Great, God Just Glorified Himself All Over My Rug

God won't give you more than you can handle.

People used to spout that at me and I would seethe- at the age of 6. The implication is, of course, that if you fail to handle something, it's because you're lazy, not because it's too much for you. After all, god wouldn't do that to you. God is love. And killing Egyptians.

That is, of course, bullshit. Things happen because they do. Or because we cause them to. Or because somebody else caused them to.

This explanation, however, raises the level of horrifying:

God knows exactly how much I can handle, but oftentimes He chooses to display His glory by placing me in situations far above my ability to handle them so that He can come in and show Himself. Sometimes, He has to bring me to a point where I realize that I just can't do it on my own. It is when I confess, "I need you, Lord!" that He is glorified and freely pours out His grace.

I have taught a child to swim. At first, I supported her in water up to my waist for my own convenience, and well above her head, by holding her up with my hands on her stomach, so she could learn the movements of swimming without having to be able to float. Then we moved to the very shallow end of the pool and learned how to float. I chose the shallow end so that if she sank, she could just put her feet down and have her head above the water. Then we combined the floating and the swimming, with me intervening immediately as soon as I felt she might possibly be starting to have trouble. (Cuz drowning other people's children just isn't cool.)

The point is, were I god, according to this person's logic, I would have thrown this child into the deep end and only saved her if she clearly articulated that I was far better at swimming than her and she really needed help.

So, how many of you would pat me on the back and call me a responsible adult if I did that? And how many of you would hold my head under the water until I stopped arguing about it? Yeah, I'd do that, too.

But I should totally get down on my knees and thank the lord for allowing me to drown until I specifically told him how fantastic he is.

I'm Filled with Squishy Organs (Atheist Bashing)

That's me: big, hairy and poorly dressed. Oh, and rampaging.

I hate this kind of casual smack at atheists. I really do. It just makes me tired. And it so common.

Don’t be afraid to be pious.

We lose nothing in being devout and we gain ineffable benefits.

Do not be afraid to bend yourself down before God especially and also to the angels and saints our intercessors and patrons and be simply pious. Man was made to be pious. This is the essence of religion, without which we are empty shells: to give due reverence to God. The sin of our first parents came from trying to be the opposite of pious: self-sufficient self-gods. That was defiance of due piety. But people can drift into the same emptiness of life by neglect of piety and devotion, neglect of fostering the habits of devotion.

Consider the benefits of devotion for a moment, and then consider the downside of being – not impious, in the sense of being wicked – but slothful and haphazard and lukewarm.

[emphasis mine]

I am an atheist and I am not an empty shell. I am not empty at all.

I am an atheist and I am not slothful, haphazard or lukewarm.

I am an atheist and I am human, too.

I am an atheist and I am not less than you, John Zuhlsdorf.

I am an atheist and I have feelings and they can be hurt.

I am an atheist and if you prick me, I will bleed.

I am an atheist and you hate me.

I am an atheist and you've never met me.

I am an atheist and I'm done apologizing.

I am an atheist and I'm done asking.

I am an atheist and I will make you listen.

I am an atheist and I've come here to demand your respect.

I am an atheist and I'm not leaving until I've got it.

Men Stopped Snoring and Now America is Over

How did I miss Simcha Fisher until now? She is just a treasure trove of snark material!

Her latest bit of snarkalicious wonderment is entitled Masculinity Reduction Surgery, which made me think that the New York Times had managed to find two hipsters trying to start the antitrend of penis size reduction, but alas, no.

It is far more sinister than that! It is the end of men and the end of America itself!!1!!eleventy!!!

Men are- I can hardly bear to type these words- getting plastic surgery. This is the end, my friends, the very end.

Look, I'm not really comfortable plastic surgery, unless it is reconstructive. If an accident or illness has left you looking significantly different than you used to, and this bothers you, reconstructive surgery all the way, baby! Otherwise . . . I dunno. I used to be totally opposed to plastic surgery, but then I noticed that my upper eyelids are drooping with age, as in actual overlap happening, and suddenly I think plastic surgery might be just the thing. So, I'm not judgey about plastic surgery, and I don't hold different standards for men and women on the subject, I'm just not comfortable with it. Probably because the results frequently look really odd, for one thing, and I also suspect that if we'd stop airbrushing and cutting up people showing the slightest hint of age, I might not feel quite so bad about a normal part of being 35.

Anyway, Simcha doesn't have these thoughts about plastic surgery, or at least she doesn't share them if she does. What she feels is, well:

What I mean to say is, didn’t there used to be men in this country? Men have always been vain, certainly, but one of their most endearing features has always been that most men will be vain for no particular reason. Haven’t you seen one of those 60-year-old behemoths on the beach, proceeding imperially down the shoreline like a glorious Adonis, even though his rock-hard, hairy, sunburned, hassock-sized belly alone takes up more property than the typical starter home? But he doesn’t care! He is

who he is, and he’s going to strut his stuff.

