Tested and Failed

My feminist ethics were tested the other day, and I failed miserably.

Dear Woman who was being verbally abused and frightened by her irrational and irate boyfriend,
I was such a douche (and I mean that in the sense of bearing false advertising and being quite useless) and I'm really sorry and I really hope that guy didn't and doesn't hurt you.

Here is my confession:

Last Sunday I was in my house and heard random male screaming out somewhere on my block. I didn't pay it any attention, as Venice seems like the last haven for every homeless mental patient that our society has conveniently forgotten. There are plenty of crazy men screaming at any given time in this city and I have become de-sensitized to it.

My sister was walking over to meet me for our twilight bike ride on the beach so I went outside to wait for her. About 40 feet away, down my sidewalk, there was a couple arguing. The woman was telling the guy to give her her car keys, and he was screaming at the top of his lungs an inch and a half away from her face. He was accusing her of cheating on him. I stepped out into the sidewalk and glared in their direction, just to let them know that I was there. But then I sat back down on my front steps. This couple was a young, good looking couple. They reminded me of multiple past relationships that I have had (x husband included) where this very same scene played out, in almost the exact same way, and also in public. In fact, this scene has not only been played out by me, but by almost every female friend I've ever had, including my sister, who walked up to my steps at that very moment.

I said, "Is this shit the same fucking yelling I've been hearing for the past 20 minutes?"

"Yes," She shook her head, "I've been behind them almost the entire way to your house."

"Do you think I should intervene?" I'm cautious because honestly, I don't want to get shot or stabbed, and intervening in random folks' business is a good way to get hurt.

She pauses. I'm trying to gauge the situation by running scripts of past experiences where a guy has crossed the threshold from verbal abuse to physical. I think that she is too. She answers. "Yes."

Fuck. I walk out onto the sidewalk again and take a long look. The dude is around 20-23, black, wearing a white v-neck and pinkish-orange shorts. The woman has long dark hair, is young too. White, or hispanic/white maybe. Wearing jean shorts and a black tanktop with flip flops. Both of them are gorgeous. They were standing in front of a black Mercedes. Honestly, if the dude was wearing a crisp blue shirt or a white tanktop with some bright color bandanna or laces, I wouldn't say shit.

"Are you okay?" I call to the woman.

"Oh, yes. He's just..." She has that look on her face that I know so well. That embarrassed, -I can't believe this is happening so I'm going to pretend it's not - look. Still, she instinctively walks towards me.

The man turns towards me to follow her, as she is walking towards me. Fiery eyes are now fixed on me and he shouts, "WHY DON'T YOU JUST MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS!?" I was surprised he didn't call me a bitch.

"Well, you've been yelling in front of my house for the last 20 minutes so now you've made it my business. So, why don't you just give her back her fucking car keys!" I wasn't yelling, but I hardened myself up. In the back of my head I thought, Shit, I am waaaay too out of shape to take this guy on.

"HER CAR KEYS!!!????" He was practically jumping up and down. He turned back to her and screamed again. "HEEEEEEEEER CAR??!! SO WHAT!? I DO NOTHING TO CONTRIBUTE?! BITCH!? (there it was.) I AM SO SICK OF YOU TAGGING ONTO A NIGGA'S COAT-TAILS! I HAVE SACRIFICED AND SACRIFICED, AND THIS WHOLE TIME YOU'VE BEEN GOING BEHIND MY BACK!!!"

She responded, " I didn't do anything!"

She looked at me and shook her head in exasperation. "There was this stupid game on the boardwalk..."

"IT WAS A LIE DETECTOR TEST!! AND WHEN YOU SAID YOU NEVER CHEATED ON ME, IT SAID YOU LIED!! YOU LIED!"

"So what?!" she laughed, "It also said that you were gay!"

Both my sister and I burst out laughing. This infuriated him intensely.

"THIS IS CUZ I'M BLACK, HUH!"

My sister says, "um, hello?, I'm black."

"NO YOU'RE NOT!"

My sister and I burst out laughing again. There is no ambiguity about her race.

"AND I HAVE TATTOOS!!"

"So what?" I rolled my eyes. "I have tattoos too. The reason you're scary is because you're screaming and acting crazy!" Why on Earth was I trying to reason with this guy? He is obviously trapped within his own reality. His behavior was unacceptable for my 7 year old, much less an adult. I began to get angry. This guy was going to make me miss my twilight bike ride too. What is the quickest way I could control the situation? These selfish thoughts led me to break my cardinal rule.

Suddenly, my mom appears from around the back of the house. I knew she would eventually hear the yelling, and I was just glad she wasn't coming from inside where she could get her gun. My mom always has a weapon. This time it was a large, pointy spade. When she saw the irate boyfriend her lips curled back against her teeth and she gripped the spade tighter. I grabbed her by the arm and told her it was okay, to get behind me. In the meantime, the guy had gone back to screaming at his girlfriend. Why wouldn't he just stop?

He was going on and on about how he was all alone, how his family is 5000 miles away and he's trying to fulfill his dream...how even though he was in three movies, it just wasn't good enough for a gold digger like her. She kept asking for her car keys, and he kept trying to get her to go into the car with him. She refused and said straight out that she didn't feel safe getting into the car with him. He then screams and punches a tree, then runs to the car and takes off. She tells me that she bought that car before she met him. I remember when my x husband punched out the front windshield of my new Corolla. This guy goes racing up the street, stops about 50 yards away, then hits reverse, screeching the tires the whole way. He double parks it, and then runs out of the car back towards us. I was baffled. I was done.

"I'm done." I said, "Give her the keys right now or I'm calling the cops!" That is my cardinal rule. Calling the cops. Having been sexually assaulted by a cop before, and the general treatment of people of color or the poor by the police brings me no faith in the LAPD. I swore that I would never call the cops on someone unless my life was in danger. He wasn't listening to me. "Fine! I'm calling them right now!"

"911 emergency..."

"yes, I'm at xxx address and there is this guy who is just being really aggressive to his girlfriend and won't give her back her car keys."

"Okay, calm down." What the fuck? I was calm. I walked a few feet away so that I could hear better, as the guy was still screaming at his girlfriend. My goal was to scare him into giving her the keys by calling the cops. However, I didn't think it through because he was imploring her to leave with him because I was calling the cops.

Suddenly, I noticed that both of my neighbors had arrived home and everything started moving really fast. Two roommate bachelors, white guys, mid 30's. Not very likable or unlikeable, but I never really talk to them. I was vaguely aware of what they were doing while simultaneously on the phone with the police operator, who had a condescending tone in her voice already.

"Ma'am, what do you mean, being really aggressive?" there was that tone again.

"I mean, he's not hitting her but he's yelling and screaming in her face."

"What is his race?"

What the fuck? I thought of Oscar Grant. "Um...I don't think that's important, I think you just need to send a car over here now."

