And now for even stranger things...

I've been blogging as The Radical Housewife for a long time--so long that my first platform was on MySpace (remember MySpace? The hottest spot on teh interwebz during the Dubya years? Me neither). Things are a bit more complex nowadays, both online and in real life. Hell, my firstborn is in middle school, checking his chin and pits daily for signs of impending pubescence. It's time for a radical upgrade.

Watch this space, fans! The New & Improved Radical Housewife Blog is coming your way!

Strange things are afoot in Minneapolis

Why happening, Prince? Have we offended you? Consider:

Neal Krasnoff has closed up most of his blog, leaving behind only four posts: an "apology" for offending anyone with his SlutWalk rantings, his resignation from local Democratic Party leadership, and two posts from 2008 about.....ME! Read and chuckle along.

http://loyalopposition.wordpress.com/

The smartest reporter in Minneapolis, Andy Birkey, was named as a co-defendant today in the defamation suit being brought by Bradlee "gays should be jailed and/or executed" Dean against Rachel Maddow and MSNBC. Birkey is the writer who first exposed the links between Dean and local pols, including Tom Emmer and Michele Bachmann. MSNBC calls the suit "baseless." Duh. I hope the whole mess makes Birkey extremely famous. He deserves it.

http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2011/07/bradlee_dean_suing_andy_birkey_minnesota_independent_rachel_maddow_msnbc.php

Did you ever wonder what kind of feminist you are? Well, a couple of Minneapolis women have figured it out for us (thank goodness!). I guess this was first written last May, but since I get all my information from Amanda Marcotte's Twitter feed, I didn't hear about it until yesterday. Now, I enjoy witty stereotyping as much as the next Angry Feminist, but these bitches put me in the Stay at Home Feminist category with Our Lady of GOOP, Gwyneth Paltrow. If I see these two munching tots at Grumpy's, I will douse their filmy Forever 21 dresses with non-organic ketchup, may Betty Friedan forgive me.

http://www.philolzophy.com/2011/05/the-different-types-of-feminists/

FUN FACT! My kids have only two days left of summer camp. Things in Minneapolis are only going to get stranger!

Amy

She had me at "what kind of fuckery is this? You made me miss the Slick Rick gig."*

I have always been drawn to women who balance precariously on the thin line between brilliant and crazy--women like Courtney, Judy, Sylvia. Women who embarrass themselves regularly. Women who say things that no one wants to hear. Women who are (to borrow a phrase from Eve Ensler) emotional creatures, yet somehow remain firmly in control of considerable intellectual and artistic power.

But a line that thin can be very hard to straddle. Like everyone who was knocked out by Back to Black, I hoped Amy could wobble her way through, making more brilliant songs for us like "Love is a Losing Game." NPR played a snippet of that song this afternoon and I started to cry.

RIP.

*"Me & Mr Jones," 2006. Watch Amy sing it live here.

What a male ally looks like

While I continue to sift through the fallout from my July 18 post, in which I asked male-identified folk to speak out to end rape culture, I invite my readers to enjoy a video featuring a fella I've admired for a very long time. In this particular clip, MY Senator (I love saying that) reminds Focus on the Family of the importance of getting your facts...erm, straight.

This is relevant to our rape culture discussion because when FoF saw the words "nuclear family" in a research study, they assumed it meant only opposite-gendered parents and used it to support their bogus claims. They were wrong. Similarly, when certain members of our population learned that a woman was seen drinking a cocktail with the man she would later accuse of rape (as Jamie Leigh Jones, who has worked with Sen. Franken, did), they assumed she deserved what happened to her. They were wrong, too.

To our male allies: a challenge

Two years ago, I participated in a MPRIG-sponsored panel on sexual violence during the University of Minnesota's Welcome Week. To their great credit, a large number of earnest 18-year-olds showed up to discuss an issue far less appealing than learning the forehand frisbee throw. During both the morning and the afternoon sessions, I heard a question that I remember from my own college days, asked the bravest straight male in the room: "This is really upsetting. Are women actually assuming I'm a perpetrator just because I have a penis?"

