The LONG VIEW REDEMPTION Blog

re this particular American January holiday … …

2012-01-15T16:35:00.007-06:00

http://tinyurl.com/79a44a8 and http://www.ted.com/talks/eve_ensler_embrace_your_inner_girl.html and http://tinyurl.com/79a44a8 and sexism specifically within and permeating throughout ... still ... the southern christian leadership conference:

Quotations on patriarchy from ms bell hooks:

"What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the establishment of black male patriarchy." --- bell hooks

"Why is it that many contemporary male thinkers, especially men of color, repudiate the imperialist legacy of Columbus but affirm dimensions of that legacy by their refusal to repudiate patriarchy?" --- bell hooks

" ... ... Yet, Dorothy Height practically forced the men of the civil rights movement to accept her. And they did, but, more as adornment. Her presence and participation gave credence to the illusion that the men were not the chauvinists they surely were. She was relegated to the background and sidelines as much as possible, silent on final statements as the men reserved the stage and limelight for themselves. In many photo-ops, she was at the table, but mostly for show, sometimes seemingly playing peekaboo, peering from behind someone or something.

She was not allowed to speak at the March on Washington in 1963, although she shared the podium with the others and can be seen, in the background, as Dr. King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Had she been given the opportunity on that August day, her remarks would not have needed toning down, as was the case with John Lewis, the SNCC chairman, whose original text was regarded as much too militant. Height seemed to accept that role without complaint, part of her persona and modus operandi. Reportedly, she was more vocal and involved in behind - the - scenes planning and negotiating sessions, which played to her tremendous strengths.

In fact, many of the women were smarter than the men. In 1972, New York Representative Shirley Chisholm outmaneuvered black male politicians by jumping ahead of them in announcing her candidacy for Democratic nomination for president, just as they were meeting to select one of their own as "favorite son." They were furious with her, but the move made her the first black female to make a serious run for the highest office. As she repeatedly reminded all during the campaign and in her autobiography, she was "unbought and unbossed." The men deemed her very unruly.

There were many black women leaders during the movement at the local level. Gloria Richardson was out front of a militant movement in Cambridge, Maryland, that shook up Maryland's Eastern Shore. Daisy Bates, head of the Little Rock NAACP, gained fame when she guided the successful integration of that city's public schools. Ruby Hurley was in charge of the NAACP's regional office in Atlanta during the height of the movement. And who can forget the riveting testimony of Fannie Lou Hamer of Mississippi at the Democratic National Convention in 1964?

Dorothy Height joins not only those women, but a long list of strong women of history that includes Sojourner Truth, Mary McLeod Bethune and Ida B. Wells - Barnett. She overcame the men of the movement by outliving them (with the exception of John Lewis): Dr. King, Roy Wilkins, NAACP;
A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; James Farmer, Congress of Racial Equality, and Whitney Young, National Urban League. Her longevity was her best revenge."

Paul Delaney, a longtime reporter and editor at the New York Times, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Black Journalists this summer." --- 12 May 2010, http://www.theroot.com/views/dorothy-height-and-sexism-civil-rights-movement?page=0,1

on one other 28 October … that of 1991, common era

2011-10-28T18:42:00.007-05:00

from Chapter 28, pp 313 - 324: All of this Adam gladly did agree to do. So typical, too: Aprovechar Herry doing all of the talk, talk, talking –– and others doing all of the work, work, working! It wasn’t Herry doing the driving so that the Truemaier Boys could participate; it was Adam, fortunately himself quite the morning person any day anyhow, who did all of that early roundtripping and not, of course, the Daddee – Herry Edinsmaier at all!

I didn’t join in the walk portion that year thinking, naturally, that the Boys weren’t going to be there to enjoy the sylvan assemblage with any of us either. Poor, poor Adam. As dear as he is, Adam always seemed to operate as if Daddee – Herry Edinsmaier had already told me about all of these arrangements about which, of course, Herry had conspired to make damned certain to never tell me! Dr. Legion True hadn’t one clue that her Truemaier Boys might be there in Ames at this vernal hoo – hah. Not one clue! So, accordingly, I determined to just meet up with the rest of the Friends who, after the amble, would be gathering over at the Meetinghouse around 9 or 9:30 a.m. for the breakfast victuals. When I beheld the Boys coming up the driveway of the Meetinghouse, why, I ran outside, arms outstretched, to greet them I was soooo excited. And Mirzah, the first to get out of Adam’s car, likewise ran over to hug me, too!

Except that ... … Except that Professor P.M. Flunk, Quaker elder, got up in both our faces. And right now!

I mean the man appeared outta nowhere. Not even had he been in my peripheral vision; and even if Flunk had been there, I wouldn’t’ve, at that stage, thought him capable of what it was he then proceeded to do.

The doctor of mathematics’ philosophy dashed in between the two of us and faced me, his back to Mirzah, now forced dead in his little – boy tracks. Slowing, I turned to go around Flunk, my eyeballs still affixed on Mirzah, only to feel this incredible force about my neck and upper chest; it was shoving me hard backwards. P.M. Flunk actually had his outstretched arm and balled mitt solidly lodged on my breastbone. I was halted.

“No! No! That is not allowed!”

“O o o o!” I think to myself now, “what a woman – loathing shitload of fuckful patriarchal phraseology.”

“What?!” is only, instead, then and a bit breathless and rather high – pitched, what came out of my mouth.

“Hi, Mom!” Mirzah came around to my side but did not touch me either. P.M. Flunk removed his hand from its placement but not his wedged and blocking body from its.

“Heeey, Baby, this is toooo cooool! I didn’t know you were coming! O, I’m so happy to see you and Zane and Jesse,” who were both by now also standing right next to us three. “This is so great! How long can you stay? How was your walk?! I can take you back to 69th Street then! There’s a bunch of great food. When do we have to be leaving?”

“No! No! That is not allowed!” In front of his god (anyhow), Mirzah, Zane and Jesse and all of the other Quakers gathering, not to mention … in front of me … this Quaker elder, aaaah, androcentric asshole, by the name of P.M. Flunk and now flanked by spouse Agnes Flunk, PhD, Independent Scholar, claimed as his own King Herod’s patriarchal power of authority and control over me in the matter … of me … and … of my very own children. This, too, any freedom – loving independent (– scholar or not! –) can imagine, I have never forgotten!

As much as I’d considered Mi Sprision O’Revinnoco, M.D.’s inaction parentally and medically unconscionable, the Doctors Flunks’ action was, likewise, not only hardly at all Quakerly or anything, like say, spirit – led, … it was as well in no way conscionable. I have never forgotten it, and I have never returned to a man’s easter sunday anywhere, certainly not there either. Pre – arrangements had included Adam and P.M. and Agnes Flunk –– and, specifically, not me …

It had been the likewise folie – à – deuxing Flunk Intellectuals who chauffeured my Truemaier Boys back their afternoon’s 130 minutes’ haul to Herry’s at 1 p.m. and then themselves returning here to Ames, and none of these preparatory negotiations had included me in any way, except to especially keep me fully and ‘quite clearly’ … in the dark. The Flunks’ role was merely that of lackey – gofers in Herry’s inflictive fuck of bait and switch so as to the Boys to keep Dr. Legion True in hers: that of Invisible Mother. Herry played them. Herry Edinsmaier played P.M. and Agnes Flunk like the bobbleheaded marionettes they were, so dodderingly gaga were these two idiots over Herry’s impressive doctor title, his status in the community as a pillar and his elitist education as a physician. And …. likewise thusly, so oppositely repulsed by my judicial state as a nonmother … and apparently by everything else about me as well.

And they, the Flunks? They let him. They knew the opprobrious Truth about Herry, but they also knew how much … more … they themselves, as did rurally Midwest Mehitable, enjoyed and reveled in their own religion –– the one based upon their credo of aristocratic appearances and image management. So the cultured Flunks simply let the Good and Erudite Dr. Edinsmaier play them. Full – well functioning that –– and, as regards me, many a –– First Day in the astringently punishing scholarship that: while knowledge is power, the withholding of knowledge is … even more power!

Just four weeks earlier Margaret Sagely died on the 02nd day of March 1991, while on a personal mission of medical mercy to China for her belovéd people there. No proselytizing. None ever when Nurse Margaret went to China. Just gracious and helpful and scientific however she could be. Massive stroke. Seventy – two years young. Dead. Immediately. Cremated. Ashes back to the States. Another “other mother” of mine –– gone. Ashes like Frieda Chicken Guthrie. Ashes and gone.

A memorial service was scheduled at a larger sanctuary in downtown Ames than the Meetinghouse’s front room so that her many, many friends who wanted to say goodbye to her could, three of whom … my Truemaier Boys. Herry had then, too, enticed Agnes and P.M., apparently contacting one or both of them to let them know that he, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and the Boys would all join the Flunks in one of that particular church’s pews –– which they so did do. Again, I had had no prior heads – up until I glanced over my right shoulder and there, subtly nodding and smiling back at me but not too widely the service being a sobering memorial for Margaret who now was basically a carton of carbon inside her simple, mahogany wooden urn up at the altar and all, … were Jesse, Mirzah and Zane. On his way out the narthex’s massive doorway afterward, Mirzah managed to maneuver himself so as to brush beside me and high – fived my right hand that I held close in and low down by my thigh whilst, poker – faced, he stared straight ahead of himself and exited to the street. No words exchanged. And then, yet again, my three Boys … were gone.

I closed the wobbly, wooden door of the booth in order to be able to hear something. My machine was temporarily shut down while I spoke on the telephone, but the rest of them were quite up, running and clamoring; it was as always very, very noisy. The phone booth was rickety, musty – smelling and darkened, there by itself in the far southwest corner of this warehouse – sized room which was the junk mail factory’s primary production floor.

“Legion, this is Agnes Flunk speaking to you.”

“Agnes?” The clock registered yet another hour and a half of afternoon shift left before I was to punch out.

“Yes, Agnes Flunk. I have had a telephone call just now from Des Moines.”

“What?! Who from?”

“Well, it’s about the Truemaier boys.”

“What is?! They’re okay?! What’s the matter with my Boys?!”

“Well, ah, um …”

“I said, Agnes, what . is . the . matter . with . my Boys?!?!” This woman was still another of those male – identified ditherers of whom in my World there are far, far too many and for whom I have no patience. None. Much worse yet is the fact that besides thinking herself a Quaker elder and terming herself an “independent scholar” who now and then when she feels like it from her bedroom computer writes books about odd, peculiarly narrow groups of workers or tribes, this woman calls herself a feminist, too. Now when certain of these types of DEhumans do this, then I truly am completely all out of any tolerance for them as well since their genre makes it sooo much harder for the rest of us DEhumans and true feminists, either female or male.

“Your boys’ll be at our house tonight if you want to see them one last time. Herry said he’d bring them all by our house and that you are permitted to come there tonight at 6:30 p.m. for 15 minutes,” came the official announcement back to me of exactly that premonition over which Jesse had soooo been agonizing just the Friday night before. Anxious and sad? Now I knew at least a little something about why his sense. The weekend over, and lo and behold on Monday afternoon, 28 October 1991, less than 72 hours after hugging Jesse inside our dark, cold Ol’ Black parked on an Urbandale sidestreet and wanting to weep over the dread voiced in Jesse’s fears and sorrow at leaving me and Iowa and never returning to us as a kid again, Dr. True was indeed right now being dictated to by a person whom I do not trust and by the type of woman whom I so loathe that I, my Boys’ own mama, would be “permitted” one last chance to see them all before they left for where?

“See them all before they left for where, Agnes?!”

“Well, now that isn’t information I have. And if I did have it, I wouldn’t be permitted to give it out, now would I? You already know that though, Legion, don’t you?” There are four – and five – letter names for women like Agnes Flunk, names not at all like “scholar,” but she isn’t worth expending any more effort nor expounding upon with any more time or descriptive words, let alone, worrying about folks like her. Nor is P.M. either –– except for the itty bitty bit part in which P.M. was yet to be seen acting later on that evening.

Ms. Phillipa Chance I hardly knew and then only as an overseer of my factory labor. I needed to leave work; but I, right then, just couldn’t think of how to explain in a short, short byte … why. My jobs changed soon after this 1991’s October –– both because the orders were decreasing and its temporary positions at the factory were being eliminated and because I needed more hours than those which had been available there anyhow so I have never gotten an opportunity to know this person. Recently I read in a wee local newsy rag where this woman was working alone one night at the county’s favorite BBQ take – out outfit and that Ms. Phillipa Chance had managed to salvage some of its equipment and to save herself before the tiny joint, like torched Twyla’s Salon and Barbering had in Urbandale, burned completely down.

Still I don’t know her personally and, then as now, if the woman’s ever had a child or kids of her own or not. I truly only knew of her from that mid afternoon of my beseeching her for allowance to leave work. As I remember acts of atrocity, I also remember actions of the opposite kind, and Ms. Phillipa Chance has always remained in my memory for the fact that her nature with me so fit her name, Chance. I exited the phone booth apparently as white as this sheet. My supervisor, Ms. Phillipa Chance, heard above all of that din, “My babies. He’s taking my babies away,” as I walked up to her small workspace countertop in the midst of the warehouse, not dazed as much as seething. And, as noticeably DEhuman, ... powerless.

No asking me “What?!” No asking me “Why are you talking to yourself and not back at your machine working?!” No questions at all as a matter of fact, and I never repeated myself. She looked at me squarely, no hedge, and replied, “Get outta here, Woman. Go! You are gone. We’ll just see ya’ tomorrow, okay?!”

After the rare times as I run into such people, almost exclusively DEhumans too they are, I wonder how it is that they know, how they already know what was coursing through my heart and my soul after news like I’d just received. Had she lost a child herself? Had a besieged sister of hers needed to wage war and lost babies? Ms. Chance wasn’t old enough I didn’t think to be a grandmother, as was Grand Mehitable, who may have been mom to a tormented daughter and grandchildren embattled in ‘the court’ system –– with all of its functionaries there with whom the family, including Ms. Chance perhaps, may have had to deal, to engage, to clash, to fight, to come to legal blows –– from its judges to the attorneys to the family and child psychologists to those custody evaluators and guardians ad litem to the state’s family services’ division personnel to the cops and the drug rehabilitators and the alcohol abuse counselors to the battered women’s shelter workers to who knows who next. How had Ms. Phillipa Chance, with instantaneousness and urgency not to mention with nearly proven clairvoyance, known where I stood after that telephone call and how had she known with precision clarity, knife – like, what the cut of “He’s taking my babies away” meant? For all their PhDnesses and all of their assumed scholarship and theoretical Quakerliness, the elder Dr. Agnes Flunk along with her spicily mucked – up spouse, Dr. P.M. Flunk, parents themselves of two grown – and – gone sons, could certainly have both stood several lessons and to pass prelim examinations on Substance and Depth in Understanding and Compassion at Grace’s Listening College –– both of them tutored there then by one mighty brainy and … kind … Ms. Phillipa Chance, junk mail factory boss – lady.

I knocked promptly at 6:30 p.m. on the front door of the bungalow. Dr. P.M. Flunk opened it to an empty living room in which stood Agnes, gawping in judgment at me without so much as a weak smile. I knew there’d been a reason why I hadn’t sought to be present any earlier; she and that countenance of hers was it. No Truemaier Boys anywhere in sight. And no conversation occurring either –– which was just fine with me. Deaf as I am, I am never discomfited as are other persons by silence in such threesomes; and because of the particular and peculiar other two in our specific axiso’three, I was most contented to remain shut up … waiting. Waiting for the Truemaier Boys in the silence of the front room of the Flunk household. I had a helluva lot to think on anyhow so, doing that, I just stared at its floor, “What in the hell was Herry up to? Taking the Boys where? For how long? No wonder Jesse’d said what he’d said last Friday night! Yeah, something’d been goin’ down, all right, but what? What?!”

Around 6:50 finally a knock and in strode Community Pillar Herod Edinsmaier demanding to see Legion True, “Where’s Jesse?! Where’ve ya’ hidden Jesse?!” He was enraged behind such a carefully controlled to – the – Flunks’ mask. After all, Herry couldn’t very well call me Cunt or Bitch or Twat in front of them or Mirzah and Zane … now the two of them old enough to quite remember such Edinsmaier endearments for their mother.

With only my youngest and my eldest coming inside and over to me on the loveseat, I instantly knew then that Jesse had run, that he had jumped ship, that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier hadn’t the foggiest fuck of an idea as to where my middle child for whom he, alone, was custodially liable was, and that Hideous Herry totally intended to pin onto me the full whammy of all that this meant –– right down to, “ … if Jesse is hurt, You Cunt, why I’ll … ” in so many sidewise glares and smirkfaced squints. The brassy fact that we were all in someone else’s home, a situation for which then I ordinarily would take under great advisement to be courteous and rather respectful, I gave not two hoots for here at the Flunks. I couldn’t have given a flying, fuckable shit that Herry Edinsmaier, two Truemaiers and one True frenetically seeking any news of the whereabouts of her third baby had completely taken over a space which none of us owned, let alone, found familiar or, for that matter, particularly Friendly! “We’re leaving Iowa, Mom. Tomorrow. We’re leaving tomorrow,” Zane exhaled softly. Mirzah, at his side and now mine, too, was just nodding.

“I want her house searched! I’m heading over there right now! Come’n, Zane, Mirzah! Now!” Herry headed for the door and without so much as addressing me with any full first name or a surname even as, of course, is Herry’s usual shaming shunning of me anyhow, ex – Husband Herod hadn’t yet directly looked at the obviously indiscernible and, therefore, ... invisible … thing in that Flunk room which was … me.

“They’re welcome to stay here, Herry,” it was Agnes Flunk, PhD, Independent Scholar, of course.

“Sure. Okay. Good. Thanks,” and Herry turned to go.

“No! No! He isn’t there! Jesse isn’t there! Where is he?! Where could he have gone to?!” I was frantic and becoming so, too, were also both Zane and Mirzah now –– who, I rather suspected, knew all along that Jesse, was indeed, gone most missing and they just didn’t know what to do. Herry, for chris’sake, had done nothing to allay any of these two brothers’ fears and, now arriving in Ames and seeing me, Mirzah and Zane were altogether certain that Jesse was nowhere at all close by to us. “I’m calling the police and László.”

“That is not necessary. He’s at your house,” Herry finally glowered straight at me, that Stupid – Ass Heifer in the Flunks’ living room, although he still would not speak my name.

“No! I told you, he isn’t! I’m calling the police, and they’ll search my house to convince you. Then maybe we can get the true search for Jesse started. Don’t tell me. Do not tell me that you haven’t even called the Urbandale police yet, Herry?!” my voice was shaking I was so livid. Herry had not.

Herry Edinsmaier had driven out of two major metropolitan areas, Urbandale and Des Moines; 65 precious minutes he had traveled out of town and onto major thoroughfares and interstates and over 45 to 50 miles northerly and into another metropolitan area, Ames, in the cold and now also the darkness –– without even calling their local police first. Not only that, the Good and Wonderful Dr. Edinsmaier had driven out of the probable vicinity of Jesse’s disappearance two more of my children displacing them even further away than they already had been from their missing brother –– and all of this evil just to be able … to come after me.

I turned to go to the telephone which appeared in a nook past the grand piano, black of course, itself alone constituting most of what were the living room furnishings besides our carcasses. Seeing this direction of mine, again P.M. Flunk darted over to the corner as well and stuck his fakey, little power façade – like veneer between the telephone and me, lifting up its receiver himself. He swung it and the coil wide away from the cradle, frowned and pursed his lips at me because, assuming he was going to, I asked, “O, are you calling the police then, P.M.? I know the number,” which, of course, I did –– “239.5133.” Any mother does; we memorize the doctor’s, the emergency room’s, the cops’, the fire department’s. What can I say? I knew it stone – cold so I dictated it to him. He turned around, his dialing finger halted at pressing the digits; he soooo did not want to, I could tell.

“If you don’t, P.M., then I shall. Call them and tell them to send someone over to 6143 Havencourt and to do it right now.” P.M.’s nonverbal demeanor even Mirzah and Zane couldn’t miss. I thought, “Fuck him.”

Before heading to Havencourt, I motioned Zane aside and whispered to him, “Do you know where he’s taking all of you?”

“Ah, no, we don’t know. We just found out today when he came to the school. I think Jesse’s bolted, Mom. I haven’t seen him since this morning. Herry came to the school at noon. Jesse must’ve seen him coming down the hall or something.” Dr. Edinsmaier insisted, from the immediate moments of all of their birthings, that all three Boys only ever call him Herry –– never Daddy, Dad, Pa, Poppy, Pops or even the formal Father. Never. He taught them well; all three of the Boys only ever did call him Herry, too.

Herry, their arrested 17 – year – old, older Joy Toy Boy ‘brother’ who, through his violence of passive – aggression and abusive collusion with ‘the courts,’ lied and bullied just whenever the frickin’ hell he felt like it and was, now with the help of these same two Quaker “elders,” gutting the goddamn bitch –– again.

Mirzah finished, “Only thing we know, Mom, is that it’s tomorrow morning. We leave tomorrow morning.”

“O, m’god! And you don’t even know where you’re going?! And we don’t know where Jesse is?!

O, m’god! O, m’god!”

“Uh – uh,” it was Mirzah, only a month past 12 years of age, just searching my face with his.

“Okay. Okay. I’m thinking here. I’m thinking. I’m going over to Havencourt and do that thing, the obligatory search thing over there. With the Ames cops. Obliged to. Got to. László’ll meet me there.

I’ll tell ya’ all why later. Then, … then I’m telephoning the Urbandale police myself if Herry won’t.

I know their number, too. I’ll call them from there, from Havencourt. I won’t be back. O, m’god! This is it then. I won’t see you two again. O, m’god! Do you think Washington State or not? West or east? South to where was it you thought he once went off to down there? Ya’ know, one time to go work somewhere down there, Biloxi? No, not Biloxi. Where the heck was that?! O, m’god.” We were hugging and hugging and hugging. I completely ignored the two others, the Flunks. Herry was already gone anyhow. “I’ll find you. I will find you. I. Will. Find. You. I love you, Mirzah.. I love you, Zane.

O, m’god. And I’ll find Jesse, too. Tell him I love him.” Kiss. Kiss.

Arms undone. I was gone.

Herry’s manner in and management of his public rage appeared similar to Dr. Lionel Portia’s everyday face, the one Grace’s spouse used for all of Lionel’s feelings, anger or joy, … pretty much deadpan. As much as Herry loathed true work, he truly worked very carefully at concealing from the general populace and, in particular, its upper crust … the Edinsmaier rage. Often, even most often, he buried it, appearing placid and unruffled for months that sometimes lasted a year or longer; but when the rage was just beneath the surface as it was this evening, Herry took extra charge and effort to put on the outward countenance of calm and correctness and the presentation of “the one who is not only in the know but since he is, since he does know, then he is the one, therefore, next doing the correct and right thing.” This fairly much describes passive aggression in a folie à deux, this immediate folie then –– Highfalutin Herry with the high – flown Flunks.

The phrase also fits what Herod Edinsmaier provokes in rational people. His actions as a passive aggressor are provocation, and he so manipulated them, as did Mehitable, to whatever resultant outcome he desired. But a reasonable response from ordinary folks to the consequential upshots of passive aggression is one of frustration or disgust often to the point of us others expressing, in no calm way whatsoever, our aversion, our disgust, our anger and our disappointment. Hell, Herry’s aggression costs us others time, money, work, lots and lots and lots of extra, initially unneeded work that now becomes necessary, pain, huge disappointments, huge, often separation and incredible isolation as was to be the end result of the news this evening that all of my Boys, not just Jesse, would so very soon go completely missing from me. It is no wonder at all that the rest of us, dealt this shit and forced this fuck, act after its display and implementation from persons such as Dr. Edinsmaier the way that we do.

Only one gargantuan problem there is with us recipients and our reactions: we others are the ones who outwardly look to the cops, to the SpaChezResort Hotel Six Floor health care providers, to the judges, to the sheriffs, to the attorneys, to the child psychologists, to the custody evaluators, to the social workers, to the children’s services’ counselors, we others look like the aggressor because we do get angry. And we show it!

Herry’s calculated violence in his application of passive aggression was, however, of historic proportions. And when coupled with the vacuous, wooden demeanor on his face to the outside onlooker, nearly impossible to read if an untrained observer. I, on the other hand? I had lived this. With Herry I had lived this mother – fucking every single day for the 12½ years of legalized mawwiage to the thug and, ever more escalatingly, all of the days since the divorce decree became official midweek on 24 May 1989! Herry was so predictable to me by now. I didn’t need to read his face; I just knew what he would probably, most likely try to get away with next. Hence, why the very real need for me to not only be present at the search of my very own home, one done without any officially obtained search warrant! but I also had to have present at this specific search an Ames police official conducting a totally thorough search of it –– because Herry, in some future court action, would lie –– another imminent perjury. I needed to be able to defuse and to counteract the falsehood that the prevaricated scenario would morph into –– by overseeing at my own residence, right now Monday night, 28 October 1991, a totally thorough search. I had to preempt a strike against me in some upcoming court appearance of which I did not even know yet –– by, right now, leaving no shower curtain drawn and no corner closet exhaustively uninspected! Too, the scrutiny absolutely had to be performed by a methodical force which could perhaps act as a neutralizing one in daMan’s court! An unbiased third party I needed, a witness or testifier that would be … the cop! Right now in my throes of becoming geographically separated for gaaawd knows how long from all three of my Boys, I had to first be concerned about a future attack and cross by Herry’s Mr. Shindy Scheisser which would run something like, “But you really didn’t even go in the Havencourt condo, did you, Officer Pam?”

“Actually, that is not correct, Mr. Scheisser, I did.”

“But you really didn’t even go upstairs and check into anything or behind anywhere, did you, Officer Pam?”

“Actually, that is not correct, Mr. Scheisser, I did. Even though I had no warrant to check anything or behind anywhere! ! ! I still did. As a matter of fact, Mr. Scheisser, I checked everywhere and behind everything, a complete and thorough search, and there was not a goddamn sign there of anybody resembling a Jesse. There were, however, Jesse’s and his two brothers’ belovéd pets, Mr. Scheisser, all three of them. No! More than three. Her boys’ mama bird’d had babies. That’s how mother – fuckingly thorough my search was; I even searched the finch’s nest, too! Not just the DEhuman mother’s nest! Hypothetically speaking here, Mr. Scheisser, why wouldn’t a supposedly loving father, swiping custody of her kiddos, not also wanna take custody of her children’s pets?!”

“I will ask the questions here, Officer Pam! And you will do the answering, Officer Pam, and only the answering. Not the judging. I have no further questions, Your Honor, for this witness.”

This was the sort of future “anticipatory guidance” pediatricians tell parents about their growing children’s activities, actions and what to expect? No, this was the sort of anticipatory guidance, a medical term used daily in these doctors’ dictations after the well – child checkup visits of little kids nationwide, which I had to also employ in order to try to guide myself around and past the crimes of the older – brother Joy Toy Boy bully, Daddee Edinsmaier himself. In order to attempt to –– later –– save my own ass within ‘the court’ that Pillar Herry could so easily manipulate to his advantage.

I arrived on Havencourt. László had broken peripheral speed records, I thought, in order to get there.

He and Judd lived five miles out of town in the diagonally opposite direction of The Teacup, and he from the northwest then was there already when I drove up. So was Officer Pam except that she was a he, Officer Chris. Up to the door the four of us went, and I even invited in Herry; and had he entered, this would have been his first step inside the Havencourt condominium ever. He did not; he declined of course, and László decided to wait outside with him. I still have never figured out for certain when all of my tools came up missing from my two garage cabinets’ worth, but I don’t think it happened this specific Monday.

I believe Herry stole them all, but I now believe the burglary occurred at a later date, still yet another thuggish thievery of Herry’s to be realized –– just not on this particular 28 October. Because László, Ancestor in Training in Cinqué – style as well, was right there beside him –– standing in silence.

The search ended; Herry and Officer Chris both drove away from Havencourt Drive. László came inside then and sat down at our brown kitchen table as I proceeded to dial, from memory of course, the Urbandale police station. Waiting on the line for the correct person to take my transferred call, I told László that I had kissed Zane and Mirzah for the last time for a long, long, long time, that the Boys were to be spirited out of town the very next morning and that to where the four of us, in the words of Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s infamous and favored ‘scriptural verse,’ … “had no idea!” Where my 15 – year – old, 13 – year – old and 12 – year – old children were next to call ‘home’ was a secret –– even to them. Assuming, that is, that middle brother would be caught.

Jesse was.

And I was never told that he was. And ‘caught’ is the correct verb, not ‘found’. I hung up the telephone for the last time around 1 in the a.m. of Tuesday, 29 October 1991, not knowing. By 4:30 pm that afternoon and off shift, I zoomed down to the 69th Street bungalow and pulled Ol’ Black plain as day right up into the driveway. There was nothing there. Nothing of evidence around the outside of the house and the property’s detached garage that my family of three Truemaier Boys had ever existed there.

I hauled ass off of 69th and out onto Douglas Avenue and careened westerly toward the Urbandale Police Station. The speeding was out of anger, yes, and certainly not out of any misperceived capability to catch up with someone, anyone. After 5 p.m., I could not enter its front door without having to first press the security intercom and summon someone to come unlock it and let me in. I blitzed by the doorman enroute to the dispatch window and was given there, by a very nice woman who of course knew nothing, the name of someone to call “in the morning.” So began a blizzard of queries to the cops, whether there in Urbandale or five states away or half a nation away or a full continent away –– it didn’t matter. Always, always courteous to me I proceeded to get out of any law enforcement authority anywhere not one shred of information on or about my very own babies whom I alone grew. Not one fragment of knowledge.

I am reminded of the time Zane ran away from home in Columbia –– and Jesse and I in that beige Shitbox Dodge had quietly followed behind him and his tracks. The cop then in the blazing heat of that July never truly ‘saw’ my little boy in his winter coat packing a long, skinny bundle that could’ve contained a rifle. Didn’t –– but could have. Zane had determinedly claimed that his fishing pole would permit him to survive ‘out there’ … alone. Although the policeman, Jesse and I so well saw, had looked squarely at Zane, the lawman never even stopped to inquire if there might be something rather at bit amiss with this scenario here.

“You have papers that say we can tell you if we know, do you?” the named individual on the post – it scrap asked me the next morning.

“Ah, no, I don’t have those papers.”

“Well, then, I’m awfully sorry, but I don’t know if you’re really the mother plus, anyhow, if you don’t have official papers, then I certainly am not going to say anything. Is that understood?”

“Can’t you even tell me … if … Jesse’s found and safe?”

“No. I’m hanging up now.” Click.

The night before until the wee dark hours of the early morning it had been the same with the police. And with Ms. McLive. Herry wouldn’t even come to the telephone to talk to me nor had Mirzah or Zane been allowed to answer the phone or take my calls. Ever before –– when they all were still sequestered in west Ames or existing inside that Urbandale bungalow. Mothers worldwide know this routine on a regular basis –– from the doctor to the teachers to the parole officer to the male – identified, maternal grandmother to the child’s commanding, milifucking officer. Not to mention, when there’s the colossal crisis of one of hers in trouble, hurt or missing, we still cannot get information. No way. No how. And if one is a noncustodial mother, why then it is a given that the backlash fuck – off will nowhere approximate a polite kiss – off.