"Ma'am! I can't send anyone out until you give me a proper description. Now I need to know his race!"

"No."

She made one of those exasperated breathing noises. She began to say something about a gang of young, male, mexican perps with white T-shirts tagging in the area or something, but my attention was now on one of the neighbors I recently mentioned.

He had money in his hand and he was holding it out and booming in a loud voice, " I WILL GIVE YOU MONEY TO GO AWAY AND TAKE THIS SOMEWHERE ELSE." His tone was also very condescending. He was treating them like hood rats.

"Ma'am! Can you at least tell me what he is wearing?"

"Pink shorts!"

Now both neighbors were yelling. At both of them. The one who looks like James Spader says that he doesn't want this shit in his front yard and they need to get the fuck off.

The tall neighbor with a missing tooth turns to glare at the woman. "THIS IS YOUR FAULT TOO FOR BEING SO PASSIVE AND JUST STANDING THERE! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU, HUH?"

He was shaming her, and I guess she probably looked to me for support, but then saw that I was on the phone with the cops. Her boyfriend was not yelling at her anymore, but pleading with her to go. She let him grab her by the hand and lead her back to the black car.

"Well now they're leaving because you took so long with this race bullshit!" I screamed into the telephone before hanging up.

So she left with him. And I let her go. After she had stated earlier that she did not feel safe getting in the car with him she ended up doing it anyway. And I am partially responsible for that. I should have just had her come inside and offered her a ride home. Why didn't I do that?

My mom looked at my sister and I and said, "Who knew that the neighbor was such a passive aggressive asshole?"

My sister looked at me and said, "Why did you call the cops?"

I shrugged, "C'mon, let's go on this bike ride before the police really do get here." I did not want to talk to them, but they never did come. Even though I gave them the address.

Sometimes the Universe sends you a test. To see if you can walk your talk. And sometimes you fail (and by you I mean me).

Hello awesome job. Nice to meet you.

About a month ago I pulled some cards regarding what the heck I was gonna do over the summer since my welfare time-clock expired. My work study job (I'm a humanities tutor at a community college) ends when the school semester ends. I really was afraid I would have to work at Starbucks or something again. Mindlessly yanking a milk frother while people look right through me. But the cards said that I needed to be open to new ways of receiving income this summer. So I was. And then I won the George Tiller Memorial Essay scholarship for that little piece I posted about the right to choose life. $500. Nice. Last week, I received an email forwarded to me from one of my GWS professors. It was for a paid internship at MomsRising.org. The stipend is $500 per month. They wanted someone who has used the web as a platform for political activism. I wrote up a resume and a cover letter and sent it out. The great thing about this job is that it is 100% tele-commute. There is no office to go into. Everything gets done online or by conference call. I never have to "go to work."

Moms rising is a great organization that was started as a reaction to The Motherhood Manifesto; A compilation of stories by mothers who were experiencing discrimination in the workplace. In the past four years this grass roots organization of tech savvy moms grew the membership of momsrising to almost 1 million members nation wide. Kick Ass.



By the way, I got the job and I love it!

Child Support Update

So, interstate child support collection is anything but adequate. I called Illinois, the state that is garnishing my x's wages. Let me just note that neither I or my x currently live in Illinois. Apparently, their department of family health and services has intercepted the payment. I thought it was California's DPSS but when I called my workers (both calworks and gain) they had absolutely no answers for me. They didn't really know what I was talking about! My calworks worker gave me the number for LA county child support services but it was actually a disconnected number. It was fairly simple for me to go on line and find the number myself. I called and listened to nauseating music on hold for over thirty minutes. Finally, a human being answered, and she had a brain! She looked up my case and informed me that Illinois has not informed California that they were garnishing wages or receiving payments. I told her that I just got off the phone with them and they informed me they were. She told me that she would assign a worker to my case and if I don't hear from that worker, to call back in about a month.

Ummm...Okay? I guess...

I asked if she knew what the deal with CALWORKS is. She says that if I keep my daughter on cash aid (even though my time clock has expired, she still receives $345 in aid, plus food stamps and medical), that I would collect an additional $50 from the child support payments and the rest would "pay back" my welfare. So I would collect $395 per month and it would be called, "aid". And I would have to keep jumping the hoops. Or, I could take my daughter off of aid and collect the child support directly. My question is, if I take us off aid, then will they still claim the back child support? If not, then I would receive $414 per month. If they do, I will only get $345. However, my x could lose his job or go back to getting paid under the table and then this will be a non-issue.

So it's all basically the same amount of money, the problem is what to call it. Right now the money is just sitting in bureaucratic limbo, and I supposed it will stay there for the time being.

The State is Taking my Child's Support.

Do you know what they don’t tell you when you apply for public aid? What they don’t tell you is that if the non-custodial parent ever gets their priorities straight and begins to pay support via the child support order the social workers make you file against him, that the state will take that back child support as repayment of the “welfare” you received? That’s right, you could say they charged all of it to my X. However, the reality is that the person really being charged is my child.

The situation is that my CALWORKs 5 year time-clock has expired. However, my child support is disbursed through them. If I don’t fill out their QR7 or comply with giving them whatever, “proof that I am doing what I said I would do,” then they can sanction me and not give me the $345. of the $414. that is being taken out of my X’s paycheck every month, who has finally decided to stop getting paid under the table in order to avoid child support payments. He owes over $20,000 in back child support to my daughter. The state is claiming every penny of it.

I believe that money belongs to my child. That $70 per month could be put in a trust fund for her to give her a chance at a future. How dare they charge her for needing support when her dad wouldn't give it, and then put me through hoops, stigmatize me and call it “welfare.” They should call it, "child support relief loan," or "Fuck you for reproducing." I wouldn’t complain if they did it to others, but only poor single parents and their children get this special treatment. Farmers don’t have to pay back corn subsidies, and their only raising our nation’s food. Mothers are raising our nation’s future population. Executives wine and dine their clients and then get it written off as tax abatement. Trying to make a capitalistic buck gets more respect than nurturing life. Banks get free bailout money from the government and then lend it back to the government with interest. Saving Corporations is more important than saving lives. Poor mothers and children are treated like parasites (in a system that gives them no other choice) and the state feels they have the right to take our child support because we have the audacity to exist and need help raising children on our own.

Just when I think I have the beast by the horns, I realize that the beast actually has me.

Does anyone know of any resources that I could use to fight this?

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS REVERSE RACISM

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS REVERSE RACISM!!!

…yes you understood me and I’ll say it again:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS REVERSE RACISM!!!

For some reason, I’ve been hearing this phrase out of people’s mouths lately. A not so old adage that was birthed out of dominant, white culture’s tight and wrinkly rectum during the backlash to affirmative action. The idea that by saying, “Fuck you whitey,” an individual can reverse the hundreds of years of systemic oppression that effectively and currently withholds the majority of resources and means of production from a particular minority group.

