cultural sensitivity and all that

it's interesting the things that strike you. i'm working these days for a company that does email support and i just took an email from a person with a very Chinese name. i was not aware that two first names was a common naming convention, and apparently neither was the company i work for. but this person was not able to put their two first names into the first name box. and it occurs to me, this is something i would have never thought of. i will never have to deal with. and how much does this have to hurt, to not be able to write your name the right way on a fucking Internet form? to have some stupid company deny your name. and yeah, i'm sure there's people who would say, "so?" who would see this as a tiny deal that this person should just get over. but names hold power, and being able to own your name is to own yourself. maybe it's because our culture has come away from the idea that your name should stand for something, should be who you are in terms of honor and dignity, that you shouldn't do things that would dirty your name. maybe it's just the privilege of our culture running roughshod over others.

and maybe the reaction is what separates people who "get" it from those who don't. does this mean i "get" it now? on the one hand, i hope so. and on the other hand, i hope not. i don't want to be the smug asshole who thinks they get it and stops listening.

So then...

it's been a while, and i know it. early march saw me joining the growing leigon of unemployed and it all just made me intorvert. but, lucky me, i'm back to work and will probably have more to say in the near future.

I Have No Words

i know i promised you the second part of my feminism and BDSM rant, but this image took my breath away. literally. i'm tearing up, looking at this beautiful woman, who's body looks so much like mine. and i don't know how i could have managed to miss the add campaign that produced it. apparently the body shoppe does this kind of thing regularly. next to it's slick shots of it's products. and i don't think i can ever bring myself to spend money at any other body product store again. this is profound, in a way i'm finding hard to express. she looks like i do. fleshy and folded and round and lovely. she is lovely to look at. and i look like her. is this what my beloved sees when he looks at me? i don't think i've ever felt, for all the hard won self love and all the hard won sanity, as though i could be simply beautiful. beautiful despite my size and shape, beautiful within my size and shape, sure. but simply beautiful? i find the words inadequate to express this...

FemDomme Feminist? Part I

so this whole nine duce debate flare up and subsequent rad fem insanity has me wanting to bash my head against a wall. on my best days i don't understand or really have much tolerance for hypocrites. and maybe i'm judging too harshly by calling these women hypocrites. but i know that if these same patronizing words came from a penis wielding human, they'd be frothing at the mouth over it. news flash! i don't need therapy, i've never been molested, i don't want to hurt the world for fun, i'm not crazy, delusional, or incapable of analytically looking at the way i live my life. and neither are the women you have insulted by saying these exact things to and about with venom and vitriol in your every post.

and since no one there wants to even touch femdomme, and i have a fucking blog, i get to do it. so yeay for me i guess...

here's the thing, female domination as a kink is just as much a part of patriarical sexuality as female submission. the idea of the strong amazonian woman who will crush a man with her thighs, belittle his tiny dick, fuck him for her pleasure, and then stuff him in a corner until future use is pretty common. yeah, the thought of it is pretty hot for me. though generally those are not the fantasies i have. but not only do a whole bunch of submissive men have that fantasy, they get super amounts of shit for it. because patriarchal sexuality dictates that a man should be the dominant one, the penetrator, the one on top. and in femdomme, those are almost never the case.

but if you want to talk about sexual power hierarchies as aberrant to the norm, femdomme is where it's at. in my relationship i am in charge. i make the decisions about what we are going to eat, how we are going to spend our money, what activities we are going to participate in, when and how we will fuck. but i don't do this in a vacuum. no one i've known in a long term BDSM relationship does. and yes, there was a time when i was a bottom in a relationship so i can talk about that end of things too.

when i got interested in BDSM i took the submissive roll. yeah, part of that was because the majority of the women around me engaged in this kind of activity were submissive, that was just the tiny bit of the local scene i knew personally. i won't say that i didn't enjoy the activities, and the physicality of pain play, but i really quickly determined that submission did nothing for me. i did not feel fulfilled by it the way my women friends did. i started topping, realized that was where it was at for me, and that was that. do i think patriarchy predisposed me toward my initial submission in some way? maybe. do i think it brainwashed me into wanting it? not really, but then i didn't exactly want to be submissive. i wanted to participate and lacked the words or knowledge of how i wanted to do that, and so followed the examples of those around me to whom i could relate. do i think this means all submissive women everywhere are brainwashed? fuck no.

there is an equality in health BDSM relationships that is hard to see from the outside. most people have defined roles within their relationships. some people seem to have stronger personalities, are more aggressive sexually, and just tend to be leader types. when these roles are not firmly established you get all kinds of conflict and emotional turmoil. having those roles defined, clearly expressed and acknowledge within a relationship is liberating. the give and take is circular, despite outside views and opinions. but i'm getting into defensive mode here, and i want to actually discuss the idea of power exchange not just hash out a meme about why my relationship is fucking awesome. even though it is.

so, the main questions being asked are:
1. can BDSM and feminism exist and cohabitate? can a woman be a feminist, or a man her ally, and be into BDSM with it's sexual power hierarchies and it's emotional and physical activities?

2. is consent shaded by growing up in the patriarchy to the point where it cannot be reasonably given? and if so, does that negate a woman's right to do so?

3. and just how does all that apply to femdomme v/s maledom?

so, ok, i'm starting to get to the point where i'm almost ok with calling myself a feminist most of the time. as i define feminism as the quest for equality of the sexes, the quest to give women their own voice and agency, and a desire to dismantle the detrimental beauty myth that keeps women hating their bodies... that's where i'm coming from, and that's the label i'm willing to apply to myself. i'm still just testing the waters of how i want to participate in that, but for now we'll assume i have a somewhat basic understanding of the theories. so let's look at it.