Understand the standard measure that is ownership of information. Information is male; it is patriarchy and belongs only within all things androcentric. Smack in line with martin luther’s “… woman was no more than a machine to make babies for him with neither the need nor the right to …” … to know anygoddamnthing else! Knowledge is power and the withholding of knowledge is even more power. And from fat, old buddha, “ … a woman’s body is filthy and not a vessel for … the law.” The law? She soooo cannot! for chris’sake, have the least bit o’ knowledge, lest the fucking woman dare to think, dare to believe that she is entitled to actually possess some … power! Just ask Mehitable, the most male – identified of all – knowing, maternal grandmothers whom the Truemaier Boys have ever encountered.

Only weeks later did I actually know that Jesse had been captured and that not only was he all right but that he had fought the abductor and his continuing thralldom the only way he could think of at this last minute. A portion of the overture to Act Three had played out exactly as Zane had intuited. Zane and Jesse both possess to this day, sometimes even Mirzah too, the uncanniest powers of near extrasensory perception. I in no way believe in ESP nor in supernature and so doubt that, atheist that I am, I ever shall; but if I ever do, I’ll wager my believing will have to do with some event or situation spawned because of Jesse’s or Zane’s minds knowing ahead of time what was going to happen or their abilities, given just a very, very few items of information or clues, to piece together what the hell went down at a place and time far, far removed from them.

Zane was correct. Jesse had, from inside his seventh – grade classroom and out its window accidentally or uncannily looked up and watched Herry in the Humvee hurl past his building and haul into the high school’s front horseshoe drive just a block east, headed he accurately presumed, at midday on a Monday morning when Herry was usually long gone outta town since the early, early hours of the first workday to his “job” wherever the locum tenens per diem contract was for that particular week, … headed instead this noontime to Zane’s Principal Druid’s office. Excusing himself from the classroom and I’ve never yet asked him how, Jesse beelined to his locker, cleared it out as much as he’d wanted and managed to signal a friend whose name I don’t know. Indeed, it was around 12:30 or 12:45 when Jesse, out a side door unguarded on that Monday afternoon, exited off the grounds of the Metro suburb’s middle school. And disappeared.

Just as Zane in the Flunks’ front room had imagined to me Jesse must’ve done. I don’t know how he made it past adults, but Jesse’s darling and quite the athlete so perhaps he either just smiled and kept on walking, sack of locker shit and all, or he may have explained about needing to return something to or retrieve something from off of the soccer – football field out back. Like his independence or something. With backpack and some belongings then Jesse, at any rate, was gone quite missing by the time Herry next returned with already snatched Mirzah and Zane to the Urbandale Middle School to pluck Jesse out as well.

And instead of quizzing the school authorities or the local fuzz if Legion True had been spotted anywhere in the Boy’s immediate vicinity or not, Herry decided, one way or the other, that even if I had not been seen around, indeed that even if I had actually not been around, … he would still exploit the situation against me. Herry knew Jesse had jumped; and if his escape hadn’t been with me, then it was accomplished with someone else or carried out by himself. He knew. Herod Edinsmaier simply determined, with less than only a full day’s time left to Daddee’s getting done “for his family” all of the moving – away kinds of chores and last – moment minutia, to still choose to take out some of those remaining few hours several miles away and harass the mother – fuck out of Legion, the ex – Cunt and Present Bitch. While all that while –– permitting Jesse to stay missing and purposefully to not jostle and scramble together all manner of proactive functions and efforts to find him! To let Jesse stay missing to him, to me and to his brothers! That level of gruesome cruelty only one who has recognized and violently lived, day to day, with this passive aggression can predict and expect.

László stayed with me as I was on the telephone calling and calling and calling all night long and getting back only clicks and hang – ups from both the Urbandale police and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive. The madam was so transparent that if László and I weren’t genuinely most worried about Jesse, it would’ve been hilarious! With every phone call, and there must’ve been a dozen at the least which I placed, all long distance, … with every one, the Next Cunt answered soooo ridiculously syrupy sweet and cheery –– herself modeling and very well mimicking Horrid Herod’s aggressive passivity, “The Edinsmaier and McLive residence, Fannie speaking. How may I service you?” Er, no. Correction. “How may I serve you?”

After about the second or third consecutive call of mine to the 69th Street number, it became crystal clear that Herry’s newest Next Cunt was taking her mother – fuckingest revenge in this manner but way, way worse than that: with her and Herry’s folie à deux operating at top speed in its so slickly slamming operatic duet again, there was the very real fact that she, too, was also … not … searching for … nor … finding my child!

Apparently around 10:30 p.m. that signaled friend of Jesse’s had attempted to flee his own residence with extra warm boots, a wool shirt, a poncho, a flashlight, some books and not only the canned goods, the pork and beans, tuna and corn, but he’d also remembered to pack the can opener next to the canteen and a couple of store – bought bottles of water. Perhaps it was the bulk of the sleeping bag and two blankets that gave him away to his mother, but Friend was discovered all right before he’d managed to exit their back door around about his bedtime on a school night. Kiddo ‘fessed. Jesse was holed up in a fort he had fashioned for himself somewhere in an urban forest not too far away. Late October outside in the city’s woods in the dark. Not exactly this particular ex – Cunt’s accommodations after all, but Jesse had bivouacked his own ‘home’ if Herry was –– again –– about to fuck with mine. And, of course, neither Jesse nor I nor Mirzah or Zane knew at all then of Herry’s affidavit – “pledge” to daMan, to daJudge, to Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor, to “never” take him away from Ames until he was 18, had graduated Ames High School and could choose for himself to where to be off exploring next!

Back into Ames and The Teacup and at or under the posted speed limit, I hunkered down at the brown kitchen table next to the telephone and tried to think of what to do. It was the evening of another day when another moving truck had yet again pulled up to my children’s lives and in the course of another couple of hundred minutes or so into it had been swallowed up all of the available stuffs of their childhoods. And in a vehicle following the van out onto interstates had been swept up and spirited several states away, as well, my three Truemaier Boys –– jettisoning them all over – again – somewhere between Ames, that Invisible She – Devil there … and the Deep Blue Sea.

Only weeks later did I know that Mirzah, too, had been captured. Mirzah, my little man of so, so many talents. From soccer to French to percussion to baking, actually making skilled use of, even at just five years of age, the nesting set of Pyrex mixing bowls, to entrepreneurial endeavors, especially ones involving the ‘investing’ of his money, to piano to volleyball to political leanings and leadings to keyboarding and computers just appearing on a very, very few kiddos’ horizons. Except in the form of Nintendo or the few Pacman or Pokémon games before those. And, most especially, and of a truly magnificent treasure to both him and to me, to his mighty fine art for making friends and establishing and maintaining friendships.

All of the Truemaier Boys possessed this wizardly craft. If ever I’d wanted to know who someone was, all that I had to do was query out loud to the thin air, “Who’s that?” Himself suddenly interested also, Zane at three, four, five years of age, would swiftly shift focus from whatever activity he was engaged in, slip – slide on over to the person in question, look longingly up at her or him and with pinpoint clarity and precise pronunciation the first time he would simply ask, “Who are you?” And then I, too, would know because Zane was so irresistible and, thus, always commanded by his wee, sweet presence the correct answer back!

I so worried about this trait in the Truemaier Boys though; it could be endangering to them all to be so open and unafraid to approach total strangers. It could save their lives, too; but it still concerned me so all throughout their little, little boyhoods. The Boys’ belovéd nanny, Rosemarie, loved to repeat the story of lunchtime one noon in the Hershey household when she’d served up food to the three of them. Rosemarie invented lovely themes, ideas and topics with every meal to foster in them amongst themselves not only camaraderie but also the finesse of fine conversation. During the discussion at this particular repast, she had asked each Boy to individually tell them all collectively assembled around the dinner table what he wanted to be when he grew up. First Zane expounded; then came Jesse’s discourse. When Rosemarie came ‘round to Mirzah poised in his high chair at the grand ol’ figure of a mere 2½ years in age, he paused and paused, eyelids scrunched shut with his right arm and fist doubled up under his little chin, elbow on the high chair tray –– just silent like Frenchman Rodin’s so – famous Le Penseur statue of 1902, thinking and thinking and thinking. Then when she and two brothers by their cocked heads and raised brows in Mirzah’s direction appeared to query him again … he finally opened his eyes, his little arm shot skyward from out its place under his mandible and, with set jawline and princely ceremony, Mirzah exaltedly proclaimed to all gathered therein, “Prezdunt o’da Knighted Tates!”

In the sixth grade now and eleven years old that Fall of 1991, things hadn’t much changed in this regard.

Although they may not have been able to actually come over to visit Mirzah at the daddee’s residence patrolled there as it was by Nottingham Sheriff McLive, Mirzah still made friends as easily as drinking pure water; and, of the collections of people he found himself within, one such group was the Extended Learning Program’s early morning class of ultimate conversationalists, the children there who participated in the Mock Trials project. By 7:15 a.m. since late August and early September, Mirzah had had to be at the Karen Farmer Elementary School two to three times a week and ready to rehearse the courtroom scenes for his group’s involvement in local and regional competitions. The kids at Karen Farmer’s had beat out several other elementary ELP mockers; they advanced to win the locals’ championship! So much so had the ELP sixth – graders won already that autumn that Mirzah, in two different mock situations, was slated with the other actors of his class to perform their two trials at the regional finals’ competition. On Monday, 28 October 1991, I can only imagine that as Mirzah left the bungalow around 7 in the early morning in the chauffeuring accompaniment of another competitor – colleague’s parent in order to get to the rehearsals on time, he was totally pumped for both of his roles, one as the criminal’s defense attorney; and in the second trial, Mirzah actually played the part of the defendant himself charged –– with murder!

The regional’s contest was not very far away at all. No one from Karen Farmer Elementary School had to travel any further than Des Moines’s own Drake University. Yes, further than the trip to school but not by much more than 15 to 20 minutes or so at the most; and there was obviously no need to carpool out of town or for any such planning as that necessary at all, one of the fine things about living in a bigger sphere with great opportunities. Out of Urbandale proper and into Des Moines officially a child’s parents would have to drive, but the Olmstead Center there at Drake was so close to Herod Edinsmaier’s suburban rental that Mirzah certainly did not think that he needed even to arrange a ride with other teammates to get there. Mirzah would just appear and meet up with everyone else –– right there at the Olmstead Center.

Perhaps from his Grandpa AmTaham and I’d like to think also from me did Mirzah learn and hold strongly and utterly to the precept that a person did not disappoint her or his friends. No way. No how. If one is a true friend, then one comes through for the rest of the posse’s others no matter what it takes; and until the morning of Wednesday, 30 October 1991, when Mirzah Truemaier awoke to find himself five states away and consequently failing to show up at the Olmstead Center of Drake University to uphold his end of the Mock Trial team’s bargain, he had not one time messed up on this … this how – to – be – a – true – friend deal, the most important of matters to him ever.

Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had succeeded in capturing Mirzah and by Herry’s subsequent imprisonment of him on the interstate and ultimately at their final roadtripping destination, had literally stolen from Mirzah the loyalty to his friends that he so prized inside of himself. The prize of the Mock Trial Project championship? O well, everyone knows what happens at such times as these. Whether at the mock trials’ competitions or at the city club’s softball game without enough players or with the default on the loan for the family’s next home or “the consequences of all of the other messes he visits upon her when he leaves her home” as John Stoltenberg quotes, the word is –– forfeit. Mirzah’s school friends left the Drake University’s Center and returned to their classroom activities at Karen Farmer Elementary without accomplishing one performance because, without its key and starring actor, there was no performance. And according to the Project’s rules, because of this dazzling absence then, the forfeiture of any ranking of the team’s standing in the competitions –– was required!

What I have never been able to justify, coming at this specific October scenario with Mirzah in The Opera from Herry’s possible perspective, is how he could have done this to Mirzah. I mean why?! Why not just wait one fucking day –– more –– before leaving town?! The realization of just the friggin’ timeframe alone of this heinous action consternates me! Blows me clean frickin’ away it does. Even if Dr. Edinsmaier had had to be at work elsewhere, which I soooo do not believe was the case at all, why the fucking hell did Herry – Daddee dump the way that he did … this horrific mess on Mirzah’s spirit?! One day longer is all!

Then, Herry could have hired a freakin’ truckdriver for the Truemaier Boys or the household’s moving van –– or for both! –– if Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive wasn’t up to any of it herself! And fuck –– Herry for himself? Shit! –– Herry could’ve taken a goddamn airplane out of Des Moines to said destination of new job five states away, could he not have?! I know. I know. This planning was work –– the work of parenting. And Herry loathed it. Herry had always hated all manner of the preparing and of the arranging that it took to help make everyone else’s lives –– ordered! Only his own life was of importance enough to warrant any such of his own labors and time. And in that own life of his, he so wanted, too, to make damned, friggin’ certain that I was fucked. If Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, Pillar, personally saw all of my Boys out of town, then he personally saw to it, also, that I, at my end, was indeed mother – fucked in possibly –– at all –– trying to stop him from doing so. Despite the irony that there is in all of the weeks and weeks and weeks of preparing and of arranging that it must’ve taken Herry Edinsmaier to keep so secret his impending plans for his own life, still so great was Herry’s neediness to know the Pussy, Legion True, was completely fucked that this is the only explanation which I can come up with as to why Herry Edinsmaier committed this slash – and – burn on Mirzah Truemaier’s so – prized loyalty to his friends. It never should have happened.

* * * *

My life was and wasn’t fucked. Herry would have, I am thinking, been disappointed to know. To know that he had not quite finished the task of that. I did commence rocking again; that I did do. And it was, once more, so cold, … November now; and as in previous years, I did not start the furnace’s pilot light to even begin to be able to turn on the heat source. That alone would save me $15 a month, just its pilot light unlit. It was back to 2 percent milk, baked potatoes with butter for main and only course and bananas with sprinkled sugar crystals on top for dessert. Sometimes a certain molar acted up in the upper right. Sometimes to the point, in fact, of forming an eruption which I could not only palpate in my cheek from the outside but could also visualize it enough orally in order to be able to actually drain its pus on the buccal aspect of the mucosa and reduce it completely. Till –– of course –– the next time the abscess ballooned out.

on one other 13 October … that of 1990, common era

2011-10-13T15:26:00.003-05:00

from Chapter 27, pp 281 - 283: My history with Legion: Had ideas about her roommates but never gave any sign [ ! ! ! … JYeah, that is what Herry, of course, wanted to believe: that I did not know! But … I knew! I always knew that he had had “ideas” about my roommates! All women I know … know this!] Trying to be a grad student but spending my time frivolously drinking and talking to friends, taking some courses, accepted to med school for Fall ’75. Worked in lab and had hots for new tech in Bio 101. Continued living in trailer. I really thought I might die. I got sick with Loeffler’s syndrome. Unable to work in lab or elsewhere. Spent week at the Iowa City sanitarium and got better; came back to drive batch truck and drop out of grad school. I thought I would call it off when I went to Iowa City. I did not expect to marry Legion. Entered med school. Went out, girls and booze. Often lonely; wanted to be as successful with girls as my friend was. I did not feel committed to Legion but didn’t send her away either. She came down at Thanksgiving for the weekend; she got pregnant. I don’t recall ever going to Ames to visit her there. My birthday she told me she was pregnant. I spent my weekends with other girls though; best I’d ever had. Getting by in med school ‘working under half steam.’ Felt isolated from other med students; blamed it on difference in my age from them. I WANTED ABORTION; EASY FOR ME TO GET HER ONE at the med school. Legion’d rejected it outright. Knew she would; she’d always been for choice but it was her choice she’d always said to keep any baby she’d ever came up pregnant with. [ ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Herry wanted Zane ABORTED! Very usual abuser thinking! Like it is ever the man’s choice!] AmTaham came to Iowa City, called me selfish and made threats of what sounded like he was going to try to obtain custody of the baby. He asked if my parents knew. I said I would tell them when we knew what we would do. He replied that if I had not told them in one week, he would. I contacted student legal services; said there’d be no way he could get custody as long as Legion didn’t consent. Continued med school. Rented trailer to friend. Discussed how a new baby could be managed; Legion couldn’t do it and stay in school. Dean said I could leave and get back in in a year if I wanted; was subject to any changes in the curriculum was all. We moved into Pammel Court in Ames; I got work at the factory. I enjoyed my life and work. We had lots of sex.”

Back to myself I spat, “Herry! ‘After you? Coming after you?!’ How you! How so narcissistically right on the mark of you, Herry! It was never about … you. Never you, Dr. Edinsmaier. Nor your fucking money. Not that and not your status. It was never, fucking ever about you, Herry. It was about the Boys. And, yeah. Yeah, you’re right all right! And so was Mirzah when he told Mz. CherryBabe Canard. I would be a – comin’ after them, and I still will! It was never, ‘You call, O He Who Must Be Obeyed, and I do your bidding,’ Herry. I have the Truth. Just try. Just try and hold us mothers back!

‘Young and carefree again?’ Whaaa’, Herry? “Carefree again”?! With three boys and a couple of stepchildren? Carefree?! Yeah, riiiight.

‘Refuge from job and parental responsibilities?’ Well, fuuuuck that!

That’s not even to mention the ‘attack’, or ‘Murielle, Celeste and the animals’, Herry! You write that you gave “no sign” about my roommates, Herry? You fool. You fucking, narcissistic fool, Herry! I always knew. We women who are roommates? We always know!

But … I am a fucked fool … nevertheless! ‘Fool me twice, shame on me’ – fool! That kinda’ fool! Was that that you ‘thought’ you might die when I nursed you for three months’ time back from that pulmonary parasitism’s brink –– or that you ‘wished’ you might die! ‘Sons, you have no mother! Mother, you have no sons!’ ??? Uh – uh. No. No. Don’t even go there. Ya’ got one thing gone straight at least though, Herry: what you were to me! ‘There. Goes. My. Sex. Object.’ But you, Herry? You take my babies? Well, you’re in for it then. Just try. Just try to hold this ‘girl’ back! You take my Boys away from me?! What did you expect?! What did you expect?! I wouldn’t notice?! … I’ma gonna NOTICE! I am! I am a direct descendant of AmTaham True and, as he had been when at once breathing, am myself a Righteous Ancestor – in – Training! I. Am. Going. To. Notice!

Another piece of ‘testimonial evidence’ … another FACT, O He Who Is THE So Great and Wonderful Doctor Herod Edinsmaier! ONE LAST FACT here, O He Who Is, in veridicality, THE Mother – Fucker: You demanded of me … Zane’s ABORTION, You Terrorist! MY BODY. MY CHILD. MY CHOICE.

And what you never –– THEN –– acknowledged, Terrorist Herry: IF I had aborted Zane, THEN … THEN … there NEVER, EVER EITHER would have existed a Jesse or a Mirzah! IF I had had Zane aborted, THEN we –– you and I –– would not have had either the same subsequent unions nor any such future liaison whatsoever at all. THUS, NO JESSE. THUS, NO MIRZAH. Yet you, Abortion – Commander Herod Edinsmaier, you have held onto –– all of this time –– you have possessed and ordered it up, although no longer “legal,” certainly not “constitutional” and NEVER MORAL … the entire World’s “RULE of PATRIARCHAL LAW” at your whimsy, ‘SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER! MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS!’ ”

The truck pulled up, a Ryder 24 – footer even! And into its back end on Saturday, 13 October 1990, around about 11:30 am went one bicycle. Nothing else. Nothing else had my 14 – , 12 – or 10 – year – old ready, packed or, most importantly, the desire to put into Daddee – Herry’s (literally) mother – fucking truck.

AmTaham True, with every centimeter of his brain, blood and flesh the Cinque – “only reason I ever was … is … for Legion now” – physique, stood statuesque and in complete view of us all at the west window to the side of my king bed, its curtains purposefully this time pulled completely back and him poised there in his full ancestral force and regalia watching over me. Two of his precious progeny climbed into the cab; I let go of Mirzah, and he belted himself up into the backseat of Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s red Baretta which had been following her Herry everywhere that daMan led.

“We’ll see allya’all back here in just a little bit. I promise,” and I smiled and waved. Off the Good and Wonderful Doctor spirited this True mother’s three Sons. They were gone from my sight around the corner at the top of Havencourt in less than a minute’s time. I went back inside to Zephyr, Rex and Lady, their tomkitty, serpentine kingsnake and zebra finch, all three of the Boys’ pets never in the custody of … and, most assuredly, never the work of actually loving and caring for them wanted by … Herry the Daddee.

* * * *

Come to find out, Herry had no job anymore either. Not here in Ames he didn’t. He had vacated his and Ms. Fannie McLive’s apartment complex in Ames’ west section and moved her and Mary Jane once again. Down to a two – level bungalow on 69th in Urbandale, a northwest suburb of Des Moines, and 65 minutes of interstate driving time door to door from mine. Apparently it was his ‘plan’ to practice pathology around that metro in a per diem, locum tenens capacity at various laboratories while all the while seeking permanency with an outfit that suited him. Guess the White Law Firm outta Kansas City, the buckos who represented the legal concerns for the Downshim Pathology Laboratories and its branches, of which the Ames one had been, had had their full – up fill with Slacker Herry’s base and boorish bunkum –– his tardiness, his contrariness and Dr. Edinsmaier’s outright absence at inappropriate times –– as, er, with deeply anesthetized and, therefore, very unconscious women! –– and … shall we say, had “released” him. Something else that never seemed to much matter to the High Aggrandizier although Judge Seizor did know, too, of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s work habits. Or, rather, Herry – Daddee’s such dearth thereof!

I had 30 days to appeal and did. AmTaham and Mehitable left me alone and went back to Williamsburg, of course. I had pinned inside Jesse’s pocket along with all of the other important telephone numbers the one of a children’s legal advocacy agency in the capital city, Des Moines, where one of the Democratic Party’s former state senators was now its director, an attorney, too, with two small boys himself, Mr. Ralph Berg, a man all three of my children had met and against whose kiddos Jesse had played soccer from time to time. Of course, they all had Grace and Lionel’s telephone numbers, too.

The next Monday, a week after the one that some federal workers call a Columbus Day holiday while righteous, Native American ancestors – in – training instead term it Indigenous People’s Day, nonetheless, a day off from their work for those feds, Mirzah occupied a freed – up desk in a fifth grade at Urbandale’s Karen Farmer Elementary School. And whose classroom I immediately visited for an afternoon. I made myself known to his teacher and the school’s principal and asked for reports often while being so, so careful not to let it out directly that I was not the custodial parent fearing, of course, that so mother – fuckingly common backlash. Of the Rachel on her Victoria Joy’s emergency C – section birthing day variety –– even ever rampant as I type in Y2003! That mother – fucking backlash.

Jesse and Zane were each enrolled in sixth and eighth grade sections at the capital city burb’s one middle school where its staffers needed a parent volunteer to assist the nurse with the school’s annual fall scoliosis checks. The Truemaiers were represented by an Ancestor in Training all right; but, trust me, it was not the ‘real’ doctor, the Good Medical Doctor Edinsmaier nor his Ms. Fannie Issicran who proffered themselves up, let alone, their time.

These two –– my visit to Mirzah’s grade and the spine – spotting scope – out at the suburb’s middle school –– were the last times officials from either Urbandale school even spoke to me –– without my forcing it the one future time it became so weirdly necessary for me to press for the middle school principal’s attention.

László wondered aloud to me incredulously, “How can you possibly do it? I’ve already maxed out what I can loan ya’, Legion?” Thus began Act Two Part Three of The Opera … the appeal of Trial Two!

and Chapter 28, pp 300 - 303: The Truemaier Boys had been gone from me a year now and, at least as far as my 65 minutes’ drive, most of those months gone down to Urbandale. After nothing at all whatsoever back to me in the way of a response for their three birthdays’ worth of sacks of stuff that I’d quietly delivered right onto the 69th Street bungalow stoop where Ms. McLive, also quite quietly, puffed and puffed and after my pointfuckingblank asking all three kiddos in my continued, clandestine visits to the fall school term’s sports fields if they had gotten the gifts which I had left there for them, I believed purposefully gone missing then the books and the brand – new volleyball and Jesse’s special cherry – flavored cough medicine that he liked and that truly clobbered his mild, exercise – induced asthma and a tin of smoked oysters along with a jar of pickled herring for Zane plus one of grey poupon, country – style Dijon mustard along with a wrapped half pound package of Lorraine Swiss cheese from my Save – U – More delicatessen and salted sunflower seeds for Mirzah. Especially, too, the homegrown Beefmaster and Early Girl tomatoes which I hadn’t grown but that the farmer with acres off in the Storm County countryside had and who also lived on 24th Street and sold them to us so – faithful customers out of her double garage there every July and August. Just freshly vine – ripened and right ready for Jesse’s and Zane’s and Mirzah’s all – time favorite sandwich, their belovéd BLT, the goooo - od sandwich! Even the multiple books of 29 – cent United States postage stamps plus the sheets of the ones meant to cover the cost of sending only solo postcards. After we four had heard nothing about the two sweatshirts with the I – Cubs logo and the spittin’– new, unoiled outfielder’s mitt that I knew Zane would know how to break in himself along with that extra pair of plain, black, also brand – new Thinsulate gloves I’d always had cached in the bottom drawer of the coat hutch on Havencourt along with all of their other pairs and knit caps, I believed that all of these items were taken from the Truemaier Boys.

I deemed them all stolen.

An especially wicked execution of the practice of aprovechar in that the Boys’ favorite foods and books and toys and warm, winter apparel and sports equipment, even their very medicines, not to mention my special – occasion cards and other letters, being withheld and hidden from the Truemaier Boys was right up Herry Edinsmaier’s alley and smack in line with his plan to make me The Invisible Mother. Of the sort that Ralph Ellison wrote in The Invisible Man. Only as a DEhuman, that is, as a woman. And not as a man at all, of course. “SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER. MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS!”

A shunning, a mother – fucking of murdering proportions. Killing the memories and swindling by way of lethal silence three Truemaiers and, at the least, as many Trues out of any bonding and attachment to each other as happened to get in this King’s way. Before the pair’s folie à deux in this massive shuck – and – jive of theirs no longer worked, that is, when Zane, Jesse and Mirzah’d all grown old enough so that the Sheriff of Nottingham Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and her King could no longer get away with lying to them or defrauding me or when the intervening seven years had seen the Boys all graduate from high school, become 18 years old and physically gone, a total of at least $5,000.00 worth of items which I alone had packaged up and sent to the Truemaier Boys either in the United States mails or by some other route both Daddee – Herry and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive had concertedly, had corruptly ripped off from them. And from me.

It doesn’t matter that I cannot remember because I cannot. I cannot remember if the long – distance toll charges on the telephone calls which I placed just to visit with my Boys are or are not included in this total amount of dollars, but I think not. I am, of course, referring here in this specific mother – swindling to all of those phone – call fees where I would do the dialing up, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive would always be the person to answer the Edinsmaier – Truemaier landline as if right on staged cue from the Kingdom’s monarch; but where I, the Boys’ mama, would be immediately and summarily hung up upon without one word spoken or, at the very most, I would receive across my right eardrum the salutations of eleven or twelve of the nastiest utterances Noah’s dictionary contains and defines –– and, then, be slammed up upon.

To all queries – ever – of mine about how to even reach Herry in order for myself to openly seek from the Grand Pooh – Bah himself his most – high permission to chat with my own Boys, the standard measure of all passively aggressive, narcissistic replies always, always, always hurtled back to me off of Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s glossal organ as to where Herry was and if, perhaps, I could speak with him directly at another phone number, “I have no idea” –– plus a few more of her own glossary’s invectives, new oaths or Ms. McLive’s same old ones. Then, at my call’s last, into that one hearing ear of mine and straightaway from out of the Good and Wonderful Doctor’s prearranged directives, King Herod’s several commands … this corrupted and aprovechar swindler – sheriff’s crash, smash, thump – thud –– followed by a dial tone.

I was not rocking anymore now at all, no warming blankets enwrapping my legs nor cradling my arms. And Mirzah was correct when he’d told Daddee’s Canard what he had –– that I would not be undone after being dressed down but that I would come after the Truemaier Boys, no matter the outcome of the appeal.

The one thing I could not do was run away with Jesse Truemaier, Mirzah Truemaier and Zane Truemaier.

I would have. And I should have tried to, I believe, in retrospect. I just didn’t have one child only, though. I had three. Three not – so – tiny ones anymore, and I still cannot envisage in my mind’s eye just exactly how it is that I could have managed that: on the run. On next to no money. Even initially. Even before being caught and rounded up –– which I know would have happened. We were soooo visible –– we were. Because we are so cool – and we are – we four are so visible and would’ve been spotted pronto. Platinum, blue – eyed Aryan woman with three blondish, blue – eyed Aryan boy buckoes! How easy is that to detect and recognize? Plus, unlike Washington DC’s Dr. Elizabeth Morgan whose parents Antonia and William Morgan, escaped the United States with her one baby girl, Hillary, and were able to protect her with political asylum until she grew older then by their taking up citizenship in New Zealand –– as their own child, Dr. Morgan, rotted over two years in prison for civil, not criminal, contempt, I certainly did not have the help nor supporting backing from Mehitable for me to try any such thing on my own. AmTaham would’ve moved mountains, gone to the ends of the Earth and to any judicial, legal or financial mat for me had I run and had he been able to try to help us all ... alone. But Mehitable was around, very around: everywhere where the Mister Doctor Wonderful Edinsmaier and his three Truemaier Boys were concerned. And Grand Mehitable would have actively eaten me, her young, alive: turned me right over Me hit able would have. Either over to the authorities or in to King Herod himself –– which, as far as my United States Constitutional parental and parenting rights to anyone, was the same thing as the cops and the legal system.

I also begged Zane, Mirzah and Jesse to promise never to flee away back to me because I was just too justifiably afraid of stranger danger, as rightfully were they –– if they had put themselves out there on the run alone. The three obeyed. And to my knowledge only one time did Jesse bolt out of a U – Haul parked at a McDonald’s in Columbia, Missouri, to escape his father for a period of two weeks’ time and to go utterly missing from West Virginia –– before Herry’d had a hired man sicced onto Jesse, him found and, of course, the recalcitrant returned back to the calculated tyranny of Dr. Horrid Herod Edinsmaier’s master plan for the invisibility and subsequent disappearance of the Truemaier Boys’ mother. From their lives. Altogether.

Together we were so highly visible. But with us four now geographically separated so far from each other, it became a very cunning tactic of Herry’s in addition to his driving that 13 October 1990 Ryder away with them inside it … to sledgehammer, as well, a wedge wide enough between the Boys and me in order to separate all of them from any memories which they may’ve had of their mother and of their past lives with me. Soothingly cooing came Daddee – Herry’s cadence to each child separately and individually –– but only initially –– for never again would the topic, let alone … as always before and as recently as our family’s existence inside that man’s Othello Drive bachelor pad, would even just the verbal or written name, of Mother Legion True come up. The Velvet Voice of the Emperor Edinsmaier could talk and charm and explain and clarify and cajole and rationalize and enlighten and describe and validate and inveigle and authenticate and excuse and defend and shield and support and “prove” with such a tenor of supposed wisdom, understanding, “in your best interests” – operatic style and “evidence” … about exactly why it was that the Boys were to never speak to me – again. And, in like manner as well, why then he and his Next Cunt would never – again – sing of me either. All tolled –– including those times before the divorce was finalized and official, nine consecutive Christmas Eves, Christmas Days, New Year’s Eves, New Year’s Days, Mother’s Days and my annual Winter Solstice birthdays came and went ... without one note nor one telephone call sent to me from any one, two or three of my children. I knew. I knew it was not of their doing.

