One year ago, Skirt! magazine published an essay of mine entitled “Love in the Time of Contraception.”  In the piece, I laid bare (pun intended) many sordid details from my love life to make the point that there is no sexual blunder more embarrassing than ignorance….and that includes having to ask your boyfriend to retrieve a Today sponge gone rogue in your lady parts.

Rereading the essay, I find myself cringing once more at the stubborn persistence of America’s Puritanical values.  I wish my European forebears had thought to resettle in the British colony settled by criminals, not uptight prudes.  Fleeing famine and/or conscription leaves one with limited choices, I realize, but I have to believe that my great-great-greats would have preferred their descendants to spend Good Friday frolicking on sandy beach instead of heading out to show solidarity for a legal, but beleaguered and threatened, facility that performs legal procedures and dispenses legal medications.

This picture was taken on Good Friday seven years ago, not long before I gave birth to my daughter.  Yep, I’ve been involved in pro-choice activism for a long time, and I’m committed to it.  I’m a realist, and I know that the anti-choicers won’t go away.  I didn’t assume that one day I wouldn’t have to show up–I assumed that one day I’d be out in St. Paul with a pair of teenagers, demonstrating our support for safe, legal abortion, on demand and without apology.

But here we are in 2012, and I cannot believe I just might have to fight for their right to contraception!

Remember contraception?  The stuff that makes controversial procedures like abortions unnecessary? (Duhhh.)

Isn’t it our right as Americans to be embarrassed by slimy sponges?  To go soft at the crinkling sound of the condom wrapper?  To take a pill that makes you a hysterical, bloated mess, so on edge that no one wants to have sex with you anyway (or is that just me?)….?!

But it’s come to that.  And now, millions of moms who wouldn’t have dragged their kids to Planned Parenthood in the past are being jolted into action.

Of course, none other than reknowned slut (four wives) and prostitute (uses his big fucking mouth for money) Rush Limbaugh doesn’t believe that there are such things as Birth Control Moms.  Sayeth he:

Isn’t that kind of contradictory? A birth control mom? How do you become a mom if you’re into birth control?

Well, duh.  You use condoms so you don’t become a 19-year-old parent with a boyfriend who is a manipulative asshole.  Or you use sponges AND condoms so you don’t become a 22-year-old parent with a boyfriend who is much nicer than the old one, but who still has a few mental health issues to clear up.  Et cetera.

Get the idea?  The clinic is called PLANNED Parenthood for a reason.  Parenting is a job too important to leave either to chance or to anyone too young to run for Congress.*

(Rush also said some not-very-nice things about a contraceptive fan named Sandra Fluke, but you know that already.)

Are YOU a pissed-off Birth Control Mom?  Are you looking to do more than spread Santorum jokes and bemoan our country’s flight back to the Bad Old Days?  Good Friday is April 6, right around the corner–there’s probably a family planning clinic in your neighborhood that could use your voice for reproductive freedom.  If you’re in the Twin Cities, please say hi to me at the event in St. Paul.  I’ll be accompanied by my two PLANNED children, and I’ll be saying this:

If your clinic isn’t planning a solidarity action, why not send them a bouquet of flowers (with your donation check, natch) to thank them for the fine work they’re doing?  Find a location at www.plannedparenthood.org.

*Dear younger readers: please don’t bother writing with the admonition that you are doing a better job than say, Bristol Palin, Snooki, or my own parental units, who spawned me at the tender age of 21.  I think we all can agree that it would be preferable for children to be raised by grownups who’ve been slutty, had their hearts broken a few times, visited New York City, etc. and have the acquired wisdom that such experience implies.

I love my feminist sisters and brothers, but they aren’t perfect.  Feminists can be power trippers, backstabbers, and my-shit-don’t-stinkers as much as any other segment of the human population.

That said, there are certain ground rules that are accepted when one claims membership in The Feminist Club.  They are so mind-numbingly obvious that I feel idiotic even replicating them, but here they are:

Feminists who’ve had abortions are not called “baby-killers.”

Feminists of color are not called racist slurs.

Feminists who are rape survivors are not called “sluts.”

Feminists who are LGBTQ are not called any homophobic insults.

We gird ourselves daily against this disapprobation from the general population, so we should understand that when we are in a feminist space, we will be safe from this kind of garbage.

It follows, then, that this is also a Feminist Club Ground Rule:

Feminists in abusive relationships are not called “weak,” and/or dissed publicly for what they are going through.