*equality of the sexes: is there sexism within BDSM communities? yes, i can say there is. i don't think it's any more or less prevalent than in "normal" society, though i think there's a much better chance of someone backing you up if you tell someone they are being sexist. because the argument that women are all naturally one way or the other is held by a fringe minority that most folks in BDSM don't actually agree with. i would love to see the sexism pointed out more often within the community, same as i would like to see it pointed out in main stream social circles. but overall, in terms of equality... unless you hanging out with Goreans who believe in the natural dominance of men, or Female supremacists who are on the other end of things, most BDSM folks want and support equality.

*giving women their own voice and their own agency: there is a demand on almost everyone who practices BDSM that they express their wants and needs in their relationship and to a greater extent, in their life. the insistence that you self analyse, and that you communicate the fruits of that analysis, contributes to individual growth. being able to say "i want" or "i need" in a safe environment is hugely liberating. especially when it comes to emotions and sex. i cannot speak for all women, but i know i have seen and experienced the growth and ability of many women (myself included) to make those kinds of statements in their daily lives as a result of the work they have done to be able to make them within their relationships. i don't think it makes BDSM better than any other kind of relationship, but i do think there is a great deal to be said for the stress on communication within that relationship style. maybe it's small, one woman at a time, but if the personal is political i think it counts towards the overall movement.

*dismantling the beauty myth: this one is harder to see as an over reaching thing. there is still so much work to do with the main stream media and ideology, but i think being part of an alternative sexuality with alternative standards of beauty is a good thing. i wish more men and women could learn about self love and body acceptance. and that's something i think can be pushed for regardless of kink.

given the above, i think that yes feminism and BDSM can co-exist. at least the kind of feminism i understand and relate to. this is getting hugely long... so i'll be asnwering the second and third questions in another post.

S&M and Me

so, one of the things that i've been rolling about in my head is the idea of the intersection of power both within my relationship and outside of it. and i've been wanting to write a post for a while about how i view BDSM in a feminist context. but i've been dragging my feet. until yesterday, when ren posted about some BDSM articles on Nine Duce's blog. and that there were more than a few comments telling submissive women that they didn't know how to do feminism, in fact pretty much hadn't a leg to stand on in calling themselves feminists, because of their sexuality.

now, i am not a submissive woman. but i have friends who are. and while i don't see submission as a feminist action i don't think that one negates the other. in fact, i think more submissive women should explore feminism. not because i want them to change, cause i really don't. but because i think the intersections of power and sexuality are profoundly interesting and can perhaps deepen an already meaningful relationship based on choices.

the thing that's pissing me off more than anything on the thread is the total denial of female dominants. now, i understand that femdomme doesn't fit into neat boxes of patriarchy and male domination of poor deluded women. i get that. but an honest discussion of power hierarchy in relationships needs to look at M/f and F/m as well as M/m and F/f and all other permutations. maybe i'm hitting my head against a wall thinking that anyone there wants to have a look, and not just have a bash the men party.

but the thing that this has made me realize is this: i love my lifestyle. and i've been neglecting my beloved. not sexually, cause we fuck like bunnies. we're young, he's hot, i have a high sex drive. but in those aspects of our relationship that are unique to us, i have been neglecting him. i have let things slide, while giving him his permanent collar. which seems wrong somehow. that's another post all together. but i think i've been trying hard not to create this cognitive dissonance in my head that i actually did. and that's not ok.

so, well and truly thanks radical feminist hate for making me defend myself and my beliefs. i'm not afraid of exploring the intersection of my sex anymore. and in fact i'm looking forward to it.

In which I face my fear of doctors

so the big accomplishment for the day..... wait for it..... i went to the doctor. yeah, i know people do it all the time. big deal right? except, it's been 5 or 6 years since i've seen a doctor for anything. unless you count the ones i used to see at work. and i was nervous, cause i'm not a big fan of doctors in the first place, and because i really didn't want to have a convo about my weight when i went in because my ears have been bugging me for a month or so. but it went really well actually.

the nurse took my papers and started heading for the scale, i told her i prefer not to be weighed. heart all a flutter, i expected to have to qualify the statement... but she didn't even break stride. just settled me into the exam room. seeing a new doc means loads of questions, and i have a family history that means i check off a whole lot of boxes. and we talked about it. about my grandfather who is the reason i check a good number of boxes. about my dad's mom. about my genes. and i told her, point blank, my family runs large and i'm ok with it. this is the weight i've been at for three years or so. that i do my best to eat well and get a decent amount of movement. that i want to have myself checked for markers of things to come, but that i wasn't really interested in weight loss. and she took some notes, and agreed i should make an appointment for a physical, and that was it.

and i am so relieved right now. i feel ok making the appointment for the physical because i'm not overly concerned about the conversation we'll have when the lab results come back. i went in feeling crummy and nervous, and left still feeling crummy (dammed ears) but much less nervous. and that's a great feeling.

What Kind of Sex do 9 out of 10 People Enjoy?

