On February 3, George F. Will published a column called “Lifting Up the Fatherless,” which at first glance looks like so many other “boo hoo, poor boys without fathers” handwringers until you get to the fifth paragraph.

Born to an unmarried, mentally ill prostitute, [Robert Lewis "Sugar Bear" Jackson] acquired his interest in driving from his grandfather, who would drive around the block with Sugar Bear in his lap. Not until Sugar Bear was 25 did he learn that his grandfather was his father, too, having had a sexual relationship with Sugar Bear’s mother.

Don’t you love the nimble use of the euphemism “sexual relationship” to define incest, an act that rarely occurs between consenting adults?  Especially not when one of them is already identified as having a mental illness?  I suppose the word “RAPE” is too unsettling for a guy who wears a bow tie.

Sugar Bear grew up mostly on the streets, episodically drifting into and out of the care, such as it was, of various female relatives.

Will doesn’t state that Sugar Bear would have been better off in the care of his rapist father/grandfather instead of “female relatives,” but I felt the correlation was strong enough to say so on my Facebook page.  A couple of readers thought I went a bit far in chastizing Ol’ Bow Tie, and perhaps they’re right.  I’m just very sensitive to the assumption that children suffer without a dude in their lives, for that assumption leads us down this stupid path:

Rick Santorum Dwells on Gay Marriage: he suggests to a New Hampshire audience that an imprisoned father is preferable to a same-sex parent (Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2012).

!!!  Emphasis mine!!!  Because any time I get even the faintest whiff of the suggestion that my friends Morgan, Mia, and Margaret are somehow not being loved adequately because neither of their parents has a dick, I want to scream!!!!!  And explode into a fiery ball of exclamation points!!!!!!!

Happily, a Facebook reader recognized that the fault lies neither with Will, the editor who crafted his column’s headline, or with Frothy Mix, for that matter.  We remain such a grossly sexist society that whenever something goes wrong, we’re quick to assume that a MAN ought to be able to fix it–in the case of Will’s column, a closer reading reveals that MAN not to be Sugar Bear’s bio-dad after all, but MAN some folks believe is The Good Lord Himself™.  As this reader so brilliantly wrote on my FB wall: “I object to the insinuation that biological or mythological fathers are the only options for good role models.”

Right on!  Sugar Bear was failed by much more than his father/grandfather/heavenly father.  Social problems as tough as entrenched poverty and mental illness aren’t going to be fixed with a Dad shaped band-aid.

(Confidential to the rad mom formerly known as Spike Laird: please don’t start a blog.  I have enough competition already.)

Interested in the thoughts of an actual honest-to-gosh cis-fella, I turned to the Radical Hubby.  ”Oh whatever,” he huffed.  ”People tell themselves that crap all the time.  I’m a good father, so I’m the reason that my kids aren’t in prison.*  When the truth is we are all a mess of nature versus nurture versus all the other bullshit the world throws at us.  Kids need people who love them.  Period.”

Yep.

*Matt is a wonderful parent, by the way.  He’s a great believer in quantity time as well as quality time.  Still, when my son was old enough to realize that his best buddy had two moms, he whined: “WHAT? Mo has two moms but I only get ONE? That’s not fair!”**

**True story!

I posted a blog in November that I called “The Awareness-Industrial Complex,” spurred in large part by my blistering rage against a world which lets us drown in cancer-support products, but not actual cancer cures.

Sure, the pink crap hawked by the Susan G. Komen Foundation at a Walk/Run/Crawl/Kvetch For the Cure™ makes people feel good, but here’s a newflash: maybe cancer shouldn’t make people feel good.  Cancer, to those whose lives are touched by it (like me), feels very, very bad.  Cancer, to those whose bodies are actually enduring it, feels more terrifying than anything imaginable.

What would a world in which cancer made people ANGRY look like?  For one thing, there would be none of this NFL players in pink shoes bullshit.

Don’t get me wrong–Tom looks cute in these shoes, but what he wears doesn’t do a damn thing for a suffering patient.  Not the way that a research program at Johns Hopkins would.