Really?!

First of all, the biggest affirmative action historically in this country was the GI bill. Which COMPLETELY DENIED BLACKS from any of the VA education and housing benefits that were promised to soldiers in 1944. This bill pretty much created the middle class, so when grandpa Joe claims, “I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps.” I call Bullshit.

Jim Crow laws, redlining, blockbusting, unequal schooling that still continues today (compare Beverly Hills High to Locke High in Watts.), and so many other forms of discrimination, formal and informal, have worked together to sustain a formidable obstacle between Blacks as a group and the resources that whites already own (and probably aren’t trying to share). And let’s not forget to mention slavery, the fact that most of those old guys whose pictures are on our currency raped their female slaves and created offspring, and those offspring were legally prevented from inheriting any of their fathers’ wealth. So don’t try to pretend that the disproportionate number of impoverished within the black community has no relation to the disproportionate number of the richest of the rich being white and male. And you don’t even want to hear me go off on colonization.

So yes, affirmative action was a form of reverse discrimination but only attempt to balance all of the previous centuries of original discrimination.

Racism is not only embedded deep within our own personal psyches, but also within our political system and cultural norms. There is no way in hell that reverse discrimination, which is what individuals can commit, is going to overturn that. That would be like saying that scholarships for people of low socio-economic status were reverse classism or that all feminist practice is simply reverse sexism.

Please. Like I tell my daughter, I can’t think for you, you have to do it yourself.

The Right to Choose Life

One day a friend and I were yapping over coffee and the right to choose came up. My friend took a sip of her latte, and said, “I’m pro-life for myself, but pro-choice for everyone else.”

Frothed milk almost came out of my nose. Incredulous I asked her, “So, you think that other women should have the right to make choices about their bodies and lives, but you need the government to decide for you?” She became upset, and told me that no, it was because she values life above all else. But who’s to say that those of us who are pro-choice do not value life?

Maternal death rates claim the lives of over half a million women each year. The United States rates 41st in maternal health which makes the risk of maternal death here in the U.S. greater than virtually all other industrialized nations. If a woman chooses to bear children, she is indeed choosing to risk her own life. Not only is she risking her health in pregnancy, but her future and the future of her family as well. With education funding being diminished, domestic violence and other programs’ funding being taken away, women’s wages being 70% of men’s wages, unspoken discrimination against mothers looking to enter the workforce as well as lack of affordable childcare in this country, not to mention the social stigma of being a single mother; to take this choice away, would be forcing women to endanger their own lives. Therefore, the right to abortion is having the right to choose life, one’s own life.

In the past two decades, the maternal death rate here in the U.S. has more than doubled. This number is skewed by race and class, where impoverished women of color are much more likely to experience maternal complications and have less access to proper health care. In Amnesty International’s report entitled, “Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA,” it is stated that women currently do not have the fundamental human right to give birth safely in this country.(Amnesty International, 2010)

The feminization of poverty is a current phenomenon where the overrepresentation of women and women headed households exists in the lowest socio-economic groups. Current policies in this country do not create enough of a safety net for women and their families who are without financial or social resources. Poor mothers are stigmatized by society, especially if they receive welfare. Sex equality in the workplace is still unattained. Affordable childcare remains elusive. These are only a few of the reasons why a woman would be reluctant to begin, or add onto her family.

In conclusion, to force a woman to risk her life and her future in childbirth could be likened to bringing back the military draft for men. If it is agreed that forcing men to risk their lives is unethical, then the same courtesy should be extended to women. It is not the place of society or the government to make this choice for anyone. Nor is it the place for anyone to decide which life gets valued over another.






Works Cited
Amnesty International. "Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Healthcare Crisis in the United States." Deadly Delivery. Amnesty International, 2010. Web. 8 May 2010. .
Goldberg, Gertrude S., and Eleanor Kremen. The Feminization of Poverty: Only in America? New York: Greenwood, 1990. Print.
Kaiser Network. "Pregnancy & Childbirth | Maternal Mortality Rate in U.S. Highest in Decades, Experts Say - Kaisernetwork.org." Kaiser Health News. Kaiser Foundation, 2007. Web. 08 May 2010. .

The Welfare Queen

The Constructed Identity of the, “Welfare Queen,” and How She Affects Welfare Policy

Oral Presentation at California State University Northridge, Gender and Women's Studies Conference on April 27, 2010


“She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000.”


This famous quote was spoken by President Ronald Reagan during a campaign speech in 1976. You may have heard of the woman he is describing. This thief, this fraud, this parasite, is the very well known public enemy number one, called the Welfare Queen.

Who is this Welfare Queen? Although she is not any one person in particular, she is used to define the thousands of poor mothers who rely on the state for economic aid in order to support their families. The public identity of the welfare queen situates herself in a particular intersection of society that is determined by race, sex, and class. This identity defines welfare recipients as lazy, immoral women of color, with many children, who are incapable of properly socializing their offspring and seek to use tax payers’ hard earned money to fuel a criminal lifestyle. This public identity has been embraced by many Americans over the years, as well as politicians, who use the identity of the welfare queen to establish punitive policies to control the personal and economical lives of poor mothers.

In 1996, President Clinton passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity And Reconciliation Act. This changed how much public aid families could receive, as well as the ability of the state to interfere and coerce the behaviors of poor mothers. Some of the restrictions outlined in this article are restrictions on eligibility, the 5 year lifetime limit of aid for any individual, severely limits immigrant women’s access to benefits, and requires that over 60% of a state’s welfare recipients be working. Not only do states have to prove that this mandatory quota is being achieved, but, “…each state’s plan must explain how the state plans to discourage out-of-wedlock births.”

One architect of the 1996 welfare reform, Charles Murray, was quoted saying, “The only way to combat the, ‘culture of poverty’ is to end all government welfare supports, forcing impoverished urban single mothers to behave more responsibly, or starve.” Another contributor to the reform was quoted as saying, “goodbye welfare queen, and hello working mom.”

In 2008, the Poverty in America Survey, administered by National Public Radio, the Kaiser Family foundation and the Kennedy School of Government, found that 57% of respondents stated that welfare support causes women to have more babies. Indeed, the identity of the welfare queen is still pervasive today, still causing the American public to be reluctant to pay into a welfare system that would propel poor mothers out of poverty, and feel more comfortable paying for a system that monitors and controls poor women’s lives.

Because all Welfare recipients are entrenched in the stigmatized identity of the Welfare Queen, the state promotes and supports what’s called the, “work first” model of motherhood. The “work first” model suggests that any job, no matter how low paying, is better than no job. This is because of the belief that welfare moms aren’t capable of properly socializing their offspring. This model is contrary to the, “intensive mothering,” model, which is the social norm, and declares the utmost importance of the mother’s presence in the child’s socialization process.