I'm sorry if it feels that way, I said. But don't blame women. Blame guys like Neal Krasnoff, author of the blog The Loyal Opposition.

Now I'm not saying that Neal is a perp any more than those college guys were, but I do know that he has a mean streak a mile wide, and he vents said meanness on his blog. Normally, I'm of the mind to let creeps like him be. Why send him the web traffic? But today, the circumstances are different than when he called me a "matriarchic supremacist" back in 2008. I can handle personal trashing, but when I read his new post about SlutWalk Minneapolis (called "If she dresses like a slut, and acts like a slut, is she really a feminist?"), I felt a response was necessary.

Last week I wrote a post about frustration with rape culture that was borderline misandrous, and I was called out as such by a secret fan of mine who linked to it on a Modern Radio discussion forum. Since Jawknee also mentioned that I am "great" and "super smart," I know that he must have seen my point: that rape culture curdles the souls of even sensible women from time to time. And Krasnoff's piece on SlutWalk Minneapolis is as soul-curdling a bit of rape apologia as I have read in a long time. Set your TRIGGER WARNING alarm, then read him here:

“Slutwalk” ideology is not about rape, as the protestors claim. It is about an attempt to abrogate the moral agency of women. It posits that women can behave as they wish with no consequences for their acts. ...dressing up in a club miniskirt, dancing and grinding with alcohol-fueled, hypersexualized 20-something men at a downtown club, then going back to their apartment with them to presumably discuss the Brothers Karamazov. Or travelling without niqab in Taliban controlled territory. Or holding raw meat out in front of a starving dog.

[caption below a photo of a woman, her bra visible, holding a "no means no sign"] Does NO still mean NO if this gorgeous Asian slutwalker does everything to say "f--- me"?

I hear quite a bit from straight men about how they aren't sure that feminism is for them, while at the same time bemoaning the guilty until proved innocent phenom mentioned above. Well, guess what? It's anti-feminist jerks like Krasnoff who are making your lives difficult, fellas. What on earth could make anyone feel comfortable comparing a woman to a slab of "raw meat"? Sexism. It's not confined to small-time weirdos on the internet, either. It's everywhere.

Help us end it, guys. We can't do it without your help. We need you to speak out against this warped view of the world. You are not dogs, and we are not meat. We are all human beings who deserve respect, safety, and freedom.

What's the saddest thing about a piece of writing like this? Neal Krasnoff knows rape survivors. He's friends with them, he works with them, he even has some in his own family. He doesn't realize this, though, because no survivor would ever share her truth with a guy him. Yet he takes to his blog and condemns these very women for failing to apply "reasonable judgment and common sense." I wonder how that goes over with the women in his life who were molested by family members and/or raped by their boyfriends, let alone the ones who were victimized after a night on the town. They have my compassion and pity. Neal? Not so much.

To those who would accuse me of misandry

...I give you one of my favorite scenes from "Some Like it Hot."

Trigger warning.

The bumper sticker announces that "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." I'd like to append that thought. For women, if we're not occasionally homicidal, we're not fucking human.

I am having a Valerie Solanas moment. Known to most as the paranoid schizophrenic who attempted to kill Andy Warhol, thus earning a biopic portrayal by Lili Taylor (in action above), Solanas is often trotted out as an example of misandry in the feminist movement by those who seek to undermine our credibility. Solanas wrote in 1968's The SCUM Manifesto that "civic-minded, responsible" women had an obligation to "destroy the male sex." Countless women who would like equal pay and safety everywhere they walk STILL refuse to identify as feminists, because if they did so, they'd be seen as "anti-male."

I love men. I married a man, probably the finest person of any gender I've ever known. My firstborn is a beautiful boy for whom I would do anything, including give up my life if necessary. That goes for my sweet nephew as well.

