…well, most of us were standing.  Some of us were playing Angry Birds Space on the iPod.

If The Radical Housewife: The Blog has been quiet lately, it’s only because the radical housewife, the person ( i.e. me) has been so very, very busy.  In a few days Minnesota NOW is hosting its combined state & regional conference, and I’ve been typing my wrists off in an attempt to publicize it.  But if my six years at the helm of this organization have taught me anything, it’s that the local media doesn’t care much about feminist actions that lack the word “slut” in the title.

(note to self: change conference name to “SLUTFEST 2012,” take phone off hook)

But no amount of press releases could get in the way of last Friday’s annual solidarity event at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood.  We travel across the river every Good Friday to show our support for the clinic’s staff and patients, who must endure the presence of literally busloads of antis that day.

Two years ago,  Minnesota Public Radio News printed my essay on why I bring my family every year.  An excerpt:

Those who oppose abortion demand to know why I would bring my children to a place they consider incompatible with their “family values.”  In reply, I point out that my family reinforces my commitment to reproductive freedom.

As a stay-at-home mom, I experience frustration, exhaustion and anxiety at every turn, and I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m as lucky as Bristol Palin was lucky to have financial and emotional support in place for her to consider parenthood at 17. I’m as lucky as Pam Tebow was to have given birth to a healthy baby boy.

Bristol, Pam, and I are fortunate, indeed……[but] our experiences are ours alone, and cannot be expected to set the standard for every other woman across the globe.  Like other structures and systems, families function best when they develop deliberately.

Speaking of families, here’s an absolutely adorable one, featuring some Minnesota NOW friends.  My preggo tummy wasn’t nearly this cute when I waddled on Good Friday 2005:

I suspect the little girl is grimacing because she knows Elliott and Miriam were the ones who hoovered up the cookies at the volunteer table.  Sorry, kiddo.

This year I allowed Elliott to film a portion of our visit.  Serendipitously, my sister and her daughter arrived to meet us as Elliott filmed.  Now that’s what I call FAMILY VALUES!

Until next year, kids.

If you’re in the Twin Cities area this weekend, don’t forget to stop by SLUTFEST and say hello!

You want a trigger warning?  You got one.

Surf away if you don’t want to read the word “rape,” think about the act rape, or get a taste of my wrath directed at pearl-clutchers of convenience who gleefully report about rape all day long in the name of news, but are shocked, SHOCKED that rape might be mentioned in a comic strip.

No, not reruns of Peanuts, silly.  Doonesbury!

Good old Garry Trudeau is wading into the forced ultrasound wars with a series this week featuring the trials of a woman seeking an abortion in a conservative wonderland (or the early stages of the Republic of Gilead).  Trudeau told the Washington Post that to ignore the issue would be “comedy malpractice.”  Bless his feminist heart!

Above is today’s strip, cut from the print editions of the two dailies in my area, the Minneapolis StarTribune and the St Paul Pioneer Press.  I haven’t subscribed to either for many years, due in part to cost-cutting measures that sacrificed journalism in favor of really big type and the kind of salacious reporting that belongs in the pages of In Touch Weekly, not a newspaper (remember when the PiPress’s reporting on SlutWalk Minneapolis appeared in the shape of a woman’s sexy legs?  I sure do).  Thursday’s strip promises to feature a doctor annoucing “by the power invested in me by the GOP base, I thee rape.”

Ouch.

But when the papers themselves can’t control the narrative (rape=kinda sexy), the issue is suddenly controversial, too hot for print.  When Garry Trudeau likens a transvaginal ultrasound to rape, it’s “inappropriate.”  As David Brauer of MinnPost (an online news source staffed by canned Strib & PiPress employees) so astutely observes, children reading their parents’ papers are already being exposed to stories that detail rapes of kids their own age.  

But that’s news, the editorial boards would argue.  People have a right to know.  Following that logic, then, it can’t be controversial that readers have a right to know that transvaginal ultrasounds look like this:

…and that these ultrasound laws coming up for debate would require that women seeking abortions would be forced to endure this vaginal probing without their consent.

Sure sounds like rape to me.

A Pap smear is not rape, despite the suggestion of Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America.  Just like Janice, I schedule Pap smears with licensed, trained professionals whom I trust.  Janice and I consent to the procedure, following the guidelines recommended by our doctors.  It’s not against the law to skip ‘em, though.  We have a choice in the matter.  When we get Paps, we say yes.*

But back to the pearl-clutchers of convenience populating the editorial boards of Twin Cities newspapers, suddenly so nervous about children.  THE CHILDREN!  MY GOD, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

Give me a break.