Gang Rape! bwahahahahaha... *puking noises*

so, generally speaking i have awesome housemates. h is like a little sister and i enjoy her company, and she has a similar vibe to my own kid sister who's pretty much her same age. a is pretty awesome but our politics and worldviews are radically different and sometimes i'm astounded by the things that come out of her mouth and that she thinks are ok. like the gem of a joke referenced above.

a few nights ago we somehow got on the subject of that joke in particular and the use of rape, and can rape ever be a punchline for a joke of any kind. obviously the joke above falls into that, not ok, catagory. gang rap as a punchline, not funny. saying steven spielburg raped indiana jones... gray area. using rape in stand up to make a joke or satirise the way we view rape, the way the word is ubiquitous, the way we have a blame the victim mentality... i'm ok with that. and so a, my beloved and i were all having this discussion and it was interesting to say the least.

my beloved is a fervent believer in no censorship of any kind. the phrase, you CAN'T say that is one he will fight against. and while he agrees with me that base humor that does nothing more than make rape funny with no attendant social commentaries wrong, he doesn't think the word itself should be forbidden. we used the rape of indiana jones as his example, and going into it i was going nonononono... you can't say that. "but the word itself," he reasoned, "has a meaning that fits exactly what i want to say happened." Spielberg took a childhood icon and violated every precept, ripped away the things that made it great, and generally destroyed it. his argument is that rape is a word, a word we shouldn't use lightly or bandy about in a joking manner, but that it is a word we should use. and i can concede that point. if we use the word rape in a conscious way, perhaps that will give it back some of the power it has to be a serious word. and then statements like, "if you take the last piece of pie i'm going to rape you," won't be said in a flip sort of way.

another bit we talked about was the rape fantasy. which i'm ok with. fantasies about power, struggle, the erotic nature of that struggle are all concepts i can get behind. i think people should be free to explore in their fantasy life anything that gets them hot, including rape. i even think that a select few people with the emotional maturity to handle the realities of the situation should be able to enact said fantasy with their partner. because there you have consent. you have two people discussing the wants and needs and realities and how to recover and when does stop actually mean stop. it's something i toy with myself. from the perp end, not the victim end, but it's there in that dark part of my own fantasies. being able to acknowledge that, and relate to it on a fantasy level, is what makes it a thing i'm likely to never do. because i know the difference between fantasy and reality, and maybe if this type of fantasy were less taboo it could be talked about as opposed to repressed. i'm a big believer in repression of sexuality as a way to seriously and monstrously distort it. and distortion of this kind of fantasy can have serious repercussions.

but i want to know what you think, reader who stumbled on this lengthy post. is rape ok to joke about? is it ok to use as a word? do you think i'm off my tit?

Princess Charming

So, apparently too much pink is damaging to the personalities of little girls, which i causing quite the comment session at feminisitng. and of course any discussion about pink eventually leads to princesses cause, all princesses wear gobs of pink...you know? at least, they do in our culture obsessed with driving home the notion that girls need their men to come along and rescue them. and i had this epiphany, like i do sometimes, about how i used to be that girl. and how i'm not anymore.

i had a relationship that was bad, not as bad as some and certainly not as bad as it could have been. but in the sense that he wreaked havoc with my sense of self worth and made me doubt everything about myself it was bad. not that my home life at the time was any better. my mother and i have never had what i would call a normal, healthy relationship, although now that i don't live with her things are much better. then along comes this guy. he's big and strong, with piercing blue eyes and a smooth tongue, looking like some nordic/germanic warrior and i fell hard and fast. and he knew it. and he took control of it, and me. and i very much wanted him to. i very much believed that he was going to save me from my life, and that we'd go off to the college of his choosing and i'd be his little house wife. thank the gods that didn't happen.

but in the depths of the dysfunction of that relationship, all i wanted was for him to consume me. it's the closest i've ever been to full submission of my will to another. and if the relationship hadn't been as crash and burn as it turned out to be, i might have ended up in a very different place. but it was. and it did.

fast forward almost a decade, and i'm in a new city with the most perfect man for me. we were laying in bed, not that long ago, talking about all manner of things and i asked him if he was glad he'd moved with me. we hadn't know each other very long, let alone been dating for long, when the decision got made. and he looked at me with those dark blue/green eyes of his and said "of course i am. you saved me from, what was turning into, a really hellish life." or something to that effect. reading the bit about princesses, and their desire to be rescued from their lives, made me think of that moment. and while that statement should have had all kinds of subversive undertones, it somehow doesn't. he's a strong man, stronger than he knows i think, and perfectly capable of dealing. the move was my idea and i orchestrated the endeavor, but he funded it and turned it from a pipe dream into a reality. but he credits me as his savior, and in some ways i really like that feeling. in many ways, i also think it feeds into the power exchange dynamic we have, and the occasional and general roll reversals we enjoy.

i'm not really sure where i'm going with this. it doesn't have a point, like some posts i've made. but the thought really made me go humm....

More on Race and Privilege

i'm not exactly sure of the meandering path that landed me on racialicious reading a post about the politics of hair. normally i stay in my happy little feminist/FA circuit of blog reading, venturing into other -ism blogs only as they relate to the other stuff i'm reading. mostly because it's all too much for me to wrap my head around most days. there's too much for me to process all at once, and i just let the search take me where it seems to want to go. which is probably how i ended up there.

i've been mulling over privilege, again... because it's the hinge that everything seems to be hung on. and it's the thing i have the hardest time seeing in myself. but Latoya Peterson's post about her decision to let her chemically relaxed hair grow out to a natural texture, and the body politics that came along with that, was really eye opening. and i thought, wow i can totally relate to that. that's just like the time i decided not to diet anymore and... then i realized it was nothing like that. yeah, there were body politics involved with that decision. but no one told me i was more or less really a part of my racial background because of it. while the beauty myh that leads fat women to diet is the same myth that leads women of color to relax their hair it's not the same situation. and i guess i'm making progress that i was able to rethink the desire to relate to her post and then make it all about me. maybe it's enough to just relate, to say wow that resonated with me. i haven't posted a comment to her blog, mostly because i'm unsure of how to bring myself into her space and not bring my entitlement and privilge with me.