Honestly, the Komen vs. Planned Parenthood kerfuffle makes me happy.  I’m disappointed that PP is losing over half a million dollars of Komen grant money, of course, but I’m pleased that PP supporters have kicked in nearly $400,000 since Komen’s boner became public (pro-choicers are the nicest people).  Most importantly, however, the public is starting to question the motives of a foundation that has very deep ties to Republican lawmakers who oppose not only women’s health initiatives, but also the environmental regulation that could ….wait for it…. prevent cancer.  Worst of all, it has long been known that Komen’s founder, Nancy Brinker, is a great friend of pharmaceutical companies that depend upon cancer to make money.

Watching the Komen brand suffer is schadenfreude at its finest–but any amount of suffering they endure is a trip to Disneyland compared to the pain of a cancer patient, of her children, and of her family.

NOTHING.

FFI:

Behind the Pink Curtain: Komen’s Political Agenda (DailyKos)

The Marketing of Breast Cancer (AlterNet)

Think Before You Pink  (a project of Breast Cancer Action)

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.

There is, however, one man for whom I would gladly march off a cliff if he led me that way.  One man whom I love deeply and unequivocally, a man whose makes me smile just thinking about him, a man who has brought immeasurable joy to my life (except for, uh, my husband of course).

That man is Al Green.

I MELT.

The only way this could be improved is if he were crooning my absolute favorite Al song, “What a Wonderful Thing Love Is,” from the brilliant I’m Still in Love With You.  If that were the case, I would quit my housewifely duties on the spot to join an Obama 2012 phone bank team in Cincinnati. Or Scranton. Or Tallahassee.  Or anywhere, really.*

If you don’t have a copy that record (or Call Me, Gets Next to You or Let’s Stay Together for that matter), please don’t make an Obama campaign contribution until you’ve hurried to your nearest independent record store to make your life complete.  It’s easy to find, for it will be the only album in stock featuring a white wicker chair on the cover.

*confidential to David Axelrod: while this is an admittedly kick-ass housewife recruitment strategy, please don’t have your candidate actually do it. My children need me.

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?

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 wish all my readers peace and joy as we transition from darkness to light, from old year to new.  Thank you for your friendship and support, and I look forward to the many adventures we’ll have in 2012.

I love gossip.  Love it.  I’m into good old-fashioned dirt, not the phony baloney that is manufactured by Kris Jenner and shoved down our throats in a series of “exclusive” photo spreads and television specials.  Brangelina delights me, as did All My Children before it went off the air.  The scandalous campfest Valley of the Dolls is one of my favorite movies of all time.

But there remains a species of gossip so tantalizing, so unbelievably marvelous that it blows away the timeNeely O’Hara flushed Helen Lawson’s wig down the toilet.  I’ll give you a hint: Larry Craig, Newt Gingrich, George Rekers. When a “family values” politician or activist gets caught with their hands in the cookie jar!

First, let us travel back to a more innocent time, namely 2009, when Minnesota Senator Amy Koch sponsored a bill that would amend our state constitution to limit marriage to heterosexuals only.  Koch, herself a heterosexual, is married to a man named Christopher.  One assumes that she felt her civil marriage contract with Christopher might be threatened by happily hitched gay folks, I dunno. It was something she felt deserved her time and attention during a recession, anyway.

It’s worth noting that in the 2009 session, Koch received a 100% rating from the Minnesota Family Council, a group so retrograde they oppose even popular measures like civil unions and, y’know, stopping the bullying of LGBT students (I hear their next piece of legislation will be to ban the phrase “don we now our gay apparel” from “Deck the Halls”).

In 2010, Koch became Senate Majority Leader, just in time to cram the divisive, expensive, and just gosh-darned Grinchy Marriage Amendment down our throats, which is just what Minnesota needed to create jobs…..for the soulless hacks at the ad agency for the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese.