But god almighty, there are times when I hate MEN so deeply I shake. I hate them. To be a thinking woman in rape culture is to know suffering so intense it is almost unendurable. It's not post-traumatic stress, it's PRE-traumatic, formed the moment that a male doctor pulled me out of my unconscious mother's body (as was typical in 1971), took a look between my legs and declared "IT'S A GIRL!"

I have never experienced sexual violence, but this is can be attributed more to dumb luck than anything else--not the unfashionable clothes I wore, the confrontational stance I took in the public, the self-defense class I aced, the well-lit streets I have walked. I am lucky, not "better."

Women with their hearts open live in both fear and pain. Women I know have been raped in their homes, in their dorm rooms, in their workplaces. They have been raped by their fathers, their brothers, their partners, their bosses. They were raped as girls, and they were raped as women. The circumstances around the crimes were different, but the attackers had WHAT in common?

If you said they were MEN, you're right.

If you're going to argue with me about women abusers, like Nancy Garrido, and how terrible it is to wish anyone dead, even a monster like her husband Philip, you need to go elsewhere. Go to People.com and examine photos of the Duchess of Cambridge's hats. Order something from Etsy. Flame Mark Dayton on the Strib.com, I don't care.

Allow me to experience, then move forward from, this rage.

FFI:

SlutWalk Minneapolis: http://slutwalkminneapolis.tumblr.com/

Rape & Sexual Abuse Center (Uptown Minneapolis): http://www.neighborhoodinvolve.org/

Aurora Center (U of M, Twin Cities Campus): http://www1.umn.edu/aurora/

RAINN-The Rape, Incest & Abuse National Network: http://www.rainn.org/

Abortion rights and the failure of "choice"

What follows is an excerpt from the original draft of The Radical Housewife. Before I slice it away, I thought I'd share it, in hopes you'll post me your thoughts on the matter. Note the second-to-last paragraph, in which I remark upon the twisted logic of what "pro-life" means in the Palinverse. It was disturbing when I wrote it, but it's even worse now that Bristol claims her virginity was "stolen" while she was drunk (for a discussion on why Bristol may have resisted calling her experience rape, read this piece at the Daily Beast). As if we needed another reminder of the power of words....

The late, great Shirley Chisholm wrote the following in her autobiography Unbought & Unbossed, addressing men on her staff who tried to convince her to avoid speaking out in support of abortion rights:

“Women are dying every day, did you know that? They're being butchered and maimed. No matter what men think, abortion is a fact of life. Women will have them; they always have and always will. Are they going to have good ones or bad ones? Will the good ones be reserved for the rich, while poor women have to go to quacks? Why don't we talk about real problems instead of phony ones?”

Rep. Chisholm wrote these words in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade, when dying from a botched abortion was a very real threat to women across the country, particularly poor women of color. Two generations later, not a lot has changed. Accessing an abortion is easy for well-heeled urban women, the vast majority of whom (as it was in 1970) are white.

In Shirley Chisholm’s day, the term “pro-choice” was used to remind people of the personal matter of the procedure. The “choice” to have the abortion should be the woman’s, centering the debate on the right to individual autonomy, a concept that Republicans claim to embrace. Senator John Kerry declared in a 2004 Presidential debate that having an abortion “is a woman’s choice. It’s between a woman, God, and her doctor.” Oh, if it were only that easy, John!

God and doctors are often in very short supply when they are needed the most. If you get accidentally knocked up in Wyoming or Mississippi, you better pray as hard as you can, because your states have no provider at all. In fact, a 2008 report funded by the Guttmacher Institute announced that 87 percent of counties in the United States do not have an abortion provider. That’s a big enough number to put in all caps: EIGHTY-SEVEN PERCENT! That makes getting an abortion seem less like a “choice” and more like a forced road trip.

Or a financial ordeal. The Hyde Amendment, passed in 1977 and reauthorized every year since, bans the use of federal funds to pay for abortions. Rep. Chisholm worried that poor women would have to go to quacks; she didn’t realize that when they won the right access abortions from a trained doctor, they’d have to surrender their rent checks. The Hyde Amendment, predictably, reinforces the idea that wealthy women have the “choice,” but poor women don’t. And lest we forget, the poorest women are the ones who lack access to contraceptive information and services anyway, dammit!

