Unknown Risk Factor

In my wild and reckless youth, as my best friend and I would walk down Florida’s sunny highways with our thumbs sticking out, I understood why some people never pulled over to pick us up. Sure we were two skinny little blonde girls with a combined weight under that of an NFL kicker. Sure we were just out, being weird and having fun and trying to vacation on an extreme budget without a car. Sure we meant no harm. The drivers passing us by didn’t know that.

We each make risk-reward determinations daily – is it worth the delicious meal to go through the effort of cooking? does the current weather make driving now a bad idea? if I spend $40 on this shirt, will I regret it? How highly we evaluate a particular risk is going to be influenced by our history, our perceptions of the world and other people, and often our socio-economic position as well. I’m not best equipped to determine what’s “worth it” for someone else, but I am best equipped to figure out which rewards are worth which risks for me.

When men on the street talk to me, even if they are friendly and chill and mean me no harm, I view the potential risks as too high for the potential rewards and try to move as far away as I can. Even if there were only a 1% chance he would harm or threaten me, and a 99% chance he would be nothing but pleasant and friendly, I’d rather not take the risk. I don’t trust strange men, and I don’t owe strange men my trust. I don’t owe them my time or attention or politeness or a ride down the highway, and they owe me none of that either.

Given the pervasive reality of street harassment, I’m not the only woman to come down on the side of deciding social interactions with strange men in uncontrolled environments aren’t worth it. Other women do find the risk worth the reward, and that’s their assessment to make. Most people on the highway passed my friend and me by. Some people stopped and gave us rides. The people who chose not to pick us up weren’t “stuck up” or “bitches.” They weren’t being “teases” by flaunting their air-conditioned wheeled vehicles in front of me while I was tired of walking. They owed me nothing, just as I owe a stranger on the street wanting a friendly chat nothing. That some people picked us up anyway I’m grateful for, but I wasn’t entitled to a ride from anyone. I was an unknown risk factor.

Words of Caution

I’m a mom of an autistic boy. I don’t blog about him much, because his story is his to tell and mine is mine to tell. I sometimes blog about my family of origin. They are adults. They can largely defend themselves. They can refute what I say or disagree. They do not need my permission and supervision to use the internet. They do not rely on me for food or shelter. And, with the exception of my grandmother, I don’t use anyone’s real name.

When we blog about our children there are a few things we need to remember. First is that the internet is a forever kind of deal. Once you have published a photo or story of your child on the internet, it’s there. If you linked that story or picture with their name, that association exists and can be found someday by a prospective employer or romantic partner or landlord or enemy. It’s out there.

Some day your child(ren) may very well read your blog, especially if substantial portions of it are about them. The words you use about your children are words they might read. Bear that in mind.

Remember that childhood is transformative and none of us come out of our teen years or childhood years quite the same as we entered them. Try not to make dire predictions in your darkest moments. If you must, use a personal offline journal to get your feelings out and reflect on them before or instead of blogging.

When your child is exasperating you, take a moment to remember something amazing about them and post that story online. It will calm you down and help you focus on your child’s strengths and positive qualities, which in turn may help you communicate and problem solve with your child to address the cause of the exasperation.

How we talk about our children doesn’t only shape how the world views them; it shapes how our children see themselves. It’s important for them to overhear us bragging about them to our friends and peers. It lifts them up when we speak about their milestones and achievements, even when they may not seem like milestones to another child or another family. When our children know we think highly of them, they have more confidence to face challenges, resist peer temptation, and maintain healthy personal boundaries.

So blog about your children, but take care. Think about which words you want to commit to posterity and publish for the world, and which ones you will keep in a private journal of your own. Remember the power of search engines, and the potential long-term implications of what you say. Respect your children as individuals with their own side of each story to tell.

Geek Thoughts

I recently appeared on the Geek Thoughts podcast show (hosted by Twitter user @BenFromCanada).