The word “rape” should make people uncomfortable.  How are we going to stop it without talking about it?  How are we going to debate the politics of mandated vaginal ultrasounds without considering that, yes, the procedure looks and sounds an awful lot like rape?

A credible newspaper cannot reasonably claim that news articles on the rape of children (reported in much larger type than appears on the comics page) are somehow less damaging than a comic strip satire.  Pearls cannot be clutched only when it suits….The Suits.

The whole thing almost makes me want to start a subscription so I can cancel it in a huff.  Almost, but not quite!  Happily, these papers are dwindling into insignificance all on their own, due in large part to dumb decisions like this one.

You can keep up with Doonesbury online here: http://www.doonesbury.com/

* can you believe I’m still explaining this yes-means-yes, no-means-no shit?  I can’t, either. 

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.

Two feminist mom bloggers whom I greatly admire, Avital Norman Nathman of The MamaFesto and Lisa Duggan of The MotherHood Blog, wrote the following message and asked writers like yours truly to repost it today for what they’re calling a virtual Blog-In.  I am very happy to participate, for I believe in and support every single word!

I encourage all of my media-connected readers to participate, via blog or with the Twitter hashtag #BlogIn2011.

Dear 2012 Presidential Candidates,

We are your future constituents and we are parents. We are American mothers and fathers and grandparents and guardians. Our families might be the most diverse in the world. Blended and combined in endless permutations, we represent every major religion, political ideology and ethnic culture that exists. We are made from equal parts biology and choice. Our children come to us in every way possible—including fertility miracles, adoption, and remarriage.

Our very modern families embody the freedom that defines America. We embody America. We are rich in diversity, but we are united in our family values. We come together today, with one voice, to express our grave disappointment in the national political discourse.

The 2012 countdown has barely begun and we are already being bombarded with the warmed-over, hypocritical rhetoric of 2008. We are living in a time where 15.1% of Americans now live in poverty, the unemployment rate stands at 16%, and we are spending close to $170 billion annually between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan*.

Given the current state of affairs we would expect every candidate to focus on the issues that truly matter: job creation, debt-relief, taxes, education, poverty, and ending the war(s). Instead, it is already clear to us that the conversation has been hijacked, with the goal of further polarizing our nation into a politically motivated and falsely created class-war.

We will not stand for another campaign year in which politicians presume to know what our family values are as they relate to the nation.

To be clear, here are our family values:

• Affordable health care, including family planning, for all Americans. We will not tolerate any candidate using the shield of “Choice” to blind us from the issues that really matter. When funding is stripped from organizations like Planned Parenthood, access to sliding-scale health care (including yearly pap smears & mammograms), comprehensive sex education, and family planning is blocked from the poorest of the population.
• Access to education, and the ability to actually use it. We want quality, affordable, federally-funded pre-K programs made available in every State, in order to provide an even starting point for all children enrolled in public schools— regardless of the wealth of the district or town they live in.
• A reinstatement of regulations for banks issuing mortgages and full prosecution for those who engaged in fraudulent lending practices. We want full accountability —investigation, indictment and prosecution— of those individuals and institutions who engaged in fraudulent lending practices and who helped create the massive foreclosures that left many families homeless or struggling to keep their homes.
• A return of strict environmental regulations protecting water, air, food, and land that were removed in the last two decades. We want our children to grow up in a world not weighed down by the strains of pollution and global warming. Between BPA in our products, sky-rocketing rates of asthma in kids, questionable hormones in our over-processed food, and more, we need leaders who will put our needs and safety over the desires and profits of large corporations.

Family planning, healthcare, education, economic solvency and environmental safety: these are our national family values. Candidates who demonstrate the ability to understand the gravity of these issues, and their impact on our families, and who can provide actual, viable solutions to these problems will garner our support and our votes.

We believe in this democratic system of ours, and we will continue to use our voices and our votes to see that it reaches its fullest potential.

Sincerely,

Your future constituents,

The mothers & fathers of America

If you would like to forward this letter to your elected officials, you can find their contact info at the following links: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

Tomorrow, registered voters in Mississippi will vote on whether a fertilized egg is a person.  Polling suggests that Proposition 26 just might pass.

I earned my bachelor’s degree in English and Media Studies (a fact I trot out often to assure people that my fascination with Jersey Shore is purely academic), not biology, so I turned to the internet to reveal to me just what in heck a “person” under this law would look like:

Interesting.