and so i went back into posts about privilege to read more about it and get a furthur handle. i'm still working on sorting it all out. i know i have white privilege. i know i have a seemingly heteronormative relationship which confers privilege. i know even if/when i find another partner to join the relationship there will be a shift in that seeming but i don't know to what extent. i think a lot of it will depend on who i end up with. another white guy? a woman? a person of color? each varriation brings other bagage with it. baggage i'm sure i'll deal with at that time.

but the white privilege thing is the one that i trip over the most. and in amoung the articles i found this gem. it's got some typos and it's an older piece but the list Peggy McIntosh puts together had some ahhhhhh moments for me. these in particular:

I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.
I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

that last one especially. because, like peggy, i was taught that racism is acts of meanness and bigotry and are pretty blatent. i still get a gut reaction when i hear, or read, about someone saying something is racist when there is no clear bigotry. i think to myself the person crying discrimination is being overly sensitive, or just trying to get sympathy, or is trying to get more help then they were offered. i'm not sure what i can do about it yet, other than keep on reading and pondering.

My Letter to Oprah

so i'm sure many of you have seen this or a similar article about oprah reaching 200 lbs and basically feeling like a failure. kate and the shapely prose family said this amazing thing but i felt the need to write something too. so i did. having a blog is fun...

why does this amazing, succsessful, wealthy woman who has beat sexism and racism to become a very powerful force hate herself and her body? why does she want to make herself dissapear? women aren't supposed to take up too much space, or be too loud, or too smart, or too succesful. or too ethnic. and while she has broken through most of those barriers she still wants to make herself disapear. her weight isn't a "sorce of shame," as she herself said. i'm quite sure she has more than enough willpower.

but she began to "eat what she wanted", and that wasn't good? not good for her to want? why are we still allowing ourselves, as women, to be told that we are not allowed to want, that we have to put the needs of everyone else before our own, that if we want anything at all we're selfish? and serriously, not every fat person is sitting around stuffing their face with junk food. and before you trot out your friend/co-worker/classmate/aunt eillien as your anecdotal evidence please remember that fat people are not all the same. just like not all black people are the same.

the disservice she's providing for the millions of women who hold her up as a role model is her re-enforcement that if you fail at long term weight loss it's your fault. which is a totally false statement. 95% of people who losse weight gain it back. period. and it's not becuase they don't want it enough, it's because our bodies are not designed to do that. she is clinging to the false hope that she, with all her money and support will be able to be part of that narrow margin. and the false statment that the only way to be healthy is to be thin. and the only way for her to be an acceptable person is to weigh a certain amount, that no other accomplishment is worth anything if she weights 200 lbs.

what i would wish for opera, and everyone who reads this blog, is an opportunity to stop hateing herself and her body. i would wish her the chance to learn about health at every size (HAES...google it, serriously) and the growing size acceptance movement. i would wish her self-love based on her accomplishmnets and strength not on the numbers on a scale or in her clothes.

Enlightening Pillow talk

so my housemate, her boy, my beloved, a friend of his and i were all sitting around watching Pen and Teller's Bullshit. now, i love these men and i will totally fess up to having a wee crush on mr. gilette. and i'm not entirely sure how we got on the subject but my housemate said she wouldn't allow her kids to have barbies. and i said something to the effect of not allowing barbie because of some crazy second wave feminist idea was... something. i was tired, and don't really remember all of it. but it's got me thinking back to something i read on fatshionista! a while back about the phenomenon of the "incredible bulk" or fat girls who verbally rampage about their fat acceptance and refuse to "worship at the alter of diets" and how alienating that can be to the casual listener. and i think i'm getting into that mind frame. which i have to curb. which means i have to apologise to my housemate when i see her for possibly getting out of line.

though it did end up with a really intense convo between my beloved and i. we were talking about how this whole activism thing has become REALLY important to me and that i know he understands it intellectually but i'm pretty sure he doesn't get it. and i finally found a really amazing way to express it to him... he's a history major and he's looking to deal in pre-colombian middle and south america, which means aztecs, olmecs, incas and mayans. these cultures are mythic and mystical and alien to the average american, and we imbue them in our pop culture with all kinds of fantastical properties. or we say there we totally savage and marvel at how they could have done the things we have evidence of them doing. and i realized, he plans to spend his education and stake his academic reputation on refuting these myths. and he takes the opportunity to talk to people about them pretty much every time they get brought up. and i asked him, "how is what you do any different then what i'm doing?" and we talked about it, and came to the conclusion that it isn't though it is. but we're coming to a better understanding.

because he asked me the most important question i think he's asked me in a long time. "what do you want from me?" and i have to admit it took me a while to answer the question since i hadn't exactly framed it out in my own head. what it basically came down to though was the need for him to understand how big this really was, and that i was challenging many things in my own head. for him to understand that i'm more than a little afraid of the challenges this could bring into our relationship. and most importantly for him to take this seriously, let me sound off, challenge me with questions, encourage and support me. i also expressed the very real concern i had over creating a cognitive dissonance in my own head about our power exchange relationship which is not equal or egalitarian, and how it fits in with other things i think and feel about unequal relationships between men and women. i do not want to be hypocritical and say it's not ok for you but it's ok for me.

which made him ask in that kind of scared, vulnerable voice i find so delightful and lust inducing, "you're not going to suddenly get rid of me, are you?" i'd be a liar if i said showing him how much i value him didn't end the night on a really good note.