I imagined that Herry never gave these special days one thought as regards any form the Boys’ involvement with me should take because of the nature of these only male – constructed calendar times. Besides Herry’s purposeful wreaking onto me the vengeance of his not caring any about all of that, it was just too damned much remembering – work for him to want to even start to try to do! And I further imagined that, quite likely instead, the barely fairly fuckable Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive so did and that when she did think of these days’ connections for the Boys to me, she then reminded Herry. And subsequently the two of them together, a folie regarding jolly – folly holidays, would make dead – certain that there was no mention made, no reminding done, no remembrances suggested out loud around the Boys of their maybe, perhaps getting in touch with their mom. No! Mum, mum, mum were they and not in the ol’ English or Aussie Outback sense either. No, actually exactly the opposite. Kept the fuck shut up the two of them did –– and the special events and moments in my and my Boys’ lives together, why, all of these, of course, just passed on by. As time will. And as judges, both district and appellate ones, so know that it will, too. With the children and their growths sooo not standing still, so not being passed by.

Pissed – off and Revenging Edinsmaier’s patriarchal plan has worked out just mightily fine to a colossal extent, … hence Mirzah’s “ ... not before 11 years of age do I remember a thing about my life. And I don’t want to.”

Mirzah’s mother, Legion True, alone, chose to grow Mirzah into himself and to, alone, bulldoze him out in late September of 1979, and to, as well alone! raise him up to his identity of 11 ! ! ! … on into the late year of 1990, at which hour the daddee showed up to abscond with both his body and his brain, (… As a matter of historically fictional, fairy tale – telling factoid, reminds me this scenario most certainly does of a dude named jesus christus and that guy’s daddee after his own mama had, as well, accomplished what should have been her … choices – alone!) … I … I never existed to Mirzah = is what this solo means, ya’ know, Jury. This man –– Mirzah Truemaier –– “has no idea” as to who I … to him … actually am.––from Edinsmaier’s aria: “Gotcha’, Bitch!”

This stated belief of Mirzah’s is from someone who, earlier on, had matched both of his brothers in scoring perfect 36s on the reading portion of their respective SATs. It is sooo not like Mirzah just didn’t have the mental capacity to remember; this murdering of his banding bond to me, the mother, was deliberately and calculatingly perpetrated onto him and to his brothers. Something I still hear out of all three adult sons to this day goes something like thus, “But Herry never bad – mouthed you, Mama. He never said anything bad about you.”

“No? Then how do you explain what he did to us and how he got away with it? He was not talking to you about me, but he was talking to someone. And, likely, to several people. Several were the accomplices in Herry’s terror and tyranny. There was a plan, a mighty androcentric ‘master’ – plan all right and, in it, I was only ... bad – mouthed. Just you never heard. You weren’t ever going to. The plan was: you were never going to hear a thing –– bad or good because I did not exist to you –– immediately and for always after Daddee – Herry spirited all of you out of and away from 6143 Havencourt and The Teacup on that autumnal Saturday.

I ceased to be. And so did you in the sense of your lives before that day, in the sense of your lives … with me.”

NOT Independence Day –– NO FREEDOM –– in America for DEhuman Mamas

2011-07-04T08:26:00.004-05:00

"I could do something, however, about the remainder of Youngest Son Mirzah’s high school experience. Immediately I made an appointment for the 22nd of August, with Mirzah’s former pediatrician’s office to have done for him that very vaccination pronto: the MMR. School –– Mirzah’s sophomore year at Ames High –– could commence then … unobstructed. As the two of us inside the beater – wagon turned the Teacup’s corner onto Havencourt Drive along around 4 that Tuesday afternoon and after just concluding less than an hour earlier this so simple chore over to the Clinic, Mirzah and I smiled about the ease of this particular visit to the doctor –– in contrast to those of tiny children when they have to periodically go in for their shots. Almost simultaneously, we together spotted in the distance sitting alongside the curb of 6143, our condominium, something looming there about which I had such the ominous and threatening flashback: a Ryder rental truck.

Ol’ Black crept closer and closer to our driveway, and the smile vanished from my mouth. I cast a jerked and frightened gawk at Mirzah who exclaimed as he leaned forward toward the dashboard, “It’s Herry!”

“Om’god! A truck just like when he first took you all away, Mirzah!” Immediately thrown right back into hypervigilance mode, I remembered out loud that horrible Saturday morning of the 13th day of October almost five years previously! “What’s he doing here?! What’s he doing here with a truck, for chris’sake!?”

“I called him.”

“You called him?!”

“Wull, yeah. But. Um.”

“You called him an’, and … an’ right away out he comes?! But why?!” I was stunned. “What’s he gonna do?! He’s got a truck, for chris’sake! What does that mean, Mirzah?!”

“Well, ah, I … I, um, I think it means I’m going back to West Virginia, Mom.”

I was sick! Literally … sick. Nauseated and throat – choked, my breathing ceased again! Sure enough. “In and out in about an hour,” just like that television commercial beckons a viewer to go get himself fixed up with a pair of new eyeglasses of that hawking store’s particular brands.

“In and out in about an hour,” my whole life was stolen from me … yet once AGAIN! By now –– Daddee – Herry’s so infamous bait – and – switch gutting of the Bitch’s whole essence. And of at least two of those three Truemaier Boys’ beings, of course, as well. Yet once AGAIN!

As much as my remembering that so twisted whirlwind of those 60 – some minutes’ worth of both of these Truemaier Boys’ last moments beside me there on Havencourt Drive, I recall Herod Edinsmaier’s … signature snide smirkface. The Good and Wonderful Doctor – Daddee was on … The Take again! From specifically me –– on the prowl and on His Take … AGAIN! Taking back –– from me, the Kiddos’ mama –– both Mirzah and Jesse! “SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER! MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS! I say so! Therefore, Pussy, it is so!”

As with very many a hating and violent man, I am thinking now as I type, Jury, that if joy ever comes to this guy from anywhere or from anything, –– ever, truly –– then its emergence for him must almost always be tied to: how great is the pain and the grief and the sorrow –– how great is the vengeance –– that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier can manage to reign in and to rain down upon Legion True. What an insecure man! Dry – Drunk and Addict Herry’s happiness depends, daily, upon taking –––– upon his taking away … mine.

Pretty much the exact same assessment of and sentiment expressed about Herry –– precisely as a father –– by Iowa Court of Appeals Appellate Judge Pansy Shawshank –––– within her six – page majority decision! … … ah, er, that is, inside the one which, of course, became … because of sexism and chicanery by that court’s Chiefy Donnellson plus a couple other of his specific judiciary’s hench –– ah, er, um, … bench – men … the woman’s dissent, instead! She, naturally its one and only token DEhuman jurist, so saw Hardhearted Herry for who he was, too –– and she did so in far less time and scope than most other folks who come into Dr. Edinsmaier’s sphere have had at their disposals in order “to measure” him. Him … daMan. A destroyer doctor. “First, do no harm?” As so decrees the very first dictum to which all health care providers pledge themselves? This one also an alleged daddee, granted the M.D. degree in March of 1980, when Mirzah Truemaier was but a wee six months of age and Brother Jesse a 19 – month – old, is not an honorable and healing lifter – up of humankind but, instead, an insecure, ruthless –– and measurable –– rot who denies, ruptures and annihilates.

I had already forgotten about the disagreement Mirzah and I had had sometime during the previous week. And, now, I cannot even remember the cause at that time of my vexation with my so soon – to – be sophomore Son nor the scrape in which the two of us must have earlier engaged. I am said to have been so ireful at whatever it was that Mirzah did or said or wanted or decided on his own that I locked him out of the condominium declaring as I did so the directive, “My house. My rules.” I don’t believe the squabble could have been focused on something Mirzah said and certainly nothing that he did to people whom he considers his friends and acquaintances. He is just too sweet – natured a human being, then and now, to have purposefully and calculatingly with nefarious motive, hurt any one of his contemporaries intentionally.

Except for one matter –––– pornography. What hath Herry Edinsmaier wrought?

With his gonzo mind and his snide mouth and Corrupt Herry’s dastardly deeds against women, I suddenly remembered about, as Ol’ Black inched into the condo’s driveway, those two DEhumans whom Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had not even cared enough about to have bothered himself to get out of bed in time to show up for the women’s breast biopsies as their frozen – section pathologist whom he had been hired by Kansas City’s Downshim Laboratories to be! With Herry’s bestial (literally, –– Jury, remember the cows – / dogs – / pigs – / chickens – / and cunt models – fucking) view of womankind –– that same contaminating contagion which he had inherited from Detanimod’s Grand – Dominating Poker – Patriarch Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier and the one which both That Old Mother – Fucker and the sooooo, so christianizingly DEhuman – fucking Martin Luther King, Jr. held about aaaall of us females, –– why, Daddee Herry had easily, readily –– and happily –– passed woman – loathing and his concerted DEhumanization of well over half of the World’s populations anywhere on … to all of the sons. And, most especially, Model Parent Edinsmaier, relying upon for his “excuse” to do so the Truemaier Boys’ and his most entitled of “cultural” speech freedoms, could voluminously secure as he so desired to procure for his own addicted neediness then, more and more and more pornography, “Stupid – Ass Heifer, now doncha’ be a – messin’ with my and m’boys’ First Amendment Right, You Whore!”

Exactly the very escape from accountability –– this paternal – filial pornography – ‘sharing’ camaraderie is –– as the alcoholic father who purposefully places himself in situations in order to be able to drink with his kiddo. And jokingly but yet loudly terms it to them and to all the World as … “bonding” –– instead of as the addiction it actually is! “How can ya’ come between a man and his dad when they’re just out enjoyin’ a coupla’ brews together at the ballpark, Bitch?” Pops gets what he wants, doesn’t he, Jury? More and more and more booze. And the adult child? Why, the kid also gets what Bucko – Pappy –– and Attorney Jazzy Jinx some time back had counseled that Slacker – Slick Daddee –– always wants: Father as the picture – perfect “parent who just likes to have some fun, ya’ know. To show ‘his good, good buddy’ a mighty fine time, that’s all!” But it –– the sham –– is soooo not all –– at all, is it, Jury?

The one child likely most influenced by the twisted yet so commonly “accepted” recesses of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s deviance was the one child actually with his mama the least amount of time –– Mirzah.

If the quarrel had been about print pornography or videotape pornography run and viewed upon my condominium’s VCR machine or if I had come across other formats of woman – loathing, then I certainly can see where I would have acted on the “my house / my rules” declaration. I had explained –– repeatedly and try to do so to this day –– how the production and consumption of pornography by any person is the purposeful and intentional harm and destruction and loathing of female human beings –– 53 percent of and, therefore, the majority of the entire Earth. A DEhumanization with proportions not equaled by any other matter in the whole wide World; but I was with Mirzah, and, therefore, to date his maternally parental influencer, … the least amount within his lifetime.

And Herry? Herry, as husband and as ex – spouse, has plied his addiction and purposefully involved his minor children with it in quite the silenced and secretive way that that alcoholic daddee carries on with his hooch, “The more my sons drink with me, the more I can, too!” Whether that juicing jag takes place at home or in bars, in cars or during a day at the beach. Anywhere. “The more my kids use porn and think it fun, humorous and entertainment, then the more of it my brain gets to have?! Well, that’s just A – okay, too! After all, we’re bonding! Me an’ m’boys! Father and son –– we’re buds! Jus’ engagin’ in a … ‘bonding’ … activity together, for chris’sake, Twat!”

When those 12 issues of Playboy had, regular as the moon’s cycles, crept into his Othello Drive bachelor – pad starter castle under the subscription Daddee – Herry had corrected for nine – year – old Zane Truemaier’s ordering of it and all four of its household’s males had retired together to King Herod’s den with any one of the particular, newly arrived issues of it … “to check on the Boys’ development,” Mirzah and Mirzah’s brain had been only six years old. When the separation and divorce was pending and Addicted Herry, right straightaway, ‘chose’ Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive with whom to start keeping company, it was Mirzah, barely seven and eight years of age, whom Herry took with him when he went to buy for her a gem – studded condom and a “hormones are raging” greeting card. All three Truemaier Boys were present during a mandatory visitation (Of course! Of course, these sojourning soirées were androcentrically and sperm – exaltingly … daddee – mandatory!) with Herry when Daddee Dearest, smirkingly I am sure, told Ms. McLive a three ducks’ anuses’ joke inside a booth at a Fatlantic café –– that particular tarriance of the Wooing and Courting King Herod’s having been the Boys’ –– any of my three Truemaier Boys’ –– very first time meeting The Other Snide Person who in such short order was to become their … so, so unwilling to – step – back – from and to – step – out – of – the – Real – Mama – position’s step – mother.

And through the years, there had been more. So much, much more. The Boys had been inundated when they were still in and then, even more frequently, just passed the primary grades and going, going, going, … then finally altogether … gone from me. Gone –– Zane, Jesse and Mirzah –– from me, their mama.

All crimes, of course. Every instance a crime. All of it criminal and perpetrated by one abusing, violent and violating man, their own biological father, that Great and Wonderful Healer, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier.

With Mirzah always then the youngest –– both in terms of the Daddee Herry – “approved” and – facilitated exposure to and use of pornography and of a child’s perception with regard to the whole and utterly complete disappearance so fashioned and brought about by that same father of the kiddo’s own mother –– there came into existence then the altogether determined wiping – out, the absolute erasure and deletion of a so inconveniently protecting mama who would have tried, had she physically been around, to put a stop to Daddee – Herry’s (and, generationally, to Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier’s) insidious inculcation and passing on of woman – hating to her children, all of them happening to be, of course, in Dr. Legion True’s case, … male children. That is, the World’s women’s worth of at least three of its very next generation of marrying and / or fathering and / or ancestoring … men.

Right in line soooo Catholic Edinsmaier’s christianizing of my three Sons is –– exactly as had been the schooling of Ms. Soraya Manutchehri’s two eldest boys (out of her nine – born children in 14 years’ time … rather precise shades, not so Jury? Anyone? of Juggern Aut’s perpetual poking of Detanimod … ) by the woman’s sharia “law” – spewing Sperm Donor, Ghorban – Ali Manutchehri. Wanting to mawwy another much, much younger DEhuman, a teenaged schoolgirl actually, and to support only one wife, Mr. Manutchehri, the mama’s two oldest sons and her very own father –– in full and hooting view of the entire town and right alongside all of those ‘educated’ males of ‘The Court’ which had just condemned Ms. Soraya, falsely accused of infidelity but such for that specific daddee … The Inconvenient Wife so by its islamic “law” on “these matters” so, so easily manmade now “no longer a human being” –– “freely” set about murdering her, this suddenly made Non Human, by hurling stones aimed in 1986, right at and striking her head, throat and thorax until this battered, eviscerated and unrecognizable corpse of a cur –– “That Bitch!” –– she, the mother, altogether stopped breathing. Gutted. Made gone … she. In and out with ‘The Court’ ’s ruling on the woman in about a dusty and bloodied hour’s time –– is all.

In an’ out –– literally, –– in and altogether out of life –– in about an hour!

‘Member, Jury, how it is that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had, as well, wanted quite dead ... Dr. Legion True? Only difference? Offing the True Twat himself –– in this christianizingly patriarchal country –– may have cost him his doctoring position and, thus, his money. So Daddee – Herry –– as have as well so many, many spousal daddees including Ghorban – Ali – Daddee –– simply “used” the most willing men of ‘The Court’ … ‘alone’ … to kill her off. Apparently … “quite constitutional” –– and within aaaaall of their very, very manmade / “We tell ourselves thus and so –– cuz we, DaMen, sooooo can” ‘laws,’ too!

It would be no wonderment to me at all that a clash which the now nearly 16 – year – old Mirzah and I evidently had had … may have centered around something woman – loathing such as pornography. Mirzah had plenty of friends, of course, as agreeable, as kind and as amiable as he always, always appeared to me to be with other guys his own age. But it was also true that for almost seven preteen and adolescent years’ worth I had not a physical clue –– I hadn’t been (allowed !!! to be) around him since he was nine! –– about his dealings, about Mirzah’s … comings, goings, thinkings and doings … with that same age group of girls. And I do recall, with both Jesse and Mirzah back in Ames and Jesse’s so recent threat of alcohol toxicity, having laid down some parameters about the perimeter of 6143 Havencourt, one of which –– for a fact I know, –– would have been that no pornography of any kind exist on those premises for any reason nor possessed under its roof by anybody.

That summer of 1995, in Ames the Truemaier Boys and I certainly had had no home computer and, therefore, no easy internet access. The passageway, that is, to web – based pornography. It was not until the next February’s Leap Day as I cleaned out the Havencourt condominium in my preparations for altogether leaving behind our Teacup subdivision that I came across, wedged down behind what had been Mirzah’s mattress, a computer – produced ‘business card’ done up on cardstock – quality paper and sized appropriately to any general ones which I have ever seen. On white in simple, black – inked font were the words, “Your Friendly Neighborhood Ho Service. Dial 666 – 5678 for a really, really good time. ––– Signed, Mirzah and Matt, Pimps. Confidentiality GUARANTEED.”

By 5 o’clock that hot and humid August afternoon, Mirzah and Jesse –– again … viciously made no longer Iowans –– vanished.

The yellow truck pulled away; and with its doing so, I remember most … Herry’s smirkface. I also know that the pillared Dr. Edinsmaier took away with him more, however, –– that aprovechar of his again! –– … more that late afternoon than my two Truemaier Boys.

As I had scurried around the condominium, to its three bedrooms upstairs and down to the basement, rounding up every bit of clothing and equipment and treasures I guessed –– in my concurrent and profound sorrow! –– that the two Boys would want with them when back in West Virginia, my one – vehicle garage went … … ‘unguarded.’

And, a couple of days later, when I needed that pliers? The one in the vessel resting upon Mirzah’s wooden changing dais painted bronze with its so easy – to – clean Formica tabletop, the sturdiest ever with baby supplies’ drawers built in underneath, the table which AmTaham True had, just 16 years earlier, constructed from leftover scraps of remodeling materials when he first learned I had become pregnant for the third time and Mirzah’s Grandpa had not wanted his Legion’s backbone to ache anymore from my repeatedly crouching down on the floor multiple times a day to change his grandbambino’s diapers!

Well, my pliers? All of my tools had gone missing, too suddenly, as suddenly and at exactly when as had Jesse and Mirzah! Including the galvanized metal, standard – sized toolbox in which Grandpa AmTaham had collected them all for me, the general genre of receptacle which any respectable repairperson owns!

* * * *

This man was not done with that particular day’s worth of taking. Still. Of Herry Edinsmaier’s taking away from Legion True. With my Boys’ taking and with my tools’ taking, the man still had more –– much, much more of aprovechar –– on His Agenda to accomplish.

Here I had been left thinking that the Good and Wonderful Healer had swung my two Boys right out onto Interstate – 35 and was spiriting them out of Iowa as fast as that Ryder could possibly sprint, the entrance to that freeway merely a half a mile from the one to our Havencourt Drive! But I was wrong on this assumption!

Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, Mirzah and Jesse Truemaier –– my Boys –– and his Ryder took a wide, wide detour –––– one so wide its width matched that of my mouth’s gaping. And of both Grace’s and Lynda’s, too!

What bulk, what mass of unmitigated effrontery, insolent entitlement and flippant, filliping arrogance the entire bunkum of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier is –– especially when it comes to us … DEhumans. Lynda Kincaid lived approximately five miles from me on Havencourt –– through some of the most tangled web of streets and tortuous thoroughfares Ames possesses, particularly … at rush hour. It was to her home’s INTERIOR that Corrupt Herry Edinsmaier’s entitlement and arrogance –– his taking –– next appeared. And it did so … right away within that very same hour as when he had pilfered way away from me … both my two Kiddos and all of my several tools.

“I can’t believe it,” I gasped. “You have to be kidding, Woman. Are you sure, Lynda?!”

I am still incredulous as I am thinking on it right now. All –– absolutely all –– of my girlfriends remain so to this day … as well. It was a stunning performance by Herod Edinsmaier. Positively utterly staggering.

We –– my friends and I –– we were never “used” to his taking, to Pillared Father’s Rightster Herry’s snatching up of my Boys whenever and wherever the time and the venue seemed to suit him; but we women, at the least, knew that So Predictable Herod Edinsmaier was entirely capable of this androcentric egregiousness, this patriarchal cruelty. We just never expected, although so very well – trained all of us should have been by now! we just never expected Exalted Sperm Donor Edinsmaier’s next fucking flagrancy. Let alone, so very, very mother – fuckingly soon! Within this very same –– “in – ‘nd – out – in – about – an” –– hour! that “Fuck you, Bitches” – hour!

“O, JYeah, Legion, I am sure!” Lynda Kincaid exploded. “They’re gone. They’re all gone. The guns. They are gone from the basement, Legion. Every last one of ‘em. Outta there! All of them! Taken.”

Months later, Jesse himself confirmed this home – invasion crime for all of us women: That Herry had actually driven up and out of his own gettin’ – outta – the – Gutted – Bitch’s – town route is one thing in and of itself. But Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had done so … for forbidden guns that he did not even own. –– And never had!

As soon as Absconder Edinsmaier pulled his rented transport, UNconstitutionally yet domineeringly –– and criminally –– loaded up both with Legion True’s two younger Boys and all of Legion’s garaged toolbox’s contents, out of my driveway and back on to Havencourt’s street headed, I had so incorrectly presumed, immediately on out to the interstate’s entrance quite proximally nearby and bound, yet again, through those same five states on back to Grubtrop, West Virginia, I had telephoned Lynda at her National Animal Disease Center desk. She had been the first friend to know –– to know of daMan’s same – style abduction … yet again! And … yet again! … of another of Legion’s ripping heartbreaks. Lynda left work to come to my side straightaway and, after cups of late – afternoon, hot sage tea and as much head – banging truisms together about our passions and our struggles as could be emotionally borne, had driven not back to work since it was now eventide but directly on over to her own home on Douglas Avenue.

I had not asked her to –– to do so; Friend Lynda Kincaid had thought all on her own to check. She told me on her commute on over to her street, a revelation had come in to her brain, “This is Herod Edinsmaier Legion’s dealing with. Of course, he just might do this. He just might! I’d better check the shelves downstairs. Just in case.”

My telephone rang not more than 20 minutes after Lynda had exited my condominium’s front door.

These were all of the guns given over to Jesse after … after … the divorce and, more importantly, given over to him by his Grandpa AmTaham but … but … but with one huge caveat: Given over from Grandpa AmTaham to Jesse by way of me, … first. That is to say, Jesse’s grandfather had made crystal clear to Jesse that his mother’s rules ruled … first! First and foremost. “Only when Legion says you may, can you have any access for any reason, for hunting or for target practice that is, at all, Jesse! You must obey your mother on this, Jesse. Verstehen? Verstehen, Young Man? I mean it. Do you understand me, Jesse?”

AmTaham True, as a matter of fact for years before this date of 22 August 1995, and when quite the Cinqué – of – the – Amistad style Ancestor – in – Training, that is, when the man was alive, and for years before Jesse’s freshest – ever 17th year (since his latest 15 August birthday had just passed) had tried and tried and tried to have all three Boys understand that the ownership and the use of any gun was far, far unlike the ownership and the use of any other item which the Boys would ever, ever possess.

Grandpa AmTaham had instructed all three Boys that at no time in their teen years’ development of “a relationship” between themselves and their firearms were any of the guns and / or their ammunitions to be brought out of safekeeping and handled by, or even just shown to, anyone else. As one may a new volleyball or a new bicycle or how it is a kiddo gifted with a used, let alone a new, vehicle might take her or his friends for a spin in it, for that matter. Developing an adult mindset circa the ownership and the use of firearms, AmTaham True taught, was akin to the learning of no other lesson. And all –– absolutely all –– of one’s minor years when she or he is still a teenager are to be determinedly spent up in the maturation of this relationship between the person and the owned firearm. By the time the person becomes 18 years of age, a parent or a grandparent –– and no other adult, that is –– needs to have instilled in this child enough then: enough protecting wisdom on this firearms’ ownership matter. AmTaham had stated, as had Dr. Powell during the several hunter safety session hours which Jesse and Zane had both enthusiastically, and some time ago by then, attended in Storm County, that the properly licensed parents and grandparents held entire and utter accountability in this endeavor because at no time did any other adult in the kiddos’ lives –––– not their Uncle Mark, not Daddee’s Pal Kevin home on his university’s semester break, not High School Voc Ag or Shop Teacher Dick, –––– actually care about the muzzles’ locations and the emptied or filled status of the guns’ chambers … as much as … does the children’s own –– properly licensed –– parents or grandparents.

* * * *

“And now … most importantly, … Jury, for the FLIP / REVERSE clincher on this specific Tuesday’s events: What woman do you know, Folks, can get clean, slick away with entering in to, home invasion – style … thus, with the criminality of it all, her ex – husband’s friend’s home –––– and abscond with daMan’s owned property, with all of his guns there for example, being stored inside his pal’s premises? Huh, Jury? Name one woman for me, please, –– anywhere in the Whole World –– who can get away –– clean, slick away –– with this act? One woman who can, in addition, TAKE with her inside this ex – husband’s friend’s home … her very own daughter, too?! Take the teenaged daughter criminally inside the residence, too, to serve as mama’s accomplice and as mother’s carrier – of – Daddee’s – guns back out to the truck parked outside?! With this mother – modeled ‘Fuck you, Bastards’ action of Mama’s and have back on herself for her having done these several crimes absolutely NO consequence whatsoever, Jury?! Name one woman anywhere who can do these very same deeds as Herry Edinsmaier’s, please. One.”

Because that is what Narcissist and Passive – Aggressor Herod Edinsmaier who “is above the law because he tells his pillared self –– and my three Truemaier Boys –– that they all are!” … did! And then, and by now well in to the 21st Century, daMan is known to have gotten his modeling self and my Boy Jesse –– with my Boy Mirzah serving as lookout sentry inside the truck’s cab … clean, slick away with it. Ex – Husband Herry took, aprovechar – style and criminally, whilst demonstrating for both of my teenaged sons then, how it is that men, just whenever and wherever they wanna, … can … simply take from women. From multiple women. “Because He Can.”

We all know this, do we not, Jury? Because he can. “These are mere women, conscious these two happen to be and not anesthetized,” Corrupt Herry reckoned, “but females, none the less. How utterly UNimportant … DEhumans are! And to her Boys, Jesse and Mirzah, as well! I will demonstrate these very same thinkings and doings, these comings and goings about women to them, too! And absolutely looooove doing so!”

Noooo different. The very same this is as … the two, elder boys who ‘helped’ their daddee, Ghorban – Ali Manutchehri, murder stoned – to – death Soraya, their very own –– and siblings’ –– birthing mama. Not a human being … she; their laws so state, the laws the men themselves “make” –– particularly as any of these, on the whole of them all, pertain in any way to us DEhumans’ general slutlery. Remember, Jury, that so common Arab maxim regarding the insatiability of graves, deserts and, of course, all … cunts? The males? The men and the boys? They are … The Human Beings. And … The Only Human Beings.

Just exactly how UNimportant is … specifically … the one DEhuman, Dr. True? Whose first name, Legion, is never to be Edinsmaier – uttered?! –– Ever?!

Consider –– yet again! –– that I had admonished us all, hadn’t I Jury, from deeeeep within Chapter 28, to be certain to so nota bene the following phraseology out of Herry – Daddee’s 02 July 1994, quite queer letter – thingy mailed to me?! That grammatically incorrect missive, displaying its stupendously stupid sentence structure, which had been sent to me, the woman whom all of DaMen of ‘the Court’, an American court –– it needs to be marked, remarked and so, so … well – remembered, an American court! –– had ascribed as the Crazed and Whoring Mother –––– yet, as well, to whom Herry – Daddee, that flouncing and professedly accountable father!, suddenly and right then so very, very soon after Jesse’s release from hospitalization at the Blue Hazelnut Ridge, had decided to entrust to lovingly and correctly shepherd one minor teen, Jesse, with as well in such a short, short span of time thereafter another, second one, Mirzah?!

“#8. Should … any matter arise … which we cannot settle under the terms of this agreement, … we both agree … to immediately return to the present arrangement as set forth by the existing divorce decree with modifications,” yada, yada, yada and so forth.” Signed, “Sincerely, Herod Edinsmaier” …

Only it is most clear, isn’t it Jury, that i) from Mirzah’s one wee, apparently whining telephone call back to Daddee – Herry when the Evil – Mother Monster quite torqued him off some –– “she pissed off daMan” (as with Ms. Soraya’s sons, Mirzah equaling this particular male this particular time) and ii) from Jesse’s desiring for himself Legion True’s guns back in West Virginian woods, it is most clear, isn’t it, that none –– utterly none–– of Proviso #8 had to its “declaration” any “sincerity” or any Truth … WHATSOEVER?!

Because it did not have to. Whether inside a courtroom with daMen’s status as “under oath” there or with their promising or their avowing –– or even with their “evidence” – and witness – wowing there! True it is. O, so head – bangingly true it is: Depending upon who you are, it is easier to lie to and deceive anyone inside an American civil court of law and get clean, slick away with it than it is to lie to and deceive one’s own mom and dad. It is easier to lie to and deceive an American civil court of law, which, we all know from long back within Chapter Eight, is a judge or nearly an entire state’s district and appellate court system’s worth of them! –– circa 23 or so of them! than it is to lie to and deceive your own minister, your own teacher, your boss and co – workers, your spouse or even all three of your own children. It is, mind you, easier to get clean, slick away with lying to and deceiving an American civil court judge about anything, depending, of course, upon who you are, than it is to lie to and deceive yourself, Corrupt Herry!

Or outside of one. Outside courtrooms. As with Liar Herry’s mid – 1994 letter to me regarding “our both agreeing” if “any matter arises.” “Heh. Heh. Heh, Woman!” I am yet again! reminding my own brainy self. “These are men making ‘the rules’, the ‘laws.’ And no amount of, no accounting of Flip / Reverse as to how these same men would feel or as to how the humans would like the trashing and the smashing, the utter mucking up of their Constitutional rights to, O say, … breathing … if the DEhumans’ mother – fucking –– if, O say, father – fucking –– is visited down upon them … matters … squat at all to them!”

"I ask, Jury, only one thing about the aprovechar – absconsion of my Boys and of my tools and guns, about this home – invasion crime, on all of this one particular day’s worth of mother – fucking –––– all of it perped by Hosing Herry, the Pillared Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, against Lynda Kincaid and against me, Dr. Legion True, as well as against all three of my Truemaier Boys, … … the fucking outrage?! Where is the OUTRAGE?!" "

From the same Dr Phyllis Chesler of ! 1989 ! ’s 1556529993

2011-06-19T18:10:00.035-05:00

And just as true then as it is ... now. Now ... on y2011’s ... Father’s Day. Regarding, of course, those of us many, many mamas "insanely long - suffering" with various DSM - V's "Patriarchal Defiance Disorders" ...

"Sure to inspire anger, understanding and action." Gloria Steinem
"Extremely subversive. It should and will enrage, entice, incite and liberate." Kate Millett ... ... "An essential work." Erica Jong

i) "The 25th anniversary edition of Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody (with eight new chapters) is just coming out. It is the best and only book of its kind and, over the years, has been referred to as THE DEFINITIVE WORK for mothers who are faced with a custody battle.

Mothers have described underlining the entire book, taking it to court with them, begging their lawyers to read it –– and keeping it near their bedsides.

Over the years, with some very few exceptions, things have gotten worse in the court system, not better. This is one of the reasons
I decided to both update and add to this important work.

This book is now available online [ http://tinyurl.com/3o7l6an ] and in paperback. In terms of helping a book find its natural audiences, online reviews really matter.

