Just a quick reminder about how badassly powerful we are

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ACA, call your reps, resist, resistance, resistance works

Resist.

Last Friday, 45 pulled his disastrous excuse for a healthcare bill after learning he didn’t have the votes to pass it via a repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

This is what victory looks like. Or rather, this is what incremental victory during would-be-apocalypse looks like.

I don’t know how many calls and faxes I made to my representatives in defense of maternity leave, covering those with preexisting conditions, keeping Medicare intact, etc. etc., but I made them. I was deeply concerned about accessibility to affordable healthcare for all Americans, and I spoke up, along with millions of you, and look what we did.

Must read: “Why I don’t like white women”

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Amy Alexander, DiDi Delgado, intersectional, intersectional feminism, solidarity

Intersectional or bust.

You wouldn’t believe the response to an article posted first on Medium, then on The Huffington Post, that until recently ran with the headline “Why I don’t like white women.”

The headline appears to have been changed to “Befriending Becky: On the Imperative of Intersectional Solidarity,” though the first line of the piece is still “I don’t like white women.” OK. I’m a white woman—and one, it should be said, who used to work in news, knows the writer doesn’t always write the headline, and despises clickbait—and I liked the old headline better. The author is DiDi Delgado, and I’m now following her on Medium because it was a great read, my must-read for this week.

Maybe you would believe the response to it.

Must read: “Republicans push anti-protest laws”

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anti-protest laws, Must read, protest, resistance

I read headlines like this, like “Republicans push anti-protest laws,” and my gut reaction is a deluge of expletives so severe as to make truckers cringe.

And then, I smile. Because, and this is an important thing to remember, and I’m starting to remember it almost immediately, my gut reaction is starting to revise itself: They would not be trying to make our dissent illegal if our dissent did not matter.

I’ve been saying this a lot lately on social media. I want all my resistance colleagues to take that thought to heart. Not because it makes it any less maddening, but because it’s evidence that our efforts are getting attention. They can’t ignore us. Even when it seems like they’re ignoring us, they aren’t.

And there are so many ways to protest. Can’t legislate against em all.

Still, read the article I linked to above, which appeared Tuesday in ThinkProgress.

5-minute resistance list for the “but what can we do?” crowd

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resist, resistance

I wrote the following list in 5 minutes, no more, no less, to show how many ways there are to resist and support resistance.

I wrote it because I know people who are feeling defeated, paralyzed by shock or depression or anger or sadness or terror and either don’t know what to do or don’t believe that anything they can do will actually help. I wrote it because my personal experience has been that taking action helps defeat those negative feelings. I wrote it because we can’t fight amongst ourselves about what actions are better than what other actions. The only bad action is no action, in my opinion.

My list is by no means complete; it’s just what I could do in 5 minutes:

Must read: “Some inconvenient truths about the Women’s March on Washington”

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activism, awareness, Devon Maloney, do better, intersectional feminism, privilege, resistance, Some Inconvenient Truths About the Women's March, Women's March, Women's March on Washington

I marched on Jan. 21 in Washington, D.C., and I’m still processing that experience. But one thing that struck me over and over while I was there was that intersectional feminism is everything, or feminism is nothing.

Call it increased awareness of privilege, but when I saw cops jumping on their vehicles, jubilant, cheering us on, telling us we were beautiful, waving us toward Independence Ave.–because the crowd was so overwhelming, so much larger than anticipated, that many of us couldn’t get close enough to speakers to hear where we should go or what we should do next–I couldn’t help but wonder why I’d never seen that, on TV, say, in Ferguson or Baltimore.

Oh right. Racism.

Not that the March was exclusively white. Listen, just read this, it’s called “Some Inconvenient Truths About the Women’s March,” and Devon Maloney pulls no punches in this critique of the movement.

I agree with all of it.

Hitting a little too close to home

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domestic violence, Huntingdon House, Huntingdon PA, Protection from Abuse, safety, shooting

TW: domestic violence, gun violence

On New Year’s Eve, my tiny little central PA town made national news when a state trooper was shot and killed. He was attempting to bring in a man who had violated his Protection from Abuse order, and the man killed him.