Virtually Walking the Walk

so, i am a gamer geek girl. unabashedly most of the time. and in my geekdom i was playing WoW (that's World of Warcraft.. or Warcrack as we like to say in my house) and chatting with the group i was playing with. in WoW it's very common for several players to group together to accomplish a particularly difficult task, and that's what i was doing. we were waiting for another group member to finish repairing his gear, and during the down time another player said they were going to go get a snack since he was due for lunch but we were about an hour from being done with the task. so, more down time... which usually leads to chatting in game. the three of us left started comparing time zones and where that placed us in the greater world. eventually the first group member came back from getting repairs done to his gear (in game repairs to in game gear, not to be confused with actual equipment) and asked where the second player had gone.

"he's being fat." responded one of the three of us that had been chatting. and my fingers flashed out, seemingly of their own volition.

"that's not a cool thing to say. how do you know he's fat?" and i swear i hit return before i quite knew what was being typed. it just happened. and i waited for this to explode in my face, to have my group tell me to back off and not be so sensitive, to have the player react all insulted... because these were not people i play with regularly. these were people i just happened to find who needed to do the same thing i needed to do. there was no personal context in which my comment might be received. and yet the person on the other end of that comment was surprisingly cool in their response.

"i'm sorry," i'm paraphrasing here, "it just means he's eating here in australia, it's just slang."

and i wanted to have the conversation i could feel was coming, the pointing out how icky it is to associate any kind of eating with being fat. to point out that eating is needful for human life to keep living. that we shouldn't have this kind of association... and yet there were some less than mature members of the group that i just didn't want to deal with, who could have very well turned the potentially awesome conversation into something really ugly. and so i left it. i just told this other player i didn't mean anything personal by it, but that i believed very strongly in size/fat acceptance and felt it was a really mean thing to say. and they kept apologizing.

which totally blew my mind, because i couldn't hear their voice but they seemed really genuine. at least in type, which is all i have to go on in that setting. and it surprised me too that i spoke out like that. it's not something i would have done even a month ago. sure i'll eat cheesecake in retaliation, but opening my mouth to a complete stranger? not so much. until that moment. maybe this is the first few steps of walking the walk... cause i still find it hard to talk about these things with some of the people i'm close to. like my mom. but that's a whole other post.

Me and My Pancreas

so i have a family history of diabetes type 2, and conventional wisdom would tell me i shouldn't drink coke or fruit juice or any other sweet and delicious beverage. or eat carbs. or be fat. but with every study that comes back from heath researchers not in the pockets of drug companies, we see less and less reasons to cling to the conventional wisdom. and now this study by the women's heath initiative. for people unfamiliar i'll be quoting from this article at junkfood science about the study and about the initiative.

"In 1992, the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched the largest preventive health study in our history, the Women’s Health Initiative. One part was the WHI Dietary Modification Trial — one of the largest, longest and most expensive randomized, controlled clinical dietary intervention trials in the history of our country."

they were trying to prove that healthy eating was the best way to prevent chronic disease, especially type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and promote weight control.

and here's the fun part for me... they completed this huge study and found NOTHING! i know i'm getting ahead here but, yeah. totally null study, which basically means they found no significant difference between the control group and the study group.

so here's the facts and figures bit:
*$415 million and conducted at 40 medical centers
*48,835 postmenopausal women assessed at baseline (the start of the study), one year and then every three years with clinical follow-ups every 6 months and their medications monitored in a pharmacy database
*more than 19,000 women were in the dietary restricted group while the other group was allowed to eat what they wanted.

in fact, here's the quote from the study:

The WHI dietary intervention group received intensive nutritional and behavioral modification training consisting of 18 group sessions in the first year followed by quarterly sessions throughout the trial. Each participant received an individualized dietary fat gram goal estimating 20% of energy from fat during the intervention and a common dietary goal of 5 or more servings daily of combined vegetables and fruits and 6 or more servings daily of grains. Self-monitoring techniques and group session attendance were emphasized.

and apparently they did really well with the women staying within 5-7% over their recommended fat intake, eating roughly 25% more fruits and veggies than the average american and eating a little over 300 calories less per day than the control group.

now the conventional wisdom tells us that these women should have been very healthy, and if not "healthy" thin at least not overweight or fat. but as i said before, the study found no such thing.

After eight years, there were no significant differences in the incidences of more than 30 clinically-documented cancers, heart attacks or strokes, or all-cause mortality. The dieters initially lost some weight but rebounded and their body weights, despite 8 years of watching what they ate, were no statistically different from the women who’d been eating whatever they wanted. Both groups ended up at nearly the identical weights they started with, differing a mere 0.7kg, about one pound.

and here's the bit that was of interest to me, what with my family history and all.

According to the WHI researchers, a total of 3,342 new cases of treated diabetes were reported: 7.1% (0.88%/year) in the intervention group and 7.4% (0.91%/year) in the control group during 8.1 years of follow-up. No statistical difference...In the WHI, there was no tenable difference in risk for diabetes among the different BMIs, with odds ratios even slightly higher for women with BMIs<25

so i'm back to looking at what goes into my body as fuel for my cells and fuel for my soul. i'm working on the intuitive eating that HAES recommends. i'm trying not to ignore my body and my hunger ques because i realize more and more that i really don't like how mean and nasty i get when my sugar starts to bottom out. and i'm listening more when my body says "give us red meat" as well as when it says "give us broccoli."