Therefore, if you are moved to do so, please write an online review of this book wherever you buy books online. It is currently for sale at Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, etc.

I am attaching a June 2011 Library Journal review of the new edition of Mothers on Trial. I am also attaching selected endorsements and reviews that appeared in 1986 – 1987. Some of you may recall that I also coordinated a Congressional Press Briefing with then – Congress members, now Senators Chuck Schumer and Barbara Boxer and a large, well publicized, and well attended National Speakout about Mothers Losing Custody of Children. If you can, if it's easy, please send me your review when you have posted it or simply tell me that it is up.

All best,
Phyllis"

ii) "Custody Disputes Now Tougher for Battered Moms by Phyllis Chesler, WeNews guest author -- Sunday, 26 June 2011

It's been 25 years since Phyllis Chesler wrote "Mothers on Trial" to help women fight their child-custody battles. In this excerpt from her revised book, she reviews what's changed, for better and worse.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Going through a custody battle is like going through
a war. One does not emerge unscathed. Yes, one may learn important lessons, but one may also be left broken and incapable of trusting others, including our so-called justice system, ever again.

Custody battles can take a very long time. They range from only several years to more than 15 or 20. They may have profound legal, economic, social, psychological and even medical consequences for years afterward, perhaps forever.

What's changed since I first started researching and writing about custody battles?

Documented domestic violence does get factored in somewhat more than before. Where real assets exist, judges have the power to award more of them to mothers and children. Fewer mothers and fathers automatically lose custody or visitation because they are gay or because they have high-powered careers.

However, certain injustices (crimes, really) that I first began tracking in the late 1970s have now gotten much worse.

For example, battered women are losing custody to their batterers in record numbers. Children are being successfully brainwashed by fathers, but many mothers are being falsely accused of brainwashing. Worse: Children with mandated reporters--physicians, nurses or teachers--who report to them that they have been sexually abused by their fathers ARE USUALLY GIVEN .TO. THOSE VERY FATHERS. The mothers of these children are almost always viewed as having "coached" or "alienated" the children and, on this basis alone, are seen as "unfit" mothers.

'Parental Alienation Syndrome'

I understand that this sounds unbelievable. But it is still true. The mothers of raped children, who are also described as "protective" mothers, are seen as guilty of "parental alienation syndrome." The fact that this concept, first pioneered by Dr. Richard Gardner and widely endorsed by fathers' rights groups, has been dismissed as junk science does not seem to matter. Most guardians ad litem, parenting counselors, mediators, lawyers, mental health professionals and judges still act as if this syndrome were real and mainly find mothers, not fathers, guilty in this regard. In 2010 the American Psychiatric Association was still fighting to include a new disorder in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders": the parental alienation disorder, to replace the debunked parental alienation syndrome.

In 2009 and 2010 more than 50 mothers from 21 U.S. states and a number of foreign countries all shared their stories with me. Their cases took place between the late 1980s and 2010. Some cases are still ongoing.

In some instances, I spoke with the mothers in person or at length on the phone. Some mothers filled out questionnaires, but many also sent additional narratives and documentation. Some mothers sent me eloquent, beautifully written, full-length memoirs. Some wrote pithy but equally heartbreaking accounts of their marriages and custody battles.

With a few exceptions, most of my 2010 mother-interviewees said that the system was "corrupt" and that lawyers and judges don't care about "justice," are "very biased," or can be "bought and sold."

Feeling Actively 'Disliked'

These mothers said that social workers, mental health professionals, guardians ad litem and parent coordinators--especially if they were women--actively "disliked" and were "cruel and hostile" to them as women. (Perhaps they expected women to be more compassionate toward other women. In this, they were sadly mistaken.)

Also, MANY mothers found that female professionals WERE OFTEN COMPLETELY TAKEN IN BY charming, sociopathic men ("parasites," "smother-fathers"), dangerously violent men and men who sexually abused their children.

Perhaps the mothers who sent me their stories were married to uniquely terrible men who used the court system to make their lives a living hell. Perhaps mothers who did not write to me had the good fortune to have been married to and divorced from far nicer men.

Good fathers definitely exist. Some fathers move heaven and earth to rescue their children from a genuinely mentally ill mother but do not try to alienate the children from her. If the mother has been the primary caretaker, some fathers give up custody, pay a decent amount of child support (and continue to do so) and work out a relationship with their children based on what's good for both the children and their mother.

These men exist. They do not launch custody battles from hell."

Phyllis Chesler is an emerita professor of psychology and women's studies at City University of New York, a psychotherapist and an expert courtroom witness. She is the cofounder of the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women's Health Network, a charter member of the Women's Forum and the Veteran Feminists of America, a founder and board member of the International Committee for the Women of the Wall and an affiliated professor with Haifa and Bar Ilan Universities. She is the author of Women and Madness and Woman's Inhumanity to Woman. She lives in New York City.

---- June and July 2011 reviews ----

i) by (multiple - works') Author Talia Carner

Not since slavery in the USA were mothers punished by having their children taken away from them. Yet, in family courts all across America, judges and quasi-judicial officers of the court do just that: children who are abused or molested by their fathers are removed from their primary-care good mothers and are placed in the hands of their molesting fathers.

How this scandal can go on for decades with hardly any change, without any public outcry, and without any protest from human rights' activists is due to the fact that outsiders to the gutter of our family courts' justice simply refuse to believe it.

In her revised and updated milestone fact-filled book, "Mothers on Trial," Phyllis Chesler fights to save thousands of children from becoming yet another generation of victims of a court system that betrays them time and again. She points out that while adult women often recount childhood sexual molestation at home by close relatives--and these women's stories are believed--people tend to disbelieve when actually facing such cases as they happen in real time, right in front of them.

It is a documented fact that when fathers fight for custody, 70% of the time they obtain full or partial custody. People often assume that the reason these men who, in most part, have not been fully involved in their children's lives--sometimes have been absent for months or even years--now gain custody is because the mothers are unfit.

The naked truth is that IN MOST of these cases, the father is emotionally and verbally abusive or outright violent. The mother, often the product of an abusive home, often abused for years in her marriage to the father of her children, now faces battle for which she is woefully unequipped to wage. Distraught, terrified, isolated, alienated in a system that scrutinizes her with the same critical and belittling attitude she's encountered in her private lives, panicked over the fate of her sexually molested children, she seems "emotional" "unreasonable" and "difficult." Her refusal to share parenting or give access to a man who sexually molest her children is viewed as her being "rigid" and "uncooperative."

Furthermore, with limited or no financial resources, she comes to court either unrepresented by an attorney, or by an incompetent lawyer with little interest in the complexity of such a case. Or, as is often the case, she does not have the funds to keep the protracted legal battle a high-conflict custody case requires. Filing fees, transcripts, payments to evaluators and her lawyer's hourly rate quickly rise to thousands of dollars.

In the 1990s I stumbled upon the phenomenon of protective mothers losing these battles in droves, researched it for a few years, and finally published a novel about one such fictional mother in 2002. (Puppet Child.) Since then, I became an activist, trying to find ways to save thousands of children each year from family court's "justice." What amazes me is HOW LITTLE HAS CHANGED in the over decade in which I've witnessed more mothers enter the nightmare of family court, where they are discredited, disenfranchised and disbelieved.

Dr. Chesler has been at it a lot longer. Twenty-five years ago she published "Mothers on Trial," a book that starts with the history of men's ownership of their families and the lingering feudal notion of male supremacy as the head of the household. She pointed then--and continues to do so now in this excellent revised edition--that society and court hold men to much lower parenting standards than they do women.

Mothers fail at every single checklist (Does the divorced mother have sex? Is she overwrought with anxiety? Is she poor?) while men can be cold, disinterested, dysfunctional or even violent and they will be excused. In fact, fathers are given new chances time and again to foster their relationships with their children regardless of their abhorant personal histories, while mothers' contact with their children are not only curtailed or cut down to expensive supervised visitations, but ALL TOO OFTEN ARE SEVERED COMPLETELY.

If a father poisons a child's mind against the mother, it does not enter into the question of his parenting skills. But all too often, a child's fear of an abusive father is regarded as the mother's brainwashing the child, rather than the father's own doing. A judge will then chastise the mother for not encouraging enough the relationship with the father--and ACTUALLY TRANSFER CUSTODY TO THAT ABUSIVE FATHER. The notion of the best interest of the child and how much the child stands to suffer from CUTTING THE BOND WITH THE PRIME CARE-TAKING MOTHER and shuttling the child into a new life with a man the child fears, DOES NOT ENTER INTO THE EQUATION.

In this revised edition, after editing out six chapters and adding eight more while updating the available research, Dr. Chesler examines closely MANY SUCH CASES OF OUTRIGHT INJUSTICE THAT DEFY ANYTHING PEOPLE KNOW AND BELIEVE POSSIBLE IN OUR SOCIETY.

Phyllis Chesler's book is a must read for every judge, court evaluation, guardian ad litem, social worker, psychologist and lawyer. But more importantly, IT SHOULD BE READ BY ANYONE WHO CARES ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS OR ABOUT CHILDREN, because it is time we raise our collective indignation to stop and reverse the life sentence without parole our courts inflict upon children placed in the hands of their molesters.

ii) by Paula J Caplan

Phyllis Chesler's work was brave and groundbreaking when the first edition of this book appeared many years ago and is equally brave and poignantly still much-needed, because things are no better and in some ways are worse for mothers than they used to be. Every parent going through a custody battle, every lawyer, and every judge should have to read this book. In fact, _everyone_ should read it, because I am astonished by how many people think, upon hearing a fragment of what Chesler reports in the book, and want to believe ... it cannot be true. That it is true, no one reading her book can ever doubt.

iii) by Lauren Crane

As an experienced matrimonial lawyer in Manhattan, this updated and modernized classic should be required reading in law schools. It should be in the library of every single professional who deals with custody, divorce, and children. That means judges, law guardians, mediators and mental health personnel. Child Protective Service workers should be required to read this. It is a solid piece of work about a heartbreaking situation.

iv) by Zara Feingold

As a college student and as a young feminist, I find Phyllis Chesler's Mothers on Trial to be a unique and invaluable resource. This book should be required reading for feminists, future lawyers, and all those who care about social justice. In her classic whistle-blowing fashion,
Dr. Chesler exposes America's courts as anti-mother. Chesler's thousands of interviews that span three decades tragically expose women as survivors of many different intersecting oppressions. White women, black women, American Indian women, poor women, and lesbian women are all victims of a sexist, racist, classist, and homophobic bureaucracy.

This book is not only for mothers who are going through a custody battle.
It is for young women who want to dismantle patriarchy for their generation. Chelser's interviews are heartbreaking and tragic, but can create real change within the American legal system.

Thank you, Phyllis Chesler, for your bravery and vigilance!

v) by Kerry V MacKenzie

Embroiled in a world and a system that I never knew existed, I felt lost and alone. More than lost and alone, I felt horrified. I was a fulltime mother fighting for custody from my ex who called me 'crazy, a bad mother, delusional.' The worst of it was that in family court I was presumed guilty until proven innocent. From the lawyers to the legal guardian to the judge,
I was treated as if I was invisible. If my forensic psychiatrist had not been unbiased and thoughtful, I would have lost my children to a bitter and vengeful man, and it would have been likely I would have never seen them again.

It was so bizarre that I thought I was the only person in the world to experience this institutional contempt, or worse, that I was imagining it. That is, until I read this book.

If you are going through a custody battle, your experiences need to be validated with this book. It is a dear friend during hard times.

vi) by Mordechai Stern

This book is not just for feminists and certainly not just for mothers. Anyone who cares about fighting injustice in the American legal system should read Mothers on Trial.

Reading about the pain of these mothers who have been robbed of their children, and about their courage and devotion to their children in the most trying circumstances has certainly made me a better son.

vii) by Fern Sidman

Feminist icon Phyllis Chesler does it again!! The newly released, updated version of her classic monograph, Mothers On Trial, is a powerful testament to the flagrant and continuing injustices that custodially challenged mothers face in this country and beyond. This compelling tome is a real page turner guaranteed to evoke palpable emotions as egregious facts about the patriarchal family court system are revealed in nuanced detail. Beautifully written, empathic and courageous, tremendously insightful.

For all mothers caught in the maelstrom of a child custody battle, it is strongly recommended that you run out and buy this book !! It will serve as a soothing and compassionate source of succor while simultaneously educating, enlightening and empowering women who are faced with this excruciatingly painful tribulation. A must read !!

viii) by (multiple - works') Author Trish Wilson

I read the original edition of this book many years ago and I saw how well – researched and supported it was. This new version is even better. The additional chapters show the difficulties and impossible position mothers are in these days worldwide and throughout history. This is an important book that must be required reading for all students so they know the truth about child custody and motherhood the media refuses to report.

ix) by Lorraine Tipton

Thank you, Phyllis Chesler, for being one of the voices of reason, sanity and truth with these social injustices we have faced in family court. Our time is coming....our voices are no longer silenced...we have suffered...but we have persevered and grown stronger. There is nothing stronger than the mighty Phoenix who rises through the ashes. We are beyond "survivor" label and are now warriors...and we will be victorious! Hell hath no fury like the most dangerous place to be: between a mother and her child!

Twenty years later and now the mothers have figured out what they have been doing to us. We have social networked with thanks to the internet; and now we are never going to shut up, give up or go away!

x) by Valette Clark

For those of us who have been through this nightmare, this book is hope.
It is hope for the future victim families who will be discriminated against in a system and process that mirrors our societal views promoting institutionalized sexism.

It is at the base of who we are as a society and why violence is accepted in the home and continues to rise statistically each year. Violent crime in the home has been given a separate category governed by a separate set of "domestic laws" rather than criminal laws while all violence is a crime. The politicians could and should change this but I do not believe they really want to and this attitude is not gender specific. Women and men alike hold deep seated feelings and ideas that they learned from a young age that families deserve whatever they get -- from an abusive spouse to an abusive court system. I can only hope and pray that all family court systems in the US review this book and actually take a look in the mirror. They may not like what they see!

xi) by Judy Gee

Dr. Chesler has written this very important book that should be on the reading list for every woman who is unprepared for the way the world works. This book should also be required reading for every young woman who is considering marriage. If you are involved with a man who is controlling toward you and vengeful toward others while you are still in the enchantment stage of your relationship, you might want to reconsider. These are poignant and quite terrifying cautionary tales from women who desperately try to gain custody of their children. Their courageous struggle not to be overwhelmed by the injustices of our justice system as it applies to custodial mothers is an inspiration to fight on.

xii) by Louis Santacroce

Every word of this book is true! I see these guys EVERY DAY! They are the bane of my job. Right now, I have a guy calling me daily about how the guy his ex is now living with is a registered sex offender (he's not, not even an unregistered one) and how they sleep in the same bed with his five year old daughter.

Another calls to complain that his wife has him arrested for no reason whenever he tries to see his children, neglecting to inform me (as the police have no trouble doing) that he shows up to see his kids drunk and at 3 AM, and tries to run the mother over with his pick-up when she tells him to go away.

They all want custody because their ex's are no good whores who suddenly became alcoholics, junkies and sleep-arounds without them to keep 'em in line. But when I go to interview the kids, 90% of them are terrified of the FATHERS and beg not to be returned to them.

xiii) by Jennifer Jones

Phyllis Chesler's Mothers On Trial is a remarkable contribution to contemporary feminist activism. Current liberal academia completely neglects America's anti-mother courts. This is to the detriment of the millions of good mothers who are systematically robbed of their children every day.

Chesler writes about thousands of white, American Indian, black, and lesbian mothers spanning a wide socioeconomic net. Third wave feminists will find great profundity and inspiration in Dr. Chesler's analysis of racism and homophobia within America's custody battles. Chesler's experience as a psychologist gives deep and unique analysis to these devastating custody battles.

Well researched, intellectually ambitious, and highly emotional, Mothers on Trial is a sacred friend for mothers who have experienced unjust loss of children. Chesler's work is also a frightening cautionary tale to a younger generation of activists who are blind to this hidden manifestation of patriarchy.

xiv) by Ann

How can this happen in a "good country"; what is happening to families will effect the future. Most people turn a blind eye to what is really happening to good mothers. This book highlights the belief that "mothers who lose their children must have done something awful"----is a myth.

xv) by Fern

Feminist icon Phyllis Chesler does it again!! The newly released updated version of her classic monograph, "Mothers On Trial" is a powerful testament to the flagrant and continuing injustices that custodially challenged mothers face in this country and beyond. This compelling tome is a real page turner; guaranteed to evoke palpable emotions as egregious facts about the patriarchal family court system are revealed in nuanced detail. Beautifully written; empathic and courageous; tremendously insightful. For all mothers caught in the maelstrom of a child custody battle, it is strongly recommended that you run out and buy this book !! It will serve as a soothing and compassionate source of succor, while simultaneously educating, enlightening and empowering women who are faced with this excruciatingly painful tribulation. A must read !!

xvi) by Brenda

Mothers on Trial is eye opening. Per Dr. Chesler, most people who have never experienced a custody battle believe the myth that mothers always win custody as they are believed to be inherently more nurturing. This falsity has achieved prominence because most fathers do not want custody. However, when fathers do want custody, they usually get it.

Stereotypically nurturing women are held to completely different standards than are their male counterparts. Good mothers are shunned and abusive and neglectful fathers are rewarded for their "devotion."

Others have tried to shed light on this tragic problem. However, only Phyllis Chesler has done justice to these thousands of women's stories. Mothers on Trial incorporates rigorous research, including hundreds of interviews spanning a wide ethnic and geographical net. Mothers on Trial tells all those who care about children's welfare to rise up and create change. Beyond Chesler's tragic stories and psychological analysis is a plan for progress and human rights.

Great – Grandma Adeline’s and Great – Grandpa Arthur’s 92nd Wedding Anniversary

2011-03-20T12:18:00.003-05:00

JYeah well, maybe not. But were the two of these folks, indeed, breathing, then today would be that: Great – Grandma Adeline Baach’s and Great – Grandpa Arthur Maas’ 92nd Wedding Anniversary.

I remember at my Grandma Adeline’s death – bedside October 1985, hearing from her about her and Arthur’s day in 1919’s eastern Iowa springtime. She regaled about the fact that for her dress she had actually not gone from out of the Montgomery Wards catalog with the conventional mawwying fabric of the times: black taffeta ... but that she actually had led off the county’s women in being its first bride of the post war to order, sew up and wear, instead, a flowy organza number in ... (gasp !) white !

Into what she changed –– that of her trousseau –– after their promises? That was done up in ... the black taffeta, instead ! All of the county was agog and gaggling when its folks later learned of Adeline’s such the ... breach ... of mawwiage tradition !

Then, tiny – / tiny – boned, itsy bitsy – framed Great – Grandma Adeline, the mounds of her platinum locks as snowy - glistening as ever before and herself born in eastern Iowa on 24 December 1896, giggled and giggled and giggled ... as she queried me, "Well, Syn – thee, so as they say: have you done the math by now?"

"Why, Gramma – Gramma, whatever do you mean?"

"You know, Girl, You know. You have the same birthday, Girl, as your daddy does … the Winter Solstice, not ?! So … ah, soooo Syn – thee, … what’s nine months from the 20th of March ?!"

(Anna Mina Augusta) Gussie Oldenberg and Carl Holden –––– on yet another 11 February – Friday

2011-02-11T12:57:00.004-06:00

(Anna Mina Augusta) Gussie Oldenberg and Carl Holden

d. Friday, 11 February 1949

HOLDEN, OLDENBERG, HASTINGS, BRUNS, TILLMAN, MAAS, PALMER, HUMPHREY, MAYLAND, LUBKEMANN, EDWARDS, WETJEN, JONES, WALLACE, ROGERS, HARRINGTON, GLANDORF, WITTE, DANE, LANDA, HEITSHUSEN

Williamsburg Journal – Tribune, Williamsburg (Iowa County), Iowa,
17 February 1949

EXPLOSION AND FIRE IN TOURIST CABIN AT BEAUMONT, TEXAS, CAUSES DEATH FRIDAY OF MR. AND MRS. HOLDEN

Services In Memoriam Held At Presbyterian Church Here Tues. Afternoon Attended By Hundreds Of Their Neighbors

Carl Holden, born June 29, 1884, and Augusta Oldenburg Holden, his wife born June 11, 1883, while on a vacation tour in the south met death under tragic circumstances.

It was in a tourist cabin at Beaumont, Texas that an explosion caused the death of Mr. and Mrs. Holden. Gas came from an unused gas vent which was opened when the bed was moved away from the wall. Both after the accident were removed to the Dien hospital in Beaumont Friday, February 11.

Funeral services were held in the Presbyterian church in Williamsburg, Iowa, Tuesday afternoon at 2 o'clock. The Rev. Lloyd Snyder officiating.

Mr. Holden was born on the old farm homestead in York township and
Mrs. Holden was born on the Oldenberg family place near Sigourney in Keokuk county.

The parents of Mr. Holden were Myron W. Holden and Emma Hastings Holden. Mrs. Holden's parents were George Oldenberg and Anna Bruns Oldenberg.

Both received their education in the rural schools of their home districts, and in addition Mrs. Holden took two years of high school normal training preparing herself for teaching which profession she followed for eight years.

They were married August 11, 1908, in the Evangelical Lutheran church at Sigourney, Iowa, the Rev. Tillman officiating.

For the first two years the couple made their home on the Oldenberg farm near Sigourney. Later they moved to the Frendal neighborhood where they lived for five years.

In 1916, they moved to the old farm home in York township in Iowa county where in the course of twenty seven years they together fostered and developed Mr. Holden's life long interest in hybrid corn and saw the industry develop into a large enterprise.

In November, 1944, they retired and came to Williamsburg. They are survived by three sons and one daughter. The sons are Palmer and Carlton of Tipton, and Roland on the farmstead near Williamsburg. The daughter is Mrs. Willard Maas of Williamsburg. One son Russell died in infancy.

He is further survived by sisters, Mrs. Edith Palmer and Mrs. Carrie Humphrey of Long Beach, California, and brothers, Eugene M. of North English and Roscoe G. of Des Moines.

The survivors of Mrs. Holden include three sisters: Mrs. Doris Mayland of Ottumwa Iowa, Mrs. Adda Lubkemann of Hampton, Ia., and Mrs. Charlotte Edwards of Beaman, Iowa. They had twelve grandchildren.

Interment was in Oak Hill cemetery. Pallbearers were Albert Wetjen,
O.E. Jones, Arthur Wallace, Lon Rogers, Howard Harrington, Arthur Glandorf, George P. Maas, H.F. Witte, George L. Dane, Ross Landa, Anton Heitshusen and Martin Glandorf.

posted by Ms Melissa Mayhew Grandt // // 13 April 2009 @ 21:43:17

One, Simple Telephone Call

2010-12-22T06:06:00.011-06:00

With the FULL MOON - Winter Solstice y2010, on what would have been Willard Maas’s 91st birthday and is my 63rd,

... One, Simple Telephone Call:

Sexism and chicanery surrounding a farmland property’s mineral rights' matter is exactly why, when I was a junior in high school, Grandpa Willard was fired from Des Moines’ Brenton Bank. 1965. He, at age 45, and my mother had two children in college –– and two others still in high school, planning to attend college.

Willard had himself just left Iowa State University’s Department of Economics and interviewed at 14 different places. With his snow white hair, the man was told always that he was "too old." (Now allegedly a crime but, then — [and … now, … still … of course!] — very much an habitual workplace discrimination.) WHEN ... ... he was a land appraiser, new there in his first year, for this central Iowa bank.

One day he discovered a rock quarry underneath a 33 – year – old widow's property which she, having moved to California, still owned from her and her husband's estate back in Iowa — before the man had suddenly died. Because she desperately needed some money for her two children and from afar then, the single mother had requested the Bank to sell the property, she believing it nothing more than scrubland barely suitable for grazing cattle.

On behalf of this specific Brenton Bank having been asked by the woman to sell it off, Willard, then, was assigned to go out and appraise the property. He found a rock quarry underneath her scrub. When he went back to the bank and told them this, the bank’s officials said that he should call the owner and tell her a $ figure which she would be expecting to hear and that under no circumstance was Willard to give to her .no way / no how. the Truth about it all, let alone, the $ figure which it was actually worth.

The Bank officials planned to buy it all themselves, get its deed into the Bank’s owned records, then to later find an "appropriate" buyer for it such as a rock quarry business —— and, in the end, to give over to the woman in California only the amount from this sale which she would be expecting. To KEEP the rest for themselves.

Nights my mother and father were up late at the kitchen table, about two or three weeks' worth of nights. Then one of those days Daddy no longer had a job — and we were moving back to the farmhouse outside of Williamsburg; Daddy was going to go to work for Holden's, farm a little and walk the watchman's beat evenings and nights over at the Amana Refrigeration Plant 30 minutes’ drive away ... all in one 24 – hour period.

Grandpa Willard had not done what the bankers had ordered him to do.

Never having laid eyes upon the woman then nor since, Willard Maas telephoned her out in California, all right, from our home in Ankeny —— and told her of what he knew. And advised her to, straightaway, get for herself an attorney.

She did.

Willard Maas was fired. And, lock – stock – and – barrel, we all left Ankeny.

And I have never dealt, ever, with a Brenton Bank —— since. And will not.

Grandpa Willard was fired --- AND ... BLACKBALLED.

Before he made that telephone call to the woman, the Bank officials had further threatened him, "You tell her, and we will blackball you in all the banks in Iowa.

You will never work in another bank again."

Let alone, in a rural one, thereby ... his actually using the agricultural economics background and education which he had just acquired during his bachelor's and master's programs at Iowa State University, beginning these degrees then at the age of 40, thus becoming the University’s first "older" / “alternative” ISU student in the Spring Quarter of 1960. And because of this endeavor, our family had been written up and featured in the Spring 1961 issue of The Iowan magazine as that: the family of the "first" yada, yada, yada ...

And ... he never did. Willard Maas never again worked in another bank.

Without a doubt, Willard Maas at the second start of his college years (his first two years at Iowa State University having been derailed in 1939, by the poliomyelitis virus) —— as with others' lives similarly ... 'rerouted' —— could not have imagined for them all ... this end result.

No one will ever remember Grandpa Willard for the mighty fine Pendleton wool, bezillion – $ suits and the glove – snug Armani wingtips he never wore nor for the effusive parties he never threw nor for the lavish vacation cruises he never took, not even for the fact that likely due to his huge hearing loss and his brain in general, he did own the finest speaking voice and the most massive vocabulary of anyone I have ever, ever known.

But Righteous Ancestor Willard Maas .WILL. be remembered for ——
this one, simple telephone call.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Mr DeFord's comment this week

2010-12-18T08:09:00.008-06:00

[Carol DeFord and her spouse, Frank, regular ‘Morning Edition’ commentator on npr on Wednesdays, lost to death from cystic fibrosis a child at the little girl’s age of eight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Deford

I loathe that this ("In a crowded world of images, you need the extreme to upset the accepted; you need a phenomenon to change the everyday.") is true re struggling against sexism, in particular. But it is true.

Frank DeFord, although he is senior Sports Illustrated writer, is the only man in sports media (of whom I know) who .regularly. writes about -- -- and then, too, actually in his very own voice loudly and .regularly. speaks out about -- -- struggling against sexism.

Frank DeFord has long, long ago made My Edition list -- -- the registry of names, past and present and of short - to - moderate length, of men (of whom I know) ... whom I do and would ... trust.]

Sweetness And Light

by Frank DeFord // 15 December 2010

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132053134/uconn-women-s-team-rises-to-a-watershed-moment

On the whole, far less attention is paid to women's team sports than to women's individual sports. The most recognized female stars are invariably tennis players, swimmers, skiers –– whereas most popular male heroes are team players.

After all, these guys are on our teams. They're playing for us. Women's teams have never enjoyed that sense of the possessive.

And it's not so simple as the old glass-ceiling analogy. No, it's more emotional: teams represent our city, our college. They represent us –– the old team spirit. So, for many gentlemen, having a team of girls representing us is too much to bear.

And to be frank, female fans have themselves miserably failed their sisters; they've not yet come to support women's teams as men do their own athletes.

O, there was that feel-good moment in the summer of '99 when our American women won the soccer World Cup. But an attempt at a women's pro soccer league quickly collapsed, and a new one barely survives. Women's pro basketball is humored –– forced to play in the off-season, the summer, so the desperate arenas can at least open the concession stands.

In college, women's softball, volleyball, and ice hockey are tolerated mostly just as necessary evils –– fill up the Title IX quota. They sure don't fill up the stands. Watch your local 6 o'clock news. How often does the sports guy even make a reference to a women's team game?

Sure, Serena and Venus get mentioned during the Grand Slams; the be-sequined figure-skater dolls every four years at the Olympics; maybe golfer Michelle Wie if she's in contention this weekend — but women's teams?

That's why the University of Connecticut's basketball team and its 87 consecutive victories mean so much. The streak places a spotlight on all of women's basketball.

The Huskies force people –– men and women alike –– to at least think about women's teams. The idea. Little girls see UConn and they realize they don't have to pick up a tennis racket or a pair of figure skates. By being so good, UConn has not just transcended its sport, but it's doing a number on tradition. On sexism, too.

And, well, as for numbers, the Huskies can, within a week, pass the incredible record of 88 wins in a row set by the UCLA men back in the 1970s. Whether the Huskies break that record or not –– and they're not so very good this year that they couldn't come a cropper against Ohio State this Sunday –– they sure have made people notice them.

By its success, UConn is to women's basketball sort of what the Baltimore Colts-New York Giants overtime game in 1958 was to the NFL. After that, fans stayed tuned to pro football. They bought tickets.

In a crowded world of images, you need the extreme to upset the accepted; you need a phenomenon to change the everyday.
=====
"Under no persuasion could I be made to believe that a human sacrifice several thousand years ago vicariously redeems me from sin. Nothing could persuade me that that was true, or moral, by the way. It's white noise to me." Christopher Hitchens, @ the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 13 October 2010, and published in Freethought Today, Freedom From Religion Foundation, December 2010 issue.

"I wouldn't say that religion is a form of mental illness, but I will say that religion allows perfectly sane and neurologically healthy people to believe things by the millions that only mentally ill people could believe on their own. The social support of doctrine allows for quite crazy beliefs in the 21st century to be held and operated upon by perfectly sane people." Sam Harris in discussing his The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values and published in Freethought Today, Freedom From Religion Foundation, December 2010 issue.

"Staff attorney Patrick Elliott's correspondence with the Janesville (Wisconsin) Public School system got Alcoholics Anonymous dropped from the curriculum of a public charter school." The Annual Freedom From Religion Foundation Report and Year in Review for 2010, http://www.ffrf.org/publications/freethought-today/articles/overheard-november-2010

"Another judge maintained that he believed women sought protection orders in order to get the family home. Another judge refused to believe one woman's story because her husband was a physician and a 'pillar of the community.' Another judge refused to believe a woman because she had no visible bruises by the time she appeared in his court, and he suggested she come back after her next beating!" -- -- US Congressional hearing - testimony re "justice" meted out on to ."American". women -- -- http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/GenderIssues/Violence+Women/testimony-morella

in this age of gaming, then: … the Custody Evaluator Bullshit BINGO game …

2010-09-19T10:34:00.004-05:00

... The custody evaluator version of the old - fashioned Bullshit BINGO game is now online courtesy of Frank Ledo, programmer.

http://www.bullshitbingo.net/cards/custody_evaluator and

http://www.buzzwordbingogame.com/cards/custody_evaluator

Cards only (handy for printing)
http://www.buzzwordbingogame.com/cards/custody_evaluator/?cardonly=1

The game can be played in multiple milieus.