However, poor mothers are actively resisting this model, as well as the stigmatized identity attached to it. There is another model of mothering that some poor mothers have created for themselves. This model is called the, “mother as provider,” model and dictates that any job won’t do if it does not pay a livable wage. These women are resisting the state sanctioned, “work first,” model and are instead fighting to get the education needed to properly provide as a head of household. Currently, a state does not have to support a University education, and many recipients who attend higher education must also fulfill compulsory work requirements, as well as the unpaid labor that is parenting.

I wanted to insert myself into my research because I, myself am a welfare recipient. I had a beautiful daughter, and ended up a single mother receiving no child support. In my own navigation of the welfare system here in California, I have noticed that these sexist, racist and classist policies that govern mine as well as hundreds of thousands of other women’s lives are actually counter- productive. Yes! Tax payer dollars, energy, and my precious time are consistently spent trying to prove to the state that I am a decent human being. Social Workers are paid to monitor me and meet federal quotas.

I feel these resources could be used much more effectively. By examining my own thoughts, experiences and feelings about being on welfare, as well as the thoughts, feelings and experiences of other women in my position, I realized that here exists a dire need for our own voice as poor mothers to be inserted into this system that so profoundly affects our lives.

For my research, I desired to search out and examine the voice of the poor mother. To do this I used my own blog and journals as a source for auto-ethnography, as well as the blogs of other women like me. I fortified this data with ethnographic interviews with additional women who receive welfare benefits.

What I found seemed to echo itself with every personal account of every poor mother that I came across. We are made to feel ashamed of ourselves. Because of that, we often hide the fact that we are on welfare from other people. Social workers have numerously made all of us cry tears of frustration at one point or another.

I also found that we do have agency. We are mothers. We want respect. We want to be successful. We don’t want to be poor. We want our children to be proud of us. If given the tools necessary to succeed, we can, and will. Through many conversations, the reality of the need to form a coalition of poor mothers and poor mother allies is not only apparent, but of the utmost importance to the world.

If what Ghandi once said is true, if poverty is truly the worst form of violence, than the state has the responsibility to correct its abusive actions. These degrading policies are based on patriarchal, nuclear family values and mythical norms that are simply not the reality of many families today.

The reality is that being a poor mother is not by nature a character flaw, and we certainly should not be subject to punishment and stigmatization because of who we are. We have something to say. Listen to us, and we will tell you what we need in order to raise happy and healthy children. We are the bringers of the future. legislators, children, and society as a whole would benefit from our voice.

is it the apocolypse?

Is it the end of the world?

Today I'm thinking that it might be.

There is a Miley Cyrus video where she is working a pole coming out of an icecream truck. Here she pole dances at the teen choice awards.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/10/miley-cyrus-teen-choice-p_n_255338.html

In the DRC, girls my daughter's age are being raped with machetes and machine guns as a systematic weapon of war.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/08/11/congo.rape/index.html

Also in the Congo, boys younger than my daughter are being used in the battlefields, as shields.
http://www.fallingwhistles.com/splash/index.php

All of this is over the minerals used to build my lap top that I'm writing this post with. Yours too.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/87/the-democratic-republic-of-congo


In Uganda, people whose sexual preference is not hetero, and those who "aid and abet" homosexuals, can be put to death or imprisoned.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1946645,00.html

There will be a new law in Utah that will prosecute women who have miscarriages with homicide.
http://community.feministing.com/2010/02/in-utah-miscarriage-criminal-h.html

don't feed me that bullshit called love

This society binds all women's choices up in flimsy wrappings called, "love."

Why does love denote such a degree of servitude for us women? We are brought up to believe that romantic (hetero) love is the most important thing that can happen to us,while at the same time telling us that if we love someone, we will want to cook and clean and sexually gratify, pick up dirty laundry, produce babies and put 90% of our time and energy caring for them, for other people. Then refer to us in such ways as, "The old ball and chain." If we don't want this, we are looked down upon.

wtf?!

Sex Work as a Means of Resistance for Women

Marriage in our society is a patriarchal construction that gives unequal economic power to men and puts women in a position where they are often economically dependent on their husbands, especially after having children. Our society promotes the nuclear family as the cornerstone of our nation, using heterosexual marriage as a means to ascribe gender roles to both men and women. When a woman deviates from these gender roles society punishes her both informally by casting her as a social pariah, and formally by punishing women single head of households by withholding affordable childcare, universal healthcare, and welfare policies that criminalize women of little economic means for being mothers. In some cases, adult, sex work in the United States can be seen as a form of resistance to traditional marriage values and patriarchy. Through this type of work a woman may be able to economically survive without dependence on a husband or the state that serve to control her body and subordinate her spirit. By making prostitution illegal and blocking sex workers from having civil rights, protection and respect, prostitution is made a male dominated, predatory industry that is oppressive to many women, while serving the dominant class at the same time.


In the Berkeley Women’s Law Journal, the definition of sex work is, “…the practice of selling, explicitly and contractually, the private performance of specified acts of a sexual nature ... the sale must involve a contract specifying the items of exchange.... The prostitution contract includes both implicit and explicit agreement regarding access to the body ... of the seller in a private setting.” (Duarte,2003). This narrow definition is used to illustrate the mutual adult consent that is necessary to constitute the sex worker/client relationship. In addition to that definition I find that it would be reckless to omit the fact that socio-economic statuses, country of origin, as well as race/ethnicity affect the delineation between choice and victimization. A woman who is engaging in prostitution because it is her only means of economic survival is not given the option of choice. Women in developing countries, especially those recovering from colonialism and are further plunged into chaos by neo-colonialism, may have little choice when it comes to career choices or means of survival. Global Capitalization has made this much worse, as well as the feminization of poverty that is occurring around the world, regardless of ethnicity. This narrow definition shows sex work to be another form of service work; however, housekeepers, cooks, food servers, nannies, massage therapists, manicurists, etc do not make nearly the same money, nor take nearly the same risks as sex workers. I also cannot speak for male sex workers, as men do not inhabit the same matrix of domination that puts women in a position to be economically dependent on a man within marriage.


Prostitution wasn’t always considered profane to the civilized world. In fact, there is evidence that it was seen as sacred. “Sacred Whore temples flourished in ancient India, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, the Americas and Asia. The word ‘whore’ was a title, used in much the way our work ‘reverend’ is employed today…Whore-priestesses were revered because they taught ‘a combination of mother –love, tenderness, comfort, mystical enlightenment and sex.’”(Muscio, 90-91). Sacred prostitution was respected and whores were considered very valuable members of society. Later, when patriarchal religions began to govern the people, these sacred temples were plundered, the priestesses murdered and the teachings destroyed. The woman’s body was no more a doorway to enlightenment and self knowledge but instead a dangerous commodity that needed to be controlled. Even today, in 2009, women are stigmatized for exhibiting a sexuality that illustrates agency over their own bodies, as well as stigmatized for not allowing themselves to be sexually objectified in a subordinate position that services the desires of heterosexual men, and reaffirms a construction of masculinity that puts men in the position of controlling women’s bodies.