I’m not even kidding: That is what I like about men. They don’t give a damn. Their neck bulges over the back of their collar? So what? Their ears are hairy, their hands are rough, they snore and make noise and take up lots of space. That is what men are supposed to be like, and if they are going to start frowning into the magnifying mirror and getting all teary when bathing suit season comes around, then we might as well just call it a day. Good night, America. Sorry, Ben Franklin. It was a pretty good country, but it’s over now.

Ah, gender stereotypes. Girls like pink and don't know how to use power tools and men think their beer bellies and ear hair are hawt! And any man or woman not fitting into those stereotypes are destroying Western civilization!

First of all, fuck off. Men aren't "supposed to be" anything but themselves and men shouldn't have to pretend to be what you think men are supposed to be just so you can feel comfortable. Sorry, Simcha, you're not god.

Secondly, it's total bullshit. My husband's weight ranges from obese to morbidly obese. I don't care, but he does and he always has. He has never been proud of the amount of space he takes up or oblivious to how other people see him. My husband has eyes, Simcha. He can see all the movie stars and models and he can see that what's in the mirror doesn't look like that. And it doesn't make him feel good.

Yes, Simcha, men have feelings. (And soft hands. I can't imagine why a musician/recording engineer would have rough hands, but I guess that makes my husband a woman.)

I'm glad you like hairy ears and farts and snoring and neck bulges, but that doesn't make any woman who doesn't not a woman, or any man who doesn't want to be hairy-eared, farty and bulgey less of a man. And it's unbelievably arrogant of you to think that you can determine what men are, and declare that all men who don't fall into your categories aren't really men. Who the hell do you think you are, Simcha?

Oh, wait, I see, it's vascetomies. Men who have had them ARE NOT MEN.

How did we get here? In my entirely unscientific opinion, something else happened in the ‘50s, when men started making appointments with their doctors for a different procedure. And once it became common, there was no particular reason for men to look like men. One word, and I’ll give you a hint: It starts with “v-a-s.”

Ooh, sorry, neutered guys, did that hurt your widdle feelings? THAT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT A MAN.

Hey, done with fathering children? YOU ARE NOT A MAN! Incapable of fathering children? YOU ARE NOT A MAN! Testicular cancer require the removal of your testicles? YOU ARE NOT A MAN.

SIMCHA SAID SO*.

And you ruined America, you thoughtless unmale bastard. Now think about what you've done!

*Simcha only wrote that choosing sterility makes one NOT A MAN, but what's the difference? If sterility means you are not a man, it shouldn't make any difference whether one is sterile by choice or not.

Too Serious for Numbers

Hyperbole and a Half has clearly been there.

I'm not entirely certain why Christians, specifically Catholics, tend to be so against euthanasia. I didn't understand it while I was Catholic, and I don't understand it now.

Here, allow me to elucidate what euthanasia means to me. Saturday we celebrated my husband's birthday by going to the casino. He loves playing poker and he's good at it, we just don't generally have the $200 necessary to play at the casino. So his brother's birthday present was the $200 stake and his company at the tables. Initially, they were going to enter a tournament starting at 7pm, so we were going to go down at 5, hang out for 2 hours, then the rest of us would leave when they started the tournament. Through an unfortunate series of events, we didn't get there until 9pm, and I didn't get home until 3am. (He came home at 7am, enough up to pay for mastering his album, which is being released the second week of June. I do expect class participation in this project.)

After 6 hours spent on my feet at the casino (they don't have chairs for people not spending money), being up 5 hours past my usual bedtime and getting 4 hours of sleep after that, this was my week:

Sunday: I managed to get from the bed to the couch. I don't really remember Sunday except as a haze of pain.

Monday: The pain was worse, but I was more mobile and managed to take a shower. Mostly, I remember nausea and pain. And everything smelled funny for some reason.

Tuesday: The pain was somewhat better, but my skin felt like it was on wrong.

Wednesday: Delighted to discover my skin was back on right, not so concerned about the pain anymore.

Thursday: Back to a normal level of pain for me. Actually, I think I'm at the level of pain that had me calling the doctor for an emergency appointment, but after the preceding four days, it doesn't seem so bad anymore.

That's my life. What might be a little soreness and exhaustion for anyone else is a sojourn in hell for me. You know what keeps me going? I know that it will end. I know what the typical rebound time for me is. Well, typical rebound used to be one day of feeling not so bad, followed by two days in hell, but it's been years since I tried anything like that. But it does end, eventually. Even in the midst of pain so severe, I was left unable to really care for myself, I knew it would end. By "unable to really care for myself", I mean my husband was carrying me to the bathroom every so often because I couldn't form the proper intent to get there on my own.