Signaling by the winner will vary depending upon where the game is being held.

In educational venues, such as meetings in law offices, continuing education conferences at which the evaluator is pontificating, and in law school family law classes, it is appropriate to use the old-fashioned enthusiastic expression of joy that characterized the original "buzzword" bingo game, coupled (at the winner's option) by feet shuffling or even stomping or cheering.

In the courtroom or during depositions, however, a winner who feels inhibited by formal protocols may, instead, utter something along the lines of "I heard a Who!" or "Psssst -- No clothes!" (the latter being short for "The Emperor has no clothes!") or any creative variation thereof in the winner's discretion, with or without a choking fit, that will be understood by the other game players.

The foregoing notwithstanding, lawyers playing the game in court are deemed to win if at any point in the game they move to strike the evaluator's testimony. Bonus tournament points also are given IF (heh.heh.heh) ... the judge agrees!

presented here from liz of http://www.thelizlibrary.org and
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/child-centered-divorce/child-centered-divorce.html

the Archipiélago de Galápagos

2010-06-20T17:02:00.006-05:00

Ola from Quito on the Eve of 0º0'0" 's Summer Solstice y2010, and my last of all nights here and in four of the Archipiélago de Galápagos: Balta, Santa Cruz, Isabela and Floreana, with Juan Carlos. ´

Out tomorrow morning and back to work Wednesday, 23 June 2010.

And on to the next adventure.

The ... Archipiélago de Galápagos ... =s closest, most recently, to an .actual. spiritual experience.

:) Azul

A Feminist’s Anniversary re Her Scorched Earth

2010-05-24T07:55:00.004-05:00

... the video of the link above PLUS Chapter Twenty – Three

of http://bluemaas.public.iastate.edu/chapter_23

Mawwiage: Thy Scientific Name, Thy Scorched – Earth Plague is Misogyny

“Women have very little idea of how much ... men hate them.”

--- The Female Eunuch, 1970, and Germaine Greer’s opening sentence,
p 245, of the first chapter, “Loathing and Disgust,” in its Part IV
entitled “Hate”

TWO WORDS =s THE key to World Peace AND World Prosperity: HONOR WOMEN

2010-05-18T11:03:00.015-05:00

i) May 2010 by Elizabeth Black http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/05/19/abused-women-in-maryland-arent-lying
ABUSIVE fathers are more likely to obtain primary custody when domestic violence is present, alleged or not.

ii) How Family Courts Punish Abused Women

17 May 2010 by R. Dianne Bartlow http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/05/17/how-family-courts-punish-abused-women

“The dirtiest little secret in America” is that family courts, in deciding custody, often wreak devastation upon mothers and children.

So argue Mo Therese Hannah and Barry Goldstein, editors of the new anthology Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody, which brings to light what many familiar with the family court system have long known: Designed to dispense justice, the system has become instead “an instrument of oppression,” particularly in cases involving domestic violence.

To find a chilling example of what the editors mean, we need look no further than the recent murder of infant Wyatt Garcia, reported in the Daily Beast:

Wyatt Garcia was born in April 2009. Nine months later, he was shot and killed by his father, who then turned the gun on himself.

It might have turned out differently—if a family-court judge had listened to Wyatt’s mother.

Wyatt’s mother, Katie Tagle, had previously filed three motions in family court for an order of protection against the baby’s father, Stephen Garcia, alleging that he had physically assaulted her and harassed her and her family. Garcia was apparently jealous that she was dating again. In the last motion, Tagle charged that Garcia “had threatened to kill her and their baby.”

The San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Robert Lemkau chose to believe Garcia’s denials over the evidence supplied by Tagle – which included emails, text messages, and voice messages, according to the Daily Beast. Tagle says she was treated like a “criminal” and “complaining woman.”

One goal of Hannah and Goldstein’s book is to convince judges, attorneys, and others who work in the court system that all forms of abusive behavior, whether physical, verbal, financial or legal, cause harm to women and children. On the legal side, men who abuse their female intimate partners have successfully used strategies such as false accusations, harassment, manipulation, and intimidation to win custody while often driving their victims into poverty. According to contributing author and lawyer Joan Zorza:

Abusive men not only harass their victims, many harass their partners’ lawyers and manipulate those in and connected with the court system who are supposed to insure that children are placed with their better parent in a safe, nurturing environment.

This makes it all the stranger that about half of the time batterers win custody in family courts. They are actually more likely to win custody than men who do not abuse their partners, according to Zorza. Over the past nine months, 75 children have been murdered by abusive fathers who used custody battles to get even with the mothers, according to the Daily Beast.

Yet Katie Tagle’s dismissive treatment by family courts is all-too-familiar. While there has been a growing awareness over the last 30 years of the harm domestic violence causes, courts are more and more ignoring women’s allegations of domestic violence and holding them responsible for their own abuse. This is largely due to courts’ reliance upon mental health experts who have inadequate training in intimate violence or child sexual abuse and who are easily manipulated by batterers.

Gender bias plays a large role in this backlash, according to the editors:

Compared to men, women are disbelieved more often, held to much higher standards, and judged far more punitively for failings such as drinking, use of drugs, adultery or hostility to their partners. …Such behaviors are readily seen as grounds for giving the father custody.

Hannah and Goldstein hope to also expose two particularly harmful court practices that have evolved over the last several decades: Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), and “friendly parent” statutes. PAS provides a handy–and utterly without basis–refutation to incest and abuse claims by blaming mothers for any hostility that the children feel towards their fathers, maintaining that children love and respect their fathers unless a “poisonous” mother has convinced them otherwise. Even alleged incest and violence are not deemed reason enough for children to independently turn against their fathers.

Since PAS has been deemed by the American Psychological Association to have no scientific backing, at least 32 states have incorporated the milder sounding “friendly parent” concept into their custody laws. This gives custody to the parent who will encourage the child to have more contact and a better relationship with the other parent. Often mothers are hurt by the friendly parent concept, since they can be deemed “unfriendly” for saying anything against the father, including alleging abuse. Zorza says that, ironically enough:

The unfriendly behavior of noncustodial parents (usually the father), such as not paying child support, physically or verbally abusing the mother, or stalking her, is not considered as meeting the definition of unfriendly.

With such an approach, Zorza says, family violence is discounted, and abusers are empowered while battered women are disempowered. Ultimately, children are harmed.

Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody will be instructive for policymakers, those working in the family justice system, and members of the media–which the authors say has by-and-large failed to expose custody court scandals. But it is a must-read for any mother involved in a child custody battle, and especially for mothers trying get free from an abusive relationship.

iii) Female Sales Reps Win Case Against (birth control - maker!) Novartis In Largest Gender Discrimination Case to Go to Verdict // Jury Says Pharma Giant Discriminated Against Women and LARGEST - EVER AWARD in GENDER - BIAS case // http://www.law.com/jsp/law/LawArticleFriendly.jsp?id=1202458479079

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/female-sales-reps-win-case-against-novartis-in-largest-gender-discrimination-case-to-go-to-verdict-93965454.html

NEW YORK, 17 May 17 / PRNewswire -- A New York jury handed Novartis Pharmaceuticals a bitter pill today, finding the giant drug maker guilty of gender discrimination in pay, promotional opportunities and pregnancy-related matters. The nation-wide class of 5,600 female sales representatives earned the victory in Judge Colleen McMahon's courtroom in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

In addition to delivering a verdict for the Plaintiffs, the jury awarded the 12 testifying witnesses some $3.36 million in compensatory damages for the specific instances of discrimination testified to by those witnesses. This award is just the beginning of the money that will be associated with this verdict.

In deliberations tomorrow, the jury will determine how much in punitive damages to award against the company in order to punish it for its discriminatory acts and to deter it from behaving so in the future.

Judge McMahon will determine a separate amount of class damages for the approximate 5,600 individuals in the class at a later date. Those class damages will include back-pay damages for lost earnings.

In separate proceedings, compensatory damages will be decided for each member of the class that opts-in. Those damages will include money for the pain and suffering caused by Novartis' discriminatory acts.

In addition, Judge McMahon now has the opportunity to order Novartis to make changes to its policies and procedures in order to prevent future discriminatory behavior.
The class includes female sales representatives who have worked for the drug giant between 2002 and 2007. Thirteen of them testified during the five week trial. The class action was originally filed in 2004. The case is Amy Velez et al., vs. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation 04 Civ. 09194.

The case was the largest gender discrimination matter ever to go to trial in the U.S.

The women were represented by David Sanford, Steven Wittels and Katherine Kimpel in the New York and Washington, D.C. offices of Sanford, Wittels & Heisler LLP, and Grant Morris, of Washington, D.C.

"Today's verdict sends a clear and powerful message to Novartis and every corporation in the United States: women are equal partners in our workforce. The days of second-class citizenship are over. Play by the rules or be subject to great exposure – financially and reputationally," said David Sanford. "This verdict is the first step in bringing about long overdue changes at Novartis and other companies that encourage or tolerate unfair treatment of women in their workplaces. We'll have to wait and see just how much the jury awards in punitive damages, but this is certainly a company that deserves to be punished for the way it has mistreated working women in this country."

"This jury learned that Novartis is not somewhere you would want your wife, your mother, your sister or your daughter to work," said Kate Kimpel. "Novartis expected its female employees to do more than just go out and market its drugs -- Novartis has a corporate culture that expects female representatives to be available and amenable to sexual advances from the doctors they call on. Time and time again, Novartis looked the other way when female representatives complained about inappropriate doctors. And then, to add insult to injury, Novartis paid those same women less, wouldn't promote them into management, and punished them if they got pregnant. Novartis refused to treat its female employees as the competent and hard-working professionals that they were and are."

On the first day of the trial in the defense's opening statement, Novartis' own attorney said of an abusive male district manager, who had shown female sales reps pornography and invited them to sit on his lap, "He wasn't that bad a manager. He was just terrible with women." *!*!*!

Novartis kept that manager on staff, actively managing women in the field, for years after it first learned of his inappropriate behavior.

Although several of Novartis' witnesses claimed it had a "zero tolerance policy" for discrimination, those same witnesses admitted that managers were not terminated or demoted even when complaints of discrimination were substantiated by HR.

Steven Wittels said of today's victory, "This jury has sent a message to Novartis ---- Get your house in order! Change your culture: the 'old boys network' will not be tolerated. Provide your HR department with enough resources to create policies which mandate employment equity across the board, and provides training and guidance as well as people to make sure the laws are respected and followed."

Novartis was created in 1996 through a merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz pharmaceutical companies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, the company had 2009 sales of $44.3 billion.

Sanford Wittels & Heisler is a law firm with offices in Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco that specializes in employment discrimination, wage and hour, consumer and complex corporate class action litigation and has represented thousands of individuals in some of the major class action cases in the United States. The firm also represents individual clients in employment, employment discrimination, sexual harassment, whistleblower, public accommodations, commercial, medical malpractice, and personal injury matters. More information at www.SWHlegal.com

*!*!*! DEFINITION of "MANAGER" ---- IF a person canNOT work managing ... women, THEN the person canNOT work ... managing!

IF he canNOT manage himself, then he canNOT ... MANAGE!

respecting NONmagical – / freethinking

2010-05-11T12:52:00.008-05:00

respecting NONreligion -- from Teaching TOLERANCE & the Southern Poverty Law Center and

http://www.tolerance.org/activity/respecting-nonreligious-people?newsletter=TT051110

* Level:* Grades 3 to 5 * Grades 6 to 8 * Grades 9 to 12

* Subject:* Reading and Language Arts * Social Studies * ELL / ESL

"Students often learn the importance of respecting people of different religions, and of respecting religious beliefs that are different from their own. But what about people who do not hold religious beliefs at all? Too often the right not to believe is excluded from lessons about tolerance.

Yet atheists and others who do not believe in gods experience discrimination because of their NONbelief. In this lesson, students learn about episodes of anti - atheist discrimination; and they develop ways to educate others about respecting nonreligious, as well as religious, diversity."

Is it too much to ask for a MOTHER on the Supreme Court?

2010-05-10T10:24:00.005-05:00

As long as the diversity nonsense continues ad nauseam, how about -- FINALLY -- a representative from a TRUE, and not faux, demographic group ... THE largest one there is?

FLIP / REVERSE -- AGAIN! How many SUPREME COURT justices over the years have, themselves, not been fathers? What has been, since the Court's inception, the ratio of them that were fathers to them that were not (... ever ... ) fathers, "step" [- back and - away when there is actually, in the kiddos' lives, true ... ] fathers, ahalfadaddy or someone's ... sugar ... daddee?

http://trueslant.com/level/2010/05/09/headed-for-a-motherless-supreme-court-elena-kagan-nominee

Elena Kagan sends us on the way to a(nother) MOTHERLESS Supreme Court .by Michael Rosten

As Mother's Day comes to a close, we're hearing reports that tomorrow morning, President Obama will nominate an individual to be the ninth Supreme Court Justice to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

If Mike Allen's reporting for Politico and NBC News's late breaking report holds up, that nominee will be Elena Kagan, the current Solicitor General of the United States.

There are all manner of issues to raise where Kagan is concerned -- from the relevant, such as her minimal record of scholarship and her lack of judicial experience, to the irrelevant such as rumors that she's a lesbian. Critics also have expressed concern that she's too conservative-leaning for an Obama appointee. But an issue about Kagan that hasn't been discussed is one that transcends her -- if she is confirmed as a Supreme Court Associate Justice this year, the nation's top bench will be heading toward a make-up with no mothers sitting on it for the first time since 1981.

It will be great to have three women sitting on the nation's highest court, but it probably won't last for long. An aging Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg remains sharp as a tack, but her health is not great, and like Justice Stevens, she might feel the time is right to exit the bench while there is a guarantee that President Obama can replace her with someone who won’t move the Court to the far right.

There are no guarantees that a third Obama justice will be a woman, and even the statistical probability that he won't appoint another woman given the variety of constituencies that he'll need to satisfy with his next pick. And that will mean that the two women sitting on the nation's high court (Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor being the other) will both be single and childless.

Certainly there is no requirement that every Justice sitting on the court be a parent. But on a powerful body full of fathers, is it too much to ask that we have one mother as a member of the Supreme Court?

I would posit that there are an enormous number of problems in our country that have or will come before the Supreme Court in which motherhood is a critically important detail. From abortion to discrimination in the workplace to future technologies concerning genetic engineering and beyond, women and the decisions they make (or don't get to make) about becoming mothers to sons and daughters will be burning issues in Supreme Court jurisprudence. Mothers in our society are often forced to make complicated decisions about their lives and those of their children that are not necessarily faced by childless women or even fathers for that matter. And since 1981, the Court has had the benefit of having a mother involved in deliberations on these issues, starting with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was later joined by Ginsburg.

It’s true that Justice Sotomayor and a possible Justice Kagan could sympathize or even (gasp) empathize with mothers. But they’ve never personally been confronted with the choices that being a parent generally, and a mother in particular brings on in our society. Women in America are constantly facing decision points about whether to focus on work, raising a child, or both. Once they become mothers, women have to make decisions along the way about how best to raise their children. And the decisions they make for better or worse often wind up being of broader concern to society as a whole.

To me, if a woman doesn't have a child, she has only an abstract ability to pass judgment on issues where motherhood is concerned. I say this not out of disrespect for childless women, whose own struggles I would not dare to play down. Rather, I say it out of respect for all the mothers in the world, including my own. Women with the concrete knowledge of the decision-making that comes with motherhood simply know better -- A mother knows best -- as we so often say.

General Kagan and Justice Sotomayor are talented women, and their unique experiences, legal knowledge bases, and ability to judge laws are worthy of esteem and fair consideration on their own merits. But I must insist that a Supreme Court without a mother on the bench would be as incomplete as a tricycle with two wheels. Mothers make the world move forward, and they need to have a voice in the arrangement of our society, from the boardroom to the courtroom and beyond.

So while the Solicitor General's lack of children in no way disqualifies her, it would be a setback if in 2011 or in a year not too far off, we find ourselves with a bench of nine that includes no justices who are mothers. And that's something that President Obama must consider when he contemplates future Justices beyond Kagan.

nytimes: Group Backs Ritual ‘Prick’ as Female Circumcision Option

2010-05-09T14:43:00.006-05:00

"On this day, you are not going to believe this one. This? This is soooo not.not.not believable!"

"O Blue! YOU exaggerate! O'course, it IS believable. These are "modernity" 's medical MEN you're talking about = those of the American Pediatric Association! ! !

O'course, THEY are gonna suggest this "wee - prick" - ing "solution" and BE themselves COMPLICIT (in America!) with the other men of the World who loathe femaleness so much so that ... BECAUSE THEY CAN ... then they WILL ( ... CONTINUE TO ... ) defile ( ... ONLY ... ) us DEhumans!"

"Un – fucking – believable!" I drop jaw!

“FLIP / REVERSE: NOOOO gawddamn pricking of any girl. NOT until ALL boys' wee pricks are under such SAME PATRIARCHAL "RELIGIOUS" / "MORAL" / family - "HONOR" attack and are ... likewise ... PRICKED,” I blitz!

nota bene, Folks! … how quite "carefully" America’s pediatricians used as spokesperson to the New York Times ... a ... (very male - identified) female ... MD. !heh.heh.heh!

This? This just begs for the wisdom of University of North Carolina’s Pyschiatrist Cort A Pedersen from his primates’ research: “The evolution of mother love was essential FOR the evolution of ... intelligence.”

That’s “ … FOR the evolution of INTELLIGENCE,” Folks!

NOTHING … LESS THAN THAT!

Group Backs Ritual ‘Nick’ as Female Circumcision Option
By PAM BELLUCK
06 May 2010

In a controversial change to a longstanding policy concerning the practice of female circumcision in some African and Asian cultures, the American Academy of Pediatrics is suggesting that American doctors be given permission to perform a ceremonial pinprick or “nick” on girls from these cultures if it would keep their families from sending them overseas for the full circumcision.

The academy’s committee on bioethics, in a policy statement last week, said some pediatricians had suggested that current federal law, which “makes criminal any nonmedical procedure performed on the genitals” of a girl in the United States, has had the unintended consequence of driving some families to take their daughters to other countries to undergo mutilation.

“It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm,” the group said.

But some opponents of female genital mutilation, or F.G.M., denounced the statement.

“I am sure the academy had only good intentions, but what their recommendation has done is only create confusion about whether F.G.M. is acceptable in any form, and it is the wrong step forward on how best to protect young women and girls,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York, who recently introduced a bill to toughen federal law by making it a crime to take a girl overseas to be circumcised. “F.G.M. serves no medical purpose, and it is rightfully banned in the U.S.”

Georganne Chapin, executive director of an advocacy group called Intact America, said she was “astonished that a group of intelligent people did not see the utter slippery slope that we put physicians on” with the new policy statement. “How much blood will parents be satisfied with?”

She added: “There are countries in the world that allow wife beating, slavery and child abuse, but we don’t allow people to practice those customs in this country. We don’t let people have slavery a little bit because they’re going to do it anyway, or beat their wives a little bit because they’re going to do it anyway.”

A member of the academy’s bioethics committee, Dr. Lainie Friedman Ross, associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, said the panel’s intent was to issue a “statement on safety in a culturally sensitive context.”

Dr. Friedman Ross said that the committee members “oppose all types of female genital cutting that impose risks or physical or psychological harm,” and consider the ritual nick “a last resort,” but that the nick is “supposed to be as benign as getting a girl’s ears pierced. It’s taking a pin and creating a drop of blood.”

She said the panel had heard anecdotes from worried doctors.

“If we just told parents, ‘No, this is wrong,’ our concern is they may take their daughters back to their home countries, where the procedure may be more extensive cutting and may even be done without anesthesia, with unsterilized knives or even glass,” she said. “A just-say-no policy may end up alienating these families, who are going to then find an alternative that will do more harm than good.”

Currently, more than 130 million women and girls worldwide have undergone female genital cutting, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. It is mostly performed on girls younger than 15 in countries including Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia. Consequences can include severe complications with pregnancy, childbirth and sexual dysfunction.

The academy’s statement acknowledged that opponents of the procedure, “including women from African countries, strongly oppose any compromise that would legitimize even the most minimal procedure.”

Dr. Friedman Ross said, “If you medicalize it and say it’s permissible, is there a possibility that some people will misunderstand it and go beyond a nick? Yes.”

But she said the risk that people denied the ceremonial procedure, usually on the clitoris, would opt for the more harmful one was much more dangerous.

And the statement said that, “in some countries where FGC is common, some progress toward eradication or amelioration has been made by substituting ritual ‘nicks’ for more severe forms.”

– Tax Day in ((e.g., corporate)) America: STILL the SEXISM in y2010 –

2010-04-15T09:59:00.003-05:00

America’s favorite golfer must understand that corporate dealmakers use 'men – only' clubs to maintain power // from Ms Ellen Snortland on 15 April 2010

Bully for him! Tiger Woods had earned my scorn and contempt years ago, well before the revelations of his marital problems. I knew he was an enema bag without knowing about his double life, cheating addiction or peccadilloes with numerous “dillos” with his pecca. More fundamentally, he earned my disgust through his lack of principles and absence of a stand on gender apartheid at the apex of corporate and athletic America: the Masters Golf Tournament and Augusta National Golf Club.

In case you’re not a golf enthusiast, have been living on a desert island or don’t follow sports in general, let me give you a thumbnail portrait of the Masters, one of the most important golf events on the planet. According to the Wikipedia, it is “one of the four major championships in professional golf. Scheduled for the first full week of April, it is the first of the majors to be played each year. Unlike the other major championships, the Masters is held each year at the same location, Augusta National Golf Club, a private golf club in the city of Augusta, Georgia, USA.”

Buried in the same Wikipedia article is the fact that Augusta National Golf Club is restricted to only men, and in my opinion is the equivalent of 1950s-era "whites-only" buses, water fountains and lunch counters. However, gender apartheid is often "winked" at, minimized and certainly accepted at the most powerful and monied levels of our society.

You may be saying, "O, but Ellen! Where's your sense of humor? Boys will be boys, and can't they just play a game without including the girls? For goodness' sake! Come on now! You're making a mountain out of a molehill!"

Let me disabuse of you the notion that golf is just a little game: we’re talking billions of dollars and a social network that reaches into the highest platforms of government, the military and capitalism.

But before I give you a little profile, let me lead you to one of the most inspiring gender analysts we have writing today: Martha Burk. I’m proud to claim Martha as a friend, although I must admit I have author envy. Burk wrote a book I wish I’d written called "Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It." In addition to writing "Cult of Power," Martha led a protest in 2003 that brought a lot of attention to gender apartheid in golf. But don’t take my word for it; get the book and read it cover to cover. It’ll explain just why women of all colors face such a major glass ceiling in the Fortune 500 corporations, nationally and internationally.

Which brings me back to Tiger Woods. Tiger was not only the youngest golfer to win the Masters tournament at Augusta, but the first man of color to do so. Augusta National Golf Club let the first African American into its hallowed ranks for the first time in 1990, only seven years before Woods played and won.

Tiger Woods has more authority and moral positioning to stand up for ending "men-only" policies at Augusta than almost anyone else I can think of ... but of course he wouldn’t, because his behavior indicates that, to him, women are playthings, not people to be taken seriously. If I’m being too harsh in that judgment, since I don’t really know the guy, at the very least his sexual shenanigans would make him reluctant to take a visible stance about ending discrimination against women.

Woods is purportedly receiving treatment for his sex addiction. Typically, treatment involves making amends for commissions and omissions that are based in the person’s drug of choice, which in this case seems to be heterosexual sex outside of marriage. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that Woods has taken objectification of women to new public lows.

Hey, Tiger! Do I have an amends idea for YOU!

Use your bully pulpit — or Tiger pulpit, in this case — to insist that the Augusta National integrate its club further with women. Why? Because it’s a disgusting bastion of male privilege and for you to take that kind of stand would be a triumph of morality.

Again, Burk’s "Cult of Power" is a must-read, but it doesn’t take a hole-in-one golfer to understand that corporate deal makers use "men-only" clubs to maintain power, cut deals and, yes, exclude women from the halls of power and decision-making. Having a penis apparently is still the most important club to have in one’s bag.

The term "bully pulpit" came from President Teddy Roosevelt’s using the term for the White House and its astounding power to impact opinion and change. Roosevelt used the term "bully" as an adjective, like "great" or "magnificent."

Wouldn’t it be "bully" if Tiger could turn his personal fiasco into a major stride for women? I’m not holding my breath.

“““Mother to Son””” … by Langston Hughes

2010-04-09T15:22:00.001-05:00

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

the Future: subsequent generations growing and … grown … up // all thanks to family law’s “civil” courts

2010-04-09T13:33:00.005-05:00

---- USA - and Worldwide - cases abound ----

Teen sues county for placing her in custody of sex offender grandfather, father (Cowlitz County, Washington)

The kids are growing up--and they're angry.

These are the kids whose childhoods were ruined by so-called "family court investigators" who knowingly placed them in the home of batterers and sexual abusers. Note that the accusations against formerly custodial mom were minor or negligible at best (a dirty house?) and that the girl's own father warned that she shouldn't be left with Gramps unsupervised since he had been CONVICTED of sodomizing a 10-year-old girl.

Yet Dad VERNIL JONES, who lived with his mother and sex offender father, got primary custody anyway. Though the girl was supposed to be "supervised" around the grandfather. Which obviously never happened. Not that anybody really expected it would happen, unless they were really, really stupid. So naturally, this poor child is molested every day for ten freaking year. Outrageous, as this was completely preventable.

http://www.whas11.com/news/Teen-sues-county-for-placing-her-in-custody-of-sex-offender-grandfather-90358309.html

Teen sues county for placing her in custody of sex offender grandfather

by EMILY FRIEDMAN

Posted on April 9, 2010 at 12:02 PM

(ABC News) - A Washington state teen is suing for millions of dollars in damages after she said a family court investigator "ruined her life" by knowingly sending her to live with her grandfather, a convicted sex offender who proceeded to abuse her nearly every day for a decade.

In court documents filed late last month, the unidentified teen claimed that she was just six years old when Cowlitz County Family Court Services investigator Mark Workingor took her from her mother and placed her in a home with her father and grandparents.

The teen said in the court documents that it happened in spite of her own father warning Workingor that his father, Vernil Jones, had been convicted of sodomizing a 10-year-old girl.

"She went through 10 years of incest of every kind almost daily by her grandfather," said Lincoln Beauregard, the attorney representing the teen.

"The bottom line is, regardless of where she lived, she should not have lived with a pedophile," said Beauregard.

Jones since has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the assaults against the teen.

Attempts to reach Workingor were unsuccessful, and messages left for Ron Marshall, the Cowlitz County's chief civil deputy prosecutor, were not immediately returned.

Marshall told The Daily News in Washington that while he had no comment on the pending litigation, Workingor no longer was working for the county.

Teen Spent 10 Years With Abusive Grandfather Despite Warnings

Outlined in the court documents is the sequence of events that led to the teen being placed under the same roof as Jones.

In March 1999, the teen's father petitioned the court for custody of the then-6-year-old. According to the court documents, the father told authorities that he was worried that the teen's mother "neglects the child's supervision, nutrition and hygiene" and had a "history of drug use."
The father also claimed that his daughter suffered from "chronic head lice infestations" because of the "filthy home" the mother kept, according to the court documents.

The investigator found that while the teen's mother had provided the majority of the teen's care since she was born, she was doing so inadequately and awarded primary custody to the father. Also included in the investigator's recommendation was that any contact between the child and the sex offender grandfather "be supervised by either the father or the paternal grandmother."

The teen's lawyer referred to that recommendation as "outrageous," and called the county's decision to place the child with Jones "egregious."

The teen's lawyer said that his client decided to bring her case to the public's attention in hopes of helping other children like her who have become victims because of the "egregious actions" of Cowlitz County.

"She hopes that bringing visibility to her case will be a form of justice to her," said Beauregard.

International Women’s Day

2010-03-08T08:26:00.008-06:00

With Proctor and Gamble's / Tide's y2010 Olympics' commercial, finally the just acknowledgment of the first person such as herself ever to do so, Ms Kathryn Bigelow, and Ms Sandra Bullock's best performance – acceptance statement of " ... dedicated to moms who take care of their babies and their children no matter where they come from. Those moms never get thanked," the Women of the World celebrate today matters and things ... accountable.

"[NOW ... HERE COMES THE MOTHER – FUCKING IN ALL OF ITS ANDROCENTRIC, PATRIARCHAL, SPERM – / FATHERHOOD – EXALTING FUCKINGNESS: THE PRECEDENT!!!]

TOTALLY TERMINATING THE VISITATION BETWEEN A NONCUSTODIAL PARENT WHERE THERE IS SUBSTANTIAL BONDING BETWEEN THE NONCUSTODIAL PARENT AND THE CHILDREN IS ... WITHOUT PRECEDENT." --- page 477, Chapter 28, Mother - Fucking: the Saga of One Fucked Mother, http://bluemAAs.public.iastate.edu

Tribal news update: an anniversary today

2010-02-19T09:47:00.001-06:00

19 February 2010 // 50 years –– out, also on a Friday … the Midwest’s Mid – Winter Friday FARM SALE

I – in his and in my lifetimes – witnessed Willard Albert William Maas cry three times. Of course, there may have been more times; I was present for three.

All of these three times occurred in the same decade ––– the 1960s.

The first time I was already 12 years old. From my recollection Friday, 19 February 1960, was of that particular 1959 – 1960 winter, its coldest day … … at least for most of its waking breadth ~20۫ Fahrenheit below zero.

Fifty years ago today, Daddy and I were alone together and standing on that screen – enclosed east porch’s sturdily gray – painted flooring, not inside the much smaller one of the farmhouse’s southside.

Our gazes went out toward the long, long lane (“16 rods” ’ worth, I had always used to hear said of its length) at where ––– right beside the profoundly gorgeous prominence of the farmstead’s actual entrance … The First Barn ––– an auctioneer around 10 a.m. of the easterly sunshine got underway. Started off this particular Midwestern Friday morning the man did ––– as so many such Fridays had on other farmsteads around the county … already that winter.

In no time at all, it seemed, the evidence was clear: the ‘success’ ––– measured however a deal as this is measured ––– of such a farm sale occurring that Friday beside The First Barn was … not to be.

And the tears in near torrents spilling forth from both medial commissures quietly tracked down both of Willard Maas’ staid cheeks … O – so silently … streaming right on down to that floor’s strong gray gloss.

My gaze, and my head, went down. To that floor’s puddle. I have remembered that morning ––– for, at least, … fifty years.

“No! Hell, No!” –– Kristen Stewart as Emily Lewin, Adventureland, 2009

2010-01-30T16:21:00.006-06:00

On the date of the 62nd year after Mohandas K Gandhi’s 30 January 1948 murder and from Holocausts, Chapter Three, “If you were not hysterical, Legion, then, … then is when I would be worried about you.” [--- Margaret Stanley, lifelong Quaker, on the telephone, while preparing for her nursing quest to China ---http://bluemAAs.public.iastate.edu/chapter_three] and responding to Factory Production Floor Worker and Teenager Eric's profundity on small men about their patriarchal entitlement to women's children and money, "And ... he takes it?!":

“Six Iowa winters I simply left the heat off in the house, there was no money. So cold, 34 degrees Fahrenheit in the kitchen when I actually measured it once, that Rex, a female, Eastern Florida kingsnake inside her aquarium’s hollow log, did not move for months and months and months each year. So cold I often wondered, ‘til late April, if she hadn’t up and died in some previous frigid period, and I, ‘course, during these spells just hadn’t known she was actually frozen to death.