In the article, Class in America, by Gregory Mantsios, he writes, “People do not choose to be poor or working class; instead, they are limited and confined by the opportunities afforded or denied them by a social and economic system. The class structure in the United States is a function of its economic system: capitalism, a system that is based on private rather than public ownership and control of commercial enterprises.” (Mantsios,193). If this is true that private ownership and control of commercial enterprises is what makes up our system of capitalism, then by preventing women ownership of their own bodies and the ability to use their own bodies as an economic resource and commercial enterprise is indeed denying women participation in capitalism and restricting the entrance of autonomous women into the “American Dream.” It seems when any woman in this country seeks to take agency over her own body, the peanut gallery always deafens us with accusations of immorality that could be likened to, “Burn the witch!”


In the article, Sex and Race, by William Chafe, he writes, “In 1898 Charlotte Perkins Gilman argued in Women and Economics that the root of women’s subjection was their economic dependency on men….In fact, the issue of women not controlling their own money has long been one of the most painful and humiliating indexes of inequality between the sexes…”(Chafe, 664). I would like to reiterate that not allowing women control of their own bodies is equally, if not more, humiliating and painful. Since this society only promotes sex within marriage as normal, women who do not conform to this role are ostracized from society in many ways. As sex workers, women are criminalized and therefore are denied the fundamental right to control their own body or economic autonomy. Furthermore, stigmatizing sex work is also an example of using values and attitudes to reinforce the power of the dominant class by creating moral arguments that serve to distract the rest of us from the real immorality of imperialism and neo-colonialism(Alexander, 3); and thereby causing opposition within the dominated groups. (rcg671). The dominant group also maintains control by defining good and bad sex and women’s roles regarding sex, reproduction, and sexuality. Some women engaging in sex work are opposing and reclaiming those definitions for themselves and therefore defining their own existences and identities while maintaining economic independence from men or the state





Works Cited
Alexander, M. Jacqui. Pedagogies of Crossing. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2005. Print.
Chafe, William. "Sex and Race: The anthology of social control." Race, class, and gender in the United States an integrated study. New York: Worth, 2007. 659-72. Print.
Duarte, Susana (2003). PROSTITUTION POLICY: REVOLUTIONIZING PRACTICE THROUGH A GENDERED PERSPECTIVE by Lenore Kuo. Review of Berkeley Women's Law Journal, 18, 308. retrieved from GenderWatch (GW) database. (Document ID: 507748691).
Frye, Marilyn. "Opression." Race, class, and gender in the United States an integrated study. New York: Worth, 2007. 154-58. Print.
Johnson, Allan G. "Patriarchy." Race, class, and gender in the United States an integrated study. New York: Worth, 2007. 158-67. Print.
Mantsios, Gregory. "Class In America-2006." Race, class, and gender in the United States an integrated study. New York: Worth, 2007. 182-95. Print.
Muscio, Inga. Cunt a declaration of independence. Seattle: Seal, 1998. Print.

I Went Through the Language Rabbit Hole and Came Out a Feminist

A classmate in my guitar class at Santa Monica Community College handed me the book. She told me that she thought it was the perfect book for me. I looked down at the little book in my hand. It was yellow, with a pink daisy on the cover. The title read, Cunt. A Statement of Independence. The author is Ingia Muscio, not anyone that I had ever heard of.

“Cunt?” I looked up at her curiously, “Really? This made you think of me?”

“You’re gonna love it.” She smiled into my eyes and walked out of the classroom. I looked back down at the book and wondered if she was hitting on me.

I flipped the book open to a page towards the beginning. It said, “Cunt is related to words from India, China, Ireland, Rome and Egypt. Such words were either titles of respect for women, priestesses and witches, or derivatives of the names of various goddesses.”(17). My immediate response was not of offense, but of awakening curiosity. I had always been interested in words since I found out that the root of the word, Lucifer, which is the name of the Christian devil, really meant, “bringer of light.” How could the name of the Lord of darkness mean bringer of light? Now I looked at this book and the same spark of curiosity ignited in my brain. How did empowering words for women evolve into the single most degrading word one can call a woman today? How did a word that denoted a degree of such respect as to be derived from the names of Goddesses, come to be profane? Why did a word that referred to a woman’s body part become the worst insult ever, anyway? Little did I know that this pink and yellow paper rectangle in my hand would awaken me to gender oppression, and incite me to empower myself and other women, something that I am so passionate about today, that I have become a women ’s studies major in college. I did not realize before reading this book that language carries with it so much power. I did not know how language has the power to shape culture. I did not know that dominant groups in society use language to oppress others. However, my most important realization was that I cared a lot about how language affects me, my daughter, and other women.

After I read this book I began to look up words in the dictionary to find their roots. Most dictionaries don’t have the word, cunt, but they do have the word vagina. In Cunt, Muscio writes that the root comes from words that mean priestess. When I looked up vagina, I was astonished to find that the latin root meant, sheath to a sword. I had to laugh but then I began to feel angry. Who decided that a woman’s body was created to be an ejaculatory capsule for a man’s sword? How could the men who have been in charge of shaping language for centuries ignore the simple fact that new generations of the human race are delivered solely through that specific space in a woman? A sheath cannot bring new life into the world. A sheath carries no mystery, no cycle, no power, and no respect. A sheath can only hold a sword. How offensive that the word that denotes respect for women becomes profanity, while the denigrating title becomes the accepted term. I was beginning to want to run out of the house and shout, “I love my cunt!”, or high five women in the street and tell them what beautiful cunts they are. I thought about how language affects me. How I’m reluctant to tell people that I’m a single mother, how I felt incomplete and like a failure for not making my marriage work. How the word, woman, denoted a specific role and destiny for me, and that destiny had to do with finding and making happy a man in my life.

Later I read an article from the book, Rape, Sex, Violence, History, and discovered how dangerous this definition of vagina was to women. In the late 1800’s, it was believed that a woman could not be raped. This was due to the, “vibrating sheath” (24). myth. Some crusty, old man had decided that women could vibrate their vagina in such a way as to render it impossible to penetrate. It was considered impossible to insert a sword into a sheath if it was moving around, and this was translated into the belief that if a woman claimed to be sexually assaulted she was lying, because if she really did not want it, she could have simply vibrated her sheath.