By now, I’m sure all y’all have seen the video of a Colorado Girl Scout complaining that your Thin Mint dollars are being spent on including transgender girls in the organization.  Sprinkled throughout last week’s Facebook timeline were sighs of relief, for our cookie addictions can now be reclassified as Important Political Statements.  I love when things come together like that!

What a cutie. I wonder what chromosomes ze has?  Normally I wouldn’t ask, but it seems everyone’s talking about what’s under those green skirts.  Used to be we just cared about the cookies, not the genitalia.

On a related note, my post on the conundrum of feminist mental health garnered this comment, with some unexpected advice:

the only thing helpful i have to offer is this: the more i move into separatism, the more i do whatever it takes to have less and less to do with men and male-identified women, the happier i become. and the easier it is to be happy and at peace. just personal experience, but it makes a lot of political sense too. 

As an aghast Mr. Beinstock said to Daphne and Josephine in Some Like it Hot (watch the clip here): “I BEG your pardon, miss!”

Occasional bouts of misandrist rage, I understand.  Patriarchy can turn any woman, whether cis- or trans-, into a lunatic.  But separatism?  Isn’t that what we’re fighting with our cookie purchases?

Admittedly, I always feel prickly whenever it is suggested that heterosexual feminists like me are Doing It Wrong.  Personal rebuff aside, it implies that Rick Santorum is correct in his belief that sexuality is a choice, which leads us all into a bullshit-filled rabbit hole.  And I defy any radical separatist to come to my house to have a crack at the difficult daily work of raising a feminist son.  I might even go out on a limb and suggest that it’s the most important work of our movement–that is, if I were the sort of person prone to the kind of “nyah nyah, my feminism is better than yours” that I try to avoid.

Really, I do.

You know who’s an unequivocally GREAT feminist, though? That boy of mine.  He could out-feminist a wannabe like Sarah Palin in a heartbeat.  And with his gorgeous hazel eyes, he’d look amazing in a green and white uniform.  Say, why does it have to be Girl Scouts, anyway?  Isn’t it time we had Kid Scouts, open to anyone interested in hustling Thin Mints for merit badges? (please don’t talk about Boy Scouts, that haven for god-fearing pedos who lack the patience to join the priesthood.)  Is there some way we could convince Kate Bornstein and Chaz Bono to spearhead a movement that untethers Scouting from gender entirely?

And for once, can we let cookies be cookies and kids be kids, regardless of flavor?

In 1963, Betty Friedan dropped a bomb on American culture called The Feminine Mystique, a book that diagnosed untold millions of women with “the problem that has no name.”  The book kicked off the Second Wave of feminism, but if you’re a regular reader here you already know that.

What I want to talk about is another problem that, though it is named and we all know it exists, is rarely discussed openly in feminist circles: the stubborn problem of feminist mental health.   Everyone we know is on an antidepressant or twelve, yet we talk more about abortion, sexual assault, gender identity and other formerly taboo topics than we do our own addled minds.

Believe me, this is no royal “we” I’m utilizing here.  My own mental health, on unstable ground since my teens, has been in a slow decline for the better part of a year, due to factors both internal (genetic predisposition, hormone disregulation) and external (professional disappointment, thorny family issues, a friend’s terminal illness).  Like many other smart, capable, honest women I know, this is how I faced it:

Some time ago, I expressed my disgust over one body part or another (belly? batwings? blotches? pick ‘em) and a feminist friend stopped short.  ”You?” she asked.  ”You feel body shame?”

“Of course I do!” I replied.

“But,” she spluttered,  ”you are such a GOOD FEMINIST!”

I laughed and told her I was a feminist because I have body shame, I know how much it sucks, and I want to stop it!  Duh!  I use this anecdote to illustrate something I’ve been thinking about for a long time: are feminists depressed/anxious because they’re feminists, or are they feminists because they’re depressed/anxious?  Are we the chickens, or are we the eggs?

From childhood on I felt uneasy with cultural norms–I was always the only kid in my social circle who loathed the ending of “Grease.”  We sensitive types recognize injustice more quickly and are attuned to suffering more deeply, so it makes sense that we would seek to participate in movements that are dedicated to ending injustice and relieving suffering.

We are chickens.  Depressives and anxiety fiends make great feminists.

The work of feminism, whether in action or in our own minds, is exhausting.  Being aware of oppression is a painful state.  In the phraseology of most popular philosophical text of the late 20th century, we swallowed the red pills, not the blue ones.  Additionally, feminism confronts the horrors of rape, sexual assault and abuse, domestic and dating violence and other REALLY REALLY AWFUL THINGS that over time become re-traumatizing.  A lot of the things I hear and know are very upsetting, and there are times when I just can’t fucking take anymore.