Shhhhh it's not ok

so last night my BF and i were looking at the latest news on the prop 8 opposition and the move toward legal proceedings in the state. and i was ranting at him about how fucked up it was that the prop passed and how the yes vote people lied and why the opposition failed to not only stop this piece of bullshit legislation from passing, but they failed to be inclusive and unifying in the way they did it. i was pacing, and ranting, and it took him aback a bit. he's never seen this political side of me, never seen this radical passionate side of me. oh, to be sure, he's seen me passionate about other things but never politics. and while our views match i am more well read on the subject i'm likely to rant about. and so he tried to calm me, think he'd done something to upset me, when really i was just angry at the situation. angry and swearing, which i rarely do.

and it frightened me for a moment. the idea of him shushing me, not to make me be quiet but to calm me down, was hard for me to process. because i wanted so much to know it had nothing to do with him trying to calm down the hysterical woman who was being unreasonable. i wanted so much for him to not have that seed of patriarchy deep inside him waiting like some cancer to suddenly wage war on our happiness. and while he assured me that no, he was afraid he'd done something to upset me and that i was angry at him, it did make me question the effect of activism.

not that i would give this up for him, but that it would break my heart if we were to fundamentally disagree on this. and i said to him the reason i feel it needful to speak and to give information and statistics is because i genuinely think 80% of people who speak out against gay marriage because it will force their church to do xyz, who back the fat people as unhealthy ideology and participate in fat hatred clothed as concern for the health of others, who are against comprehensive reproductive health are just ignorant or unaware of the spin they've been fed. and i said to him, these people are the kind that have to be talked to, have to be told, because eventually they will listen to bits and pieces and discover new ideas. and once that happens, the number of people who will be able to look at him and think (or worse say) "he's thin, he's good looking, he's smart so why is he fucking a fattie" will go down. if not away.

of course he promised to punch anyone who dared say such a thing in the face. which made me a little melty. but the fact that he hates willfully ignorant bigotry is a huge pat of why i love him.

sexy is as sexy does

so kate and the gang at shapely prose had a post up this past august, which i am only just reading, about attraction and whether or not a person should include efforts at finding fat people attractive as they progress through fat acceptance. the article can be found here.

the things that struck me were two more or less. one being the idea of attraction. we get told, rather often, that attraction is animal and natural and not a social construct. but our concept of beauty and sexual worth is a social construct. i think it's interesting, and i might add admirable, that anyone would be willing to own their social conditioning and allow that they might have missed out on a wonderful relationship or three because they thought someone was too fat. or too thin. or too disabled. or whatever other characteristic they've been enculturated to find non preferential in a mate or potential sex partner. i had never really thought about why i find certain people attractive or why i don't, and i know i'm still working through some of my initial judgement of people based on their outsides. but a really good point was brought up (ok a whole bunch were but this struck me) in the comments about how FA isn't about forcing the world to find fat bodies sexually appealing but rather about according fat people with the respect and dignity due every person regardless of whether you find them sexually appealing or not.

which might be the tie in i've been missing for why FA is a feminist movement at it's core. because yeah, i'm still struggling with the feminist thing and i make some progress and then i take a few steps back. i can get behind the fight for reproductive heath rights, ad the fight for equal rights under the law for EVERYONE, and i can begin to get behind the fight to see more women in top executive spots. but i stumble when it comes to looking for sexism in everything i do, see, read, listen to, touch or taste. i have trouble separating myself from my own privilege as a white middle class woman. so maybe i just have to be hit over the head with a clue by four but the idea that the sexual attractiveness of a person, their decorative ability, might be a measure of their worth in the world at large was one i had a hard time wrapping my head around. (M-O-O-N that spells uptake) because on some level i still crave that outside affirmation of my sexual attractiveness. i want men and women to notice me when i feel i look good. i want the vision of me in my head to be reflected in the eyes of people who look at me.

which brings me to part two in which i was reminded just how close i came to passing up the relationship i'm in now. because he's tall and thin, and i mean knee jerk reaction feed the boy a sandwich thin, and i thought i couldn't date a guy that i out weight by 80 lbs or so. my level of attraction was irrelevant because i just knew he wouldn't find me to be attractive. more importantly i was sure that he might find me decent looking with my clothes on, cause i can dress this body pretty damned well thankyouverymuch, but with my clothes off.... a whole other story of soft jiggling flesh would be revealed against the slim muscle of his body and i just knew it would make me seem 10 times fatter and just kill the mood. so i rejected the idea of intimacy with him, and refused to see the reciprocity of attraction until i realized that i was moving out of state and leaving behind someone i was insanely attracted to, and insanely compatible with, because i was hung up on his waist measurement. and when i put it that way i realized how stupid i was being. and thank god i came the my senses, because he is a constant delight and has made the move to another state so much less lonely and frightening and stressful.

so i can add this attraction thing to the growing list of things i think i need to re-evaluate. and i like the concept of working to find something good in the look of every person rather than mindlessly responding to them as a set of physical characteristics. will is suddenly develop a lust for the very large? i don't know. and that's ok.