When I demonstrated with over one million other people on the U.S. Capitol Mall in 2004, the event was called the March for Women’s Lives, which made some mainstream feminists gripe. Wasn’t it usually called the March for Choice? Not so fast, declared a coalition of poverty activists and health care groups for women of color. The word “choice” obscures the “real problems” that Rep. Chisholm talked about: racism, poverty, and other forms of pervasive inequality.

I no longer identify as pro-choice. How can I, when Sarah Palin congratulates herself for the “choice” to carry her Down’s Syndrome child to term? Bringing a special needs baby into a tightly-knit, financially stable family that has access to health care and other forms of support is no big whoop, except for the baby in question—Trig Palin is one hell of a lucky kid. So is Tripp Johnston, the child carried to term by Trig’s seventeen-year-old sister. All four of them appeared on a celebrity tabloid in the early days of 2010, declaring “we’re so glad we chose life!” That’s that sneaky, slippery power of language again! Can you imagine a headline that read “we’re so glad we didn’t have abortions!” I can’t either.

Remember chapter one? I don’t deserve a medal for surviving life with the colicky, special needs baby I had in the year 2000. Accidents of fortune gave me everything I needed, and my child reaped the benefits. I don’t care if Sarah and Bristol Palin keep on breeding; that’s their beeswax, not mine. But under Gov. Palin’s leadership, Alaska’s rates of domestic violence and sexual assault were twice the national average. When Palin ran for office in 2006, she announced (in so many words) that if her then 14-year-old were raped, she wouldn’t allow the girl to have an abortion—a very likely scenario, considering Palin’s vocal support for parental notification laws. In yet another nimble linguistic twist, Palin averred that the issue was one of “parents’ rights.” Welcome to Palinverse, where a pre-born fetus had greater bodily autonomy than a post-born teen.

Feminists of any/every Wave, listen up: “choice” is over. It’s done. NO MORE.

What the shutdown means for our children.

Happily, we spent our 4th of July weekend in the great state of Wisconsin, where booze is sold on Sundays and the lottery tickets flow freely! Whew!

In all seriousness, please read this article from Minnesota Public Radio News about how shutting down child care subsidies is already hurting impoverished youngsters, the workers who care for them, and the parents who count on these state subsidies to keep the jobs that are supposed to help them out of poverty. And a job is a path to economic stability far more reliable than the lottery--or at least it used to be. Now? All bets are off.

#mnshutdown

My state's government shut down today. 20,000 employees were pink-slipped, important social services have been cut off, and perhaps most importantly for a family with two small children who are traveling to Grandma & Grandpa's house for fireworks this weekend, all rest stops are closed. Why? An impasse between the Republican-controlled legislature and our Democratic governor over our state budget. Apparently it's news to the GOP that corporations and churches don't fix potholes. As Robin Marty just tweeted: "this is what happens when you elect a bunch of people to run the government who don't like government."

All credit to the fabulous Gov. Dayton, who is holding the line against "increasing taxes on the top 2% will make companies relocate to Sioux Falls" baloney (confidential to Kurt Zellers: I've seen Sioux Falls. Neither Target, 3M nor Medtronic is leaving for Sioux Falls). The constant refrain from conservatives is that our state needs to live within its means, yet they don't have a problem with funding the construction of luxury boxes in a new Vikings stadium. Seriously?

Image via Crooks and Liars

And of course, you know what the MN GOP prioritized this session, instead of job creation, health care, taxes and whatnot: MARRIAGE! Yes, marriage! Ensuring that state marriage law is hetero-only is apparently more important than, y'know, funding domestic violence shelters! I'll leave it to someone else to research the cruel, cruel irony of all of those legally married Minnesota heteros treating their children and one another like garbage. I'm too sickened to think about, it, let alone Google the statistics that would leave me in a sweaty, crying heap on the floor.

Summer vacation just got longer, hotter, and scarier.