We are eggs.  Feminism can make you greatly depressed and anxious.

Oh lordy.  Pass me a doll, won’t you, love?

And what do you know: it’s red.  How appropriate!

Like all GOOD (if not great!) feminists, however, I try not to paint everything into a binary box, so I am in no way suggesting that this is an either/or proposition: feminism and happiness are not mutually exclusive.  Why, one arm of the vast right wing conspiracy is dedicated solely to convincing women that we’d be better off in our pre-Friedan kitchens and baby nurseries, because all this agitating for equal rights is what’s making us so cranky!   Perhaps that is one reason that feminists like me have been cagey about admitting to emotional frailty.  Despite the fact that 11% of Americans take antidepressant medication these days, talking frankly about mental health care feels about as safe as walking down a dark alley, drunk, in nothing but filmy lingerie.

Didja get the analogy there?  In America today, the prevailing wisdom is that people with mental health challenges bear some of the blame for their condition.  As in, “yeah, no one deserves to be raped, but y’know, you really shouldn’t have been in that alley, drunk, in your underwear.”  Anorexics are told to EAT A SANDWICH.  The anxious are told to PRACTICE YOGA.  Addicts are told to QUIT ALREADY.  Depressives are told to SUCK IT UP FOR GOD’S SAKE, YOU’RE BRINGING ME DOWN.

Ahem.

This is the part of the blog post in which you, dear reader, usually discover the Great Lesson in all this, but today I don’t have one.  In fact, I’ve been putting off writing this blog post for weeks, hoping for a bolt of clarity, either intellectual or emotional, that has yet to strike.  I am eager to hear your thoughts on the matter, though, both as they relate to your own story and to the big-picture issue of keeping sane in a world that isn’t.

In any case, I’m resolved in 2012 to speak more frankly about my own struggles.  Will it be more or less difficult than my perennial resolutions to exercise daily and eat more green food (apple Laffy Taffy excepted)?

Watch this space to find out.

I hate cancer.  I hate it so, so much.  I hate it to the depths of my soul and back again.  I have never been diagnosed with cancer, but it’s taken plenty away from me all the same–the hole in me isn’t from a surgeon’s knife or a radiation beam, but from what my dear friend Liz took with her when she died of colon cancer in 2007.

Cancer is everywhere.  Members of my family have it, friends have it, neighbors have it.  Just before Thanksgiving, I learned that YET ANOTHER person I care about is under attack from the demon cancer.  I HATE IT.

You know what else I hate?  These:

A few months ago, a feminist lawyer of my acquaintance contacted me in my role as Minnesota NOW president to let me know about a suit being brought by a local girl against officials at her middle school, who disciplined her for wearing one of these godawful things.  This was a feminist/free speech/women’s health issue, she suggested.

Bullshit, I said.

As the mother of a middle schooler, I have been familiar with this bracelets for some time. Perhaps the best way to explain my position on the matter is to dramatize what occurred when Elliott expressed interest in getting one for himself.

MOM: No way are you getting one of those.  They’re sexist.
ELLIOTT: But Mom, they’re for cancer.
MOM: Oh yeah?  Did you know that men get a very serious form of cancer themselves? It’s called testicular cancer.
ELLIOTT: Uhh…
MOM: Are there kids at your school wearing bracelets that say “I heart nutsacks”?
ELLIOTT: (giggling uncontrollably)
MOM: I didn’t think so.  These bracelets aren’t about cancer, they’re about making fun of women’s bodies with cancer as a cover.  Until men’s bodies get in on the joke, no bracelets for you.

I planned to write a post about this lawyer’s request back when she made it, back in the thick of the  ”is it or isn’t it feminist” debate swirling around SlutWalk.  This lawyer, as it happened, hinted that SlutWalk might not have been her feminist cup of tea.  I invited her to share the issue with a future meeting of Minnesota NOW officers, state board delegates, and members, all of whom could debate the issue more intelligently than me, a person who attempts to fill the Liz-shaped hole inside of her with WHITE HOT RAGE directed at ANY AND ALL CANCER “AWARENESS” CAMPAIGNS.

Really.