Am I a Racist?

reading through big fat delicious, she has a post there about a rather shitty and racist e-mail she got from a family member. it's one i've seen too about how we label anyone white as racist for doing things POC do like attend "black" colleges, or have history months, or days to celebrate dead leaders. i know part of the reason we don't have these things is we don't really have to. every history class, with a growing number of exceptions (YEAY), are white history classes. we don't need to celebrate white men and women who fought the good fight for the advancement of the white race, because there wasn't much in the way of resistance met. yes, there were many people of all ethnic backgrounds who fought for civil rights in countries all over the world. and yes, i think anyone who uses racial slurs is racist. and so i am kinda torn over this kind of thing... cause on the one hand the knee jerk reaction is to say omg yes, that is SO wrong. and yet...... maybe it's a mark of my own privilege that i feel like some part of this is right. maybe it's that i'm still getting over myself. maybe it's the fact that i'm not proud to be white, and white alone, but i AM proud to be of russian/german/french/jewish ancestry and there is no earthly way anyone can say my skin is not pale as can be. is that the difference? naming the places my forebears came from and being proud of those origins rather than the blanket term "white." and yes, there are times when i feel like people are too quick to slap someone with the term racist, or that there is a pendulum swing in the opposite direction somehow. but how do i reconcile what i see in my own world with the very real injustice still happening? especially when it seems like those things contradict one another? and how do i respond to the accusation that pride in my heritage makes me racist?

YES WE DID!

fan of the current administration or not, fan of Obama or not, the choice has been made and sounded overwhelmingly by the people. even if you don't share my enthusiasm for the end of this administration you must admit to the historic nature of last nights outcome. we elected a bi-racial man, an affrican american man, to the highest office in the country. and we did it overwhelmingly, in many states thought to be bastions of whiteness. it's not the end of racism, white privilege, or bigotry but it is a major turning point. i am too young to have seen MLK Jr with my own eyes, or heard his voice as anything more than a recording but i have been alive to see his dream play out. not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character did we elect Obama. and i for one am ecstatic.

Fat Tax?

so alabama is going to start forcing people to get health screenings and work with their doctors to improve their health or be charged an additional $25 dollars for their health premiums. WTF!?!?!?!?!?!?

now i'm all for health screenings, and the fact that these are going to be free i'm happy with. but the only people required to get them are the fat people who work for the state. not everyone. just the fatties. because it's not ok for the south to flat out discriminate against black people anymore, so they figure picking on the fat is the next best thing. i mean statistically speaking african americans have a higher percentage of obesity. so, since we all "know" fat people are lazy slobs who have no self control and always eat crap, this just proves that black people are even more like that. it's so stomach turning. gha!!!!!!

and i'm reading through the comments and it's just so messed up. people are saying, yes those fat people should put down the food and get healthy. we should totally tax their fat asses cause they are ruining the country. it's about time the lard asses paid up. don't like it? tough, cause i don't like having to pay more because of you. the whole country should do this.

i mean it's obvious that none of these people have read anything that wasn't directly funded by a diet or drug company. that none of these people have read anything beyond the most superficial news article. and none of them know anything about reality. i really hope the state gets sued by it's overweight workers for being discriminatory and bigoted.

Manners?

more on the ideas of privilege...

i wound my way into an article on not being "that guy" http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/214607.html which was really great in helping with the idea of where many women are coming from when feminism comes up. the idea of privilege and how not to shove it in people's faces and how to recognize the urge when it hits, and where it might be coming from. and generally how not to be that creep who makes women uncomfortable and exacerbates the issue.

but the big epiphany part of this was reading through the comments. one of the commenter's was saying that, much like me, she doesn't feel she is much of a feminist since she has no issue with men opening her door or helping her out. there were several posts following that talked about the idea of reciprocity in those instances. that basically it's not the fact of the door being held but the idea that the person the door is being held for doesn't have the right to expect it. or, maybe more importantly, that the person holding the door doesn't think the other person can't do it themselves. it's been a disconnect for me, because i am a big proponent of holding doors and gentility type manners and stuff. i simply do not find manners to be patronizing. but maybe that's because i've always come to them from a position of, doing these things allows me to show people around me that i respect them. as a further... complication... i actively engage in a power exchange relationship where i am the dominant partner, and part of his duties are to hold the door open for me. and in this case there is a sense of entitlement, that this is owed to me because of the agreed on inequality in our relationship. as something for me to tuck away until another day, i know there will be a point where i have to reconcile the idea of equality for everyone with the consensual inequality of our relationship.

but back to this epiphany.... here is the bit that really got me going, hmmmmmm:

"I've seen it stated that "feminism is the radical belief that women are people, too". A feminist is not "forbidden" from wearing makeup and/or frilly dresses and/or nylons. You can shave your legs and wear heels and enjoy cooking and still be a feminist. You can let men open doors for you and seat you at the dinner table and still be a feminist. The point is, feminism tells us that those things are not an intrinsic part of being a woman, and we don't have to do them if we don't want to. " by starwatcher who's lj is at: http://starwatcher307.livejournal.com/ which conversely means, i can do them if i do want to. because i really like corsets and gartered stockings and heels and pretty clothes. and i love to cook, just about as much as i love to eat. and i sew, and embroider, and i love these things too. they are my art. and here is this woman, the feminist woman, saying that i can do all these things and not be one of THOSE women so long as i do it because i want to and not because i think it's my job or the way i'm supposed to be.

it amazes me that, in the very little reading i did on this subject in high school, i never cam across this idea of privilege. i think if i had, the disconnect wouldn't have happened for me. instead i ready books of essays by teens and early 20 something women about their experiences of discrimination and how they came into feminism. and i could never relate to those stories because i didn't have those experiences, and i felt guilty about it in that, maybe i'm not trying hard enough to see what's going on around me. i am not afraid of men and the violence they might do to me. i have never had some skeevy guy take my no for a maybe, at least not that comes to mind right away. i also rarely find that women are the safe sisters i can always turn to, not because i think of them as competition but because i find i don't relate to them in the way i relate to men.