I realized then that this one word illustrates the general ideology that women exist only to please men. I began to see in my daily observations of human interaction how both men and women contribute to the perpetuation of this ideal. The language that I had been using in my daily life needed to be examined. All words became subject to my growing suspicion that our language was indeed androcentric, or centered around men, and that this served to oppress women throughout history and in modern day. Why is history, history, anyway? Could this be why the stories that have been passed down from generation to generation in this country are stories about men and their conquests? Was there a herstory? Are the stories and accomplishments of women rendered inconsequential and invisible?

Why are men just men, or male, antonymous and independent? We are women or female, words whose roots mean “of men” or “from men”. I haven’t seen any men birthing any babies, so how are women from men? The race of people on this Earth is currently referred to as mankind or human. There is no word that illustrates the contribution that women have made in this world. None at all. I began to reexamine words used to insult men and found out that they were actually insults against women. The word bastard or son of a bitch are both words to describe a man who is a bad person, or a mean person, yet they are both insults against that man’s mother. This implies that the mother is the reason behind the man’s personality flaws. I wondered if insults like this reflect the general idea that being a single mother is bad, which may be why my cousins are always trying to reassure me that I’ll find another guy. It never occurs to them that maybe another guy is not something I want.

In the American Heritage dictionary, I looked up the word, mensus, another word centered around men, used to describe a biological process that is purely female. The definition said that the mensus is debris that is ejected out of a woman’s vagina. This reminds me of the attitude that boys would take towards a woman’s cycle, a very immature attitude. I remembered my first menstrual cycle; I was 13, on a class trip in New York City. I remember locking myself in the bathroom, reading the directions off of a tampon box, terrified that the curious and snickering boys in my class would find out my terrible secret. In a society where people didn’t define this process as a bloody mess of trash leaking out of my body, maybe my experience, and the experience of many other girls, could have been much better. Yet again, I had found another example of how language had intimately and profoundly affected my own life.

As a child, I often heard the rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” In actuality, I learned, and continue to still learn, how words actually contain the power to shape society and our own personal lives. Words can even be used as weapons, covertly used by dominant groups in society to divide and label people for their own benefit. Other groups are stigmatized and marginalized because of this, and women are not the only victims. Racism, sexism, classism, heterosexual privilege, ableism, and ageism are the dark and bloody waters of which many of the words we wield so casually today were born from. It was not until I picked up that little yellow book with the pink daisy on it that I was awakened to this, and to myself. Today I am a gender and women’s studies major, with a passion for deconstructing these notions and reshaping language to represent and empower everyone. I carry that little book with me, and one day I am going to hand it to another woman, smile into her eyes, and say, “You know, I saw you and I think this book would be perfect for you…”

The New Wave of Feminism is Leaving Campuses and Infiltrating the Web

In the past few decades, feminism has spread across many of the Universities around the country. Many colleges now have a Women’s Studies department, and one can find classes on feminist theory, history and methods. Even academic research has changed due to feminism. Feminism has affected every aspect of our academic lives, including the language we use, as well as how we gain social knowledge. Today, a new wave of feminism is building, and it is off of the campus and in the internet in the form of blogging. This expansion of feminist knowledge out of academia is crucial to the movement in this day and age where information technology is booming. Blogs not only serve feminist research practice by providing immense qualitative data from many marginalized walks of life, but also changes the language of feminism from that of academia to a language that is accessible to many other people who are not scholars or go to college.


Furthermore, blogging eradicates most discrimination when it comes to free speech as most people from any economic background can have access to this free form of publishing. And there are no stipulations about race, sex, class, sexuality and other aspects that can bar someone from writing a blog. Absolutely anyone who can read and write and has access to a local library’s internet is able to have a blog. As a forum for debate, a blog can be more critical than a campus debate because there are no speech codes enforced on the argument. Speech codes are campus guidelines for acceptable speech on campus. The reason that these codes can represent a threat to free speech is the simple question of who gets to decide what indeed acceptable speech is. In the blogging forum there are no codes, rules or guidelines that one must adhere to in order to speak. Even if one is extremely offensive, they cannot be silenced in this particular forum. This no holds bar freedom of speech within the blogosphere is what makes blogging so powerful. One can go on the internet and read almost every point of view, from the ultimate religious conservative to the anarchist prostitute.


Before, social scientists placed primary importance on quantitative research, that is, research that is numerical at its base, can cover a large number of people, and be generalized to a certain group. This type of research comes from a sociological scientific ideology called positivism, where information that is considered social fact must be collected from a purely objective, non-biased, value free researcher. However, women have found that fitting knowledge about women into this paradigm only served to subjugate us further. We know now that the view of positivism in the academic, social science arena is not unbiased at all, but comes from the perspective of the dominant group in society who created and presided over the field for so long. Namely, those with sex, race, heterosexual, ability, and class privilege. In Feminist Research Practice, Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Patricia Lina Leavy insist that, “…feminist disciplinary goals…aim to avoid hierarchies and unearned privileging of quantitative methodologies” (276). Quantitative research alone does not serve to illuminate the experiences of the marginalized, invisible and oppressed groups. Secondary to quantitative research is what is called qualitative research. This is research that is not about numerical data but focuses more on the experience of the individual in a certain group through involved interviews with that person. Feminists were worried that quantitative research leaves out the whole story and has the ability to misrepresent women and girls in the research findings. We know that research conducted on women and girls can profoundly affect their lives, and the feminist goal in research is not to do research “on women and girls but for them.”(250). To put women, girls, and other marginalized groups in the center, a new way of gaining knowledge is critical. Feminism helped launch the acceptance of a different type of research, one that does not value numbers or generalizations but instead places critical importance on the thoughts, feelings, language and daily experiences that an individual goes through in their life. This is called feminist standpoint research, and is very important to feminist epistemology, or how we gain knowledge about women and other oppressed groups. According to Feminist Research Practice, “Feminists, in contrast, give priority to actors’ own subjective experience and emphasize the emotional aspects of social life grounded in concrete, daily experiences. For them, data must be qualitative in order to reveal these aspects.”(268). Because all forms of sharing experience are valid in this methodology; poetry, art, journaling, music and much more are now all accepted forms of knowledge. Blogging is no exception.


We may be familiar with the old, childhood rhyme, “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” As a feminist, I hold this to be false. Language is very important in shaping social ideology, which in turn shapes social policy, and even our face to face encounters with our associates, friends and family. Rosalie Maggio writes in her essay, Bias-Free Language: Some Guidelines, that, “Language goes hand in hand with social change – both shaping and reflecting it. Sexual harassment was not a term anyone used 20 years ago; today we have laws against it. How could we have the law without the language?” (471). In this quote, Maggio illuminates the importance of bringing the language of feminism to the average person and how this language has had a profound effect on our laws and our lives. To this day, the word feminist is subject to misunderstanding, due to the media backlash against it that started in the 1980’s. Today, that can be repaired if the word feminist is normalized and has widespread recognition. If feminism is really for everybody, as I firmly believe that it is, it needs to be presented in a language that everyone can understand. Because of the wide reach of the internet into the homes and minds of so many, blogging can be the antidote to the feminist backlash that we still suffer from, as well as bring the language of gender equality into the everyday lives of many people.