Minnesotans have a reputation for politeness, but we also have a fine tradition of asserting our superiority. One of my favorite local politicos, Matt Entenza, noted in a 2010 campaign ad that “if budget cuts were always the answer [to solving problems], then Mississippi would be a leader in this country.”  HA! HA! HA!  All snickering aside, Entenza forgot that Mississippi is, in fact, a nationwide leader in many issues affecting children–the kind of children that look like this:

• Mississippi has the nation’s highest rate of infant mortality, at 10.04 deaths per 1000 births.
• Mississippi children have the country’s highest obesity rate (21.9 percent).
• Mississippi children have the highest poverty rate in the country, at 21.9 percent. 

I am not going to gloat about Minnesota’s relatively luckier children, because the fact that there are ANY kids living in poverty ANYWHERE is something that should nag the conscience of us all, no matter where we live.

I am unequivocally pro-choice.  I have been ever since I was young enough to understand what reproductive rights meant, and I remained so during my two pregnancies.  But I do allow that there is a scenario in which I could be convinced that abortion could be considered a social ill that required the careful attention of government.

Shocking, I know!  So what on earth would that scenario be?

If every post-born child in America were ALREADY healthy, cared-for, well-educated and safe.  Every single one.  No child left behind, as it were.

As I wrote in my last post, I’m still waiting for living children to attain “personhood.”  If abuse like that suffered by Hillary Adams is abolished forever, I could engage in a discussion about the “rights” of two-celled globules.

Let’s hope that tomorrow, Mississippians do the right thing for the already-living children in their state who desperately need them.

This week, I received a bit of career advice from a woman who is quite literally a rock star in the mom-blog world: The Feminist Breeder.  She hipped me to the fact that there are two subjects that can cause her blog traffic to shoot through the roof, and since it’s been a slow week around here at Radical HQ, I thought I’d throw them in a post together, complete with mystery photos from Google Images.

1. Abortion

I’ve never had one, a fact that seems to confuse more than a few of the trolls who have crawled my way over the years.  I’ve been careful, yes, but I’ve also been extremely lucky.  My opinion on the matter has not changed since I became a mother to my two beloved children–quite the opposite, actually.  As Dolly Parton once told Ricky Gervais, if you want to see the pretty rainbows, you need to prepared for a hell of a lot of rain.  Just as one wouldn’t move to Seattle without an umbrella or twelve, neither should one enter parenthood without emotional, physical, and financial preparation.  There are things in life that can turn out okay if you wing it, like punk rock, making a stir-fry, and writing a book, but raising a kid ain’t one of ‘em.

2. Menstruation

The only thing worse than menstruating is NOT menstruating (see #1), unless you’ve planned your parenthood, in which case not menstruating is a joyous thing indeed.  Isn’t that picture bizarre?  I think so.  I’m a little bit bothered by it.  I feel a cramp in my lower back and a deep need for chocolate…..

Web traffic, I eagerly await you.  First, I’m running to Walgreens for Kit Kats and some Pamprin.

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.

The clip below, from a hearing in the Minnesota State Legislature on Friday, May 6, has already made its way around the Minnesota blogosphere, but it deserves national attention. It needs to go big: crazy nasty-ass honey badger big, “leave Britney alone!” big, Rebecca Black big, bed intruder big. How else to respond to the implication, made by state representative Glenn Gruenhagen, that the seven men on the Burger Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973 just to get in women’s pants??!

WHAT REP. GRUENHAGEN SAYS:
“Let me just remind you, especially ladies, it was seven men that made abortion legal. Not seven women. Now what’s the significance of that? Men, a certain percentage, have developed a perverted view of women and what abortion tells men is they can use women and lose them. OK? Use and lose them and run from their responsibility… Again I plead with you, ladies, help men support legislation that teaches men to accept their responsibility when conceiving with a woman. Don’t support government legislation and programs that tell men they can impregnate women and run away from their responsibilities. Please ladies, think about what’s been done to you in the last 40 to 50 years.”

WHAT ‘LADIES’ HEAR:
“Forget what you may have heard in those ‘womyn’s studies’ classes of yours–those seven men on the Supreme Court in 1973 were horny, twisted perverts. Harry Blackmun wrote the majority opinion to score with loose Washington chicks, not to guarantee your right to medical privacy. Thurgood Marshall, your civil rights hero? Voted on Roe to realize his dream of boinking every last clerk in the office, not to give you any civil rights of your own. Ladies, men are dirty hornballs who need to fuck everything that moves! Only abortion law keeps us in line! Heaven knows that YOU don’t want sex. Justice Elena Kagan, a celibate spinster, would NEVER have voted in favor of a woman’s sexual agency. I know she’ll vote like a proper lady when the time comes.”

Question: