15 March 2010

10 things that should be illegal

1. Truck nuts


2. Blaming natural disasters on something the locals did to piss God off.

3. Talking on the phone in the checkout line. At very least, the cashier should be permitted to wait, hands on hips, staring at you, until you hang up.

4. Cutting off dogs' ears and tails and declawing cats. How would you like YOUR ears cut into shapes?

5. Fox "News"

6. Using pink to represent femininity. Enough already.

7. Veterans having to fight for benefits

8. Real housewives of anywhere

9. Inescapable flash website intros

10. Calling anyone who has not actually laid their life down for another "heroic."

Breaking up is hard to do

Morning church window 350 px

I broke up with my church a couple months ago. It was as filled with heartache and questioning as every one of my many, many breakups with men have been.

It took as long, too - I never break up without months and months of rumination, mulling, obsession.

In essence, I handled my church breakup in the same messed-up, immature way that I have handled the end of all of my romantic relationships: badly.

I realized a long time ago that I wasn't getting what I wanted from my church. It started when I became a board member. Unfortunately, I got a peek at the man behind the curtain and found out it wasn't The Great Oz back there.

My first issue was with the church tithe. As a church, we take a collection and then give a tithe of 10 percent of all we take in. Fairly standard.

At my old church, the board voted every month on which community organizations or larger non-profits received the tithe. At this church, the pastor decided how to tithe to "our spiritual sources." Meaning we gave money to other churches and speakers that inspired us. Some of them were churches that were run by friends and relatives. Some of them donated their tithe back to us.

That just didn't pass the sniff test with me. I brought it up to the pastor but got shot down. That's the way we do it, she said.

Also, I never fit in on the board. I'm not a team player and never have been, but I really tried. It just seemed that I was always saying or doing the wrong thing or asking the wrong question at the wrong time.

You know how it is? When you feel like you just don't fit and there is nothing you can do to make it right? I was the proverbial square peg.

My feelings really got hurt last year, though, when Curt died. I had to miss a board meeting to go to his memorial service and I let the rest of the board know where I was going and why.

Silence. Members of my board, my church board, didn't send one email or make one phone call of condolence or even acknowledgment.

Meanwhile, I posted about what was going on. I got comments, emails, tweets, phone calls. My online friends reached out and offered comfort, help, a listening ear, a place to stay if I wanted to get away. The irony did not escape me - people I had never met in person were kinder to me than my "church family."

I sent another email where I mentioned what had happened and how upsetting it had been. I got just one response - from a woman who isn't on the board anymore but who is still on the email list.

It really broke my heart. I took a giant step back. I did what I do in every relationship where I feel disrespected and unloved: I checked out. Blanked out. Cut my emotional ties.

I guess I could have said "Hey, you really hurt my feelings when you didn't acknowledge that I had lost someone," but that would have been entirely too mature and healthy.

So I had a dilemma. It was the end of February and my board term didn't end 'til December. I didn't feel like I could quit. So I slogged it out the rest of the year, barely showing up and putting forth the most minimal, grudging effort.

I don't know if anyone noticed or cared. If they did, they didn't say anything.

This is another of my sick-head patterns, too. I feel like I have some obligation where I can't get out, so I just go through the motions until the exit door opens and I leap out quickly.

But it's also one of my former church's sick-head patterns - you can flake out as badly as you want and everyone just tiptoes around pretending it never happened.

The annual member meeting, my last responsibility, was on January 10.

The Haiti earthquake happened two days later and it hurt my heart. I think when a great tragedy happens, the whole world feels the pain, and I felt awful for the people of Haiti. The next Sunday I went to church, hoping that we would spend some time praying and healing together.

Not a word. Not a word about Haiti. Not a prayer, not a song. The message that Sunday prominently featured something about the movie "Psycho." It was supposed to be funny. I just sat there, listening everyone else laugh at the funny story, feeling the air grow still and icy around me. I knew that was the last time. I knew the exit door was wide open and I had to go.

The next week I went down the street to the other wacky new-agey church. I walked in late and they were talking about the concert they were putting on for Haiti. Then they talked about how they have a "circle of caring" to help members who need meals, visits, rides to the doctor or other help. I checked into how they use their tithe, and it goes to non-profits who help people in the community.

I sat down. I got comfortable. I think I might stay for a while.

07 March 2010

Oh what a feelin'. Peel me off the ceiling.

I read this post about why CJane isn't a feminist this morning.
Equality has never done any good for me. When I try to look at the world with my equalizer glasses it leaves me empty and upset. Equality presents a scale and binds you. And when I dissect my marriage, nothing makes me more anxious then the expectation that things are equal. It makes a measuring stick out of our relationship. And I don't want to spend an entire marriage judging the allowance of equality.

