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Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself

I was going to write a column about why, as a feminist, I’d rather be voting for Barack Obama and why, precisely, I’d rather not vote for Hillary Clinton, but one of my students beat me to it.

As smart as she is, however, Hillary is a seriously repugnant actress. Anyone who has sat through a community theater rendition of Shakespeare might know how I feel when I watch Hillary on TV. You are literally crawling out of your skin by the time intermission rolls around. Hillary is like Lady Macbeth and Ophelia rolled into one, and that, my friends, is a very unfortunate combination of ambition, madness, victimization, and desperation.

Do read the whole of the article, since it expresses so much of what feminists who don’t like Clinton don’t like about her.

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Aunt Nelly’s Macaroni

Today’s Word of the Day is —

macaroni /n

1: pasta made from semolina and shaped in the form of slender tubes. *2: an affected young man : fop

* “He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars.” – Oscar Wilde, from The Picture of Dorian Gray

Now there’s one I’d never heard before. I’m just wondering how you make it a plural… “Oh, those macaronis can’t even act straight.” Perhaps.

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Aurora the Explorer

I miss her so much, so I had Betty send me a photo. She is of course making sure my pillow is full of her fur for my return.

& Before you assume otherwise, that’s just a sinus mask hanging on the back of the bed, nothing kinkier.

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Iowa

Iowa’s now in the Top 17 of Hippest States, for having turned down the bullshit abstinence-only sex ed funding the Federal government has to offer.

In 2007, Rep. Mary Mascher, D-Iowa City, sponsored a bill that, when passed last spring, set guidelines requiring all of Iowa’s sex-education curricula to be scientifically based. This created a conflict with the federal guidelines for Title V funding, which its opponents say are not medically accurate.

Nutty idea: education based on science.

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worst.sinus.migraine.ever.

i’ve had a sinus headache for the past few days, one that comes back full force as soon as the 6 hours of advil runs out, and/or when the decongestant i’ve taken runs out.

if i haven’t taken both, i can still feel the pressure – at the back of my head, on my cheekbones, under my eyebrows, in my upper teeth. (i only feel it in my upper teeth when they’re really bad.)

i’m smoking a quarter what i used to, i switched to bone earrings (instead of metal, which conduct cold more easily), & wear a hat every day. a big one with ear muffs, even. & i snort hot water, take zyrtec… you name it. but still, this fucking headache.

i think it means there’s one hell of a storm coming on here, or maybe not. i tend to get them when a storm is incoming (betty gets the headaches as they’re leaving).

so if i seem particularly cranky lately, that may be it.

that, & the first paid work i’ve ever done where i thought i was appreciated for the full measure of my talents AND was paid enough to live on is ending.

jeez louise. in like a lion all right. i keep trying to catch sight of the lamb.

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(Partner) Anger & Trauma

I wrote this piece for our message boards in a thread about how/if trans people deal with their partners’ anger. It reiterated, for me, why I want to see the trans community understand feminist issues a little better & bring them more to the fore.

One thing that I wasn’t aware of & only recently discovered: it turns out that anger is one of the symptoms of trauma. There are so many of us women raised female with trauma in their lives – & in a lot of cases, with unexpressed or untreated trauma. Even treated PTSD doesn’t mean it goes away, but only that it’s there to be managed.

So I suggest, delicately I hope, that sometimes the transition of a spouse that has provided a sense of safety & security otherwise can be a kind of “last straw” for a woman raised female who has lived through other kinds of trauma.

The cycle of trauma that women can deal with goes something like this: (1) bad shit happens to you, which increases (2) your need for an SO, which creates (3) anger & self-criticism due to feeling that you need/are dependent on anyone for any reason, which fuels (4) anger that said security/safety is being taken away by transition, which is all exacerbated by (5) complete lack of awareness that most/any/all of this is happening, and (6) your spouse’s inability to understand that most/any/all of this is happening too, which is further frustrated by (7) an inability to talk about the trauma, the self-criticism, the dependency, or the anger.

Which is why, once again, I wish there were more awareness of feminist issues within trans communities. I have heard too many trans women react to their insanely-angry wives with hostility & even derision, & that maybe, if they understood women & their lives a little better, they might riddle that frustration with empathy.

We have been through shit too. Trans people are not the only ones who suffer, or who want relief from pain & maybe even to feel something like “normal.” & Goddamn when you have found your pain relief, in the form of a gentle man who provides you with solace & laughter & stability, only to find out that he is not who either of you thought she was.