If that were my everyday life with no end in sight, you'd better believe I would kill myself. Without hesitation and without apology. I love life, but that's not life to me. As much of an endurance challenge as formerly easy things can be to me anymore, there is still beauty and wonder in this universe for me, but not when I'm in that kind of pain. That kind of pain reduces the world to nothing more than screaming nerves and an overwhelmed brain that's not meant to take that kind of abuse. Imagine walking through a fog so thick you can't see your hand in front of your face. Now imagine that the fog is pain and you are pain and time is pain and the world is pain. Now imagine that is all that is left for you and then imagine what you would do.

If that sounds unreasonable to you, well, you haven't been there. I know Red Cardigan hasn't been there, because this is how she responds to quality of life concerns:

I first saw this article at a news site which allows comments, and the
comments were overwhelmingly in favor of suicide for the terminally ill, the
elderly, the handicapped, and anyone else who no longer enjoys "quality of
life," which is apparently defined by the ability to maintain a trendy home,
dash off on destination vacations, work long hours for the right sort of people,
and shop for cool toys and couture fashion at America's most
religiously-attended structures, otherwise known as shopping centers, malls,
strip malls, or misleadingly named "town squares"
(and this is off-topic, but the couple of times I've had the misfortune of
actually setting foot in that place linked to I have honestly felt like the
whole thing is frighteningly unreal in a rather evil way; but then, I'm a
writer, and thus prone to fits of imagination).

A part of me laughs. She is clearly more concerned with some [follows link] shopping center than she is with another person's screaming agony. On the one hand, most of us, including me, are more concerned with what affects us than with what affects another person we've never met. On the other hand, does she really think that people are stuffing a bag over grandma's head because she can't shop at Coach anymore?

A part of me screams with a rage that has few words. That part of me is still quaking in fear that last week will come back for me, that the all-encompassing pain will return and never leave and it will kill me before I stop breathing, and she's yapping on about shopping centers and being a writer?

Does anyone have words for that? What kind of monster are you, Red Cardigan, that you call a shopping center "unreal" and "evil" when there is suffering in this world, all around you, suffering with no release, not even a pause, suffering ended only by death? You ignore this and call it morality.

I don't even know what to say.

Cognitive Behavioral Slutwalk

What am I saying here? See below.

Holly, of the Pervocracy, is one of the people I am determined to meet in real life before I die, if only for this exchange in the comments of her post on the Slutwalk(s).

Tit for Tat said...

Ok, is there any time that you should be aware that what you are wearing might potentially cause you physical harm?

May 6, 2011 6:22 PM

Holly said...

Yes. When you are wearing a live porcupine.

May 6, 2011 6:25 PM

I, quite literally, spewed iced coffee all over my ipod. (They hold up well to that sort of abuse.)

My 63-year-old mother-in-law (hereinafter "MIL") was sitting next to me when this happened, and she asked me what was so funny. I explained it to her, and she said, "You tell him, Holly!"

Now, you may be thinking "Wow, 63 and championing hot pants," but it's more than that. 10 years ago, my MIL was a waitress dying of congestive heart failure. She didn't know that last part until she was in the hospital and they were saying things like, "If you live long enough for the surgeon to get here, we'll be doing a quadruple bypass." Yeah, if you live long enough.

Today, she's a nurse with a scar that runs down her breastbone from an inch below her collarbones to the top of her abdomen. And she doesn't cover it up. She's not wearing my level of breast exposing tops, but you can pretty much always see at least an inch or two of that scar. Why? Because she's proud of it. She survived. She changed her life for the better. She succeeded. And it was all because of what led to that scar.

And people say the same thing to her about her scar that they say to "sluts" about their low cut tops and high cut skirts: Cover that up. What kind of attention are you trying to get? Don't you know what people will think?

My MIL's response is Holly's response: fuck you.

So, where does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (hereinafter "CBT") have to do with it? The essence of CBT is simple: I can't control what you do or say or feel, but I can control my reaction to it. How does that apply to the Slutwalk and it's message? Simple. You can't control what a woman wears, but you can control your reaction to it. You don't have to catcall or harass or rape a woman. She could be walking down the street naked as the day is long and you can look away.

Look, guys, the world isn't all about you and neither am I. What am I saying with the dress above? Comfort, actually. I wore that yesterday to remove wallpaper and sand and prime the bathroom walls. That dress, and the flowery one just like it, are SO comfortable. I cannot describe to you how comfortable those dresses are. Was I attracted to it by the low neckline and the opportunity to attract men*? No, actually. I bought the flowery one first. I liked the flowers and the price was right. And, it was one of those "Surprise! It's 90!" spring days you get in Pennsylvania and I wore a sweater to work because it was 45 the day before and I needed a new outfit fast. It was so comfortable, I went back and bought the black one, and I am kicking myself for not getting the blue and the pink.