For a multitude of reasons, this news shook me to my core. First and foremost, the police officer was very young, had just joined the force, and was newly married. His loss is devastating for his family, fellow officers, and our entire community and state. Second, though I did not personally know the officer, the man who shot him, or the woman who reported the PFA violation, I also did know them. When you live in a town of just over 7,000 people, everyone sort of knows everyone. I knew them in that I recognized their names and faces, and that I immediately became the woman.

I don’t want to have that response, but it’s not always within my control.

Must read: Ijeoma Oluo’s tips for fighting injustice

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Ijeoma Oluo, listen, Must read, take action, The Guardian, tips for fighting injustice

I’m going to start doing must-read posts, and I imagine I’ll be linking to Ijeoma Oluo’s work a lot.

I’ve been following Oluo’s writing at The Establishment and The Guardian for a while now, and have been obsessed since I read “When I said all Trump supporters are white supremacists, I meant it.” She drunk-tweeted the debates, and it was a balm. I highly recommend her because she pulls no punches and is relentless in reminding us that we have a long way to go in eradicating racism and sexism. She gets trolled and harassed–which means she’s hitting alt-right, fragile-white nerves. I love her.–so maybe we could drop by once in a while and comment on her stuff and/or tweet at her with an emphatic, empathic fuck yes.

And, we could listen and do what she tells us to do.

It would be easy to despair, but Oluo came blazing out of 2016 and into 2017 with “Here are seven ways you can keep fighting for justice in 2017” at The Guardian, because vacation is OVER.

This is my must-read for the week.

 

A few words about tone policing in this post-election hellscape

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derailing tactic, emotion and reason are not mutually exclusive, privilege, tone police, tone policing

I want to go to there. Photo by Flickr user joel– (Creative Commons license).

I’m not going to watch my tone much.

Those are my few words. Now here are some more.

My last post, my hiatus-breaking post, was ranty, self-righteous, self-conscious, and peppered with swears. I’m good with all of that, I’ve decided. First, I swear when my child is not around me. Like a lot. I do it because swearing is the shit and I need my fix of it so I can say things like, “That’s so silly-pants!” and “Good grief!” and “Oh, bother!” when I’m with Jax. Second, I’ve always been ranty. Third, I’ve always been self-righteous, but I think people put up with me because I’m also nice, and I’m often self-righteous about their rights as much as my own.

The self-consciousness, though, is learned. Conditioned.

On presence

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being present, blog hiatus, do something, don't despair, hiatus, presence, self-care, writing challenge

Photo by Flickr user cuneogc (Creative Commons license).

I took a month off from blogging and being on social media, and the world went to hell on a fast track while I was gone.

Not that the two events are related. 😉

Now I’m taking a hiatus from my hiatus, and if that sounds like I’m only back temporarily, that’s because I’m only back temporarily.

The dropping off the face of the web thing felt really frickin good. I thought it would be hard, but it wasn’t. I thought I would miss it, but I so did not. I thought I might struggle to keep up my self-imposed “write every day in November” challenge but I didn’t. I had energy and time and a semi-positive outlook because I wasn’t gauging my eyes out in comment threads.

I also realized there really is no such thing as a safe space online. There are spaces that are safer than others, of course. But to have a blog means anyone can read it–even the one person you wish would get a life and a conscience and go the fuck away once and for all.

I’ve been struggling with the question of presence, in every sense of the word.

Trump best PR ever for DV Awareness Month? Ugh, I need a hiatus.

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blog hiatus, Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2016, DVAM 2016, Facebook hiatus, self-care, taking a break, Trump is a misogynist, Trump is rape culture

Peace out til December. Photo by Flickr user samantha celera (Creative Commons license).

I’m taking a break. Call it my fragility, call it righteous anger, call it a serious case of can’t-even. But I just realized a cranky, clueless, hateful, petulant orange man-child is the catalyst for perhaps the greatest anti-domestic violence advocacy campaign ever–and during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, no less.

And I should be happy, but I’m not.

My last post tells a lot of why.

Despite the stigma that still surrounds DV and rape culture, victims and survivors DO speak up. I speak up, and I’m not alone, which is both a comfort and a travesty. So why did it take a professional misogynist on a national presidential debate stage to call mainstream attention to these issues, to unite, motivate, and mobilize activist efforts?