Another reason to take feminism to the blogosphere is to separate feminist writing from political rhetoric, a form of writing that George Orwell, author of 1984, believes is designed to, “…even think your thoughts for you…” (210). Political writing in the form of propaganda is given very little respect in some corners of the literary community and has been described by Orwell in Politics and the English Language, as, “the enemy of truth and the cause of linguistic degeneration…that endanger free thought and truth…”(204). Even though feminist blogging could indeed be political, feminist writers seek to deviate as far away as possible from stereotyping, biased language, and exclusionary language. The type of language that Orwell describes as, “ugly and inaccurate…[and] makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” (205). If people are swayed to embrace equality and compassion from a blog, it is not because of a savvy political writer’s ability to wield euphemisms, glittering generalities, and gobbleydegook. These are all forms of propaganda that purposely ignites our emotions in order to control our thoughts and come with many logical fallacies. This is not the language of feminism. From a feminist perspective, empowerment has come from refusing to be silent, sharing knowledge with other women, and naming those things that oppresses us as well as uplifts us. Never does it come from manipulating the thoughts and feelings of others.


The argument against blogging is the same as the reason why it’s so powerful. That anyone and everyone can blog and that there are no rules and regulations to control it. Opponents of feminist blogging believe that the information cannot be trustworthy because it does not come from academic sources. I believe that this view is biased towards scholars and de-values people who may not be college graduates. I do not believe that anyone should be disregarded because of their academic status, or lack of it, just like I do not believe that people should be de-valued for their economic status, race or gender.


Some feminists still oppose blogging, believing that women should be out on the streets creating social change, instead of wasting their time writing about whatever they deem interesting at the moment. But even those who oppose blogging have their own blog. One woman, who goes by “Mother Jones,” writes on her blog that, “Today's feminists need to blog less and work more. If women want reproductive choice to remain more than rhetoric, they'd better stop assuming these clinics will be there when they need them… OK. Tell me exactly what today's feminists are doing for the struggle.”


In response to her post, another woman blogger who calls herself Holly, writes, “I am often asked what I am doing for feminism and what I tell them is that I blog. I share my feminist ideals on my blog and encourage educated and informed conversations on a wide range of topics that matter to me, to humans, and to my feminist activism. Many people don’t think that blogging is enough, but if you read the bulk of feminist, womanist, and humanist blogs out there, most of the topics that are brought up for discussion come directly from living life and being a humanist out in the big, sometimes cruel, always controversial world.”


This exchange of ideas between feminists is very important if we are to unify ourselves to create social change. There are numerous debates within the feminist community that take place in various feminist blogs. It is critical that this dialog happen if the movement is to evolve and become successful in diversifying and including all women from all walks of life. Because of the ability to get the point of view of so many different types of women, the feminist movement itself is better at being inclusionary to all of us through blogging. Those voices that have been previously invisible in a movement that was predominantly white and of upper middle class can now be heard. Women of color, lesbians, girls, sex workers, house wives, immigrant mothers, single mothers, transgendered women, disabled women, welfare recipients, and too many others all now have a better chance at getting their stories heard and their troubles addressed. In this day and age, diversifying, not homogenizing our numbers in the feminist movement is key to accomplishing the social change that we so adamantly want in our lives and in the world in general.


Consciousness raising has been a tool of the feminist activist since the first wave. Historically, it is how the feminist movement began. Many times this was done by getting a group of women physically into a room together so that they could talk to each other and share their individual experiences which serve to illuminate the oppressive forces in society. The blogosphere is a virtual room where consciousness raising is taking place on an international level, 24 hours a day.
Feminism has needed a vehicle to take it out of the universities and into the everyday lives of people in order to be successful. Because of technology, blogging is that vehicle. Not only is it bringing the language of gender equality and humanism in general to the masses, but it is also changing the way we gain knowledge about women and girls. Most importantly, the stories, feelings, thoughts and experiences of women and girls from all walks of life and all over the world are accessible to the masses. The voices of the marginalized no longer have to be invisible, and we have the ability now, with blogging, to see the many different perspectives that are presented, not just what mainstream media decides to feed us. For the feminist movement, blogging can be the way to expand, diversify, dialogue and gain insight in order to create social change that benefits women, girls, and other oppressed groups. Feminism has escaped the bars of academia, and we can now share our language with the masses, thanks to the medium of blogging.

Works Cited
"Blogging - the future of the LGBT movement? " Between the Lines [Livonia] 11 Dec. 2008,8.
GenderWatch (GW). ProQuest. California State University, Northridge. 19 Mar.
2009 http://www.proquest.com/
Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy, and Patricia Lina Leavy. Feminist Research Practice A Primer.
Minneapolis: Sage Publications, Inc, 2006.
Holly. "Blogging is activism." Weblog post. Menstrual Poetry. 14 Mar. 2009. 4 Apr. 2009
.
Johnson, Robert "KC", and Ralph E. Luker. "Who's Undermining Freedom of Speech on
Campus Now." Exploring language. By David Beito. New York: Pearson Longman,
2007. 520-22
Liz Newbury. . "NOW Brings Feminist Voices to the Web, Engages Women Online. " National
NOW Times 1 Oct. 2008: 6,11. GenderWatch (GW). ProQuest. California State
University, Northridge. 19 Mar. 2009 http://www.proquest.com/
Maggio, Rosalie. "Bias Free Language: Some Guidlines." Exploring language. New York:
Pearson Longman, 2007. 470-79.
Mary Cartledgehayes. . "Isn't It Time You Created a Blog? " Today's Woman 1 Nov. 2008: 48-
51. GenderWatch (GW). ProQuest. California State University, Northridge. 19 Mar.
2009


Orwell, George. "Plitics and the English Language." Exploring language. New York: Pearson
Longman, 2007. 204-14.

conversations with a soon to be 6 year old

I'm here on the computer and my kid is watching cartoons next to me on tv. This commercial comes on, about "stomping out bullying."



My daughter tells me that she thinks the girl on the video is "sexy."

"What makes her sexy?"

"The way she looks and stands."

"To me she seems mad about bullying."

"Yeah. But mom, she is also sexy."

"Oh. Well, what does sexy mean to you, honey?"

Here she takes a moment to ponder. She doesn't really have a solid idea of what sex is, just a vague idea I think from the stories of other kids in her kindergarten, and what she catches from the media(which is frightening in itself). She eventually replies, "Jazzy. Pretty." Unsatisfied with her own answers, she wrinkles her freckled nose. "What is sexy, mom?"