So, I'm comfortable. I can control that. What I can't control is how anyone else views me. Not my problem. It's up to you to control how you react. You can view me any way you want. You want to think "SLUT!!1!eleventy" to yourself? Go ahead. I don't care. You want to spend the rest of the day imagining me bent over your desk? Have at it. Just keep it to yourself.

Here's the thing: I very rarely wear those to work. (I wear a blazer over it in the building.) When I do wear it downtown, I get catcalls aplenty. I also get catcalls when I'm wearing six layers of clothing midwinter. When I wear that dress in my home neighborhood, I don't get any catcalls. Men do occasionally tell me I look nice, but that's not creepy.

Now why is that? It obviously has nothing to do with me. It's the same body in the same dress. What is different is location. Downtown is the scene of many violent attacks, from stabbings to sexual assaults. My neighborhood? Nope. Shortly after I moved in, I forgot my keys and had to break into my house through a window. The cops were there 2 minutes after I got inside. My neighbors called them. Last summer, my husband and I heard a woman screaming. We ran outside and followed a horde of our neighbors to the source of the screams. There had to have been over 100 people at the scene. It was a teenage girl with an obvious slap mark on her cheek and her boyfriend. We do not allow that sort of thing to happen in our neighborhood. So I don't get catcalls, I get compliments.

And that's the secret, kids: it's not the woman and it's not her clothes. It's the rapists, the harrassers, the catcallers. They're the ones who need to change their behavior, and that will not happen as long as we excuse their behavior by slutshaming women. You decide what world you want to live in. You decide what world you want your daughters to live in. Downtown or my neighborhood?

*I'm a heterosexual woman. What else would I want to attract? Giraffes?

Prolifers Think Women are Pretty F'ing Stupid

You already knew that, right? They don't trust you, an adult, to decide what is right for you, in your circumstances. They know better than you what to do with your body. They know better than you the circumstances of your life. They know better than you how you feel and what you can handle.

But this is the outside of enough (in support of laws that require women to view sonograms):

Imagine, for a second, that you are going in for surgery to have your appendix removed, and nobody actually says the word "appendix" or mentions that the goal is to take it out of you; instead, the whole thing is so wrapped in euphemism that you can't quite tell what it is the doctors plan to remove, or why. Would someone choosing an appendectomy under those circumstances really be making a free choice? Why, then, do we insist that the only way a woman can make a free choice to have an abortion is if we never actually talk about what she's having removed and killed?

Do you really think that women having abortions have no idea what's going on? They just heard about this new craze and thought they'd give it a try? Have you ever had an abortion, Red Cardigan? I have. Trust me, there is no way you could get an abortion without knowing exactly what they're doing. They describe it in detail, using real medical termino- oh. I see. They use words like "fetus" and "embryo" and you think those words are synonyms for "baby". And you think that if those poor, ignorant women just hear someone say "baby", all of a sudden their entire lives will be completely different and they will have money and support and health and everything will be okay and rainbows and unicorns will shoot out their vaginas and . . . um, yeah.

Okay, Red Cardigan, you are a woman, and you are pretty f'ing stupid. The rest of us, not so much.

after all, pregnancy only lasts nine months, but abortion is forever.

Proving once again the fetus fetishists don't give a shit about the baby once it's born. Here's a clue, RC, pregnancy may only last nine months, but the child? That's forever, too. It's forever either way, you just get to pick which forever is best for you. And don't talk to me about adoption. That's just delaying the forever for 18 years. Once that kid turns 18, they'll be at your door wanting answers, answers you may not be able to give.

Pop Quiz

Okay, Hellions***, it's time for a pop quiz. Read the following quotes and tell me who said them:

1) Leggings are not pants. Leggings are the dickeys of dresses/skirts/long tunics & tees.
2) All flesh-colored leggings should be outlawed.
3) Grey leggings should not be allowed at the gym because they show crotch sweat like whoa.

and

I support all of these observations. I love leggings, but they belong under a longer shirt.

a. Stacy London of What Not to Wear

b. A sexual predator excusing his behavior

c. A commenter at feministe.us and a blogger at feministe

The correct answer is "c", though I'm sure Stacy has said those things and well, you'll see after the second part of this quiz.

Part 2 of the quiz, same question: who said this?

Ok, I have to ask, how often do people really wear leggings as pants pants? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in the wild, though I’ve seen a billion leggings under dresses and tunic-length tops. I hear it complained about a lot though.