Because that’s where we’ve arrived in the cancer “awareness” movement.  We are aware of cancer every day.  We run in races, we walk for three days, we wear rubber things on our wrists.  We are granted freedom to make as many boob, ta-ta, knockers, bazooms, and/or tit jokes that we want to.  We paint everything pink for “awareness,” yet the dollars are not reaching the scientists in the labs who need them.  More and more of the money is kept by the pinked-out corporations and enormous foundations who exist to make you feel good, not do good.  Think about it: ever since the Empire State Building started glowing pink during the month of October, have breast cancer rates gone down?  NO. In the most egregious example of pinkwashing yet, Susan G. Komen For the Cure actually commissioned an “awareness” perfume that contained toluene, a neurotoxicant, and galaxolide, a hormone disruptor.

You read right: CANCER AWARENESS IS GIVING US CANCER.

That’s a feminist issue.

This post is part of the Love Your Body Day blog carnival.

Image by Kyla Hollis, grand prize winner of NOW’s 2011 Love Your Body Day poster contest

Today is Love Your Body Day, a yearly event sponsored by the National Organization for Women Foundation.  Billed as “a day when women of all sizes, colors, ages and abilities come together to celebrate self-acceptance and to promote positive body image,” it’s also a day in which I force myself to admit publicly that beneath my Battle-Hardened, Bad-Ass, Nearly-Forty Feminist facade beats the heart of a quaking 15-year-old girl who hates what she sees in the mirror.

It’s also a good day to mull over what I’m learning from the latest entry in my ever-growing Feminist Book Pile: Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl: a Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (look for it in the nifty Amazon widget on the left of your screen). Published in 2007, it is a fascinating unpacking of cultural misogyny everywhere, including within the feminist community.  And we’re not just talking about the exclusion of transwomen from supposedly feminist places like the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, though Serano gives Mich a whole chapter.  As she writes:

While past feminists have gone to great lengths to empower femaleness and to tear away all of the negative connotations that have plagued women’s bodies and biology, they have allowed the negative connotations associated with femininity to persist relatively unabated.  Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that, while most reasonable people see women and men as equals, few (if any) dare to claim that femininity is masculinity’s equal.

Bam!  I’m a ninth-grader in front of that mirror again, bewailing my failure to conform to what Cover Girl, Seventeen magazine and my mother all expect of me.  How could I possibly escape their collective pressure?  For me, the way out was to opt-out.  In 1987, I decided I would dress like the Replacements for the rest of my life.

Beauty-go-round rejected!  Fuck you, L’Oreal!  Kiss my ass, Vogue!  I’m a perfect feminist…right?

Writes Serano:

The greatest barrier preventing us from fully challenging sexism is the pervasive antifeminine sentiment that runs wild in both the straight and queer communities, targeting people of all genders and sexualities.  The only realistic way to adddress this issue is to work toward empowering femininity itself….indeed, a feminist movement that encompasses both those who are female and those who are feminine has the potential to become a majority, one with the strength in numbers to finally challenge and overturn both traditional and oppositional sexism.

Goddammit.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go polish my nails.

Friends, fans, flamers: I give you Barbra Peterson.

“We’re challenging you here today. We demand that you start covering the crime itself.  Start now doing stories about the backlog in processing rape kits.  Start now doing exposes on why only six percent of rapists serve any time.  That’s a crime in itself, don’t you think?  And how about how colleges try to discourage the victim from reporting the crime? Do you think the newspapers should be doing stories about that? Instead of a word we choose to call the event? What do you think?”

What DO you think?  Tell me in the comments.

One thing that we won’t debate, however, is the brilliance of Barbra, a woman I cannot BELIEVE I am lucky enough to know.

Pinch me!

…and it ain’t pretty.  Or is it?  I’m so burned out I don’t know anymore.

Regular readers of this blog should recall a recent post here called “If we didn’t confront you, you wouldn’t pay attention.” It described my thoughts shortly after I completed an interview with a local reporter about SlutWalk Minneapolis.  Richard Chin and I talked for a good 30 minutes about all things feminist, including the fact that my work today is informed by my desire for my daughter to grow up in a world where her IDEAS mean more than her BODY.

Her miniskirted body.  Her high-heeled body.   Her blah blah blah…..baby, did you see those LEGS!  Check out the GAMS on HER!

The article hit the streets (pun sadly intended) on Monday, September 26. You can check out the article yourself here.  I am quoted near the end of the piece, NOT within the legs, thankfully:

Shannon Drury, president of MN NOW, said she thinks the SlutWalk can present a different face of feminism that attracts younger women. ”There’s a lot of baggage when it comes to feminist imagery. There’s a lot of stereotypes of what feminists look like,” said Drury, 39. “Some people don’t like the idea that a feminist would dress in provocative clothing.”