Besides the vast amount of physical energy expended, I spent so much mental energy in just remembering that the heat was off. Always, even when I was away from home. The pipes might freeze, the few plants friends had given me and number one son Zane’s beloved dimestore zebra finch, Lady, might not make it although she ruffled as much as she could on her perch.

More than once no water came out of the dilapidated apartment’s shower faucet and the slop water in the toilet would nearly overflow until I could pour enough boiling water over the tub tiles or down the stool sewer, and the water pressure from behind the thawing obstruction could finally force the rest of the ice loose and down. Nearly every January and February noontime, many years oftener, I raced home from the university to check on the plumbing and the pipes. This meant, of course, usurping all the lunch hour in this endeavor. Parking around campus was so far from the office that half the time off for the noontime break was used up just in getting to, and back in from, the heap that is Ol’ Black, my incredibly faithful 1986 Chevy Eurosport wagon. Which I own and drive still today. Luckily, that rundown joint on Havencourt Drive with the mailbox – sized chunks of orange and brown wallpaper splashed upside the kitchen walls that had been my, the Boys’ and their pets’ wonderful little home now that Herry and I were divorced, was an inside unit of four of them lovingly referred to by its absentee landlord as condominiums. Had it been an end condo, the pipes would, indeed, have burst more than once. By my bedside, I placed two alarm clocks. One for the middle of the nighttime was set to scream at me at 2:30 am so I could rise to run all the faucets and flush all the drains. The second was set by which, then, I rose a second time – that time for the day’s labor. Every night. Four months. Six winters.”

Why – Women – Need – Freedom – FROM – Religion

2010-01-22T16:36:00.001-06:00

ARIS: America Growing More Secular

According to CUNY's definitive American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), the number of "Nonreligious" American adults more than doubled between 1990 and 2001 while the number of "Religious" and "Christians" declined. The "Nonreligious" are now the fastest growing segment of the population.

	1990*	2001**
NONRELIGIOUS	8% (14.3 million)	14.3% (29.4 million)
Religious	90%	81%
Christian	86%	77%
Mormon/LDS	1.4% (2.5 million)	1.3% (2.8 million)
Jewish	1.8% (3.1 million)	1.3% (2.8 million)
Muslim/Islamic	0.3% (0.5 million)	0.5% (1.1 million)
Refused to reply	2.3%	5.4%

Regarding religious affiliation, the authors note:

"Often lost admidst the mesmerizing tapestry of faith groups that comprise the American population is also a vast and growing population of those without faith. They adhere to no creed nor choose to affiliate with any religious community. These are the seculars, the unchurched, the people who profess no faith in any religion.

". . . the present survey has detected a wide and possibly growing swath of secularism among Americans. The magnitude and role of this large secular segment of the American population is frequently ignored by scholars and politicians alike."

ARIS survey shows 16% of Americans are "secular"

Regarding religious views, the authors of CUNY's survey note:

"In all, sixteen percent (16%) described their outlook as secular or somewhat secular while seventy-five percent (75%) described their outlook as religious or somewhat religious. . . . [A]t least ten percent of the population clearly and unambiguously considers itself 'secular' rather than 'religious.' Another six percent regard themselves as 'somewhat secular.' "

Overall, the authors note:

"The greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification."

* 1990 National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI). 113,000+ samples
** 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). 50,000+ samples
Graduate Center, City University of New York
www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_studies.htm#aris_1

This information provided by:

Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc.
PO Box 750
Madison WI 53701
(608) 256-8900
www.ffrf.org

“ … the inevitable pile – on that will ensue.” = the backlashing blowback when trying to beat back the normalization of web woman – loathing

2010-01-16T18:46:00.005-06:00

My best guess is that the misogynous commentors burn at a white-hot temperature, hotter than anything I've felt. Affronts to their worldview--someone, especially a woman, saying women are oppressed, or even female performers on YouTube not asking their permission to exist--enrage them more than affronts to our views enrage us. They feel they just have to spew or they'll explode. I seldom take them on in blog comments because I'm so much less livid.

Not offering an explanation here, of course, just reading the thermometer. Maybe a feminist with a little time to spare should give herself a mandator quota of X comments over Y period of time on DoubleX or HuffPo or the like, to speak up against the worst of it?
=====
I guess the difference between the Internet and meatspace is that I can avoid most of those individuals in meatspace and so I do. I'm more concerned with the impact those comments might have over time. It might even become socially acceptable to hate-on-women all the time in public spaces. I hope that is not the case but familiarity breeds contempt.
=====
Echidne, It's also that people wouldnt' dare say half the stuff to you in meatspace that they'd say to you on the internets. The medium lends itself to less self-censoring than occurs in meatpsace.
=====
I too was more optimistic about the way women were viewed before coming online. The internet has been the greatest force behind my feminism becoming more radicalized and hard-line, because it shown me just how much casual misogyny lurks in the hearts of men. Internet comments lift the veil of political correctness, and people are free to say what they really think, rather than what is polite.

I have also wondered why you don't tend to see many feminist counter-arguments on comment threads rife with misogny. I think women simply block it out and try to ignore it as much as possible. I know many times I have been tempted to respond, but decide not to, because I simply can't be bothered with the inevitable pile-on that will ensue.

Recently I thought about making a kind of "feminist defence-force" site. Where links could be posted to current discussions going on around the web which have a lot of misogny present. And then a bunch of feminists could all swoop in at once and provide those much needed counter-arguments, and preempt any pile-on of lone feminist voices. I am still contemplating how such a community might work.

Thanks for writing about this, echidne. I also worry that the misogyny found in online comments might eventually bleed into real life (actually, I think it already has, to some extent. At least among young men).
=====
Do you think the Finally Feminism 101 blog qualifies as a "feminist defense-force" site? I wish the mods there did more in the way of say gathering rape stats from the DOJ or posting studies that prove women actually talk less than men and are actually more reluctant to marry.
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Frankly I think that in this case (as with everything) there is more variation within each sex than between the sexes. I know both men and women that never seem to shut up, and both men and women that are really quiet most of the time, and both men and women that will talk a lot in one situation but not in another. The problem with "women talk too much" is that (and this has been studied) the men that say this are not comparing the amount women talk to the amount men talk, but the amount women talk with how much they want them to talk (never). I encountered a group in an online game I play that complained that an NPC was talking too much, like a "typical woman". Never mind that the NPC in question is the leader of one of the 5 main forces on our side of a war, never mind that she is leading in an elite squad of us to infiltrate the enemy's fortress. She's a woman first and foremost and that means she should just SHUT UP.

I reported the group for sexism and left. No point saying anything, I'd get discredited because I'm a woman.
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Wonder if we can borrow Pharyngula's horde. Or take over 4chan.
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Sadly, Pharyngula's horde is full of "what about the men"-ning and "I can't possibly ever think anything sexist because I'm nice to my wife"-type denialism of institutionalized sexism.
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Damn. Pharyngula himself seemed decent, but I can never wade through all the comments there.
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The internet is real life. And the hatred has bled onto the internet from society built in meatspace, not the other way around.
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I follow the Sanity Watchers Plan that I discovered over at Shapely Prose, which entails avoiding most comment threads unless I know the site I'm on is a reasonably safe space.
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"I know many times I have been tempted to respond, but decide not to, because I simply can't be bothered with the inevitable pile-on that will ensue."

I have often felt the same way, and I venture to say a great deal of commenters feel this as well — that it's just not worth arguing with someone who wants to fight you that badly.
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Somehow a lot of men hate women for some reason. Perhaps at a deep level they hate their mother, who for a significant part of childhood was the most important person in their life. Of course we know this attitude is at least 2000 years old witness the epistles of St. Paul about women keeping silent, and the way homes should be run. (Of course Paul also said that being married was a concession to weakness, it was better to be single). But then Paul expected the world to come to an end in a few years anyway. Actually it would be interesting for an anthropologist to look at the comment streams and reach some conclusions about attitudes.
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"Perhaps at a deep level they hate their mother" = This is how the responsibility for what men do is shifted to women.
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A fine list of some of the most aggravating aspects of the typical expression of misogynists. It was one of the most startling things about comments on leftist blogs, how much raw and freely expressed sexism there is on the left. Also a shock, was how hesitant those who oppose misogyny are to call the jerks on it. What is the reason for this hesitation? Fear of being called a nag? Other names? Peer pressure? A lot of it boils down to fear of being discounted as a serious person whose ideas are worth listening to, of being characterized as being a kill joy - as if they expect us to feel joy at their jocular, hateful free expression. It shouldn’t go unnoticed that the attempted suppression of our freely expressed objection takes the form of, mostly men, nagging, hectoring, lording it over. Essentially doing what they are accusing women of doing as they say it.

It’s tempting to go into the phenomenon of leftists’ hatred and demeaning of women on the basis of its cause but the important thing is to try to suppress bigotry. I don’t really care why they do it or if they feel frustrated when it’s opposed. I don’t feel anymore for the pain of a sexist suppressed than I do for a racist repressed. I don’t care if their adulthood misbehavior is the result of malign socialization, you can use that excuse for anything. Any pain felt by them is self-generated and fully deserved.

The way you do this is to call them on it and to discourage it by inhibiting the perpetrators. And the only way to do that is for all of us to call it, consistently. If it means hijacking the discussion on blog threads for a while, that’s exactly what the sexists are doing now. The useless, counterproductive expression of misogyny is morally wrong and destructive to progress and suppressing it is both moral and useful for making things better. Women shouldn’t feel as if they’re inhibiting progress by making this an issue, because the expression of sexism distracts and inhibits progress already.
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The backlash is usually a bit heavier than being called a nag. Plus, if you're a woman and a feminist it's pretty hard to have a conversation with somebody who apparently doesn't believe you personally are fully human without tearing your hair out.
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I'm in favour of reporting it and complaining to the site owner/moderators if I think they'll listen, rather than having a dialogue with those that I know won't listen. Stupid local newspaper website not thinking that sexism/transexism/racism is "offensive content". At least my online game is concerned by offensive content (just you have to report it for them to notice it).
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Anthony it's far more than fearing being thought a nag or a killjoy. Women get *death threats* for holding feminist opinions. Remember Biting Beaver? It's not a case of staying out of the kitchen, &c. There can be real issues of safety here.
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Anonymous blog commenters, those who use pseudonyms don't have to worry about threats. Bloggers who are known by their real names do have to worry about it. I'm advocating that we tell the sexist creeps to shut up, anonymously if necessary.
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"Remember Biting Beaver?"
The woman who flipped the fuck out because her son was looking at porn despite her efforts to indoctrinate him? I try not to.
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Do you believe there even is such a bird as "reverse sexism?" Doesn't any kind of "ism" rely on one entity having power? The truth of the matter is that there is no power dichotomy in which women are able to practice sexism.
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The answer to that would be long and complicated, but what I was trying to get at is the false practice of generalizing from the behavior of a few individuals to a whole group.
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I agree with bridgett--women can certainly hold gender bias, but sexism depends on holding power as a group.
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Depends how you define things. A lot of people think of sexism, racism, whatever-ism as simply having bad things to say about that sex, race, whatever, and that institutionalised sexism/racism/whatever-ism is different though obviously belonging under the same umbrella. I've found discussing things with people that have these mental definitions much easier if I use their terms.

Echidne, another way to put it could be prejudice or stereotyping, but it's a hard one to discuss. Frankly away from sites that specifically discuss feminism I use the term sexism like you've just used it, and the term institutionalised sexism for the more problematic specific directions of sexism against women, racism against whatever the minority/not in power group is etc.
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Shrieking that women have a bias against men is a silencing technique. It's supposed to make you feel guilty about hurting the feelings of men, which are infinitely fragile and prone to much misunderstanding. For instance, when men continue to subjegate those they claim to love, and a woman brazenly points out this modest fact -- well, hearing that terribly unfair false accusation would naturally cause any man much emotional anguish. How dare you. You are phobic. And prejudiced. You man-hater, you.

But you see, I'm not brainwashed. If and only if men ever get around to not subjegating those they claim to love, then and only then would a negative opinion of men as a class ever fit the definition of "gender bias". In the meantime, being pissed as hell is the only reasonable option for sane folks.
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Miska, I believe it's the other way around. Misogyny in real life has bled into on-line comments. It's so easy to spew the hate when you're cloaked in anonymity. It's a free for all.

At my age (I'm a second wave feminist), one would think I wouldn't be so naive. But since I've become really active on the internet, I've been shocked and horrified by some of the things I've read. It makes me angry, but it also makes me sad. Who's raising our boys?

As for responding, I pick and choose. Someone told a rape joke on a message board I go to every day. I called him out. His response was "I didn't think anyone would be offended by that. I'm sorry", the "I'm sorry" being sarcastic. That was bad enough. The responses from other posters were even worse. I was called out for being too sensitive, from men and women. It wasn't just "oh lighten up, Rose". There were posts along the lines of "Poor Rosey, she's so fragile she can't handle one little joke about rape. I'll laugh at anything that's funny. I don't care what the subject is. What's your problem?"

OK, this comment isn't about my fragile feelings. The above is just an example of the kind of stuff that happens in comment sections/discussion threads. I think every one of those people who called me out would have done the exact same thing in real life. The anonymity of the internet just makes it easier.
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I agree that misogyny comes from real life, and then shows up online because of the freedom of anonymous commenting. But I also think that the normalization of openly expressed misogyny in comments is contributing to making misogyny more acceptable to express openly in real life too.

The internet became popular when I was in my teens. Over the course of about 5-7 years I noticed that the young men in my life (classmates, friends, co-workers etc) were becoming more inclined to say incredibly misogynistic things as a matter of course. It was really striking. Before, they would certainly say sexist/misogynist things, but is was much more subtle, and often they would say these things without really realizing they were sexist. Compared to what I was noticing several years later, which was much more deliberate and venomous - rape jokes, dead hooker jokes etc - and not just when out at a bar, but now even in the office for christsakes. I did a lot of thinking about what could be behind this, and one of the biggest changes was the popularization of the net over that time, which has always been saturated with visible misogyny. It was a bit of light-bulb moment when I realized that.

It's just anecdotal, of course (I would love to see a real study). Also, I don't think that internet commenting necessarily causes an increase in misogyny (probably these young men were always making rape jokes amongst themselves), but I do think it may play a role in normalizing unapologetic expressions of misogyny. Rather than keeping misogynistic small-talk as a private thing between each other, young men seem much more inclined to air it out in the open when in general company, and they also seem to expect that women will laugh along too (and sadly, many do).I don't think the internet is the only factor at play, but I can't shake the feeling that it has contributed.
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Yeah, I absolutely get what you're saying. I've had some discussions with people about whether their behavior on the internet has resulted in a change of behavior in real life. A lot of people said that it did. That can a positive or a negative result. For me, it's helped me do a better job of standing up for myself in real life. But it can definitely give raging asshats the attitude that they can say whatever they want about women (or gay people, African-Americans, trans people, etc) and no one will challenge them. It turns into a huge, vicious (and I do mean vicious) cycle. It feeds on itself, for sure.
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So where are all the counter-arguments?

Women have responded over and over and over to those types of comments .... and have finally realized it won't help, so they just ignore it. I'm actually glad to not have to wade through the same converation at every blog.
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I'm the resident feminist at a few blogs. I used to be more willing to point out misogynist comments, but it just happens too often. The result is also fairly predictable, and the thread will turn into a discussion about the subtleties of sexism. I usually get plenty of support on these particular blogs, but it's still the same argument/discussion over and over and it gets old fast. So now I usually just ignore comments that use "pussy" as insult to a man, or that comment on the looks of a woman in a position where men's looks would be ignored, or even the comments that border on slut-shaming. I'll still call out people on blatant misogyny, but it just seems so futile to try to have a useful discussion about subtleties, even when I get support and agreement from other commenters.
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You know, it's not just at feminist blogs or feminist topics. There is a reason I don't read much mainstream commentary online. EVERYTHING is leaking misogyny and I just get so sick of it. If it's not a deliberately woman-friendly space, then forget it.
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I agree catgirl. I end up letting a lot of stuff go, because I'm just banging my head against a brick wall. Unfortunately, that's what they want. They're bullies, and they know if they keep shouting and talking over the people who disagree with them, those in disagreement will eventually give up. Yelling back doesn't help. Trying to have a reasonable discussion doesn't help. I mean, it just turns into a flame war.

I do call out the use of derogatory names for women (no need to repeat them here. I'm sure y'all know what they are). And I find it interesting that the place on which I get the most support is a fashion blog. Quoting Bert Cooper on Mad Men: "One never knows where loyalty in born."
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The response is so formulaic and predictable that continuing to speak up (tho we must!) becomes boring/frustrating.

From Miss Andrea's http://feminazi.wordpress.com/2007/11/26/evolution-of-an-asshat-and-the-power-of-forgiveness%20%20/:
Man says *yawn* I haven’t done anything wrong, what are you talking about, I don’t see a problem, she deserved it, anyway it’s just a joke, grow a thicker skin, the intention wasn’t what you think, I’m not sexist so it’s okay for me to make sexist jokes, aw you know boys will be boys, we’re just having fun, I didn’t mean it that way, you’re reading too much into it, just relax, don’t you have a knitting forum to bitch about this at, you’re too sensitive, you’re ruining my fun, how can I possibly have a conversation about anything and NOT include a reference to woman-as-sextoy, you’re whining again, get over it already, it’s not that bad, it’s really not my problem, other things are worse, explain your problem with the joke again, no I didn’t understand the first time will you explain it again, it’s your job to teach me–not mine, what did you mean by that, men have troubles too, don’t you care about men, why do you hate men, you’re making too much of it, my wife thought the joke was funny, if you’re going to be rude about it then why should I listen to you, you need to say it “this way”, show me some respect whydon’tcha, *cough* for god’s sake I didn’t know it bothered you that much, why didn’t you tell me sooner, why didn’t you say anything when that other guy did it, stand up for yourself, don’t be rude to me when you stand up for yourself–my feelings are important too! Hey! this stuff bothers women, and it’s harmful! Who knew? *shug* I’m such a great guy for figuring this out on my own! Come back here and lets be friends! Don’t hold a grudge, make sure you forgive – like I always have! I’m not mad at you honey so you better not be mad at me or else I’ll backslide… You just better behave YOURSELF TOO.
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Damn, wish I'd seen this before I started trying to call out one of my ex-friends. Though he skipped the "I'm just having fun" bits we got to the blue bit and I gave up.
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Glad you like that. I was thinking when I made it that the words would look nice in a rainbow arch, with discretely humping unicorns and flaming castles etc faded into the background. Perfect for a poster and given away to schools for Women's History month. They'll take whatever free resources they can get and not notice it's subversive.
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The problem with responding to the crap is that, at some point, you have to decide where you're going to put your energies: into fighting a losing battle with scumbags, or living your life.

One fantasy I've had is, rather than actually posting counter-arguments, simply keeping running count of sexist or misogynistic comments and responding to each such comment with the current count.

-- On another note:

I don't think the problem with comment threads is only that they are so anonymous. Another thing is the asymmetry between bloggers and commenters, which is a lot like celebrities and their fans. The celebrity/blogger is, so to speak, visible all the time. Commenters only "exist" to the extent they comment, and what's more, other commenters pay less attention to other people's comments than they do to the blog post -- or to the responses to their own comments. So, if you're a commenter, how do you get people to look at your comment? You could spend a lot of time and say something new and insightful (and maybe get ignored, anyway.) Or you could just post something that will get people going, either positively or negatively. I think this encourages commenters to say more extreme things than they would in a more one-on-one setting.

I say this because I'm involved in a mostly-male on-line group, but it's not a blog. Any member can post or respond, and threads go pretty much anywhere people take them. It is also small enough that most of the posters there know each other. It's interesting to see how people have grown and changed. (I found out recently that some of the moderators have been helping some of the more difficult posters with their social skills.) There's no shortage of misogynistic and sexist attitudes, but there are also some fairly enlightened folks, too, and over time, people are expressing less and less misogyny. I think the fact that posters know that other people know who they are and know their history makes a big difference.
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Yay progress. I like the count idea :D
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Thank you for writing this. It does make a difference.
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It occurs to me from time to time that it doesn’t help, at all, that the majority of anti-feminist motivation derives from the also-interesting belief that women are moral paragons. And not so much because they’re naturally more moral, tidy, and virtuous but because (the belief goes) men are animals who would lick their butts the way dogs do if they could only reach them, and who would drink out of toilets too but for the memory of their moms steering them towards rightness. With the result that every flaw in any man’s character, including their own, “just goes to show” while any hint of clay in a woman’s feet becomes ZOMG!!!THEMBETRAYINGBICHESAREDRIVINGSOCIETYTORUIN!!!!!

Sigh.

It’s as if they see their “policing” of women as proof of their own desperate need to be lifted out of the sewer. Which they don’t recognize they actually occupy by choice.
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This exactly. Every time I hear "but men just can't help themselves" or "I'm a man, what do you expect" or "boys will be boys" type comments I want to scream. I know many men that do not do these "typical" "manly" things, and it is because of them that I have a good opinion of men and know what men really are capable of.
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Figleaf, that is partly true. The corollary is the belief that only "good women" deserve not to be treated badly, so discussions very often veer into all the ways women are not good and that somehow means that gender equality is not necessary. The supposed moral superiority of women was a Victorian weapon of some feminists because that was all that seemed available then, I guess. It was completely centered on middle-class and upper-class women at home, the ones Virginia Woolf (I think) called "the angels in the house." If a woman is not an angel that somehow neutralizes everything.
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The corollary is the belief that only "good women" deserve not to be treated badly

Exactly, and who gets to decide which women are "good"? Men--on a case-by-case, moment-to-moment basis. Your "good" status can be revoked by any man at any time, apparently.
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It isn't really any different from meat space. It isn't possible to be female in public without being the target of men expressing hatred and contempt.
Reading a thread is about the same as walking a city street. You say hello or nod to the peeps you know and ignore the bullies on the corner who consider harrassment a sport.

When it gets too intense or the wrong person is abused the cops make the bullies move on to another corner or the blog mods tell the bullies to knock it off.
Do you recall the change in the comment threads at Digby's when she admitted to the crime of being a woman in public?

Crooks and Liars is an example of what happens over time when a blog owner doesn't have a problem with expressions of hatred and contempt in the threads.

The threads there used to be full of interesting discussions with the occasional misogynist troll or hateful rant. By the time I stopped reading and commenting in the spring of 2008 it had become just another "liberal" boys hate fest. I don't know what it is now.

I think the blog threads are a reflection of society that magnifies and reflects and influences society.

"But one might think that articles with feminist content should be equally attractive to feminists. So where are all the counter-arguments?"

Just like in meat space, when you can't be heard over the din of hecklers you roll your eyes and go where peeps are discussing the issue instead of "supping from the delicoius chum bucket of outrage".

Places remarkably exactly like this place!
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I think that misogynistic comments come from a different part of the brain than counterarguments against them would come from. I read that lizard brain "hypostatizes" meaning, which I understand to mean, lizard brain thinks in stereotypes. Elsewhere I read that it also processes rage. It is not that one does not wish to 'argue' with this type of 'reasoning', therefore, but that one simply cannot. Not by using the reasoning facilities of the higher mind.

When a feminist like me tries to reason with this lower level thinking about gender and identity, it doesn't get through. The message that is heard is rather: "Women are not bad; men are bad!" (ie. all that gets through to people who 'think' in this way is a simple reversal -- and that is despite the fact that I might have presented a very nuance argument that was nothing of the sort!)

So women know how pointless/tiring it is to try to argue in this way, and they let various comments stand (not realising, perhaps, that uneducated folks whose thinking may not be so regressive, are taking it all in, and viewing the misogynistic statements seriously.)
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"So women know how pointless/tiring it is to try to argue in this way"
As has anyone who ever tried arguing with a creationist, all of which operate on pretty much the same principles...
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Your comment is chilling, and indicates the incredible difficulty behind combating any form prejudice with some sort of rational process. I've never quite heard it expressed in this way. Thank you for pointing this out. If this is the science, what should be the way forward for social action.
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That's a good point, Jennifer. So to address any of the misogynists one must first make them move to a different part of the brain.
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Yes, and what was it that Jennifer helped me to figure out on her blog? (Computer ate my reply over there.) It all stems from a basic insecurity, and yet, trying to help them feel more secure doesn't really work, because it turns out that their insecurity is a black-hole that no amount of bolstering their self esteem will ever fill it. So it's just a waste of time and energy.

Isn't she frickin' brilliant? Smile I think it may take a lizard to fight a lizard, though... Scramble their cognitive dissonance so hard their brain spins out of it's flight pattern.
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I don't usually read comments – nevermind leave them – but you've inspired me to do a logic-and-run on a 'women cause street harrasment by encouraging it somehow' logic fail on another blog. I will try to make more of an effort in the future, although I find it quite scary!
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I admit that I like to argue with stupid misogynist trolls on comment threads. But usually they outlast me. I eventually move on while they keep repeating themselves. It is worth it though. I often find that someone on the thread (usually a woman who hasn't really thought deeply about this stuff before) will admit to having a lightbulb moment -- and there may be more people who have the lightbulb moment without necessarily saying so on the thread. So it is worthwhile to respond to this stuff. Even if the misogynist doesn't get it, other readers might.
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I've had some pleasant surprises from men on some sites where I've actually written a feminist rant and gotten agreement from them. Depends on the site. Anything more mainstream will bring a ton of misogyny. Women have commented that they didn't realize how badly men think of them til they went on the web. I know of some radical feminist sites that have been shut down by spam wars and vicious threats.

So its not very safe for women to really express themselves and too many men do hate women thats why they rape them, batter them and sell them as sex slaves. Thats a given. The problem is women keep to their training to be ever so nice as if that has ever gotten us anywhere. I've been told by the member of the Women's Rape Crisis Center which was Women Against Rape when a group I was part of organized it..."that we don't go screaming in the streets anymore" Well that's very nice but rape is epidiemic. Dr. Tiller's killer is being allowed to use the necessity defense, the Democrats don't care about women's issues and the Repubs would have us perpetually barefoot and pregnant as long as they didn't have to pay for it. So I think the time has come again for women to make a much bigger fuss. Believe me I was there it is only an energized fierce women's movement that has gotten us anything. Stop being good girls, nice girls as you were trained to do by patriarchy for their benefit.
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I was thinking about this thread earlier and thought that the idea of a standard comment would be great, one which we could keep on our desktops and just insert into any thread which has a lot of misogyny. It could be formulated to be very polite, to have some global statistics on the plight of women and some U.S. statistics, and to point out why misogyny is a horrible and cowardly thing, especially when done while hiding behind anonymity. For best results, the standard comment (or comments, there could be a few by area) should be shared so that they'd become familiar over time.
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The Standard Comment is a great idea! Headed or sig-ed by some label which would become recognized. If we all urged others to join in using it, it would hit like a "splat" and yet take on an impersonal quality, like "Error Message".
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If we could just get an Error Message to actually pop up -- on the offender's computer AND on the thread for all to see ...

''ERROR. Terminal Misogyny. User Fails.''
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I'm going to think about what such a standard comment should say and urge you to do the same. There might be one for MRA stuff, one for sexual harassment type of stuff and one for economic lies, say.

When a woman goes to court …

2009-12-31T11:52:00.002-06:00

" ... he went to church every week, ... "

... but ...

"much more often than not ... "

NATURE: any year, any century, any millennium, ANY TIME

2009-12-31T11:20:00.006-06:00

NATURE observes ITS OWN ( ... NON - calendar - ... ) TIME. And TIMING.

As do, in TRUTH, ... NATURE's mamas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZvLEcwM-1M

“ … the Man in the Sky – forbid! ”

2009-11-25T12:55:00.011-06:00

"... the Man in the Sky - forbid!"

.––. Anna McDoogles’ mama, The Invention of Lying, 2009

Check out http://evolvefish.com/fish/buttons.html#4221 for all of your Winter Solstice's christ - less, shopping - less statements and http://ffrf.org/books/wws/wwsquotes.php as well as http://www.ffrf.org/news/2009/seattlebus.php for those, now and before, freethinkingly ... like - minded.

“ … yet again, … another National Day of Mourning …”

2009-11-24T10:33:00.002-06:00

"Some ask us: 'Will you ever stop protesting?'

Some day we will stop protesting: We will stop protesting when the merchants of Plymouth are no longer making millions of dollars off the blood of our slaughtered ancestors. We will stop protesting when we can act as sovereign nations on our own land without the interference of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and what Sitting Bull called the "favorite ration chiefs." When corporations stop polluting Our Mother, the Earth. When racism has been eradicated. When the oppression of two – spirited people is a thing of the past. We will stop protesting when homeless people have homes and no child goes to bed hungry. When police brutality no longer exists in communities of color. We will stop protesting when Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal and and the Puerto Rican independentistas and all the political prisoners are free.

Until then, the struggle will continue."
–- Moonanum James, UNAINE, 26 November 1998

“ … the PREDATORY nature of the DOMINANT culture … ignores the history or attacks those who make the arguments … ”

2009-11-18T15:58:00.004-06:00

How I stopped hating Thanksgiving and learned to be afraid

by Robert Jensen

I have stopped hating Thanksgiving and learned to be afraid of the holiday.

Over the past few years a growing number of white people have joined the longstanding indigenous people’s critique of the holocaust denial that is at the heart of the Thanksgiving holiday. In two recent essays I have examined the disturbing nature of a holiday rooted in a celebration of the European conquest of the Americas, which means the celebration of the Europeans’ genocidal campaign against indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States.
http://www.alternet.org/story/44661/no_thanks_to_thanksgiving/
http://www.alternet.org/story/68170/why_we_shouldn%27t_celebrate_thanksgiving/
Many similar pieces have been published in predominantly white left/progressive media, while indigenous people continue to mark the holiday as a “National Day of Mourning” (http://www.uaine.org/).

In recent years I have refused to participate in Thanksgiving Day meals, even with friends and family who share this critical analysis and reject the national mythology around manifest destiny. In bowing out of those gatherings, I would often tell folks that I hated Thanksgiving. I realize now that “hate” is the wrong word to describe my emotional reaction to the holiday. I am afraid of Thanksgiving. More accurately, I am afraid of what Thanksgiving tells us about both the dominant culture and much of the alleged counterculture.

Here’s what I think it tells us: As a society, the United States is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt. This is a society in which even progressive people routinely allow national and family traditions to trump fundamental human decency. It’s a society in which, in the privileged sectors, getting along and not causing trouble are often valued above honesty and accountability. Though it’s painful to consider, it’s possible that such a society is beyond redemption. Such a consideration becomes frightening when we recognize that all this goes on in the most affluent and militarily powerful country in the history of the world, but a country that is falling apart -- an empire in decline.

Thanksgiving should teach us all to be afraid.

Although it’s well known to anyone who wants to know, let me summarize the argument against Thanksgiving: European invaders exterminated nearly the entire indigenous population to create the United States. Without that holocaust, the United States as we know it would not exist. The United States celebrates a Thanksgiving Day holiday dominated not by atonement for that horrendous crime against humanity but by a falsified account of the “encounter” between Europeans and American Indians. When confronted with this, most people in the United States (outside of indigenous communities) ignore the history or attack those who make the argument. This is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.

In left/radical circles, even though that basic critique is widely accepted, a relatively small number of people argue that we should renounce the holiday and refuse to celebrate it in any fashion. Most leftists who celebrate Thanksgiving claim that they can individually redefine the holiday in a politically progressive fashion in private, which is an illusory dodge: We don’t define holidays individually or privately -- the idea of a holiday is rooted in its collective, shared meaning. When the dominant culture defines a holiday in a certain fashion, one can’t pretend to redefine it in private. To pretend we can do that also is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.