Oh I see it a lot. Sunday morning in New York is a virtual camel show.

Is this the statement of:

a. a well known feminist blogger

b. a fashion commentator

c. a character in "Mean Girls"

Yeah, it's Jill again.

Well, here's the thing about Jill: she's a privileged, educated, well off white woman living in NYC. I don't think she knows jack shit about my life or how I live it. And I don't think Jill gets that feminism is about way more than what her and her privileged little clique experience. So when Jill tells me I just don't understand her thinky thoughts and I have no sense of humor*, well, Jill, you don't get my entire fucking life. And maybe you need to step away from the red wine and Burt's Bees (she can't live without it) and see how a very large number of women live.

Do I get mentally judgey when I see other women? Yeah. Because I live in this culture and I have absorbed that I am required to judge other women based on their attractiveness to men. (I rarely get mentally judgey about what men wear. It's the patriarchy, baby!) But I am aware of this and I work very hard not to do it. I stop my judgey thoughts and replace them with this: I sincerely hope she was happy with her outfit when she left the house this morning.

Because I rarely am.

I can only imagine, based on the above, what Jill would think upon seeing me in my frequently ill fitting, sagging, pilling, old and often inappropriate outfits. Like Tuesday, when it was 80F/27C. That's hot, especially in April. So I was wearing a flowery sundress, in a soft, crinkly cotton, with an empire waist and spaghetti straps. It's like wearing nothing at all**, this dress. I did put a cardigan over it at work, but, yeah, inappropriate for a law office. Probably also inappropriate for a 35 year old woman.

But you know what? I don't have any money and I have to buy clothes for work, and walking around in the heat and rain and snow, and clothes for doing yard work and running around after nieces and for days when my hands are so stiff buttons are a fucking puzzlebox. That's what it's like to be poor, Jill. You get to be inappropriate, in public, where other people can see you. And you know it. You know those people are looking at you and thinking ZOMG! Doesn't she know what she looks like?

Yeah, I do. I just can't do a damn thing about it. And Jill, you have no idea what it's like. None at all. So stop pretending the problem is me and my inability to understand your amazing thinky thoughts, and start trying to understand, in some small way, what it's like to lose.

And I have to wonder what Jill would think about her words coming out of the mouth of a man, especially a man who sexually assaulted a woman. I mean, look at the way she was dressed!

Yeah, I just don't understand your thinky thoughts. That's the problem.

*We call that a Scott Adams, btw. Yes, that is a link to feministe. Irony, it's a funny thing.

**Stupid sexy Flanders!

***Please, please, please let me call you that!

I Think I May Be God's Favorite Little Light and Other News

We'll start with the other news because what can follow the discovery that I may potentially be God's favorite little light?

When it comes to adolescents genuinely committing to their faith, a study found that their social environment determines how strong their faith level will be.

...

According to the study, titled “Seven Anchors of Religious Commitment,” parents, religious leaders, a faith community, rituals and traditions, faith tradition or denomination, God and sacred texts are crucial to a young person's faith.

Emily Layton, who conducted the analysis as part of her M.S. thesis for the study, explained to The Christian Post, “Relationships were extremely important – relationships with parents, with church leaders and relationships with people in their faith community. That was interesting to me, the relationships with other adults in their faith community as well as other younger teens.”

Shock, shocked I am! Religion is a function of society? The more religious the people around you, the more normalized ritual is in your community, the more likely you are to believe and believe strongly? It's almost like religious belief is like every other sort of belief: a function of it being so pervasive and normal that you never really think about it.

Well then.

Anyway, in the wake of the horse killing homophobes, somebody in real life* told me that the perpetrators could not have been Christian. For the record, I did not say that the perpetrators were Christian, I said that many of the people who spew homophobic hatred are. She not only strawmanned my argument, she whipped out a No True Scotsman so fast I got whiplash. I, of course, argued against the No True Scotsman and was told to read Isaiah and see if anyone who could do such a thing- kill horses, not spread hatred, I don't think she was really opposed to that- could possibly be the light of God, i.e., a Christian.

It's a damn good thing she used the phrase "light of God" because Isaiah is a big book, and what she was referencing, I think, is in chapter 58.

They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.
³ ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?’

“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.
⁴ Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.
⁵ Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?

So . . . I'm a socialist, which makes me obviously against worker exploitation, and I'm not in favor violence . . .

⁶ “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice

I am so against injustice!

and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

I am so trying to break every yoke! It's the whole point of my blog.

⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

I do that (and then end up being the hungry, but whatever) and I rarely don't have someone sleeping on the couch in the basement.

when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

I've never actually seen a naked person in public, but if I did, you'd better believe I rush to cover that up.

⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;

Metaphorical healing, perhaps . . . wait! Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is totally making me better mentally.

then your righteousness^[a] will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

If anyone can make an argument that "righteousness" and "rear guard" actually mean "Jägermonster", I will worship the Christian god with a fervor previously unseen in all 2,000 years of Christianity.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

oppression like American business and landowners being free to legally discriminate against gays? Malicious talk like telling people the gays are coming for your children? Like that?

DO THESE PEOPLE EVER READ THEIR OWN DAMN BOOK?

¹⁰ and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,

How do they syncretize this with going galt? am I insane or are they?

then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.

Which would doubtless make it hard to sleep, but seriously folks, by this measure, I'm the greatest fucking christian of all time and god's favorite little light. (Or the greatest Jew of all time, given that Isaiah is Old Testament.)

*Remember the lady who told the bus driver that god gave him his house? It was her. I wasn't talking to her, I was talking to another woman and she jumped right in to fallacy me into sputtering. She's fun like that.

Female Stereotypes- They Are So True. Now Stop Fulfilling Them.

She is wearing the Mascara of +5 Smug Face.

Amy Alkon sees rude people, apparently when looking in the mirror. Her job title is, as far as I can tell, "Advice Goddess", which makes me think that perhaps the field of advice giving is not quite as hard to get into as I think it is*. So, let's put Amy's advice giving skills up against mine:

I have an online dating issue. When a man and I are going to have our first phone chat, I set up a specific day and time so we don't have to play phone tag. This allows me to schedule around it and be prepared and at my computer viewing his profile when we talk. I take the man's number and call him, because I'm not comfortable giving out mine right away. During my several years of online dating, the percentage of guys who aren't there at the planned time has been about 90. Many never contact me again, even to explain or apologize.

You know, this seems reasonable to me. Why should she give out her number first if she isn't comfortable with it? (I suppose she would have to accept if the man felt the same way, but clearly they don't.) I also don't see why she should just be waiting around for some guy to call. A specific call time really doesn't strike me as being outrageous, but I am a very organized person. Maybe it is weird.

I think it's very rude for those men to agree to this specific call in time and then not answer the phone. If they are offended by this request, they could just say so, or contact her to cancel it with some stupid excuse. Really, anything other than simply no showing would be better than no showing.

See, that's why Amy's a Goddess and I am not. The menz aren't being rude by agreed to be at a certain place at a certain time, the woman is being rude by requesting it. Not even just rude- she is all things that are wrong with women.

A woman can be a little premature in setting up who wears the ball gag in the relationship.

um, wut? Since when is "I will call you Thursday at 6:30" equivalent to ball gagging someone (which is a metaphor that is rather nasty towards the kink community. They enjoy ball gagging as a consensual activity.) Oh, I see, they are menz, and menz are like the wild animals of the Serengeti: they cannot be tamed. Asking them to be at a certain place at a certain time is just the same as cutting off their testicles! And then displaying said testicles in a jar over the fireplace!

Telling somebody they need to talk to you at a specific time might work fine in business, but because men tend to be wary of controlling women, it's a risky tactic when you're vying to maybe become a guy's girlfriend, not his supervisor. But, here you are, not only setting the call time but informing a guy that he'll be doing the waiting and you'll be doing the calling. Very possibly, there's more in your e-mails that suggests you're bossy and controlling. If so, for a guy, this can foreshadow a lot of being ordered around by you: "Sit. Stay. Repeat after me, 'I'd love nothing more than to turn off the playoffs and join you in watching Valerie Bertinelli kill her abusive husband with a shovel in the Lifetime Movie Of The Week.'"

That's right, it is totally unreasonable to ask a person to pick up their phone at 6pm on Thursday! It's completely insane! And making a man wait for a woman to call? Why not just paint his toenails pink and slap some lipstick on him? He's your bitch now! Menz do the calling, women wait!

Ahem. Nongoddess advice: If a man is really that turned off by the thought of him waiting for you to call, you do not want to date him. If his ego can't handle that tiny role reversal, imagine what will happen when you ask him to put a plate in the dishwasher.

I also enjoy that Amy assumes that the writer is super controlling and her emails, which Amy has never seen, are just odes to controlling behavior. Amy has no way of knowing that, but women, you know.

And good job dragging out some tired stereotypes to fill your word count, Amy. Hurhur- womenz don't like sports. Womenz like sappy movies. Womenz are controlling bitches trying to trap a man into watching chick flicks while the Superbowl is on. Gah! At least be creative about your misogyny, Amy.

Now, maybe you have a peculiar attraction to rude men, but more than likely, you just need to try something new: Relax a little. Give out your number. Not your home number, connected to your address, but the number to your cell or one of those pay-as-you-go phones that isn't traceable to you. Should you start getting unwanted calls, put the thing on silent or give it to some wino and tell him to answer it by breathing heavy and asking, "Are you wearing crotchless panties?"

Yes! Give out your cell phone number to random internet strangers! That sounds like a great idea! That's completely untraceable, right? Or spend even more money on a paygo phone, and then give it to a . . . fuck? wino? . . . stranger and let them deal with the abusive phone calls. That's called charity!

Seriously, though, wino? You are not a good person, Amy Alkon.

Instead of trying to wring every bit of uncertainty out of your life, accept that there might be a little phone tag. When you do get on the phone with a guy, step away from the computer and your spreadsheet of questions. Your goal shouldn't be vacuuming him for data; it should be having fun getting to know him. If you're having fun, you'll be more likely to sound like fun -- like the sort of woman who keeps the spark in a relationship (and not by tasing the guy whenever he's a little slow to take out the trash).

You aren't fun, letter writer. You are a boring person. Fun people like to waste their time waiting for people to call. It's what women do, after all. Stop trying to have time for things other than men and waiting around for men and being more attractive to men. What do you think you are, a man, deserving of respect and suchlike?

Why is Amy Alkon getting paid for her writing and I'm not? That's just proof there is no god, right there.

*Which is not a good thing, because if I can enter the field of professional advice giving, I will give out advice designed purely to amuse myself. "First, put on a mouse costume . . ."

How Not to Address Weight

[trigger warning: weight, eating, fat shaming. please enjoy this nonjudgmental otter instead.]

Weight! It's like a gun!

I would like to start this by saying I have spent almost 13 years with a man who has ranged from overweight to obese to morbidly obese and back again the entire time I have known him. He knows what his weight is. This is not some sort of mystery to him. He has tried all the diets and exercises you can think of. The thing is, he eats about as much as I do and the same foods that I do, yet I'm never more than the lower end of my recommended weight range and he's never less than overweight. My body likes to be thin, his body likes to be overweight. That's all there is to it.

My husband does not need to be told he is overweight. He certainly doesn't need this bullshit:

Structure House, a North Carolina-based weight-management facility, offers an online refer-a-friend program in which an e-card with details about Structure House's offerings arrives in your pal's inbox, with a note reading, "I saw this program online and thought I would share it with you."

Translation: Hi! I saw this business advertising itself, and I thought I'd help them out by humiliating you and ending our friendship! Aren't you glad I found a stupid way to tell you I'm an asshole?

Experts are divided on whether this is an effective — or especially friendly — way to tackle the topic. But it speaks to the fact that weight loss is an extremely sensitive issue that leaves many at a loss for ways to broach it.

Experts are divided? Are half of those experts house plants? Because while I am not an expert in assholery, it took me all of 0.1 seconds to see exactly how rude that is. What do they think the reaction is going to be? ZOMG! I had no idea I was overweight! I only live in this body and I was completely unaware of that fact. Thank you so much for letting me know! Really, fuck off.

Here's a clue: don't broach the subject. There is no reason to. There is no more reason to discuss someone's weight with them (unless they themselves begin the conversation) than there is to broach the subject of their bad haircut or their poorly decorated living room.

Here, I'm going to say it really slowly and really loudly: DON'T. DO. IT.

Your friend knows zie is fat. It would be literally impossible to live in our culture and not know that. In fact, people of normal weight generally think they are fat because every image you see, in magazines, on TV, in movies, celebrates people we actually should be deeply concerned about, because despite what they say, no model or actress is achieving concentration camp thin by eating at McDonalds.

But, hey, I'm not an "expert", and clearly I do not properly appreciate the tremendous immediate danger of obesity:

"If you saw a loved one with a sore on their arm that could be a melanoma, you would ask, 'Have you had that checked?'" says Lynn Grefe, president and CEO of the National Eating Disorders Association. "If you think their health is at risk, it's not a judgment, it's a concern. If you saw someone with a gun to their head, you would try to take the gun away. If the person is at risk for diabetes, they could lose their sight, they could lose their legs. The person, in a way, has a gun to their head. They may not know what to do." [emphasis added]

Ah, the proverbial gun to the head. It may sound familiar if you are an atheist, because we get that, too. It's just as fucking stupid in this context. I added the bolding above to point out just how ridiculous that statement is. Your obese friend may well not know what to do about their weight, but you don't, either, so just shut the fuck up.

Let's be honest: nobody knows what to do about obesity. If they did, we wouldn't have so much of it. Diets don't work, exercise isn't the cure everyone thinks it is*, and often, obesity has more to do with lack of access to quality foods and opportunities to exercise than it does with ignorance or lack of desire to lose weight. Telling someone they're fat doesn't help any of that. So shut the fuck up and stay that way.