not sure how to conclude this...but this is definitely something that my brain needs to ruminate and that i'm glad i found.

update: so i followed the above mentioned thread through a few others to a post on lj about the open source boob project, which i'm sure you can google if you like. but this just sends me back into the, i don't think i can participate with these women feelings i have toward feminists. here this guy and a bunch of his friends, men and women, at a sci-fi convention ended up asking many women if they could feel and appriciate their boobs. now i cringe at the word boobs, cause i think it's one of the worse anatomical words used but that a whole different rant. and yeah, i think the fact that the guy didn't seem to get, or maybe couldn't get, why so many women were getting updet over the fact that he thought he had the right to ask in the first place is agrivating. but the responces were so angry and so full of vitrol i just couldn't stomach them. the fact that many of the posters were refusing in much the same way to understand what he was saying is so heavy handedly duplicitous i just cannot begin to express it. and while were at it, i don't think they chose the right body part for touching but it think we need more fucking touch in general. i mean my god! no, there isn't a single person who should have touch forced on them if they don't want it. period. and yes, you should always ask before you touch someone you don't know very well who's non-verbal ques you don't know. but for fuck's sake! we are social creatures who thrive on touch. and this whole, lets hate the boob grabbers has turned into something so harsh and so hate filled i just cannot comprehend.

Privilege

so, i'm beginning to think i may need to re-evaluate my anti-feminist stance. i'm reading shapely prose and come across an article about fat men, which leads me to articles on privilege which leads me to question myself...which is kinda the point of this whole search. i'm white, i'm hetero with bi leanings, i'm monogamous right now but usually live more polyamourous, i was raised in a middle class area except for the few years of jr high. generally i guess i have been pretty privileged.

not a bad thing, i know, but it does make me wonder how many of my attitudes are shaped by where i come from. i had a brief friendship with a girl who, in one of several nasty fights, accused me of being elitist. which i have never thought of myself as. but i want a certain level of financial Independence, a certain level of taste and refinement and creature comfort that i got used to living with my mom and during high school. i want more than top ramen and a place to lay my head... and i want a college degree and to be well read and part of the academia. does this make me elitist? do i think less of those people who don't have those things? who don't want those things?

i think there was a time when i did think those things, and i think a lot of it has to do with where i'm living at the time i do a self evaluation. maybe...i know there was a time when i thought i wanted to become a doctor and i pushed my then partner really hard to pick a direction and go to school and get all professional in something because i didn't want to be a doctor with a husband (we were engaged at the time) who was a welder or mechanic. i didn't think i would be comfortable taking him to high class parties with grease under his nails, or some equally bs fantasy situation that negated who he was as a person and made him into an accessory. and i felt, and still feel, really bad because in pushing him i alienated him and made small of those things that he loved about working with his hands. i've since decided not to go into medicine but i do have plans to go after a doctorate. that past partner and i are friends again, and he still loves working with hot cars and hot metals and i've come to appreciate that about him. and the amount of intelligence it takes to do those things. so am i over being elitist?

probably even less than i've gotten over being white, cause i think in part they go hand in hand. white privilege is why i never got followed around in shopping malls, even dressed in my gothic best. and yeah at 16 and 17 shoplifting is something i did, not totally proud of it but not totally ashamed either. and maybe this is my disconnect from feminism. this fact of being white and privileged and thus not being able to relate to women who have been marginalized for being women. women who have been harassed and objectified because they don't have a dick. as an adult who tends to become friends with older than me people i've had some ageist comments thrown my way, but never felt victimized by them. but maybe it's my inability to internalize that feminist struggle for equality because i've only rarely seen myself as the victim of inequality.

i was raised first by both parents and then by a single mom in a mostly white suburban middle class neighborhood in nice houses. jr high being the exception, when we lived in a mostly hispanic neighborhood in a duplex. and i can remember that being a horrible time in my life because i had no friends and i had this imploding family and i suddenly was home by myself and watching my sister. i went through this really deep depression that first year. i stopped caring about my appearance and my hair and i think i once went a whole week without brushing it or my teeth. but even in that hell hole of jr high, even with the teasing and the rumors and getting spit at and picked on and called nasty names, even in that dark place outside my peer group i was still intrinsically me. still white. still well fed. and i know now that we went through some tight times while my mom struggled to put us back together, but i didn't know how how hard she worked then and once were were out of that patch i just forgot it. we moved, and i didn't have to be that awkward girl anymore. the kids in class no longer called me whetta (white girl in spanish with derogatory over tones).

sure high school was still hard, and you couldn't pay me enough to go back but it was much more of an environment i was part of. not one of the minority white kids, but part of the majority. in the accelerated classes with kids who were all smart like me, all wanted knowledge like me. sure, i was awkward and not very popular but i had a social group i was nominally part of and a few close friends. and i came to a point where i started to like myself a whole lot more.

i still find it hard to put my finger on what my own privileges and prejudices and elitist attitudes are. and i expect that's going to be case for a while as i sort through it all and cram more info into my brain. i lack the fire i read in some posters who are well and truly outraged at the state of society and part of me wonders if maybe i'm dooming myself to that feeling of impotence and becoming another voice raging at the system about the broken things and inequality and oppressive white men. cause i don't want that to be me.