I press these points with no sense of moral superiority. For many years I didn’t give these questions a thought, and for some years after that I sat sullenly at Thanksgiving dinners, unwilling to raise my voice. For the past few years I’ve spent the day alone, which was less stressful for me personally (and, probably, less stressful for people around me) but had no political effect. This year I’ve avoided the issue by accepting a speaking invitation in Canada, taking myself out of the country on that day. But that feels like a cheap resolution, again with no political effect in the United States.

The next step for me is to seek creative ways to use the tension around this holiday for political purposes, to highlight the white-supremacist and predatory nature of the dominant culture, then and now. Is it possible to find a way to bring people together in public to contest the values of the dominant culture? How can those of us who want to reject that dominant culture meet our intellectual, political, and moral obligations? How can we act righteously without slipping into self-righteousness? What strategies create the most expansive space possible for honest engagement with others?

Along with allies in Austin, I’ve struggled with the question of how to create an alternative public event that could contribute to a more honest accounting of the American holocausts in the past (not only the indigenous genocide, but African slavery) and present (the murderous U.S. assault on the developing world, especially in the past six decades, in places such as Vietnam and Iraq).

Some have suggested an educational event, bringing in speakers to talk about those holocausts. Others have suggested a gathering focused on atonement. Should the event be more political or more spiritual? Perhaps some combination of methods and goals is possible.

However we decide to proceed, we can’t ignore the ugly ideological realities of the holiday. My fear of those realities is appropriate but facing reality need not leave us paralyzed by fear; instead it can help us understand the contours of the multiple crises -- economic and ecological, political and cultural -- that we face. The challenge is to channel our fear into action. I hope that next year I will find a way to take another step toward a more meaningful honoring of our intellectual, political, and moral obligations.

As we approach Thanksgiving Day, I’m eager to hear about the successful strategies of others. For such advice, I would be thankful.

----------------------

Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism of the University of Texas at Austin and a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center, http://thirdcoastactivist.org/. His latest book is All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Soft Skull Press, 2009). His film, “Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing,” has been released by the Media Education Foundation. http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=141

Jensen also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). His articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.

“If you feel overwhelmed, it’s because we face an overwhelming situation.”

2009-11-01T10:02:00.007-06:00

"If you feel overwhelmed, it’s because we face an overwhelming situation."
An interview with Robert Jensen on war, ecological crises, and the quest for justice

excerpt: "CS: If we were to inevitably make this transition, or at least in the process of making it, do you believe that there will be restoration of matriarchal values?

RJ: I don’t think it’s about matriarchy versus patriarchy. Patriarchy is a system that emerged in the last 8,000 to 10,000 years, and it imposed systems of hierarchy, not just around gender but around other differences as well, and we are still trying to get out from under those. If we succeed in that -- if we succeed in realizing that power does not come only with the ability to control other people, that power comes in the creative potential of human collaboration, it can come in non-hierarchical ways to organize ourselves -- it doesn’t mean obviously that there will be a matriarchy, if by that we mean a world in which women dominate. It means that we move into a real space where mutuality and egalitarian values can reign.

What will that look like? I don’t know. If we were to magically get there in my lifetime I couldn’t begin to imagine what it would look like. I know that it won’t look much like the institutions I live in today -- it won’t look like the modern corporation, it won’t look like the modern nation-state, it won’t look like the modern University. But you don’t really predict those things, you try to live them. And you live them in small steps, not in some grand utopian fantasy."

by Calvin Sloan

The following is an edited transcript of an interview conducted for the KVRX radio show "The Pursuit of Injustice." The podcast can be streamed or downloaded at http://www.divshare.com/download/9029846-04a
An early version was published by Energy Bulletin, 30 October 2009. http://energybulletin.net/50523

CS: So to start off, let's address some topical issues. The war in Afghanistan has been described in the mainstream media as America's good war and as the cornerstone of the "War on Terror." President Obama is currently debating an increase in troop levels there. He's already sent an additional 21,000 since taking office, and as the Washington Post recently reported, has been deploying without public announcement 13,000 additional troops. You've been an outspoken critic of the war since its inception, what is your take on the current situation there?

RJ: I think any assessment of the current situation has to remember that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was illegal. The United States invaded the country with no legal authorization. It claimed the right to do this because of the relationship between the governing Taliban and Al Qaeda and the events of 9/11, but there were many ways that the United States could have pursued a just solution to the question of the terrorism of 9/11.

So, why would it pursue an illegal and, I would argue, immoral invasion? Here we have to remember that U.S. military interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia, whatever the stated reason for them, are really about energy resources. The Middle East especially is home to the most extensive reserves of petroleum. There's a lot of natural gas in Central Asia, plus it has geostrategic importance. So let's get rid of the idea that this is about the "War on Terror." Does the United States want to end terrorist attacks against Americans? Sure, but that doesn't mean that this particular war is a war on terrorism. We also should remember the phrase is a bad joke, that terrorism is a method by which people try to achieve political goals. You don't have a war on a method. If you're going to make war, you're making war for specific purposes against specific people in specific places, and the "War on Terror" is simply way too obscure for that.

So with all of that background, if the United States were to pursue a just and legal path it would begin a withdrawal from Afghanistan, pay the reparations it owes to the people of Afghanistan, and attempt to work with the appropriate regional and international organizations to try to help Afghanistan transition to a decent government. The United States has no intention of doing that.

So, the proposed buildup in Afghanistan is not only immoral, it’s not only fundamentally unjust, it’s also incredibly stupid. On all counts, anyway you want to evaluate this, the United States is making crucial errors.

The fact that Barack Obama, the alleged peace candidate in the last election, is willing to pursue this just reminds us of the limits of contemporary mainstream electoral politics with a choice reduced to Republicans and Democrats. What we should be thinking about is the whole structure of, and motivation behind, our involvement in the Middle East and Central Asia, and we should also be rethinking the whole structure of our political discourse at home.

CS: So if this is by all means a stupid endeavor to continue this occupation, why are we doing this? Who is profiting from this? What are the underlying motivations of our occupation?

RJ: Remember that just because people in power might be corrupt and immoral doesn’t mean they’re always competent in pursuing that corruption. If you look back at probably the most grotesque U.S. intervention in the post World War II period, the Vietnam War, there were corrupt and immoral reasons the United States invaded Vietnam -- mostly to undermine independent development and try to dominate the third world -- but in trying to carry out those objectives there were a lot of incompetent decisions made. And sometimes incompetence compounds itself, so as you get further and further into a set of bad strategic decisions, there is an instinct to want to rescue them, but unfortunately it often leads to even more bad strategic decisions.

So, why are we doing it? Well, there’s a certain amount of irrationality to these strategic decision making, even though it’s in the pursuit of a rational -- albeit I would say immoral -- goal, which is to dominate the Middle East and Central Asia. Why are we doing it? Are there profit motivations for private contractors, who are making a killing? Sure. Are there oil companies and gas companies that want concessions? Sure. There are always those things, but I think that the driving force behind U.S. foreign policy tends not to be the interest of any particular industry or any particular set of contractors, but the fact that the whole system is designed to perpetuate this quest for dominance. And those other factors, like the interests of Blackwater (which has changed its name to Xe Services) or ExxonMobil, just contribute to the motive force behind the policy more generally.

CS: So here we are in 2009, and we’ve entered the ninth year of the war in Afghanistan and we’ve similarly occupied Iraq since 2003, yet when you look around it’s hard to notice that we’re running on a war economy. It’s become so normalized, and from a student’s perspective it’s interesting to note that the majority of undergraduates across the country have spent all of their high school and college careers with our nation at war.

And my question is, how do you think history will judge this perpetual war? Do you believe we’ve entered into Orwell’s 1984 realm, are we living in a society where war has officially become peace?

RJ: I don’t think we have to wait for history to judge it. I think we can assess it today and it’s pretty straight forward. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was illegal. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was a cover for other interests, and that’s all doubly true with the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The whole project is corrupt beyond description. Yet, the propaganda industries, not just the propaganda emanating from the government, but the propaganda industries -- advertising, entertainment, journalism -- are all perpetuating this crazed interpretation of the War on Terror, because they all have an interest in doing that. They are all ideologically connected to the same project.

And yes, it’s Orwellian in that sense, it’s corrupt, it’s immoral, it’s illegal, it’s all these things that we’re talking about, and we don’t have to wait for history 30 years from now to make that judgment. What we have to do is recognize it, and try to organize against it. But I think what we should be doing is not just opposing this war but recognizing that the disease from which this war springs is more deeply set in the culture than ever before.

You can clearly see that on a college campus. Remember that when the United States invaded and began to destroy Vietnam, the opposition to that war started, and was always strongest, on college campuses. There was a kind of “natural,” if you’ll accept the term, resistance from students to that imposition of power from above.

Well in some sense, campuses are the most passive places when it comes to anti-war activity today. To the degree that there is an anti-war movement, it’s mostly rooted in the community. So, that tells us something about what’s happened in universities, the way universities have been turned toward a more corporate and ideologically neutered position, though campuses could potentially be centers of opposition, resistance, and struggle. Well, that’s about not just the war, that’s about what’s happened to American higher education, the corporatization of higher education.

In other words, the war is an indicator not just of the depravity of the war-makers, it’s a very important indicator of what’s going on in society more generally. And about that, I’m terrified. The direction the whole culture is heading is very scary. It’s an imperial culture in decline. The United States remains the most powerful country in the world, at least in raw military terms. It remains the largest economy in the world. But it’s an affluent imperial society in decline, and such a society is very dangerous. I think we should be paying attention not only to what these wars tell us about foreign policy and military affairs, but also what they tell us about our society at a much deeper level.

CS: So are you saying that the universities aren’t actually free? Do you think that that’s affected by the politics of tenure and publishing grants?

RJ: It’s affected by the structure of financing, it’s affected by the rewards and punishments that faculty members respond to in building careers. For students, it’s about the economy that the students are going into, and how students are conditioned to believe that college is career training. It’s about trying to create the University as an allegedly politically neutral space, but of course any time you talk about political neutrality what you’re talking about is de facto support for the existing distribution of power. All of these things are part of it, and we should be concerned with it.

Is the University free? Well at some level, obviously yes. Here we are in a University office, I’m a University professor, we’re talking about things that will be on a University radio station. Of course it’s free in that sense, but it’s also a system structured in a way that is going to divert most people from the kind of conversation we’re having. So there are constraints. That’s true of any institution. There are opportunities and freedoms, and then there are constraints. I think what we should be focused on -- whether we’re talking about the Universities or the media or any of the other intellectual institution -- is how the freedom that exists on the surface is often masking a deeper kind of pressure toward conformity, a conformity that’s not enforced through the barrel of a gun, as in a totalitarian society, but a conformity that’s enforced in a much more complex, and in some a ways a much more effective, fashion, through the rewards and the punishments we’re talking about.

CS: I’d like to move on to your most recently published article entitled “Is Obama a Socialist?” In this article you express a deep concern for our evolving ecological crisis, specifically I’d like to refer to the following statement: “Capitalism is an economic system based on the concept of unlimited growth, yet we live on a finite planet. Capitalism is, quite literally, crazy.” Can you explain this concept further to us?

RJ: For most of the past couple hundred years, we’ve been living really in a rather unique historical moment. First of all it’s a moment made possible by unleashing the enormous energy of coal, oil, and natural gas, the fossil fuels. That’s a blip in human history. There’s never been energy like that available to human beings before, and we’re quickly running out of it. So, all of this bonanza of consumption and material comfort is really subsidized by that energy source, and there is nothing on the horizon to replace it. All of the talk of alternative fuels and biofuels and wind and solar, that’s fine, they are all going to supply some energy, but they are not going to replace the energy we’ve been using from coal, oil, and natural gas.

The explosion of this energy is also the time in which modern industrial capitalism has emerged. It’s all based on a fantasy that is easy to understand because of all that energy. It did look like we could simply grow endlessly. But the ecological crises, and I use the plural quite specifically -- multiple crises, not just global warming but levels of toxicity in the air, water, loss of top soil, the reduction in biodiversity -- are part of a global pattern that is uncontroversial: We are reaching, and probably are long beyond, the carrying capacity of the planet, and we are drawing down the ecological capital of the planet at a rate that is increasingly threatening, not just centuries from now, but likely in decades.

That’s all part of an era in which capitalism led us to believe we could have unlimited growth. It’s a crazy claim, and more striking is that it is a crazy claim that is considered to be the conventional wisdom. This is the kind of thing we should be worried about. We’re not having a debate about capitalism in this country -- there’s no debate for the most part in the mainstream. Capitalism is taken to be the only way to organize an economy, yet it is a system of organizing an economy that is literally crazy. Well, if that doesn’t scare people, then I don’t know what will.

CS: If you are implying that if we are at a level of overreach, that there will be, that we might reach a population crash?

RJ: I think it’s inevitable. Ecological overshoot is the key concept. The planet has a carrying capacity. The planet can host only so many human beings, depending on the level at which we live. I’m not a scientist, I’m not an ecologist, I’m not trained in any of this, but reading people whose judgment I trust, and trying to synthesize the information that I can, my judgment is that we’re probably well past the carrying capacity of the planet already.

And at the level of first-world consumption, we are dramatically past the carrying capacity. That is, if you are going to expand this high energy consumption and lifestyle of the first world to the whole planet, it would be game-over tomorrow. If everybody in the world lived like you and I live, the planet would literally die tomorrow. So the only reason we can continue this system is the fact that a good portion of the world’s population is living at a dramatically lower level than we are. Even at that level, I don’t think that the world can support this many people. So we’re in a position of overshoot.

When is the crash going to come? Well in some sense the answer is it’s already here. You have half the world’s population living on less than $2.50 a day, you have hundreds of people dying every hour in Africa from easily preventable diseases, you have the beginnings of ecological crises that are manifesting themselves not only in the reduction of biodiversity but in the direct threat to human life.

When is all of this going to come crashing? Well I don’t know, because I don’t have a crystal ball and no one else does. The question shouldn’t be when can you predict all of this is going to fall apart. More important is the recognition that it inevitably will fall apart, and we should prepare for it, in both physical terms and moral terms. My own view is that, if not in my lifetime certainly in yours, there will be a massive human die-off. That’s an antiseptic term -- it means that millions upon millions of people will die in large sweeps across the planet. What do we do about that morally? What do you do if you’re living in a world in which you know that simply by virtue of the luck of where you were born, you are protected from a scourge that is literally killing millions around the planet?

Well we’re seeing small examples of that today with such things as the devastation from easily preventable diseases in Africa for instance, but what if that happens on a massive scale? I don’t think the human species has a way to cope with that. We’re not ready physically, technologically, but we’re also not ready morally. And the only way you get ready for that is by openly discussing it, but it’s still a culture that cannot come to terms with this. Everything we’re talking about today would have been unthinkable as subjects for the presidential election. No candidate could talk like this and expect to be elected, because the culture is still in such deep denial about the fundamentally unsustainable nature of our economic system and the moral implications of that.

CS: How do you think nation-states will respond to these collapse scenarios?

RJ: First of all I think we should recognize nation-states are not inevitable for the rest of human history. My own view is that were going to end up finding other ways to organize ourselves politically, because the nation-state is at the center of so much of this destruction.

How will people respond? Well I think a lot of that has to do with how the most powerful nations respond. Remember that one of the aspects of being the most affluent and militarily powerful countries on the planet is that what you do matters a lot. You can continue to pursue insane strategies in a crazy system, or you can tell the truth. And if powerful countries tell the truth, start to actively reduce their energy and other material consumption, start to take seriously the demands of justice in equalizing the distribution of wealth around the world, give up on fantasies of control and domination, well that would have a huge effect.

The developing world, which clearly doesn’t trust us and shouldn’t trust us, might be able to move into a posture of more cooperation. Democratic movements within those countries might strengthen when they know there is in fact a commitment from the powerful states to real law, real democracy, real justice, real moral principles. Well, all of that is possible. It’s not a guarantee of success. We could do everything we can imagine in the realm of just and sustainable policies and still fail. The human species does not have some magic guarantee of endless success. Other species have come and gone, and it’s quite possible -- in fact, I would argue it’s probably likely -- we're going to go that way relatively soon. And people always say, well that’s a rather depressing fact. Well, if it’s a fact, it’s a fact, but of course there’s no way to know for sure, and we can struggle to create a different future, without guarantees.

But even if it does seem to be our future, what of the time we are here? I think part of what makes one fully human is to resist that, to struggle, even with no guarantee of success. And that’s where I put my faith. Maybe it’s a faith that is going to be betrayed, but I don’t see any better option at the moment.

CS: If we were to inevitably make this transition, or at least in the process of making it, do you believe that there will be restoration of matriarchal values?

RJ: I don’t think it’s about matriarchy versus patriarchy. Patriarchy is a system that emerged in the last 8,000 to 10,000 years, and it imposed systems of hierarchy, not just around gender but around other differences as well, and we are still trying to get out from under those. If we succeed in that -- if we succeed in realizing that power does not come only with the ability to control other people, that power comes in the creative potential of human collaboration, it can come in non-hierarchical ways to organize ourselves -- it doesn’t mean obviously that there will be a matriarchy, if by that we mean a world in which women dominate. It means that we move into a real space where mutuality and egalitarian values can reign.

What will that look like? I don’t know. If we were to magically get there in my lifetime I couldn’t begin to imagine what it would look like. I know that it won’t look much like the institutions I live in today -- it won’t look like the modern corporation, it won’t look like the modern nation-state, it won’t look like the modern University. But you don’t really predict those things, you try to live them. And you live them in small steps, not in some grand utopian fantasy.

CS: Given our trajectory towards this cliff, this ecological cliff, should college students be rethinking their career choices? Are we being trained properly?

RJ: Reality is going to force college students to reconsider career choices, when certain assumptions will no longer hold. The most important thing that Universities could do right now is be laboratories for experiments outside of the dominant system, which is exactly what we’re not doing.

What we’re doing is still training people to be rats in a maze. Well, what if we said, the maze is over. For now, the maze may still exist out in the world, but we’re going to spend four years here going beyond the maze, and your job as a student, and your job as a faculty member, is to experiment with alternatives. That would mean a dramatically different curriculum, that would mean a dramatically different classroom.

I would like to see that happen. In journalism education, the collapse of the commercial journalism industry -- the fact that there are fewer jobs for our students in the traditional journalism institutions -- gives us a kind of opportunity. It’s a disaster at one level, in that the way we’ve done things no longer works, but it’s also an opportunity to reshape those methods.

In my own experience, there is a lot of resistance to that kind of change, because it is kind of frightening. If you’ve been doing something on a model that in the past has worked, or at least appeared to work, and now people are saying that model is over, well it’s not exactly easy to jump to that position where everything is up for grabs. But that’s what Universities should be doing. Unfortunately, not only in journalism but in the University at large, I think there is a distinct lack of that spirit. There is an attempt to kind of hunker down, and make this model work, but I don’t think the model can work. I don’t think it ever worked for real education, but it’s certainly not going to work in a dramatically changing landscape.

CS: What advice do you offer UT students, or just to activists of all ages, who want to participate, want to fight the system, but feel overwhelmed by its strength?

RJ: If you feel overwhelmed, let’s recognize that that’s a rational response. If you feel overwhelmed, it’s because we face an overwhelming situation. We’re facing a collapse economically, a collapse of U.S. power around the world, and ecological crises that defy the imagination. Well that is overwhelming. But we should also look at history and realize that this is not the first time the world has appeared to be on the brink, and people didn’t lie down and die in the past. People organized, people committed to long-term projects to create a different future, and we can still do that.

In my case, I’ve moved toward a focus on helping to build local community networks and institutions that can help people explore other alternatives. One of the groups in Austin I’ve connected with is the Workers Defense Project (http://www.workersdefense.org/), a wonderful group that helps immigrant workers, especially undocumented immigrant workers, who are vulnerable to exploitation by employers. Through that work it offers a critique of the underlying power structure and a vehicle for people to build the power to change things. It’s really inspiring.

If we’re going to be effective, we’ve got to dig in for the long haul. There’s a paradox in all this. We may feel the crisis is more urgent then ever -- and I do feel that, more than ever -- but we have to recognize there’s no short-term solution, and we have to dig in for the long haul. That might be difficult, but it’s the only way I can see us moving forward.

----------------------

Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism of the University of Texas at Austin and a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center, http://thirdcoastactivist.org/. His latest book is All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Soft Skull Press, 2009). His film, “Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing,” has been released by the Media Education Foundation. http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=141

Jensen also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002).

He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html .

blondesense

2009-10-17T14:43:00.007-05:00

Poetess Eve Merriam:
"I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, 'Mommy, what was war?' "

“I actually do read male authored works oooonce in a loooong view while.”

2009-10-17T11:47:00.009-05:00

Great - Great - Grandma Adeline Baach Maas, 1896 - 1985, had three cherry trees to the north side of her wraparound porch and front yard. Out along the country dirt road, these swayed: one of only a very few memories I own ... of her homeplace farm.

She ... a woman 98 pounds total -- maybe -- of which about four of them were spent up in the six inch - wide brim of her massive black, wool - felt hat with on its left the huuuuuge red rose which she always wore ... when dressed to the nines.

Adeline Baach was born in 1896, the same year as the writing and publication of Englishman (Alfred Edward) A E Housman's poem of below:

LOVELIEST OF TREES, THE CHERRY NOW

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, for my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

thebondbetweenmotherandchild

2009-10-11T08:49:00.005-05:00

APA: The Bond Between Mother and Child

Without a secure motherly attachment, children’s bodies activate a stress reaction to unexpected events.

By Beth Azar
Monitor staff

With the cutting of the umbilical cord, physical attachment to our mothers ends and emotional and psychological attachment begins. While the first attachment provides everything we need to thrive inside the womb, many psychologists believe the second attachment provides the psychological foundation and maybe even the social and physical buffer we need to thrive in the world.

Psychologists’ research shows that the quality of care infants receive affects how they later get along with friends, how well they do in school and how they react to new, and possibly stressful, situations.

The psychological construct of attachment, developed in the late 1950s, describes how babies become attached to their primary-care giver, usually their mothers. Securely attached babies consider ‘Mom’ a safe base from which to explore their environment.

They gain assurance from her presence and use her as a source of comfort when they are distressed or upset. Insecurely attached babies seek comfort from their mothers, but gain less assurance from her.

Attachments infants and children form with other primary-care providers also affect a child’s development, research shows. The nature and impact of such attachments have become a focus for researchers interested in the increase in daycare for very young children.
Social development

Many researchers have found correlations between secure mother-infant attachment and later psychological and social development. Infants who securely attach to their mothers become more self-reliant toddlers and have a better sense of self-esteem, said Alan Sroufe, PhD, an attachment researcher at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota.He’s been following a group of 180 disadvantaged children-now age 19-since before birth, looking at mother-infant attachment and multiple developmental measures such as the kids’ expectations from relationships with parents and friends. He’s also looking at the children’s life stress, success in school and peer relationships.

Sroufe has found that even though these children lead unstable lives, if they had a secure mother-infant attachment they were likely to be self-reliant into adolescence, have lower rates of psychopathology, enjoy successful peer relationships through age 16 and do well in school-especially in math-at all ages.

Sroufe doesn’t think infant attachment affects aptitude, but he believes it affects confidence, attitude and, subsequently, attendance and achievement.

His sample has more life stress and less social support than the average, middle-class samples most researchers study. He’s found that this stress-including instability and loss-can deflect even the most positive life course.

‘Kids who had secure attachment histories but suffer losses will become less secure,’ said Sroufe.

He also found that anxious, poorly attached infants can become more secure if their mothers enter stable love relationships or alleviate their symptoms of depression.
Buffering stress

Secure infant attachment may provide children with a crucial tool for dealing with stress by buffering their physiological reaction to novel or unexpected events, said Megan Gunnar, PhD, of the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota.To test this theory, Gunnar exposes children to mildly stressful events and measures changes in their stress-related hormones. An increase in the hormone cortisol, for example, indicates an extreme stress reaction.

In a recent study now in press, Gunnar, along with her then- graduate student Melissa Nachmias, PhD, and others, exposed 77 18-month-old children to three stimuli that the children could choose to approach or avoid: a live clown, a robot clown and a puppet show. Mothers were always present, but for the first three minutes with each stimulus researchers asked them not to participate. For the second three minutes, researchers told the mothers to try to comfort their children.

After the experiment, researchers measured cortisol levels in the children’s saliva. A week later, the researchers measured mother-child attachment using the ’strange-situation’ test (a commonly used measure of attachment).

As expected, the researchers found no increase in cortisol for children who approached the stimuli without fear. However, cortisol levels for inhibited children, who appeared scared and wouldn’t approach the stimuli, varied depending on their attachments to their mothers. Inhibited children who had secure attachments showed no increase in cortisol while inhibited children with insecure attachments showed an increase.

‘The secure children seemed to be saying, ‘This is scary but I feel safe,” said Gunnar. ‘They had the resources to cope.’

Mothers of more inhibited children differed dramatically in how they responded to their child’s distress. Mothers of socially attached children were able to calm their children immediately. They seemed to have an established history with the child that didn’t require any work.

But mothers with insecure attachments were working hard to get their fearful children to not be fearful, said Gunnar. ‘They seemed to think it was their job to change the child, to make the child look bold.’

In a similar real-life experiment, also in press, Gunnar measured cortisol in about 60 toddlers who received inoculations from a physician. She again found that only fearful, insecure children exhibited increased salivary cortisol.

Secure attachments may act as a buffer against the stress of new, strange or scary events, Gunnar said. Without that buffer, children find it difficult to cope and their bodies activate a stress reaction.
No attachment

And what happens if there is no motherly attachment? Psychobiologist Mary Carlson, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, asked that question when she went to Romania last September to measure cortisol levels in orphans.Many Rumanian mothers can’t afford to care for a newborn, and send their children directly from the hospital maternity wards to orphanages. The children receive little to no physical or emotional stimulation from the caretakers in the orphanages. She worked with two groups of 30 children. As part of another study, one group received enriched care-one adult for four children-for a year, six months prior to Carlson’s visit. The other group received standard 20-child-to-one-adult care the entire time.

On an average day for a typical child, cortisol levels peak in the morning and decrease by the end of the day. In both groups of orphans, however, cortisol levels increased from morning to noon and decreased slightly by evening.
There were slight differences

for the children who received the enriched care, but because it ended six months before Carlson could study them, there’s no way to know if the care had positive effects that then diminished when the children returned to standard care.Rhesus monkeys reared with a ’surrogate mother’ made of a wire frame covered by cloth-a poor mother substitute-demonstrate abnormal cortisol cycling similar to those of the Rumanian orphans, according to experiments by Gunnar and Stephen Suomi, PhD, Thomas Boyce, PhD, and Maribeth Champaux, PhD, at the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development.

Gunnar wanted to know if the monkeys simply cycled improperly, or if it was a matter of ‘no mommy, no attachment, no buffer.’ So, she and her colleagues repeated the experiment, making sure to keep the monkeys’ environment unusually quiet-removing even normal daily movements around the lab. The monkeys produced normal cycles.

For these severely deprived monkeys, any stimulation seems to cause stress; they have no buffer to cope with even normal, daily events, said Gunnar.

These studies show that the most basic biological systems depend on social stimulation early in life, said Carlson. Without it, children lack the foundation to deal with everyday life, let alone trauma and stress.
Beyond the mother

With more children entering daycare, researchers have begun to look beyond mother-infant attachment to primary caregiver attachment, whether it be a mother, father or daycare provider.’If you take the notion that children form attachments from the daily mundane experiences of care-feeding, diaper changing, caressing-you need to look at all the caregivers,’ said Carollee Howes, PhD, at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In a series of studies, Howes found that the attachments children form with their primary caregivers is remarkably similar to the attachments they form with their mothers.

However, secure attachments only occur with 50 percent of caregivers as opposed to 70 percent of mothers. The lower rate of attachment probably reflects the lower quality and closeness of the caregiver relationship, said Howes.

In terms of effect, Howes and her colleagues found that in a group of 48 4-year-olds, attachment to a child-care provider better predicted peer interactions than mother-child attachment. Toddlers with secure attachments to teachers were more gregarious and more likely to engage in pretend play with peers; preschoolers were more sociable. Children with insecure teacher attachments were more hostile, aggressive, antisocial and withdrawn.

‘Attachments are relationships that develop from interactions,’ said Howes. ‘We have to figure out who the caregivers are’ and make sure they’re all competent.

While this is a relief to mothers who want or have to work, it also emphasizes the need for high- quality child care, Howes pointed out.

Many attachment researchers find themselves playing the part of child advocates, they admit. Their research points to the need for social policies that allow mothers to stay home or that require high-quality daycare for all children.

‘Babies need a lot of love and a lot of work, and denying that would be wrong,’ said Sroufe.

Maternal Deprivation

2009-10-03T13:55:00.002-05:00

On one mahaTmA's 140th year after birthing, his quotation in the Prologue of the Mother - Fucking Trilogy, "Even if I am a Minority of One, the Truth is still the Truth."
--- Mohandas K. Gandhi // // http://bluemaas.public.iastate.edu

"Years ago, still small, I lost my mother.
Everyone wept around me,
but I grieved in silence,
Ignorant that to relieve sorrow,
a flood of tears must fall."
--- Thich Nhat Hanh, Viet Nam

[[[from the 20 September 2009 Domestic Violence by Proxy // http://justice.posterous.com

"Some unfortunate women after years of enduring domestic violence have then lost custody to the batterers who abused them. In these cases, batterers have made good on their threat to attack their ex - partner in the place she is the most vulnerable -- by taking her children away from her.

After separation, these batterers continue to wage their campaign of manipulation and abuse by attempting to convince involved children that their mothers never loved them. [thuggishly ... and hourly ... perpetrating the INVISIBILITY of her].

Looking for a way to describe their batterers' behavior, some mothers have called what their batterer is doing "parental alienation syndrome."

"In reality, what these women are describing from their ex - partners is better termed Domestic Violence by Proxy ..." For the article and more information, see: http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/pas/DVP.html
and http://www.thelizlibrary.org/site-index/site-index-frame.html .

Filed under // punishing mother therapeutic jurisprudence
Comments [1]

Recent comments randijames said...
AKA Maternal Deprivation [Syndrome]. Please noncustodial mothers, stop trippin off of pedo "parental alienation syndrome"]]]

http://echidne-of-the-snakes.com

2009-09-26T10:45:00.003-05:00

[from the Snakes' Echidne and her Posse this week:
" ... as the mother of 3 boys ... "

"What if you grow up believing that women should enjoy sperm in their eyes, to be sexual beings?"]

On Porn, Sex And Pincushions

It has been much on my mind because the recent let's-bash-women happiness study did not analyze the impact of the enormous increase on Internet porn on women's and men's happiness gap. And because of something Amanda (from whom I stole that pincushion part in the title) at Pandagon wrote recently:

With that in mind, I want to link this excellent post by Becky Sharper, who has a wonderful sense of irreverence in the face of people who are going to give you the least generous read imaginable when you suggest that perhaps porn isn't all roses and fountains of gold. I hesitate to open this can of worms, because when I pointed out that the facial exists in porn as a symbolic marker of female degradation, many, many, many people deliberately misread me, claiming that I said that coming on the outside was wrong, or that if any touched your face, it was wrong, or that you're a bad person if you like being degraded in bed. All I said was that it's funny to me that something that is overtly about employing the "this slut deserves to be humiliated" trope in porn gets to send its message to an audience that wants to hear negative things about sexual women, and the rest of us will pretend that they just didn't say that.