A critical first step is keeping the conversation centered around health.

Grefe suggests asking your friend if she or he has had a recent physical. Offer to help locate a doctor and attend the appointment.

"Let's see where they are on the map," Grefe says. "See if they have high blood pressure. See if there's undetected diabetes. Keep the approach on health."

Friend: So, been to the doctor lately?

Overweight Person: Yes, actually. I just got over a sinus infection.

Friend: But, did you have a physical?

OP: No, I did that 6 months ago.

Friend: Do you have high blood pressure?

OP: Nope. 116/74 just yesterday at the drug store.

Friend: Do you have frequent urination, blurred vision or unusual thirst?

OP: What the fuck?

Friend: You're fat!

OP: *punch*

There's no way for that conversation to end well. Leave the health concerns to the doctor and SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.

edited to add: Please visit the Cynical Nymph for a continuation of this discussion.

*Exercise is good for you, but it can increase appetite over the calories you burned exercising. Some peoples' bodies love being fat. They just do.

Please Remove Your Wallet from Devvy's Vagina

This is Devvy. She is surprisingly calm for having everyone's wallet in her vagina.

"In lobbying for defeat of a congressional plan that would cut off taxpayer support for the abortion business' leading player, Richards claimed: "If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are going to lose their health-care access ­ not to abortion services ­ to basic family planning, you know, mammograms." But Live Action workers who called 30 Planned Parenthood business locations across the nation said "every single one admitted they could not do mammograms."

I will never have a mammogram, but having one is a personal decision and expense. The Outlaw Congress has NO authority to steal the fruits of your labor to fund abortions or mammograms.

Devvy apparently wants to find out about her breast cancer when it's difficult to impossible to treat, because that's how she rolls. The rest of us, however, are not looking forward to radical mascetomies, radiation and chemotherapy.

Here's the thing Devvy, and I'm sure it's hard to listen to facts and logic with even one wallet in your vagina, let alone 300,000,000 wallets in your vagina, it is far cheaper to pay for cancer treatment in the earliest stages than in the later stages. And here's another thing: unless you want to cut off all health care access to the poor, which you probably do, eventually that person is going to end up in the ER and then they will run up an enormous bill everyone gets to pay for.

Would you, Devvy, find it to be a better idea to change your brakes when they start squeaking, or after you cause a ten car pileup on the highway? One costs, what, $250 max, the other hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions if you end up killing someone. Now, changing the brakes when they squeak is like giving out free pap smears. The ten car pileup is not giving out free pap smears and instead treating women with end stage cervical cancer in the ER.

Ignoring, of course, that "poor women should die preventable deaths so that my taxes can be 0.8% lower" is sociopathic and appalling on every level.

Having a test for cervical cancer is a personal expense.

One I certainly can't afford, but I don't think Devvy cares. As far as she is concerned, another person's cervical cancer should impact her exactly as much as another person's hair style and she cares just as much. Probably less, actually, as she doesn't have to look at anyone else's cervix.

That's not a political position, that sociopathy. I'd mention that, again, it's not good economic policy, either, but I really think that the police should be checking her yard for human remains every so often.

"How many times have we heard female politicians bleat about "women's issues" during elections? How many times have we heard the old chant about "empowering women" from female members of Congress? The feminization of Congress and our state legislatures is destroying constitutional government, running America into oceans of unpayable debt and breeding generations of helpless women, whining for mother government to take care of them and their every need.

Cancer is not a woman's iss-

Fuck it.

There are 10,000,000 more unemployed people than there are jobs. And they want to cut off unemployment benefits and lower taxes even further on the wealthy. 1 in 7 Americans experience food insecurity and food prices continue to rise, so let's cut food stamps. More than 40,000,000 Americans have no health insurance and a person without healthcare is 50% more likely to die of cancer than a person with health insurance, but health insurance is a privilege to be enjoyed by the few. Our bridges are crumbling and occasionally collapsing, but investing in infrastructure is wasting money that could be given back to the rich in the form of more tax cuts. GE paid no taxes last year. The banks crushed our economy by securitizing mortgages, but let's deregulate the market and bail them out with taxpayer money.

Do you see the disconnect here? What we are doing is not working. It is not working. What language do I have to say that in before people understand?

The GOP is, at this point, like a person pouring gasoline on a fire to put it out and, as the fire climbs higher and higher, insisting that if they just put enough gasoline on the fire, eventually it will work. Oh, and it's the country that is on fire.

Just for fun, here's the wallet-vagina line:

Get my wallet out of your vagina because you have no constitutional right to steal the fruits of my husband's fixed retirement to pay for your abortion.

She's bitching that her husband's social security is being used to pay for abortions through Planned Parenthood. Now that is some performance art quality irony right there.