You can catch the show here: http://mibreviews.com/2012/11/22/geek-thoughts-episode-8-on-separating-art-from-artists/

Chick-or-Treat

Last night was Halloween. My son dressed as a leopard and we went trick-or-treating as a family in our neighborhood. Times have been tough and most of our neighbors didn’t put out decorations this year, however, one family went all out.

They had a fog machine and dozens of skeletons and every child in the neighborhood went to that house last night. They had set up a small haunted house for the kids to walk through and an elderly white woman sat inside the “house” handing out baggies to the kids. “Wow, what a great haunted house!” we said as we walked home with Kid’s candy loot.

When we got back, Daddy went through the candy bag. As he opened the baggie from the haunted house, he found a Jack Chick tract inside, this one. For those who aren’t familiar with Chick tracts, they are evangelical Christian pamphlets in comic book style layout designed to terrify children into converting to Christianity.

The tract the old woman gave to my son tells the story of Timmy and his friends who go to a haunted house, which is demonic. As they run in terror, Timmy is hit by a car and killed. In later pages Timmy’s friends talk to his mother who tells them that Timmy is in hell right now and will be forever. Then she leads them in the sinner’s prayer so they won’t suffer the same fate as her Timmy.

It’s been over twelve hours and I still want to curse and scream. Who does that? How dare she? What gives her the right?

Don’t my parental wishes for my child’s religious education matter even a tiny bit? How can you think you’re being honorable or doing the right thing when you’re being so intentionally deceptive? What kind of person sets up a haunted house to lure children so that they can tell those children that going to a haunted house can lead them to hell?

This woman doesn’t know my son. She doesn’t know his name, his age, his favorite subject, his struggles, his hopes, his dreams. She doesn’t know his beliefs about morality or eternity. She has no idea what, if any, religion we his parents are teaching him at this age. For all she knew, we could be Christians already but not wanting to teach our son a fear-based approach to Jesus and the Bible. Did any of that matter to her? No.

If anyone reading this isn’t offended yet, imagine she was handing out Wahabi Islam tracts to your children, telling your children they were going to hell if they didn’t dedicate their lives to Islam right now. Pissed yet?

Dozens of children went to the neighborhood haunted house last night, babies to middle schoolers. Each child was given a baggie that contained a few stickers (made in China), a Jesus pin (choking hazard for the little ones!), and a Chick tract. Trick-or-treating on Halloween is a holiday tradition we have for children. It’s a chance to interact with your neighbors, let kids out later at night than usual, and to have fun pretending to be scared of things like fog machines and plastic bag ghosts.

If you think Halloween is evil or against your religious beliefs, ABSTAIN! Everyone knows not to knock at the door of the house with their porch light off, so just stay inside or go to the movies or something. Don’t set up a trap to manipulate the fears of small children you don’t even know. The arrogance of that is unforgivable.

Internalized Misogyny

I could see the two gendered paths laid out before me in childhood. I knew that the world and my faith attributed certain traits to the feminine and others to the masculine. I knew that girls were supposed to follow the feminine path, and that boys were supposed to follow the masculine. I could tell the girls’ path was a trap and I wanted nothing to do with it. Besides, my sister was so much better at being girly than I was. I could only hope to perform as second best in the feminine realm.

I’ve started to realize how much the gender roles still defined what I could and could not do, what I would and would not allow myself to enjoy doing. I was so afraid of being seen as “just a girl” or “only a woman”. I had also internalized the idea that being a girl is why I had been sexually molested – not because the man was sick and violated me, but because I was tempting flesh as a young girl.

I had plenty of examples of strong women in my life. In my family I had a female preacher, graduate professor, worship team leader, ballet dancer, and human resources department head. I knew that women could do anything, but the world told me that wasn’t true. I decided the women in my family were better, were “not like those OTHER women.” I attributed our strengths to our masculinity, to our Otherness from women as a whole.

I didn’t learn how to cook until the past couple of years. Cooking was women’s work, was a gendered chore, and I wasn’t about to sign up for a bunch of thankless effort. It’s only now that I’m in a relationship with a feminist man that I feel like I can explore cooking without trapping myself into a Female-labeled box without air holes.