Speaking of my relationship, Chup will surely remind me that this is all semantics, so let me define equality (for me) : fairness.

And life is not fair. So how can it be equal?
I could have responded right away, but I am trying to stop swearing on my blog. I let it percolate in the back of my mind all day, simmering, simmering...

I finally decided I won't address her argument directly. I am sure that some of her 400+ commenters did that more succintly and intelligently than I might.

I do, however, want to make a few points as someone who is older than she is. Because I have memories from my own life about how hard women had to work for equality and what it was like before they did:

  • My 5th grade teacher actually took class time to read a list of all the ways men were superior to women. Back then that was ok. Because it was FUNNY! Ha ha! Because those uppity feminist bra-burners were trying to say women were equal, but everyone knew they weren't. He had a long list of ways men were superior to women (stronger, faster, smarter, bigger brains...)The only way, he said, women were superior was in their ability to withstand cold, because of their greater fat layer.

  • It was ok and funny for Jackie Gleason to threaten to punch his wife in the face on his show every week

  • It was legal for men to rape their wives

  • Rape survivors were put on trial for their sexuality, with the assumption being that they "led men on" or "asked for it." Because of this, most women didn't report being raped.

  • Police didn't get involved in domestic violence situations and there were no shelters for victims

  • At my junior high, girls could not take shop, and boys could not take home ec.

  • Girls were also excused from PE for 5 days a month due to menstruation

  • Phrases like "crazy woman driver" were commonly used

  • Women were thought to be too emotional and/or stupid to be judges, doctors, lawyers, ministers

  • When I called the only woman gynecologist in town to get birth control, the receptionist sharply told me that Dr. So-n-So "is here to bring babies into the world, not prevent them." Yes, she was an OB-GYN who did not provide birth control services at all.

  • Because my sister's school didn't offer regular sports teams for women - the assumption being that sports weren't important for women - she went to intramural girls' "Play Days" organized by the Girls Athletic Association.

  • I interviewed a college vice president who said that, as a young journalist, the only beat her newspaper would put her on was "society." Because that was the only beat fit for a woman.

  • The lack of safe abortion services were a major health crisis, with women dying or being seriously injured from illegal and self-induced abortions

  • Getting pregnant out of wedlock was a huge source of shame and young women were kicked out of school if they became pregnant

  • Women had a hard time getting credit without a man as a co-signer, preventing them from owning property or running a business.


If CJane wants to go back to those days, I wonder at her sanity.

Equal doesn't mean "the same." To me, equal means that we all have a chance to live our lives to the fullest and to express our talents and abilities as best we can, without being stopped from that by outside pressures brought to bear because we are one gender or another.

Equality for women is good for men as well as women. It isn't about taking from one to give to another. It's about creating a world that works for EVERYONE.

The best places to live on earth are those where women have the greatest equality. Those aren't just the best places for women. They are the best places for men and children and transgendered people, too. They have the best education, the best health care, are the most properous and the most stable.

Dusting off your pretty hands and saying "Equality - it just isn't for me," is a silly thing to say when you haven't experienced true inequality. If you think you don't believe in equality for women, go spend a couple months in Saudi Arabia and then get back to me.

04 March 2010

Hi, what's your name? I'm highly contagious

On the way home, I stopped at Sears to return some ugly ass swimsuits I had bought from Land's End overstocks.

I love me some Land's End swimsuits, but these were just so wrong in so many ways. Ugly print, tied behind the neck instead of having real straps (which I need because I am jumping around like a chimp), slightly too short in the torso.

Plus, they didn't solve my low-cutness problem, which has increased lately with the recent addition of one guy in class who is incredibly unsubtle about staring at my cleavage.

The woman in front of me at Sears was returning some kids' clothing. It was taking forever because she had the wrong combination of receipts and clothing tags. She had a bad, bad raspy cough.

When she finally got done, I stepped forward.

The cashier gave me a panicked look. The kind of panic you usually don't see in customer service people outside of the Christmas season.

"I....I...I..." she whispered. "I have to go get some disinfectant. I'll be right back."

"What's up?" I said, puzzled by her aura of utter freakout.

"That lady," she said. "She told me she had SWINE FLU."

What the everloving heck, people? Who goes to return kids' clothing when they have SWINE FLU? It can't wait a week? Are people completely clueless about how disease is transmitted?

You KNOW how I am about germs. Right now I am typing this from a bathtub full of Clorox. It stings a little.

(That's a lie. I don't have a bathtub. But if I did, I might consider it.)

***********

I started working on a book today. Mmmm hmmmm. I may not have a job, but I have someone who is paying me to write a book, which is kind of a nice gig for a writer.

SQUEEEEEE!
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