and the loss of boundaries I experience during orgasm–is an integral part of who I am.

I was terrified of losing that.

After surgery, one is advised not to have intercourse for six weeks. For the first couple of weeks after surgery, I felt awful. I lost a lot of blood during the procedure, and my iron level was down to 27 (normal is 42). So, I wasn’t thinking a lot about sex. But, things started to wake up, and I decided to take matters into my own hands, so to speak. When the orgasm came–complete with the deep sensations of contraction and vibration–I wept. I wept. I called my closest friends. I shared my joy. I felt no shame in doing so. And, when I was able to resume intercourse, it was to discover that everything still worked. In fact, it worked better, as I now did not feel this sluggish, clogged-up sensation in my pelvis.

And life without periods has been interesting. I don’t bleed, of course, but since I still have my tubes and my ovaries, I experience a normal cycle, complete with bloating, crankiness, and breast tenderness. Woohoo!

I realize that for many, this may be too much information. But I was open about having the procedure before I had it done, and I feel an obligation to let those who reached out to me prior to surgery know that I’m well. I’m fabulous.

It’s three years later. Sex is better than it has ever been before. Multiple orgasms. No periods. No cramps. No worry about getting pregnant. I’m 45 now, and menopause is setting in. (Heidi told me that on Monday, when I was telling her about my mysterious hot and cold flashes. I had been pretending they were something else. )

I know that hysterectomy is not the choice for everyone. But I feel as if I need to de-mystify this operation that so many of us fear.

I still believe that there are some doctors out there who perform unnecessary hysterectomies. And Heidi took only what she needed to take out, so I still have my ovaries and my Fallopian tubes.

But I don’t feel any different than other women out there. My sexual desire level is high—but I expect that’s normal for being in my 40s. (It is true what they say: being in your 40s is awesome!) My lover and I take every opportunity that we can to touch and snuggle and caress, lick, penetrate and come.

In an odd sort of way, I feel as if my hysterectomy freed me to be even more sexual.

And I refuse to say that that’s a bad thing.

potential - from the root word potent - powerful - effective - able to perform (not necessarily sexually) - able to impregnate (normally masculine - see impotent)

As much as I may despise this particular word and its origins, I despise my own - my possession of this “trait” or whatever you may want to call it, even more…

I awoke at just before 5 A.M. on a Saturday morning (nearly three weeks ago now)… to make cookies. I figured while my meringues were drying, I would finally finish one of my blog posts. (I had three that were “in progress” at that time.)

It is never more evident to me than on days like that, when I wake up incredibly early to finish something at the last minute or when I am scrambling to meet a deadline, that I lack discipline.

Procrastination: it is something that I thought I would outgrow, perhaps even magically. It is not something that I can do without effort. I still have a lot of growing up to do. Apparently, I still have a lot of changes that I need to implement into my life as well.

I was fumbling around the kitchen on this morning, making three different types of cookies, making coffee and then I thought to myself that I should maybe start breakfast, too. No one else was watching me, so perhaps it would not be evident to them that I lack focus (or discipline, for that matter). I would perhaps share this information later in the day. Perhaps by that time, the fact that I was juggling baking, composing a blog, and cooking breakfast would have translated into an amusing anecdote - perhaps not.

Even as I was composing this blog entry, I found myself toggling between different windows, still seeking to be distracted from the issues at hand - I have a propensity for seeking distraction. I knew that it had not yet been anywhere nears three quarters of an hour but I found myself getting up from the chair to repeatedly check on the  meringues.

Why can I not just finish one thing at a time?

It is obvious to me, if not to anyone else, that I have commitment issues. I fear it as though it were the plague, but in a manner that is somewhat backwards, I suppose. When it comes to imperative life changes, I tend to embrace those - to jump in with both feet (if not to dive in head first). When it comes to little things, I fear that I cannot trust even myself to know what I will be doing from one moment to the next.

Recently, I was referred to as a professional adult. Just hearing these two words used to describe me, let alone in conjunction with one another, made me want to snicker aloud. For fear of being found out, for fear that someone would discover that I was doing my best to pretend and to play the roles of both professional and adult, I fought the urge. I can’t help but wonder how many other adults feel like they are just faking it and playing along and feel like they struggle with the responsibilities of day to day life? I wonder if they, too, fear being found out.

I am inspired to question myself, too,  about whether or not this feeling will ever go away.

I find excuses, justifications, reasons constantly to avoid things that I do not want to do. “Why,” I ask myself. “What will it amount to?” And then when it comes to things that I want or want to do, I ask myself the opposite. “Why not,” I say, “What will it hurt?”

I thought that with adulthood, with responsibility, there would also come a defining sense not only of self but perhaps an instinct concerning consequences, an intrinsic adoption of accountability. I sat here, typing, getting up from my chair - a perfect metaphor for my habit of running away from things just as I approach the truth - often refusing to finish things when they become too difficult or (even worse) just when I lose interest and I wait to inherit these traits of  accountability.

Thinking about how things begin, the way things start and they way that I behave when I begin things or approach things - whether it be a new friendship or relationship, a new responsibility, a new position, a new project - I realize that I often begin things with enthusiasm - with passion and fervor and a sense of urgency; I often complete things late or at the last minute and in a manner that is less than excited if I even see things entirely through at all.

I am not certain that I believe in new year’s resolutions, but I do not discount them entirely. It seems to me an awakening of sorts - what better time (however arbitrary) to attack something with both hands, to attempt to adopt new and better habits than at the beginning of a brand new year. We could perhaps begin our journeys to becoming new and better people at the start of the earth’s new journey around the sun.

Instead of measuring myself against others, using similarly arbitrary standards like age for instance, perhaps I will have a new measuring tool or unit of measurement - I will be able to see my success by counting short term goals I’ve actually managed to achieve, or tasks I’ve managed to perform and complete, things I’ve managed to ACTUALLY accomplish.

The final sad irony of this composition is not that the one thing I completed on the day that I set out to begin, to do, to accomplish so many things was that the one thing I completed was my blog post about not finishing things; it was, in fact, quite the opposite - it has taken me over three weeks to complete this blog entry… How sad is that?

So, regardless of how commonplace or cliche it may be, I am setting out to change myself - not to become a brand new person - but to develop a new discipline. I am vowing to finish things that I begin, no matter how tumultuous or tiring they may become. I believe that I owe it to myself (and probably to other people as well) to put my best foot forward and to tackle one thing at a time instead of doing several things all at once with less of the effort than I should be exerting - to minimize distractions and to truly focus. Perhaps I will discover new passions - perhaps I will attain a great sense of accomplishment from actually completing tasks, no matter how mundane they might have seemed at the time during which I was completing them. Maybe I will discover things about myself.

The new year is young and my resolve still adolescent at best… I have seen the futility of things that fail to endure - of accomplishments, of human life itself. Perhaps one is just giving in and giving up, throwing in the proverbial towel and resigning one’s self to mediocrity at best when they fail to even try to disprove the futility of their own efforts, which are at best human.

I do not yet know how my exercise will turn out. I do know that I was once described as having a laziness that was almost masculine and that I found that funny at the time. Over time, however, I have become disenchanted with others who I have witnessed display so much potential and so much passion as they begin something, only to abandon it later on… It almost hurts me to watch because, while I hate to admit it, I am very likely doing the exact same thing myself.