Thank you Feminism for helping me recognize and confront internal misogyny. Thank you for helping me to love my “feminine” skills and traits. Thank you for giving me opportunities to try new things without losing rights or dignity.

My Creeper Friend

I had a friend in high school. He was nice to me. He drove me to school in the morning with him and a few others, so I wouldn’t have to catch the bus. On my 16th birthday, he gave my boyfriend a dozen roses to give to me (his family owned a florist shop.) When I decided to chop off all my hair randomly one day in the school parking lot, he lent me his katana to do the job. We ran a Dungeons & Dragons game together for awhile, and he always provided enough Mt. Dew and Doritos for everyone.

“Wait,” you may be thinking to yourself. “This guy doesn’t sound like a creeper. He sounds like a nice companion or friend.” And to me he was nice, and a friend. I wasn’t the object of his affection – someone else was. When I met him, he was hung up on a girl bad. He talked about her all the time. He had a keychain lanyard that spelled out her name. They’d never even dated. In fact, when he’d asked her out, she’d clearly said she wasn’t interested in him romantically. He’d been friendzoned, and he wasn’t dealing with it well.

I do imagine he got over her, and knowing the support network he had, I imagine he has amended his creeper ways over the last 13 years. In high school, I knew it bugged me that he wouldn’t just move on, but I didn’t know why. A creeper is someone who behaves in a creepy way. He (or she, or xe) may be a good friend, a courteous host, and a nice companion to others despite being a creeper to one person. It’s so easy to recognize black hat villains, but so hard to see where we are letting things slide or not calling out creeper behavior, because it’s coming from someone we like.

Religious Liberty & Birth Control

Some American politicians, journalists, clergy, and lobbyists have been trying to argue that it is a violation of an employer’s religious liberty if their female employees have access to birth control through their earned healthcare package. In fact, an Arizona bill under consideration would make it legal for any employer to fire a female employee if she uses hormonal contraception, again all in the name of the religious liberty of employers.

But what about the religious liberty of employees? What if a Sikh woman employee uses birth control because abortion is against her faith but family planning is approved? What if a Christian woman believes her body is her Lord’s temple and maintaining its health is part of her worship? What if a woman of any faith knows she will pass on serious defects to any children she has and so chooses to avoid inflicting that pain by using contraception? Why do the spiritual mores and religious liberty of these female employees matter less than the religious liberty of their employers?

Religious liberty is for individuals, not institutions. Institutions don’t have souls or morals or brains. They cannot – they are not sentient. Religious liberty is not for the Vatican, a foreign state, to operate unfettered within the United States. Religious liberty is not for employers in their roles as employers. Religious liberty is for individuals.

As an individual, any employer may abstain from using birth control or other health services in accordance with their faith. However, it is not your right as an individual to impose your faith views on others and force them to abstain from using birth control or other health services. Your faith is for YOU, not for your employees.

“But if a woman wants birth control, she can just go work somewhere else,” you might say, but you’d have to be doing so from a position of extreme ignorance about the current economic and jobs climate, and the rate to which healthcare is tied to employment in this country.

Besides that, our Constitution provides equal protection to all individuals, regardless of religious faith or affiliation, especially in terms of employment. You as an employer are not allowed to discriminate in hiring or promotion of employees based on gender or religion. I’m pretty sure both come into play here, when you’re interfering with the religious liberty of female employees.

I have spoken with hundreds of women who have had abortions and thousands of women who use contraception. Some are atheists and some are devout believers. Not one of them wanted her non-related boss’s opinion or spiritual views to override her own when it came to her family planning or healthcare.

I’m not a fan of faith or religion, but I am a supporter of religious and conscience liberties for individuals. Women should be able to decide if and how they will plan their pregnancies, and how to cope with their pregnancies, whether planned or unplanned. If you really want to protect religious liberty, protect the religious freedom of individual women to make decisions for their lives in accordance with their own faith.