Even though, from my perspective, the implicit argument---that women who have a lot of sex, or with a lot of men are sluts who deserve humiliation---is anti-sex. In other words, for all the sex in porn, much of it adheres to the "family values" narrative, where a sexual woman is used up and deserves nothing but abuse. Being truly pro-sex, in my view, means believing that women who have sex, a lot of sex, or a lot of partners do not forfeit a single ounce of their dignity or humanity.

Becky notes that the heavy use of anal sex in porn has resulted in an uptick in anal sex in real life. And though I know a good half of the commenters will pretend I didn't say this: This isn't, in and of itself, a bad thing. Just like coming on the outside is a fine way to spice things up, anal sex also can be a lot of fun for straight couples in the right circumstances. But porn morphs rather mundane sex acts into tropes about hurting and humiliating women, and then those tropes are repeated in bedrooms for that purpose. The problem with this is that many of the women engaging in these deliberately humiliating behaviors don't get off on being submissives or being degraded. They're doing it just because they thing that's what sex is.

I repeat: like coming on the outside, there's a way to do anal sex that isn't about hurting, humiliating, and punishing a sexual woman. (If only I knew the secret number of times to repeat to avoid being misread!) There are entire excellent books about it, and whole lines of sex toys that exist solely to exploit the sensitivity of that area of the body. In fact, straight men can put things up their butt and like it, too! This is not being questioned. (I predict 5 comments before someone suggests I questioned this.)

But porn doesn't show anal sex in the pro-woman way that many practice it, where there's an attempt to warm you up, make you comfortable, go slow, and stop if there's any discomfort. Like Becky says:

Problem is, hetero mainstream porn isn't depicting the kind of careful, attentive interaction that makes anal sex pleasurable. In fact, in porn there's no attention paid to the woman's pleasure--or even her comfort--at all. The male actors just plunge in and start pounding.

Emphasis mine.

Isn't it awesome how anyone criticizing porn must now explain very carefully why that criticism is not being anti-sex? But Amanda is brave, so she does the necessary work anyway.

I have written about some of my concerns earlier, but they are worth repeating, especially as I'm a little bit clearer about what I don't like when it comes to the extremely wide-spread use of porn. Here's the list:

1. I worry that too many confuse porn images with real actual human sex, that especially young viewers of porn go away with the expectation that real sex will be like porn. Yet porn is called porn and not art, say, for the very reason that it cuts out everything but the purely instrumental use of another person (or persons) for the purpose of getting an orgasm. I'm sure many people can make that distinction, especially among older users of porn who have also had real-life sex. But what happens if porn images are, in essence, your education in sexuality? What if you grow up believing that women should enjoy sperm in their eyes, to be sexual beings?

2. Hence my concern over the male-centeredness of heterosexual porn. That market is geared towards men and the women in the porn are there to do things that will get men off. If some men like humiliating women in bed, then that's what the female porn actors pretend that they will like. No, you don't need to use lube before plunging into my anus (a vulnerable part of the body, by the way, in the medical sense). Yes, please, urinate all over me. And so on.

That you can find all kinds of porn, even feminist porn, doesn't negate this problem at all. Because if most men, including the very young men, watch male-centered porn (and not feminist porn, say) then that's what their idea of sex will become: Something in which women don't have to be asked what they want, and in which women who don't want anal plunging or sperm all over their faces are somehow anti-sex or frigid. Because the women in porn like it!

3. If I am correct about all this, the impact of porn might be to make both young men and women to equate sex with what goes on in male-centered porn. I don't know if I am correct, but I see something of this sort taking place in discussions about sex on the Internet (and in the insults on political comments threads: Swallow, bitch, swallow). To even suggest that what is being talked about is male-centered heterosexual porn and not sex in general labels you as an anti-sex prude.

To re-frame this in feminist terms: I worry what porn is doing to the way young heterosexual women learn about sexuality. Is it just a service you provide men? Suck a lot of cock, let them come on your face or in your ass? Even if this is not what your body actually likes to do?

Comments (47) | Trackback (0)
Posted by: echidne / 9/23/2009 02:07:00 PM

I'm so glad you wrote this.
Suzie | Homepage | 09.23.09 - 4:32 pm | #

I worry about this too, as the mother of 3 boys. The lack of awareness of the woman's enjoyment in most video porn is appalling. I don't want their formative understanding of sex to be the distorted, frequently-misogynistic view presented by porn.

My only hope is in being clear and direct, to explain that porn may have its place, but the overwhelming emphasis on domination over women makes it cancerous to creating a real, healthy relationship with a woman.
Sam-I-am | Homepage | 09.23.09 - 5:17 pm | #

To re-frame this in feminist terms: I worry what porn is doing to the way young heterosexual women learn about sexuality. Is it just a service you provide men? Suck a lot of cock, let them come on your face or in your ass? Even if this is not what your body actually likes to do?

And then even worse, those same young women become receptive to the cultural conservative notion that sex is icky and women should hate it because, well, who likes sperm in your eye? Clearly only really sick people would like that, right? Worse and worse.
Gavel Down | 09.23.09 - 5:46 pm | #

I hate it that so many people think that porn is an accurate representation of sex. It's so confusing to me that men don't realize that the women in porn are being paid to act a certain way and that may not reflect the actual desires of the woman. I've met men who were genuinely shocked and surprised that I wanted to watch them take their clothes off or, ya know, enjoy sex for myself.

In porn, women are hot and men are generally mediocre because they're basically just placeholders. I don't watch much straight porn becuase the men simply aren't that hot. Even in the cases where the man is as hot as the woman, the camera is more focused on the woman. So of course men interpret this as "women don't like porn, and they must not like sex". The problem is that porn just isn't made for women.

I also get really frustrated about the anal sex thing. I'm sure some people like it and that's great for them, but I'm just no interested in doing it. However, at least half of the guys I hook up with insist that if I would just let them shove their magical penis up there, I would suddenly like it. I have no doubt that porn is responsible for this attitude. I'm very pro-sex and that's exactly why I'm not a big fan of the current state of porn. I like sex to be enjoyable for everyone involved, rather than a favor that one person does for another without enjoyment or pleasure.
catgirl | 09.23.09 - 5:47 pm | #

Even mainstream movies and tv ignore straight female sexual desire. The men get an ordinary looking man to identify with and a gorgeous female love interest for the male character and the audience to ogle. The actress playing the love interest is often much younger as well.

Sometimes there are movies with handsome leading men, but the camera doesn't film them the way it does with women, making sure you get a nice long look at the chest and butt, having them wear skimpy clothes. Even in R rated sex scenes the focus is on the woman. We get to see her and not him undressing, moaning, etc.
anna | 09.23.09 - 7:09 pm | #

Another scary thing: Many (most? all?) of our desires are formed from experiencing the world. Boys and girls who see porn (or have contact with porn culture) may catch on that this is supposed to be exciting and arousing, but is forbidden to them. Desires will be formed that are hard to undo.
Suzie | Homepage | 09.23.09 - 8:33 pm | #

Beautifully, sadly written.

I've a 13 year old daughter who is just on the cusp of curiosity. I dread the impression that she'll get from the subhumanizing, omnipresent porn. Her sexuality, self-esteem, and health of her future relationships can be so casually destroyed my the mindless porno-bulemia of our culture.
ColoKate | 09.23.09 - 10:18 pm | #

We have been worrying and fretting for fifty years that through media saturation we would get to a point where people were no longer easily able to distinguish between fact and fiction, myth and reality.

I think every indication is that we have arrived.
We have publishers putting out non-fiction books full of myths and made up stories.
The news media has moved through the infotainment stage to propaganda.
Carefully scripted shows are presented as "reality" teevee.

"Scientists" use scenes from films and teevee shows to support their arguments regarding social interaction as though it were representative real human interaction.
At the highest levels of government they are arguing that if it didn't kill you it wasn't torture.

Porn is obviously torture, but since the woman smiles and we assume she gets paid for her pain and humiliation, it's just another form of entertainment.
thebewilderness | 09.23.09 - 10:19 pm | #

yes there are alot of assholes in the world. and alot of bad porn. no shit. why not just come out and ask people to recommend good movies instead of saying all men, sex, porn and climaxes are negative, humiliating, slutty...(all the while saying you dont mean to say what your saying)
oh fer crissakes | 09.23.09 - 11:52 pm | #

and plenty of films do show women being pleased. hell the summer indie hit 'away we go' opens with the young husband going down on his wife.
oh fer crissakes | 09.24.09 - 12:06 am | #

why not just come out and ask people to recommend good movies instead of saying all men, sex, porn and climaxes are negative, humiliating, slutty...(all the while saying you dont mean to say what your saying)

You talking to me? I didn't say any of those things, actually. In particular, that "all" word wasn't used.
Echidne | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 12:19 am | #

"porn is called porn and not art, say, for the very reason that it cuts out everything but the purely instrumental use of another person (or persons) for the purpose of getting an orgasm."

and there you have it.

first rather than just saying that most porn is bad art you claim that all porn is no form of art at all.

see what I mean about that too broad brush? if you were painting windows you'd be all over the glass.

art: is simply self expression.
thats all. it might be good or bad, simple or complex, stupid or genius, found, folk, modern, abstract...natural, semantic, sexual...but pretty much everything is art.

art is a neutral word. it requires adjectives. people make the same mistake with the word 'love'.

next you claim that no erotic representation has existed in the history of humankind which depics both sex and compassion. pretty sweeping wouldnt you say.
oh fer crissakes | 09.24.09 - 12:28 am | #

yes I'm talking to 'you'. although yes you using anothers quotes.

and I dont mean to be mean, just short and clear.
oh fer crissakes | 09.24.09 - 12:30 am | #

...(all the while saying you dont mean to say what your saying)
oh fer crissakes | 09.24.09 - 12:33 am | #

Gravatar 'you' meaning your post.
oh fer crissakes | 09.24.09 - 12:33 am | #

Gravatar anyhoo..have a nice night. i'm just passing thru, didnt mean to ring the bell or wake the dog.
oh fer crissakes | 09.24.09 - 12:35 am | #

Gravatar ...and 'wake the dog' was a figure of speech, um...which had nothing to do with you [woman starts beating stranger with cast iron frying pan]

no. no. really it was just a non-gender oriented figure of...oh fuck it..[stranger starts running]
oh fer crissakes | 09.24.09 - 12:45 am | #

oh fer appears to be one of those I was just speaking of who cannot tell the difference between scripted behavior on film and actual human behavior on film.
I don't imagine they can tell the difference between a woman smiling while under threat and a woman smiling who is pleased either.
thebewilderness | 09.24.09 - 1:01 am | #

Porn is the graphic representation of the torture and rape of women.
Sometimes men and children as well.

Kinda hard to see past that to some dehumanized art concept.
thebewilderness | 09.24.09 - 1:05 am | #

wow. you poor thing. your head must hurt

No. Porn is the graphic representation of sex. thats all.

if its good sex its good porn if its bad sex its bad porn.
oh fer crisspybacon | 09.24.09 - 1:22 am | #

oh theres my bus...[wanders off]
oh fer crisspybacon | 09.24.09 - 1:27 am | #

"too many confuse...images with real [life]."

yes. and?

thats the story of:
-film
-IKEA instructions
-bible
-constitution
-songs
-dance
-...

yet you know what? Some are not confused. And some media are not corrupted. so theres that.

and cheese raviolis...they solve everything. with some fresh chopped tomatoes spinach and seasalt. (good with eggs too) mmmm.
oh fer crisspybacon | 09.24.09 - 1:47 am | #

note: I understand your general concern about male-centeredness of things as illustrated in the classic cartoon of two women talking about actually finding a movie in which the women discuss something other than men (see link).

I understand male-centeredness can be a problem in life, in films, and specifically in films with sexual content. Firstly many people who are men are inconsiderate. Secondly everyone wants to be able to see people like themselves in life, in films, and in films with sexual content. Yet the larger problem is inconsiderate people. after all do you like inconsiderate women? hopefully not. thats all

http://petitesophist.blogspot.co...08/09/ rule.html
oh fer crisspybacon | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 10:28 am | #

"Even mainstream movies and tv ignore straight female sexual desire. The men get an ordinary looking man to identify with and a gorgeous female love interest for the male character and the audience to ogle. The actress playing the love interest is often much younger as well."

Oh, I know! It's everywhere, even game shows. On Wheel of Fortune, men get Vanna White to look at, and women get Pat Sajak. On Deal or No Deal, men get 50(?) beautiful, skimpy models to ogle, and women get one middle-aged bald guy to look at. It's the same situation with most news anchors, too.
catgirl | 09.24.09 - 10:35 am | #

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ziz...yphus/34585797/
oh fer crisspybacon | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 10:41 am | #

Porn is the graphic representation of the torture and rape of women.
Sometimes men and children as well.

No. Porn is the graphic representation of sex. thats all.

This is my biggest problem with the Great Porn Debate.

There doesn't seem to be any agreement as to how to decide whether a particular film/video/etc. is pornography or not, and the participants (including, unfortunately, Echidne) don't ever bother to say how they define "pornography." Everyone seems to assume that everybody already knows what pornography is, but they all apparently assume something different. It makes the whole discussion sound a bit psychotic.

For example, if you use the first definition quoted above, it's hard to imagine how there could even be such a thing as "feminist pornography."

I also sometimes get the impression that some participants are happy to be vague as to what they mean, so that the word can mean whatever is most convenient for them at the moment.
AMM | 09.24.09 - 10:49 am | #

Great post, Echidne. I agree with your point, which I haven't seen elsewhere, that the presence of feminist porn doesn't solve the problem if the young consumers are going to be consuming the other kind.

I've seen some porn scripts and yes, most do depict the (almost always female) recipient of facials or anal sex as being used or being a slut to be dehumanized. Whether or not the actress is consenting doesn't make this a good message.
octogalore | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 12:29 pm | #

AMM, the second definition applies to porn in theory. The first definition applies to porn in practice.
Kali | 09.24.09 - 12:32 pm | #

In light of the fact that human trafficking is at epidemic proportions, how does anyone know if the porn they watch has not been made by women or girls forced into these acts? This would make anyone buying or watching this garbage an accessory to a crime, as far as I'm concerned.

Apparently ethics, morals, and a personal conscience are things we all extract and put on a shelf when it comes to this "degradation-of-women" type of entertainment. Men have their needs you know, therefore cannot be held responsible...
EL | 09.24.09 - 1:03 pm | #

amongst his/her flurry of noise making, oh fer makes one point I agree with:
"too many confuse...images with real [life]."

yes. and?

thats the story of:
-film
-IKEA instructions
-bible
-constitution
-songs
-dance
-...

I think the primary problem with porn consumption isn't that there is crap out there (there will always be crap) but that there is very little porn (or erotic art or whatever) that values women (and people in general). I agree completely with echidne that there is a real threat that bad porn can negatively influence young people's perception of sex... but if there is a true marketplace of ideas about sex people will not be brainwashed by a single distorted view. At that point they may have several views to choose from, but will abandon those that don't feel real in comparison. This would not eliminate the association between sexist porn and sexism (as those who are sexist will still seek out sexist porn - since it feels more "real" to them) but it could reduce causality - i.e. it could cut down on the possibility of misconceptions by naive people due to porn (by having less naive people).

As usual, talking to kids (and others) about such issues (love, sex, sexism, media, crime) could also help significantly. How many people, for example, are consumers of porn without fully realizing its common connection with sexual slavery and exploitation? Perhaps also porn needs to be more above ground - regulated like organic farming or other consumer products - so that a consumer could consciously choose porn confirmed to be free of criminal elements. Suppression only feeds oppression.
Roger | 09.24.09 - 3:10 pm | #

Everyone seems to assume that everybody already knows what pornography is, but they all apparently assume something different. It makes the whole discussion sound a bit psychotic.

For example, if you use the first definition quoted above, it's hard to imagine how there could even be such a thing as "feminist pornography."

I also sometimes get the impression that some participants are happy to be vague as to what they mean, so that the word can mean whatever is most convenient for them at the moment.

A good point. The meaning I attributed to porn when writing the post was what you would find if you seek what's called vanilla porn by some on the net. The sites are not making movies with a plot. They just show sexual acts of various types, and the vast majority of them are geared towards getting a straight man to orgasm, not towards other goals, artistic or not.

Those sites are not the ones which explicitly trade in pain, humiliation and suffering of women.
Echidne | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 4:02 pm | #

No. Porn is the graphic representation of sex. thats all.

if its good sex its good porn if its bad sex its bad porn.

Good sex for whom? Bad sex for whom? It's quite possible to show sex which is really good for one participant and really bad for another participant.
Echidne | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 4:04 pm | #

That, to me, is part of the problem with this argument.
The "good sex" idea is not about the actors, but rather about the viewer.
The actors are doing their job, purportedly voluntarily, for money. They are making a product for sale.

They may be making a good or bad product, but their pleasure in the process is beside the point.

The viewer decides if they have been deceived sufficiently to believe the actors are enjoying themselves.

It is called "suspending disbelief". We do it when we are reading or viewing a story that we know to be fiction.

It astonishes me the degree to which people will argue that what they choose to believe about what they see in a film is accurate, while what the people say who made the film is not.
thebewilderness | 09.24.09 - 5:02 pm | #

The viewer decides if they have been deceived sufficiently to believe the actors are enjoying themselves.

But in the actual porn it's not really even quite that. It's whether the viewer comes or not, ultimately, and that depends on how the actor playing the viewer's role appears to be enjoying it all. The other actor/actors are kind of like dildoes.
Echidne | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 5:32 pm | #

I believe it was Twisty who said, "if it's not degrading to women, then it's not porn".

Personally, I thought that was fairly accurate, as referring to intercourse with a pro-all-human slant as "erotic porn" or "feminist porn" misses the entire point of what most people have internalized nowadays when they hear the term "porn". It's one of those linguistic whatchmacallits, like pleasant murder or dry water.

The advantage to cease using the term "porn" and to begin using a new term when referring to pro-all-human intercourse is that it creates a definitively seperate space. That harmful crap is over there, wallow in the dirt all you want -- we'll be over here having lots of luscious pro-all-human sex. (Obviously, it needs a snazzier term than "pro-all-human" sex, but hopefully you get the idea.)

To me, "feminist porn" only sounds like a weaker version of regular porn.
m Andrea | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 7:19 pm | #

"Even though, from my perspective, the implicit argument---that women who have a lot of sex, or with a lot of men are sluts who deserve humiliation---is anti-sex. In other words, for all the sex in porn, much of it adheres to the "family values" narrative, where a sexual woman is used up and deserves nothing but abuse. Being truly pro-sex, in my view, means believing that women who have sex, a lot of sex, or a lot of partners do not forfeit a single ounce of their dignity or humanity. "

I am totally stealing that. And not giving Amanda a link back unless I am feeling extremely generous. Because normally she's a total handmaiden of the patriachy. And the people I am going to share that with, don't need yet another source of feminist lite.
m Andrea | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 7:28 pm | #

In most porn the "actor playing the viewers role" is the camera lens. Viewers prepared to view sex are accepting the role of voyeur. I hear a lot about the so-called "diversity" of porn, but when the sexuality of all consensual porn is exhibitionism that expands into everything else viewers see, I doubt true diversity can come from such a narrow starting point.

Voyeurism is a sex act, and 99% of people viewing porn 99% of the time don't get the permission of the people they're watching get fucked. Porn-watchers assume because of the fact of the filming that people in porn have given permission to everyone viewing them, but viewers don't learn their real names or seek to verify their willing involvement in porn.

The De Anza case was about a gang-rape at a party. Most people walking into a situation where eight men were gang-raping a drunken girl wouldn't stand by, watch, and decide to masturbate. Yet I guarantee that no small number of times porn users are getting their voyeuristic sex on they have done exactly that, walked into a situation where a woman was being raped by multiple men, assumed consent to their voyeurism where none is given, and started masturbating.

It's an acceptable area of concern that women might be pressured into accepting sex acts they find degrading or unpleasurable because of what's seen in pornography. However, people discussing this effect often gloss over that porn is used as a tool to "break in" prostitutes and that prostituted women endure more sexual violence prior to entering prostitution compared to the general populace. If the "average" women might be harmed by re-enacting porn with their boyfriends, then what terrible sufferings must prostituted women be experiencing as they endure triggering sexual violations by strange men while their pain is preserved on film forever. Research finds prostitutes who are filmed for porn have worse PTSD than unfilmed prostitutes partly due to a relentless, lifelong fear of limitless voyeurs of their shame.

Factor in the profit motive driving pornographers to hurt prostituted women in ways it doesn't drive boyfriends to hurt their girlfriends, and feminists should be seriously more concerned for prostituted women performing in porn than in “average” women being unfinancially pressured to imitate those non-recorded acts with their lovers.
sam | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 7:31 pm | #

How el bizzaro. I swear I posted two comments.
m Andrea | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 7:41 pm | #

Factor in the profit motive driving pornographers to hurt prostituted women in ways it doesn't drive boyfriends to hurt their girlfriends, and feminists should be seriously more concerned for prostituted women performing in porn than in “average” women being unfinancially pressured to imitate those non-recorded acts with their lovers.

These are good arguments for writing more about how prostitutes are treated. But it is not necessary (or even desirable, from my point of view) to rank the concerns in a particular way. For one thing, changes in general norms about what sex means for women affect billions of women if they are successful. That's why the possibility of such changes needs to be discussed.

This doesn't mean that what actually happens to unwilling or mistreated participants in the filming of porn wouldn't be an outrage of a totally different level, for each individual so affected.

In other words, work needs to be done in more than one direction.
Echidne | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 7:42 pm | #

Also, if the general ideas about what sex is become more woman-loathing (to use a word I know might be attacked), then one of the consequences of that is that the female actors in porn will face ever worsening treatments, too
Echidne | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 7:44 pm | #

I agree the problem is multifaceted, and I brought that part of it up because the blogger discussing only porn's harm to non-porn women said in response to her boyfriend's claim the 'actresses' are all consenting, "DUH, I KNOW THAT." [sic]

She doesn't know that. There are many excellent reasons for a feminist discussing the harms of porn to conclude opposite-wise about the women displayed in it that went unheeded.
sam | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 8:43 pm | #

Maybe it's hopeless, as m'Andrea sez, to rescue the term "porn" with any qualifier. Films deliberately designed to excite men and women to orgasm have definitely gotten nastier and nastier (and less and less sexy as a result, IMO) over the years, as Echidne sez.

We definitely need to find a better word for genuine eroticism than pro-all-human tho.

I think that there's a major brainwash problem here. When you , me, or one, or anybody watches sexually exciting images, very deep structures of the psyche get activated. Otherwise, what's the point.

Mix that with the sadism -- a nice exact term -- that Echidne is describing, and you combine an open read-write channel to program the brain, on one hand, with a visual or situational trigger to activate sadism in other (real sex) circumstances on the other. In short you're both associating erotic energy with sadistic energy and programming erotic situations to trigger sadistic scripts.

You could do it in a lab and I'd bet a good chili dog you'd get reproducible results.

And that really stinks for us as a society. Take something good and fundamental like sex. Link it to something nasty and counterproductive like sadism. Program it deep into the limbic systems of young and old. In a couple of generations sex could very well come to "mean" sadism.

Some very smart people have already suggested that, operationally, the equation already holds (Andrea Dworkin, I'm remembering you). And while I don't think it's come to that in individual lives, I can see her point when looking thru a larger social lens.

Not all sexual film is like that. The single greatest predictor in a sex film of sadism versus what I think of as genuine eroticism is, in my amateur opinion ...

The gender of the filmmaker.

Now who would've guessed that.

The second greatest is the presence or absence of men in the film.

It makes me think about the screwfly solution.

Or the Screwtape solution. It's an unpleasant note when some people can get rich really messing up the brains of masses of other people.
heraclitus | 09.24.09 - 10:08 pm | #

It is also important to remember that the effects of pornography are not just limited to the bedroom. Once you are willing to act sadistically to another person to get off the old hard on when else will you start to think (if you don't already) that the ends, what you want, are more important to the means? It will spread through the rest of the relationship, sex is not cut off from that.

It is not just the one relationship either. When people say "oh, it only effects his girlfriend/wife/friendw/bennies they have this consensual thing going on,(or, oh, it is no big deal he only does it for a wank by himself)" ignoring whatever you think about consent, it is ignoring that once a man is used to treating/viewing a woman/women in a specific way what is to stop him from having the line blurred between that and say everywhere else. Like I said, just because that door to the bedroom is closed doesn't mean it can't get out. Like men who insult women with porn tropes, or even something they don't think is an insult, or even just joking "among friends." So even if you have this great consensual thing with your boyfriend or whatever, no one else consented. No one else consented to up the skirt "shots" with cellphones, being stereotyped due to porn tropes (coed sluts, sexy librarian, hot lesbian, etc).
awfisticufferatlarge | 09.24.09 - 10:55 pm | #

No. Porn is the graphic representation of sex. thats all.

if its good sex its good porn if its bad sex its bad porn.

Good sex doesn't necessarily make for good TV. I mean, much of what I find pleasurable wouldn't show up well on film because someone's head would be in the way.
zuzu | Homepage | 09.25.09 - 12:25 am | #

When people say "oh, it only effects his girlfriend/wife/ ..., it is ignoring that once a man is used to treating/viewing a woman/women in a specific way, what is to stop him from having the line blurred between that and ... everywhere else?

It's the same reason it's a good idea to prohibit violence against even people you think deserve it -- because once you start giving people permission to do awful things to one set of people, who's to say they'll stop there? Or, as I like to say, "if they'll do it to anyone, they'll do it to anyone."

Wehret den Anfaengen!
AMM | 09.25.09 - 10:10 am | #

I've kept this post and comment thread open in my browser for days now, and keep re-reading, because there is so much here that is very well-said.
Helen Huntingdon | 09.26.09 - 11:41 am | #

2009-08-09T15:43:00.001-05:00

"""That's because a large portion of feminist scholars and activists are i) male – identified or ii) childless themselves and / or iii) the second wives of older men or iv) the partners of lesbian mothers or v) still carrying the culture's anti – mother belief systems or vi) well –meaning but just motherhood – ignorant and vii) so forth ––– so have a huge embarrassed problem with it themselves. It's not the gender – neutral, androgynous world they would prefer.

So ––– it's okay to demand that women who want to trot right back to work postpartum get facilitated in their efforts to do so, but there really is no desire or intention to facilitate women's wanting to actually BE with and nurture their children. Very cognitive dissonant.

The same thing comes up in the daycare / child care issue.

----------------------------
http://www.thelizlibrary.org
----------------------------

******

On 07 August 2009, c____ wrote:

I wish the breastfeeding issue was not only mentioned but publicly written about, discussed, and outraged against. This is one of those issues that when I've told people about it, most have simply not believed me. It seems to get no publicity at all.

c_____

*****

On 07 August 2009, l__ wrote:

Breastfeeding: Natural Protector Against Swine Flu

Cecilia is a lawyer. Why is there no mention in the article of the abomination of judges in child custody cases ordering mothers to stop breastfeeding in order to facilitate father's rights?

Why is there no mention in the article of the abomination of judges ordering women involuntarily to have to pump their breast milk like they were cows in order to facilitate men's exalted demands for playing mommy?

l__"""

“ … misogyny = ‘ ... an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment.’ ... “

2009-08-08T15:36:00.001-05:00

misogyny = " ... an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment." ...

whether in its gyms, its schoolhouses, its engineering curricula, its print and video media or inside its ... family – law courtrooms.
http://bluemaas.public.iastate.edu/chapter_27, pages 230 - 231 ...

Women at Risk
By BOB HERBERT

07 August 2009 // http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/opinion/08herbert.html?_r=1

"... there would have been thunderous outrage if someone had separated potential victims by race or religion and then shot, say, only the blacks, or only the whites, or only the Jews. But if you shoot only the girls or only the women — not so much of an uproar.

We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.

We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment.

The mainstream culture is filled with the most gruesome forms of misogyny, and pornography is now a multibillion-dollar industry — much of it controlled by mainstream U.S. corporations.

One of the striking things about mass killings in the U.S. is how consistently we find that the killers were riddled with shame and sexual humiliation, which they inevitably blamed on women and girls. The answer to their feelings of inadequacy was to get their hands on a gun (or guns) and begin blowing people away.

... we should take particular notice of the staggering amounts of violence brought down on the nation’s women and girls each and every day for no other reason than who they are. They are attacked because they are female.

A girl or woman somewhere in the U.S. is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count.

There were so many sexual attacks against women in the armed forces that the Defense Department had to revise its entire approach to the problem.

We would become much more sane, much healthier, as a society if we could bring ourselves to acknowledge that misogyny is a serious and pervasive problem, and that the twisted way so many men feel about women, combined with the absurdly easy availability of guns, is a toxic mix of the most tragic proportions.

2009-07-25T19:04:00.000-05:00

IF there at all has to be a mawwiage, and IF it at all has to be accomplished within any religion's venue, then ... then the Midwest’s Ms Jillian's blissful boogie is THE only way to get it going: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0 with "explanation" by another Midwesterner, a preacher - type person named mAAs ... of http://callcenterinfo.tmcnet.com/news/2009/07/24/4290602.htm

2009-07-19T14:13:00.000-05:00

Haaaappy, Happy Birthday today, Grace Portia! -- Legion True

""" ... Grace Portia of the Listening College. She is my truest, my best friend; and when she does finally speak, she is sober, she is deliberate and she is measured. She does not speak with a tiny voice. I do well to listen to her, and that is what she says.""" -- Chapter 25, "Men of Conscience"

2009-07-04T20:33:00.001-05:00

Religious education is child abuse, is child abuse, is child abuse.
Child abuse is religious education. Very. http://tinyurl.com/nj59cq

2009-06-14T21:51:00.000-05:00

Sorry -- I’ve been away editing Chapter 27, that is, http://bluemAAs.public.iastate.edu/chapter_27

its 70 pages now posted ... and I’ll be back to blog very soon ... even as it is also on to the edits of the 104 pages (so far) of Chapter 28, "An Opera in Three Acts – But with Five Parts – – Act Three: Parts Four and Five."

-- -- as June's Full Moon wanes while its Ides and 2009's Summer Solstice ... wax on.
Blue

2008-11-29T12:41:00.001-06:00

Blue of Central Iowa

freethought bluemAAs December blue mAAs historical bluemAAs@yahoo.com October bluemAAs@iastate.edu http://www.wedemeyers.net yellow http://www.wedemeyers.net/photos/v/wedenwood-garden/planting_trees_2008_11 May central Iowa sunshine history silence white egalitarianism law cats tart cherries 1979 28 Scrabble 22 opera 1978 15 soccer baseball 1976 24 dancing sweat lodge legal cows walking hats Legion True generosity sisters sister September silver brothers brother August nature Abraham Zebulon Micah Wedemeyer Jacob Jake Wedemeyer winter solstice justice justice justice: Dr. Edinsmaier (ie, "re: i am snidE") """received his bachelor’s degree in math and physics from Iowa State University in 1968.""" O! O! O! O! soooo NOOOOT! ... what ludicrous, self - aggrandizing ... fiction! not surprisingly, such the falsehood ... an outright and soooo easily provable ... LIE! There is NO -- -- and there NEVER HAS BEEN ANY -- -- degree of any type whatsoever! in physics! ***heh heh heh!***

The LONG VIEW REDEMPTION Blog

2008-11-28T18:13:00.000-06:00

2006-09-07T15:01:00.000-05:00