Oh shit. My opportunity to shape and mold the future of feminism and my daughter's future as well. I don't like these moments. The ramifications of any given answer could be catastrophic. I think about the hilarious piece written by Jezebel about tlc's pageant kids reality show. This 10 year old girl fights with her mom because she wants to put "flirty" moves in her swimsuit routine. You can imagine just how inappropriate those moves could be (remember that scene in Little Miss Sunshine?) The girl also states that she wants to be a cheerleader, "because they get to show their belly."

I think about sexuality and sensuality and sexiness. Sensuality to me is the natural expression of pleasure from being in a human body. Sex, and an enjoyment of sex is a beautiful thing. I don't have a problem with pornography if it celebrates a woman's and a man's sexuality. But pornography that reinforces and replays domination over a woman while reinforcing women's status as subordinate and exploitable isn't cool with me.

Sometimes, from my own experiences, I feel that sexiness can also be seen as a tool of manipulation, an art of war, and a tool of survival used by a universally oppressed group for at least hundreds, if not thousands of years. I also know that what I call an, "ability to create desire," is something that is used against women in the worst ways, and in every moment of history. An excuse for generations of men to indulge their impulses, refuse self control and rationalize yet another form of violent domination. Like the planet Herself, Women's bodies have become a natural resource, for men to plunder or protect, yet having no voice or power of Her own.

Besides that, it's disgusting what society finds "sexy" these days. Frail, breakable women who love to be objectified. They come with shaved, disembodied parts that make them look pre-pubescent. Like a child, easy to control. Domination is sexy so that makes children legitimate sex objects. Alluring like a pristine, artesian spring, that is ready and willing to have you plant your flag, claim ownership, and build a factory. And when that one is used up, there are always more. Manifest Destiny = pursuit of happiness. A God given right.

"Sexy isn't pretty."

"It's not?"

"No. It's more like acting like you want to have sex. Or using your prettiness to get things."

"ewww. Gross!"

"Yeah. Gross" I pull out her basketball uniform and gym cloths out of the laundry basket. "Now get ready for Krav Maga class."

According to nip /tuck, all I want is to be cut up...

I caught the new promo for season 6 of nip/tuck. I never watched the show because frankly, it's too painful to watch. Women prostrating themselves to men with scalpels who are revered as Gods. And the trailers were always disturbingly/horribly violent.

Well the season 6 promo doesn't dissapoint. Complete with maimed, corpse like dancers who are alluringly sexy and dancing with bloody scalpels, eager to be put on the block. Some disembodied body part art that mimicks ManRay and the Black Dahlia murder completes the lovely display, all to the tune of "flashing Lights" by KanYe West. My favorite part is at the very end, where the beautiful blonde's face changes into what I assume it was before surgery, and her stitched up eye reacts in terror.




At the Beverly Center, they had the corpse dancers in little boxes. You could chat with them online and then watch them do a sexy dance. I love sexy dance, but what bothered me was the little dresses that are hospital gowns with parts cut out and lined with red. This gives the impression that they are slabs of meat on an operating table. And that they are in little glass boxes like toys or something.



I have a problem with mainstream media promoting violence or domination on women as sexy or sensual. I have a problem with violence being equated with sex period. And we wonder why sex assault is so prevalent in our society. Because we encourage it. Now the usual spiel I get back on this sentiment is that I shouldn't have the audacity to censor what a man can get off on. Well, we don't let men get off on child-porn, they go to jail for that. But women are so devalued that we can be depicted as getting off on getting cut up. How nice for us.

Gripes of a single mom/student on welfare

Right now I'm supposed to be at work. However, my daughter has a bad stomach flue and has been puking since yesterday. I have a very sensitive gag reflex and aversion to vomit so at one point we were puking in harmony. So I'm home even though I could really use the money. That is because 1 week after I finally get GAIN to approve me going to CSUN I get a letter from CALWORKS saying that they closed my case because I never sent them my QR7. It's a bogus piece of paperwork they use to monitor recipients and I mailed it to them weeks ago. The budget cuts caused my local office to close and merge with the larger DPSS office on Pico and Sepulveda (remember that song from "The Forbidden Zone"?) I have an odd feeling that may be the reason they don't have my paperwork. I've been calling all kinds of DPSS numbers for a week and no one is picking up.

How I found out that my case was closed is that my $580 that I get every month didn't come. Needless to say, Consumer-mas is coming and my bank account is $300 overdrawn. I actually have nightmares about the overdraft notices coming into my account. This year my gift to everyone is to please not buy me a gift. I won't be buying you one.

Another thing I found out is that all of the Cash Aid that I've been getting has been charged to my x-husband as child support. That means that the $13000 that he owes me in child support will now go to the state and I won't see a penny of it. So, to me, it's not really welfare, it's my child support money being advanced to me. So that means I am being forced to work (GAIN is a 32 hour compulsory work program)for my child support?

The way welfare works is that you get 5 years of cash aid for your whole life. I believe that 1 year is exempt from GAIN but after that you have to perform a minimum of 32 hours of "approved activity". They promote minimum wage jobs with little benefits. These jobs may suffice during the 5 years with the help of CALWORKS because child care is paid for, you get food stamps and free health care. However, after the 5 years are up, if your still stuck at that low wage job, you will not receive any help. I believe that this 5 year limit is the main cause that women and children are the #1 rising population of homeless people. While it's the mothers that get the stigma and the blame, these huge corporations, like WALMART, that refuse to pay a living wage or provide benefits to their employees, go unnoticed. They continue to increase their profit margins at the expense of taxpayers who must make up for the damage that is caused by their refusal to pay a wage that people can actually live on.

And GAIN does not promote going to school. Like I said before, it's the last week of the semester and I just got approved for going to school. That means, before now, The hours I spent in college did not count towards my GAIN approved activities. It counted for zero of the 32 mandatory hours per week. It's very important to know that if one is not already registered in college before participating in GAIN, then it is very hard to get approved to go to school. I had to take an 8 hour vocational assessment, and only was approved because "social worker" was one of the jobs that I was able to choose for "vocational education". Some of the other positions that I scored on was "singing messenger" and "food server". Besides sex work, or relying on a partner's financial support, a university education is the only way I can think of to have a chance at the ability to provide for my family. Why wouldn't the Department of Social Services realize that and promote education above minimum wage jobs? Why do they make it extremely hard to get an education while receiving public aid? Why am I society's pariah and not the rich corporate CEO's that enjoy luxury and get hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer's money? I really don't have the answers, I just jump through the hoops.


Bush's solution to the feminization of poverty, that is, the poorest of the poor being women and their children, is marriage. I really hope that this next administration will actively create policy to help mothers in the society given responsibility of raising the future of humanity. The farming industry gets subsidies from the government and they're just raising our food. That is essentially putting corn and cows above human beings. They do this and point a finger at me, Latinos, African Americans and undocumented immigrants as the cause of society's ills.