The Mama Grizzly was right: you really can’t trust the Lamestream Media!  For those who haven’t met me in person, I wear a bra.  I shave my legs.  Am I still a feminist?  I do not wear makeup, nor do I wear heels.  Am I still a woman?  And most importantly, what on earth did Richard Chin and I talk about for the other 29 minutes of our conversation??  Did rape as a public health emergency come up at all?!!

Happily, I was able to share my opinion on the subject with the good people at Minnesota Public Radio News, who printed my commentary, “A rape protest whose talk draws attention to the walk,” on Wednesday, September 28.  Allow me to quote myself, please:

…during the course of those 30 minutes, the reporter mentioned that a previous interviewee said she would fear for her daughter’s safety if she were to wear a SlutWalk t-shirt in public. I replied that everything I do for women’s civil rights is done to ensure that my daughter’s world is a little better than the one my feminist mentors left me. Why should I accept limitations for her? Shouldn’t I demand that my culture accept her dignity, her humanity and her bodily autonomy? In the end, the one quote [the reporter] used was about feminists in provocative clothing….

Sex sells, with or without consent. In a puritanical society as baffled by sexual behavior and expression as ours, it follows that any frank discussion of sexual violence would lead to confusion….I challenge the opinion that SlutWalks draw negative attention. The negative attention is already here. It’s called silence.

My thanks to the editors at MPR for allowing my hastily- and furiously-cobbled together piece space this week.  One interesting bit of feedback I received from the essay was via a friend who sent it to a vocal opponent of the entire SlutWalk movement.  Said this critic after reading my commentary: “well, at least Minneapolis has its act together.”

Gosh!  I might be pretty after all!  But I’ll take another picture, just to be sure…

Additional links to local coverage of SlutWalk Minneapolis (trigger warning for victim-blaming in comments sections):

Heavens! A SlutWalk in Minneapolis.  Brian Lambert, MinnPost.com

SlutWalk comes to Minneapolis.  Sheila Regan, Twin Cities Daily Planet

SlutWalk March divides feminists.  Kristin Tillotson, Minneapolis StarTribune

As predicted, following the advice of The Feminist Breeder resulted in a large bump in my blog traffic–not because the subjects of Abortion & Menstruation are really that hot, after all, but because TFB has some of the most loyal readers anywhere on the web.  To my great delight, they left comments in abundance, and not simply ones that parroted back my point of view.  In some cases, the comments challenged me directly, but they did so without calling me a “pro-choice whore,” a “matriarchal gynecentrist,” or a homicidal maniac who looms over my children’s beds at night with an icepick.  How refreshing!  Thanks, all!

To welcome my new readers, I present my favorite feminist menstruation story of all time.  Believe me, it kicks the ass of The Red Tent.  ENJOY!

Via Spinner.com:

Date: August 28, 1992

What Went Down: When L7 got pushed, the all-girl grunge band pushed back. The crowd at England’s 1992 Reading Festival learned this the hard way. During the band’s set, guitarist Donita Sparks got fed up with all the crap fans were hurling onto the stage and retaliated by removing her bloody tampon and throwing it into the crowd. Some (un)lucky fan walked away with one of the most unsanitary souvenirs in alt-rock history.

That about sums up what I just told a reporter seeking my comments on an invented controversy swirling around the upcoming SlutWalk Minneapolis.  In a twist on what Jessica Valenti famously requested of the Morning Joe crew on MSNBC, I inquired of this reporter: “Minnesota NOW has supported Take Back the Night marches in the past, but you didn’t call me for comment about those, did you?”  Um, no.

I also told him that reappropriating the word “slut” isn’t new–Kathleen Hanna was doing it nearly twenty years ago.

In 2000, Gloria Steinem was asked by BUST’s Debbie Stoller (aka Celina Hex) what she thought of the ’90s riot grrrl movement.  Steinem said, ”I was really fascinated by it and applauded it…[but] it’s true that older feminists don’t always recognize feminism when it comes in a different form.”

The reporter I spoke with today asked if I wouldn’t mind sharing my age and generation identification.  ”I’m 39,” I answered, a Free to Be…You & Me baby and riot grrrl Third Waver sandwiched between the Second Wave and the new breed of feminist online networkers.  There’s plenty I can learn from both of these groups of people, but I would never in a million years be so arrogant as to assume that THEY have something to learn from ME.  ”The more we listen to one another,” I told the reporter, “the more we can get beyond words and move towards action.”

After all, a word (A WORD!) on Kathleen’s stomach didn’t end rape or rape culture, did it?