But wait!  What’s this?  Did Santa leave a present a little early for us this year? Via CityPages:

Santa, who puts hypocrites, not necessarily adulterers, on his Naughty List, has made sure that this story gets the viral treatment it so richly deserves.  The giant, sparkly bow on this gift that many national outlets are missing?  That Koch’s alleged paramour is none other than Michael Brodkorb, founder of the giant blog o’ sleaze that is Minnesota Democrats Exposed, a site that deals in hearsay, innuendo, and “reliable sources.”   MDE joined my personal naughty list in 2008 when it implied that writing an article in an old issue of Playboy magazine OBVIOUSLY made Senate candidate Al Franken a misogynistic pornographer (the President of Minnesota NOW, however,  begged to differ).  The humiliating exposure of a former exposer is an irony even more delicious than eggnog.

I love gossip.  I love just deserts. I LOVE THE HOLIDAYS!  Enjoy, all!

Apparently, only the Centers for Disease Control and the mainstream American media are surprised that there are numbers backing up this thing that we feminists have long called “rape culture.”  I mean, when was the last time that NPR reported on rape when it didn’t involve a male celebrity perp?

I’ll wait.

In the meantime, the tight knot in my right shoulder, the one I call my Angry Muscle, is telling me that I ought to write a blog post on the subject, but I fear that no post will be nearly as straightforward as the one written by a friend who blogs as Minneapolitan Mademoiselle.  The MM is a whip-smart feminist and anti-violence advocate here in my hometown, whom I suspect blogs anonymously as part of her plan to run for public office.  She needn’t worry, though, as she writes with a great deal of common sense, neither cussing wildly nor baiting misogynists like your rad mama here.

The MM kindly allowed me permission to repost an excerpt from her roundup of Life in Rape Culture, which she entitled “And this is why you should care…”

[Yesterday,] the CDC released the results of the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. Some key findings include the following:

• As many as 1 in 3 women have experienced rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetimes, compared to about 1 in 10 men.

• 1.3 million women were raped during the year preceding the survey.

• Approximately 80% of female victims experienced their first rape before the age of 25 and almost half experienced the first rape before age 18.

• 28% of male victims of rape were first raped when they were 10 years old or younger.

• Both men and women who had been menaced or attacked in these ways reported more health problems. Female victims, in particular, had significantly higher rates of irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, frequent headaches and difficulty sleeping.

Doesn’t that just inflame the hell out of your Angry Muscle?? But wait, there’s more:

I read it.  I had the same reaction as I did when I listened to NPR this morning.  ”This isn’t news to millions of victims, or to people who care.”  And by care, I don’t mean caring about rape and sexual violence in general, as social ills–I mean people who are compassionate and kind enough to be trusted by a survivor with his/her story.  Whenever I encounter someone who claims not to know any victims of domestic and/or sexual violence, I have to break the news that they do.  Actually what I usually say is: “ask yourself why you’re such a fucking jerk that no one trusts you with the truth.”
There I go, cussing again!  Back to MM:

And finally, a fraternity at the University of Vermont thinks it’s legit to ask new members who they’d like to rape. The University doesn’t think so and has suspended the organization. Here’s a brief write up about that. 

!!!

As the father of two daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine. As I understand it, the reason Kathleen [Sebelius] made this decision was she could not be confident that a 10-year old or an 11-year old going to a drug store should be able alongside bubble gum or batteries be able to buy a medication that potentially if not used properly could end up having an adverse effect. And I think most parents would probably feel the same way….

The Radical Housewife, October 5, 2010:

Contemplating our children as sexual beings feels creepy; we don’t want to do it.

Would I want know if my daughter wanted an abortion? Of course. Every parenting decision I make is guided by my desire to build trust and respect in our family. I would want to know about her abortion; I would want to know about her pregnancy; I would want to know that she was sexually active. Do I have the right to all of this information? No. I work to earn her trust, but I can’t force her to give it to me.

No law can force a trusting relationship that doesn’t exist. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics supports this view, stating that “legislation mandating parental involvement does not achieve the intended benefit of promoting family communication, but it does increase the risk of harm to the adolescent by delaying access to appropriate medical care.”

Jezebel.com, December 6, 2011: