Last week, a person I admire wrote, “I hate people.” Without missing a beat, I emailed back, “I love that you wrote that.” And that gave me pause. Earlier in the week, I had read a chapter from Maythee Rojas’ Women of Color and Feminism. Rojas wrote about love’s being the fuel of feminist activism, a force for social change. It is through love — of oneself and others — that we build the necessary bridges between the great global diversity of women and their issues, uniting us in action and visionary change. In her book, Rojas made a clarion call for love, but I was feeling hate.

So I looked at the email exchange, I thought about Rojas’ message, I contemplated guilt and put it aside, and I opted instead to consider my response to the thing that initiated the original email. That thing is this:

On Wednesday, lifesitenews.com, an anti-abortion website, published a piece by blogger Elise Hilton entitled, “Why I rejected Plan B after my disabled daughter was raped.” Hilton’s piece reported the kidnapping and prolonged sexual assault of her daughter and Hilton’s subsequent decision not to administer the Plan B emergency contraceptive provided by the women’s shelter clinic to which her daughter was taken after 48 hours of captivity and violation.

Hilton used her byline at LifeSiteNews and she profiles herself on her personal blog — Kissing the Leper: Acknowledging the perfect joy of suffering in Christ, but having a little fun along the way — where she also posted the piece.

With her column’s publication, Hilton raised significant concerns about sexual assault victims’ rights, the rights of people with disabilities, and reproductive justice. Before reviewing these issues, it’s important to acknowledge that, after reading several of Hilton’s blog posts, I have assumed her daughter is an adult or approaching adulthood, as she was taken to a women’s shelter rather than a children’s hospital. Hilton herself reports that her daughter has bi-polar disorder and a cognitive disability, which her blog content suggests might be Down Syndrome. All of which contribute to my concerns:

1. In revealing her own identity attached to the online post, Hilton essentially revealed to the world the identity of her daughter, the victim, and the devastating nature of the crimes committed against her. Hilton also made this information available to the perpetrator of these crimes, who Hilton reported had not been apprehended. While she might serve as her daughter’s legal decision-maker, had she been predominantly concerned about her daughter’s wellbeing, her right to the privacy normally afforded victims of sexual assault, Hilton could have published her piece anonymously — or not at all. Instead, she blasted her daughter’s assault around the virtual globe with adequate identifying information to lead back to her daughter. Thus, Hilton blatantly violated the victim’s confidentiality.

2. In the context of her column, Hilton rendered the crimes against her daughter a secondary issue to her own struggle between her anti-abortion stance and the option of using Plan B to prevent any possible pregnancy as a result of her daughter’s repeated rapes. Hilton certainly has a right to her opinions and to their publication, but in doing so, she invites criticism. And, as a writer, an editor and a book critic, I offer this: Hilton’s column exemplifies a dedication to anti-abortion ideology that precludes compassion for real humans in the real throes of reproductive crisis. She sacrificed her daughter’s confidentiality and, potentially, her daughter’s wellbeing for the purpose of anti-abortion propaganda.

3. Hilton represented her decision to withhold Plan B from her daughter as a spiritual triumph. But Hilton’s triumph could be her daughter’s undoing. In rejecting Plan B, she denied her daughter treatment to prevent a possible pregnancy; her daughter with bi-polar disorder, a disorder exacerbated by pregnancy, a disorder many treatments for which are contraindicated for pregnant women. In rejecting Plan B, Hilton forced on her daughter the prospect of motherhood, motherhood for a woman supposedly disabled enough that her mother must make her most crucial decisions for her. Hilton’s column is a forthright and specific declaration of her violation of her daughter’s reproductive rights. Whatever informed decision her daughter might have made for herself, without the imposition of Hilton’s ideology, we will never know.

Ultimately, in publishing her column, Hilton has demonstrated terrible failures. Hilton has failed to honor a victim of sexual assault with the comforts of confidentiality. Hilton has failed to honor her daughter, a person with disabilities, with the grace of respect due her individuality. Hilton has failed to honor a woman whose reproductive justice was first denied for 48 hours by a rapist, and then again by her mother. Hilton’s disregard for her daughter’s unique humanity, her daughter’s individual rights, reveals Hilton’s disdain for her “disabled daughter,” no matter how much she loves her.

So, is it hate that I feel for Hilton? Upon reflection, I find it is not. Rather, it is rage, rage at a person who would so brutally violate a vulnerable woman — her daughter — for the sake of a cause. I am not a praying person, but I offer up this prayer for Hilton’s daughter: I pray you are not pregnant. Next, I’ll try very hard to love your mother.

Love,
K-B

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Picture this.

A small town café. An eclectic group of folks commune at the breakfast counter, shooting the bucolic shit.

“How’s school?” the older, white man asks.

“It sucks,” says the young woman. “I don’t like the students.”

“Why? Are they Hispanic students?”

“No, actually, mostly white and privileged.”

He doesn’t notice her cringe. He doesn’t notice that she is Hispanic.

And picture this.

A flight home after a hectic trip. A lovely young disciple distracts the businesswoman from her work, hoping to save her soul.

“You have quite a faith there, and you’re bright,” the businesswoman says, deflecting the proselytizing. “You might enjoy the ministry. Have you thought about going to divinity school?”

“Oh, we’re taught that women aren’t suited to being spiritual leaders,” the young disciple says. “Women are driven by too much emotion; men are driven by reason. That’s why god tells them to lead us.”

“It takes some powerful emotions to start and fight a war,” the businesswoman suggests. “You might find men are no more rational than women. And you might find a church that doesn’t limit your freedom of choice.”

“Oh, no, knowing Jesus has set me free! God gives me the freedom to choose to submit to his will.”

She doesn’t notice the dogma that binds her. She doesn’t notice the profanity of her words.

Then picture this.

A dispersing student government meeting about an anti-hate proclamation. A male administrator and a female student cross paths, to his apparent dismay.

“There seems to be a message from the administration that we shouldn’t name the cause of the proclamation. Why is that?” the student asks.

“Oh, that’s the students’ initiative,” he says, sidling away.

“I’m not talking about the students,” she persists, “I’m talking about the administration’s avoidance of naming the problem.”

“Oh, no, no, that’s the students,” he says through his back, scurrying for cover as though the student is the beast.

He doesn’t notice he’s left her to fend for herself. He doesn’t notice the beast is stalking him as well.

And finally, picture this.

A gathering of wingtipped white men at the Value Voters Summit. A Southern Baptist pastor, waxing didactic, introduces presidential hopeful Gov. Rick Perry.

“Rick Perry is a proven leader,” Pastor Jeffress intones, doing the devil’s work. “He is a true conservative, and he is a genuine follower of Jesus Christ. … He is willing to stand up and defund that slaughterhouse for the unborn known as Planned Parenthood!”

“Are you talking about Mitt Romney?” the media pounce in a proper flurry. “Are you saying Mormonism isn’t genuine Christianity?”

“It is not Christianity,” the pastor reassures them. “It’s a cult.”

“And he knocks it out of the park!” Perry roars, disregarding the nation’s 14 million Mormons.

He doesn’t notice the slaughterhouse comment. He doesn’t notice the 156.5 million women in the United States he would represent.

What is wrong with these pictures?

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

Image of Woolworth’s counter by *Kid*Doc*One*

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

I vaguely recall the first time someone asked me what it means to be a feminist. I was still a kid, freshly baptized in the blaze of radical feminism. Or so it seemed, as our consciousness-raising group met in Anita’s living room. She was into her middle years, a professional woman returned to college, and the group was a school project. Its existence in our small town was a damn miracle for us and a disturbing mystery for the men, who didn’t understand why a gaggle of gals would get together for no better purpose than to talk — just talk — to each other! — what the hell? — and we weren’t too sure ourselves, at first, although their reactions were reason enough, and enlightenment shortly followed.

Ensconced in pastoral adornment — brocade throw pillows, hand-tatted antimacassars, ceramic tchotchkes — we spoke of goddesses and orgasms, of Shulamith Firestone and her Dialectic of Sex. We gasped and caressed the images of female genitalia in Our Bodies, Ourselves. We dreamt of Feminist Revolution amid fiery Redstockings. And we strode boldly forth to spread the good word of equality of the sexes.

That’s when one of the boys on the farm asked me about feminism (yes, there literally was a dairy farm, with a lot of eager boys on it). But the acrid sarcasm in his inflection neutralized the need for a serious response, along with his chances. Were it not for my oh-so proper upbringing — the gendered training that turns Southern females into well-coiffed boot scrapers and males, into manure-crusted boots — I’d have asked him what it means to be a teeny sexist turd.

Of course, I didn’t. As one of the elite white males who has claimed the exclusive U.S. leadership mantle said years later, “Wouldn’t be prudent”[1] — no matter that belittling my passions annoyed me. But, alas, back then I still clasped the remnants of ladylikeness as a virgin bride clutches the coverlet to her chin on her wedding night.

Hmmm, that image might be a tad sexist. Blame it on the South, the South and the more generic sublimation of female anger. We were not allowed to be angry; it would interfere with our being gracious, accommodating, acquiescent — boot scrapers.

But I changed — with the seasons, with the years, with the geography — and by the 1990s I took to slinging the Oxford English Dictionary definition of feminism at California’s political candidates, who proudly proclaimed their befuddled disaffection for the moniker by answering “No” to the question “Are you a feminist?” and “Yes” to the question “Do you support granting women the same rights as men?”

“Ahem, sir,” I’d say, “that is feminism.” And the hapless hucksters would stumble over their reassurances that they both advocated for women’s equality and abjured feminism.

Go figure.

Now, thirty-five years removed from my feminist birthing, I am asked yet again what it means to be a feminist, a feminist in an anti-feminist culture, a culture as far removed from the feminism of the 1960s and 70s as we were then from the suffragists of the previous century’s turning. But there is a difference. This time, the query is posed without sarcasm. It comes from a women’s studies professor, a smart woman with wild hair and more books than her institution deems seemly. She’s been plunked into a new office with shelves enough for half her books. When I saw this, I couldn’t help but imagine the architect wondering how many words women really need to pack into their pretty little heads. Idiot.

Do I seem angry? I’m not supposed to be. But after thirty-five years of surveilling our patriarchal system, I am.

Or no, I’m not angry. I’m thinking, thinking of that classic Southern aphorism — that horses sweat, gentlemen perspire and ladies glow. I recall telling Mother, once, that I was sweating like a stuck pig. I don’t recall that she laughed, but I hope she would laugh at my suggestion now — that ladies clench their sphincters and remain silent, women become understandably yet politely angry, and feminists get mad. Because I am mad. I am a mad feminist. And I get mad better than most. Because mad is a tool for change. Silent acquiescence and clenched sphincters, polite anger, they are not tools for change — not at the turn of the century, not in the 60s and 70s, and not today.

What does it mean to be a feminist today, a mad feminist? I think it means a lot of things, some I’m still learning.

But I do know it means seeing people roll their eyes at the mention of consciousness-raising groups, those silly little things that turned on our voices, that aroused our sexuality, that confirmed our personhood.

It means a persistent gendered wage gap that in 2009 paid women a median wage equating to about 80¢ to each $1.00 men earned.[2]

It means fuming as women’s bodies serve as capitalism’s primary tools, our breasts selling beer, our genitalia pitching the latest fashions, our undeveloped hands assembling the endless stream of consumer goods from Third World countries that keep the elite in power around the globe.

It means mourning the loss of Congresswoman Bella Abzug’s trailblazing path to the United State’s lackluster ranking of 70^th of 186 nations in the percentage of females in national legislatures[3] — behind such countries as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

It means gasping as young women succumb to the fallacy that fellatio is not sex and their bodies, themselves are not worthy of respect — their own or their partner’s.

It means flinching as nearly one in every four women in the United States reports experiencing violence at the hands of a current or former intimate partner.[4]

It means wailing as each of more than 500 women per day reports being raped or sexually assaulted.[5]

And still — still! — we blame them for their abuse. Perhaps this is why experts suggest the actual numbers for domestic violence, rape and sexual assault are double or triple what is reported — or more.

It means that the U.S. government has barely begun to collect comparable data for lesbians and bisexual and transgender women.

It means — all of this means — that we need to do something about it, something to declare that this is how it is and that how it is, is not right, is not sane, cannot continue.

And that means we need to be activists for equality all the time, everywhere we go, always insisting on having difficult conversations we might rather avoid, the kind we would have shied from before our do-it-yourself-home-inspection-speculum days, when it was easier to fake an orgasm than to talk about it, to explore what it would take to achieve it, to tell a partner to try this instead of that. It’s not that different from equality. Seriously. Female orgasms and equality require the recognition that they are absent when they shouldn’t be, the desire for them, and the commitment to talk about them for the purpose of obtaining them. Orgasms are just a lot easier.

Equality, equality is a toughy. Which brings me back to the question of what it means to be a feminist today. Although I’m still working on the answer, I’m certain it means I have to be mad. I’ll let you know what else I figure out. And then I’ll call Anita, to thank her.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag, The Progressive Post and San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

“Hey, dude, that’s wack!”

I learned that handy little colloquialism during my first semester at Cal State San Marcos. “Wack,” according to the fellow who uttered it (a comely young man who was conscripted into a women’s studies class), is an adjective indicating that something is not right. After doing a little etymological digging, I found that “wack” is a variant of “whack,” which means “crazy” and is commonly used in conjunction with “job,” as in:

“That guy is a wha—.”

“What guy?”

“That guy over there by the thing. He’s a—.”

“Where’s there? What thing? What guy?”

“Over there, there! The guy by the thing over there! That guy!”

“You’re a whack job.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, that’s wack!”

Language is so interesting. And sometimes surprising.

Just last week, while following a ”Vote Pro-Life” bumper sticker along Fallbrook Street, I had a moment of surprisal. (Yes, it is a real word, but the OED considers it rare or obsolete, just like the hand-stitched white formal gloves languishing in the back of my sports bra drawer or the—. Never mind.)

Now, I had always thought “pro-life” meant just that, as in “for life,” “in support of life.” You know, “life-positive” — kind of like “sex-positive,” another term I learned in school, meaning human sexuality is something to be explored, expressed and celebrated. Apparently, we have to be taught that — c’est domage! Except in this particular context, maybe sex is a rather dicey reference. Do you suppose pro-lifers even have sex? Well, of course they do: Someone is producing those cute little kiddos who hold the mangled fetus posters outside health clinics. But if pro-lifers have sex, they inevitably have unintended pregnancies, and then what do they do?

Oh, yes, right. They do pretty much what other women do. They either have babies or abortions, as in one in five abortion patients self-identifies as born-again, evangelical, charismatic or fundamentalist Christian.

I guess they go to the clinics that aren’t on the picket list that day. Maybe we should picket them, but in a warm and welcoming way. My sign could say, “We proudly serve pro-lifers.”

But where was I? Ah, yes, my moment of surprisal and the meaning of “pro-life.”

The question arose when I was stopped at a traffic light behind a Christian school van bearing the “Vote Pro-Life” bumper sticker. An older woman of ethnic descent, noticeably mobility impaired and apparently of low economic status (only the poor don’t have cars in Southern California, right?), began to jaywalk her hobbled way across the street with a heavy load of groceries in her arms — just as the light changed to green.

Lo and behold, the van driver revved the engine and nosed toward the woman, who, to my surprisal (that would be a misuse of an obsoletism — yep, that’s a real word but also rare), proved she could limp a whole lot faster than I would have thought possible had I not seen it.

I guess the person driving the Christian school van that bore the “Vote Pro-Life” bumper sticker cares only about the lives of babies, not those of old hobbled women. Or maybe the driver was actually a bit more anti-jaywalking than pro-life, and consequently felt compelled to frighten the bejesus out of the errant pedestrian. Or maybe the driver was only partially life-positive but staunchly sex-positive, and was a little over-eager to beat a path home to explore, express and celebrate that latter positivity. Or, dare we imagine, maybe it was the old gal’s ethnicity or gender or age or apparent economic status that gave the driver the heavy accelerator foot.

Certainly, it would be easy to attribute the driver’s action to simple impatience; easy, but rank with disrespect and disregard for the target of the impatient assault. And one of the things I learned well before returning to school is that even the most simple acts we lightly perform on others can be heavy with complex motivations.

Whatever the reason, that driver was wack!

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag,  The Progressive Post and San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

January 22 was my birthday, which interests me greatly, being that I love birthdays — still. But, understandably, few folks noticed it.

January 22 was also the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that resulted in legalized abortion in the United States. But, unfortunately, few folks noticed it.

But I did, I noticed it, as I do every year. Every year I make note of the decision that has affected my life multiple times. And, as much as I love birthdays, if I had my druthers, I’d give up my flowering plant and chocolates and unabashedly early adult beverage; I’d forego the caviar dip and dinner and cake; I’d decline the ribald cards and presents and familial adoration; I’d chuck it all, if I could feel confident that the pro-choice population is aware of the Roe v Wade decision, it’s significance, and the persistent efforts to deny the constitutional right it confirmed for women.

And with the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, those efforts are already picking up. Just last Thursday, House Pro-Life Caucus Chairman Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced the introduction of the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.” If passed, the act would permanently encode the prohibition on federal abortion funding that heretofore required a vote each year since former Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) first succeeded in denying access to affordable abortions for women on Medicaid in 1976.

That was three years after the Roe v. Wade decision. Today, thirty-eight years after the decision that gave all women the right to choose an abortion, the majority of women do not have ready geographic or financial access to providers.

I would more gracefully accept Smith and Boehner’s effort to permanently deny abortion funding to women in the military, disabled women, and low-income women (you know, the gals they slander for making more babies than they can afford), if these fellows first introduced a bill called the “No Taxpayer Funding for Erectile Dysfunction Treatment.” Yes, let’s nip the need for abortions in the bud, so to speak. Perhaps if all the white, wing-tipped males who would vote to control women’s bodies and their seed therein suffered from a bout of flaccidity, they would get their heads out of our neither regions and back on the economy.

But I suppose one shouldn’t joke about abortion opponents — particularly not their penises — because they are so darn effective.

I wonder if my daughter is aware of Smith and Boehner’s bill. It’s simply the latest chisel chipping away at her right to choose to have an abortion — or to choose not to. I wonder if the Women’s Center at my college is aware. I could find nothing on the center’s website about the bill, the Roe v. Wade anniversary, nothing. And I found nothing on the campus website, either. I left a message at the center, but what could they have said if they had responded: “Oops,” “Roe who,” or worse?

And that makes me worried for my daughter, for the young women at my school, for the parents who struggle to feed the children they have, to keep a roof over their heads, to find a job. God forbid the heterosexual ones conceive yet again in the throes of comfort-me-we’re-about-to-lose-the-house sex.

I worry for them, because I can imagine a world without access to safe, legal abortion. It is not the soft pink-and-blue place that legal abortion opponents fantasize: all the cooing and joy and miraculous appearance of parenting skills and endless disposable diapers, where unwed women, promising college students, rape victims, women who don’t want children, drug addicts, women with life-threatening pregnancies, burned-out mothers, and abused and damaged women pledge to see their pregnancies through, singing “Kumbaya” and basking in the glittery glow of fairy dust.

No, a world without access to safe, legal abortion is a much more harsh and unforgiving place, where the risks of hunger and poverty, neglect and abuse, crisis and unrealized potential, clothes-hangar-punctured wombs and death clamor at the door and sometimes enter in. And they make anti-abortion activists look fun.

Yes, I worry for my daughter, for all our daughters, so I wonder if I can take advantage of my birthday to ask you for a gift — if you might give it: Please learn a little about the Roe v. Wade case, why the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court made the decision to support women’s right to abortion, why some would prefer that they hadn’t, why the right is so vitally important.

Click here to read an overview of the Roe v. Wade case.

Read the oral arguments, linked from the same page, on the left. The case was argued twice by attorney Sarah Weddington; the second time, because the court makeup had changed before it was able to decide.

Read the majority Supreme Court decision, written by Justice Harry Blackmun.

Read the dissenting opinion by Justice William Rehnquist.

Watch If these Walls Could Talk, a dramatic look at three women of three different eras and the abortion decisions they made.

And start talking about abortion rights, talk with women who have exercised their right to choose, listen to why they made the choices they made.

If you think you don’t know anyone who has had an abortion, you can give me a call or send me an email. I have exercised my right to choose several times, and I live at peace with the full range of consequences, including my daughter. I’d be happy to talk with you about it.

In the meantime, I’m going to have one of those adult beverages. I’m older now, I’m allowed.

Love,
K-B
kbgressitt@gmail.com
760-522-1064

1992 posters by Robbie Conal

Crossposted at OB Rag, the Progressive Post and San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

California’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina died Saturday when her Retire Boxer Money Bomb exploded prematurely, killing Fiorina immediately and injuring a campaign aide. Fiorina, the infamously fired CEO of computer giant Hewlett Packard, was 56.

Distraught and slightly singed campaign manager, Marty Wilson, stood outside Fiorina’s Sacramento campaign headquarters as firefighters extinguished a small fire caused by the explosion.

“We don’t know what happened,” Wilson said. “Carly was getting ready to launch the money bomb email. She’d just put another million bucks into the campaign, but that was it; she wasn’t going to risk any more of her own money, so we really needed contributions. Anyway, the fuse must have been faulty. The thing went off in Carly’s face. It’s gotta be [U.S. Senator Barbara] Boxer’s fault. Or [President Barack] Obama’s. We demand an immediate investigation and an apology to Carly and the California voters, not only for this deliberate assault but for Boxer’s refusal to have an honest and serious debate about the issues during this crucial time for our nation!”

Paramedics treated Wilson on the scene for a minor head injury and first-degree burns.

The deadly explosion followed another life-threatening incident just two weeks ago at the Republican Party’s Hispanic 100 Awards Gala in Newport Beach. According to an event volunteer, Fiorina had been “slamming down tequila shots, trilling her tongue and shouting ‘Andale!’ in this really pathetic accent. Then she passed out. We thought she was dead at first. But, nope, she barfed and got up to dance.”

Republican Party insiders had purportedly been concerned about Fiorina’s “self-sabotaging behaviors” since she became an economic advisor to the 2008 McCain-Palin presidential campaign, which made Wall Street and CEO compensation reform key platform issues. Skydiving into a campaign event, Fiorina had become entangled in the lines of her golden parachute, preventing the chute from fully opening. Skydive experts at the time said she would have plunged to her death had she not had the presence of mind to pull the cord on her bonus chute. Still, she made a hard landing when she said Sarah Palin was unqualified to run a corporation, and the campaign fired her from the media circuit.

Although Fiorina’s tenure at Hewlett Packard was longer lived than her time on McCain’s campaign, she suffered a more devastating crash from HP and was eventually ranked by Portfolio magazine as one of the 20 worst CEOs ever:

“A consummate self-promoter, Fiorina was busy pontificating on the lecture circuit and posing for magazine covers while her company floundered. She paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs. The merger Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq in 2002 was widely seen as a failure. She was ousted in 2005. THE STAT: HP stock lost half its value during Fiorina’s tenure.”

Despite her very public HP failure — or perhaps because of it — Fiorina was determined to prove herself in the public arena, and Boxer’s senate seat became her next target. She reconciled with Palin, who endorsed her in the primary, when Fiorina depended on the conservative Republican vote to topple moderate Republican Tom Campbell.

But just last weekend, noting Palin’s sagging polling numbers, Fiorina declined to appear with her at a Republican event in California. Palin’s husband, Todd, subsequently leaked a scathing email:

“Sarah put her ass on the line for you, Curly [sic]. She thought you were the real deal. But you and me both know you’re no Joe Sixpack. All that crap about starting as a secretary. You pulled yourself up with your family’s gold plated bootstraps. And now you can’t answer a simple invitation with a yes? Please explain how this endorsement stuff works, is it to be completely one sided, cuz if so, you don’t have a wolf’s chance in Wasilla of getting a cabinet seat in Sarah’s administration. You think you can throw a punch, but my Sarah can take you out in one shot! From a helicopter!”

Fiorina’s past job performance was not her only weakness on the campaign trail. She was A-rated pro-life in a pro-choice state. She supported offshore drilling in an anti-drilling state. She supported Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law in a state where 71 percent of Latino voters oppose it. And, in her op-ed piece announcing her campaign she highlighted her failure to exercise her right to vote: “Admittedly, I have not always been engaged in the electoral process, and I should have been.”

One of the few votes Fiorina reported casting was for California’s anti-same-sex marriage ballot measure, Proposition 8. That revelation, apparently intended to woo conservative voters, attracted the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay lobbying organization, which invested in anti-gay, pro-Fiorina advertising targeting Latino voters.

“Wouldn’t you know it!” said Juan Bautista, an independent gay voter, who was passing by Fiorina headquarters when the money bomb exploded. “One of the few times Fiorina bothered to vote, and it was for Prop. 8. What a poop she is, er, was. And the NOM ad, have you seen it? It’s pure manipulation. At least it’s not as bad as that pissy Sharron Angle ad telling Arizona Latinos not to vote at all. ¡Pendejos racistas!”

Most daunting of all Fiorina’s political challenges was her claim to be a jobs champion, which was contradicted by her corporate experience, noted for mass layoffs and outsourcing jobs overseas, strategies that have not been forgotten by California’s workforce.

Pedicab driver Bobby Sneed, who dropped off a fare just before the explosion, had little faith in Fiorina’s commitment to creating jobs for Californians.

“She laid me off from HP, shipped thousands of jobs overseas, and got a $45 million boot out the door. Now I’m essentially unemployed, she’s worth $120 million, and she was asking voters to give her money? Good lord! She wanted the senate badly enough, she should’ve just sucked it up and bought it, like Meg Whitman. Look, Fiorina soared to the corporate heights by whatever means she had at her disposal — and her dad’s telling her she’d never amount to anything surely motivated her — but she lacked the ability to translate her personal ambitions into a vision that captured the voter’s heart. And, I know it’s petty, but I couldn’t get beyond that snarl she was always trying to hide.”

Perhaps feminist activist Gloria Steinem captured the tormented essence of Carly Fiorina best, after Fiorina committed a live microphone faux pas in June:

“We had the prospective joy of two powerful women competing for a U.S. Senate seat. And in a moment of unintended, unedited honesty, what did we get from Fiorina? A pearl of wisdom? A poignant revelation? No. We got a snarky comment about Senator Boxer’s hair. That, Sweetie, is not feminism.”

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Crossposted at The Progressive Post.

Note: Carly Fiorina image from Carly for California campaign ad; Carly punch, from Californians Opposed to Carly Fiorina Facebook page; Carly Out of Control from Carly for CA website.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Updated 13 September 2010 and 14 September

Supervisor Bill Horn has firmly established himself as a man of consumptive excess.

I write not of his notable girth, but rather of his carnivorous proclivity for overindulging in the largess of his public office — for his own benefit. Put another way, Horn is one greedy cuss. And, perhaps, a desperate one, as his excesses are nibbling at his seat in an unsure election year.

From blatantly ignoring land-use regulations and campaign reporting requirements (which resulted in a $12,000 “settlement”), and apparently communicating illegally with the developer of a proposed project, to swapping ideological voting blocs for tax-funded grants, Horn is on the verge of following the descent of Representative Randy Cunningham — an erstwhile war hero whose corrupted character crashed and burned in 2005.

Will 2010 be the year of Horn’s self-destruction?

On September 2, Horn was soundly rebuked when San Diego County revoked a controversial $20,000 grant that Horn had designated for Life Perspectives, a self-proclaimed “nonreligious” group that County Counsel John Sansone determined creates religious materials. The organization’s seeming lack of self-awareness is sound argument enough for denying the grant; if it has been intentionally misleading the public, that would be a clincher.

Despite revelation that the nonreligious group is indeed religious, Horn is now attempting to bully the $20,000 back into the group’s fervent hands: He indicates he has helped Life Perspectives amend its grant application to meet County requirements.

Hmmm.

Perhaps the County should require grant applicants to demonstrate the minimal communication, budgeting and organizational skills necessary to prepare their applications on their own — independent of the supervisor who reviews and recommends their grants. Such a requirement would preclude supervisors helping prepare grant applications and then recommending and voting to fund those same grants, thus avoiding both the appearance and the actual fact of a conflict.

Nice concept, eh?

Another nice concept would be for the County to develop a responsible method of reviewing grant applications, so taxpayers are not dependent on journalistic nudging to motivate any County oversight.

Consider the case at hand: Horn is now saying he wants the taxpayers’ $20,000 for Life Perspectives president, Michaelene Fredenburg, to write a book.

Say, I’d like the money to write a book, but I’d certainly never consider asking my fellow taxpayers to give it to me. I’m humping for an agent to get it from an actual publishing house — something the taxpayers are not.

Seriously, Horn indeed wants us to fund Fredenburg’s new book, a companion to her previously published book, Changed: Making Sense of Your Own or a Loved One’s Abortion Experience (apparently self-published in 2008 and available on Fredenburg’s site for $19.95).

It seems Fredenburg made a reproductive choice when she was 18 — to have an abortion — and she has subsequently become unhappy with her decision. I do feel for her. But now she tries to convince other women not to exercise the right she has enjoyed. She says that the resulting “troubling emotions” some people experience post-abortion might require them to purchase her book Changed. And she goes on to suggest “some individuals may benefit from individual or group therapy” based on her next book — the one she wants taxpayers to fund — a “Group Leader Guide for the book Changed, [which] will allow therapists and peer counselors to effectively utilize Changed in a group setting.”

Hmmm, hmmm. I wonder: What’s the County’s cut of book sales?

Or, rather, it would be wise for the County to review Changed, before considering Horn’s recommendation to fund the Group Leader Guide.

Here is some information that might inform the Board of Supervisors’ decision:

– First, a few excerpts from Changed, a “core resource” of Fredenburg’s proposed program, presented with her formatting:

Your emotions may be directed outward
at other people or at God, …

This is all a normal part of moving through the grieving process.

Writing a letter that expresses your feelings to the individuals involved, …
reading the letter to yourself,
and then destroying the letter can be helpful.

As the letter
is torn into little pieces,
imagine the harmful emotions towards others, yourself, or
God

disintegrating. …

Many people who have experienced abortion find great comfort and hope through the prayers and support of others and in the assurance of God’s love and forgiveness.

Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm.

– The book refers people seeking “post-abortion” help to its affiliated website www.AbortionChangesYou.com, which then refers folks to a zip code search function. My zip code, 92028, produced five agencies, all of which are private organizations with noted religious affiliations: Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center, Pregnancy Resource Center – Vista, Birth Choice of San Marcos, alternatives womens center in Escondido and Rachel’s Hope/La Esperanza de Raquel in Escondido.

– Fredenburg has yet to make public any legitimate professional expertise that is relevant to writing a group therapy guide; although, Garry H. Strauss wrote the afterward for Changed. Strauss is a professor of psychology at the evangelical Christian college, Biola University, and a member of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, whose ethical standards derive from the following Statement of Faith: “The basis of this organization is belief in God, the Father, who creates and sustains us; Jesus Christ, the Son, who redeems and rules us; and the Holy Spirit, who guides us personally and professionally, through God’s inspired Word, the Bible, our infallible guide of faith and conduct, and through the communion of Christians.”

All told, it appears that Horn and Fredenburg have neglected to include in their revamped grant application the fact that Fredenburg’s post-abortion healing efforts have the same religious tone as her other pursuits, a tone that is fine in all ways — except that in our country we don’t use public funds for the promotion of religion.

What is it that Horn and Fredenburg don’t understand about that; what is confusing them? Is it the passion of faith, the pursuit of mission, the arrogance of office, the power-addled death throes of a corrupted politician, or the idiocy of a man who simply thinks he can get away with Hornswoggling the taxpayers yet again?

So, dear Supervisors Greg Cox, Dianne Jacob, Ron Roberts and Pam Slater-Price: What are you going to do Tuesday when Supervisor Horn’s recommendation comes before you?

Love,
K-B

P.S. Say, I hope Horn would be as eager to fund Life Perspectives if it were a Muslim organization, but what do you think?

Supervisor Greg Cox responds: … For weeks, my staff and I have been working with Supervisor Dianne Jacob and her staff to put forth a policy change that will institute a series of reforms for the Neighborhood Reinvestment Program.  The item will be heard at the September 28th meeting and if adopted, will ensure accountability and integrity in the program and bring it back to its original intent.

Regarding tomorrow’s board meeting, I have stated publicly that I am against Supervisor Horn’s recommendation to amend the grant to fund Life Perspectives.

Sincerely,
GREG COX
Supervisor, First District

Note: Horn’s motion died for lack of a second.

Crossposted at The Progressive Post.

Photo of Bill Horn from his County website.
Changed image from www.AbortionChangesYou.com.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

I was preparing for my little ritual last week, the one I practice every August 26, Women’s Equality Day, to celebrate our right to vote. … Well, not really to celebrate, but to at least recognize the Constitution’s 19th Amendment, declaring women’s suffrage. Hmmm, nope, not even to recognize it, no, more like to contemplate the 1920 passage of the amendment, because— . Well, I suppose, actually, to rant about it would be more accurate. In fact, to complain bitterly is what I mean. Yep, bitterly — because it took so damn long, and in the end, we had won the vote but we still didn’t have equal rights. And we still don’t have equal rights today.

Instead, we now have the likes of Sarah Palin, with the wit of a nit, pretending to be feminists yet advocating for our male-dominated Congress to make personal decisions for us; and young women, the likes of my own kiddo, bobbing to iPods in the wake of the women’s civil rights movement as those rights are rippling away; and senatorial wannabes, the likes of Carly Fiorina, sniping at her opponent’s hair — her hair, not economic recovery policy or Pacific Rim business alliances or the state of California’s schools, but sniping at Senator Barbara Boxer’s hair, her hair! Ye gods!

Yeah, so, I was gearing up for my little ritual, my deep, dark mourning for our failure to perpetuate the women’s civil rights movement and achieve true equality — you know, the enjoyment of equal rights and access to all the goodies Sarah Palin’s great nation of ours has to offer those willing to work harder for them than men do — when I stumbled upon an online story that exemplified our failure in the most putrid of terms, a story about an ad in Woman’s Day magazine.

Now, it is important to consider the context. Woman’s Day, launched in 1931, has evolved from a grocery store publication for housewives to a magazine for women who might work outside of the house but still spend a lot of time in it — parenting, cleaning, cooking, boinking and trying to lose their saddlebags. The magazine’s folks write that each issue “captivates 21 million readers by inspiring them to Live Well Every Day. Woman’s Day is designed for how we live now — with a strong voice that serves up simple, but sound ideas about health, food, family, relationships, home and style. A streamlined look and integrated media capabilities reflect both the sensibility of our readers and our editorial commitment to fresh thinking. Woman’s Day is truly an indispensable guide to living the best day possible.”

And on the day honoring the enfranchisement of women, what showed up in the new Woman’s Day? An advertisement explaining “Confidence at Work: How to Ask for a Raise.”

Sounds good, right? Eight “simple steps” to “asking a boss for the money we deserve.” It seems a nice complement to Women’s Equality Day.

Except it’s not. And it’s not a compliment to women at all. Take a look at the ad:

In essence, this Summer’s Eve ad is telling Woman’s Day readers that if they want to get a raise, they need to deodorize their vaginas.

That’s the best Fleet Laboratories’ Summer’s Eve and Woman’s Day have to offer us? That’s their idea of “fresh thinking,” of “indispensable guidance,” because “staying fresh isn’t always simple”; because, oh no, you have to skulk over to the feminine hygiene products aisle and hide your Summer’s Eve Feminine Wash and Cleansing Cloths between the bananas and the rutabagas so you can kill all the naturally occurring bacteria in your crotch before you ask for the raise that still won’t bring you up to pay equity with the man who has the same job you have, but who has always been paid more, and who has never been told to scrub his scrotum before he asks for a raise.

Do you see? Do you see why I mourn when we should be celebrating?

What were they thinking?

Maybe it’s just a big rightwing ploy to screw with us. It’s plausible. Fleet Labs is based in Lynchburg, Virginia, home to Jerry Falwell’s bastion of misogynistic academagoguery, Liberty University, where you receive six reprimands and a $25 fine for attending a dance or wearing a two-piece bathing suit; twelve reprimands and a $50 fine for watching an R-rated film; thirty reprimands, a $500 fine, thirty hours of disciplinary community service and possible administrative withdrawal for having an abortion — which, by the way, would not be necessary if the students dumped the purity pledges they don’t honor and tried birth control instead, a method more effective than withdrawal.

Anyway, when I trotted to Major Market to buy Woman’s Day and opened it to the offending page, lo and behold, there was actually a two-page spread: confidence via crotch cleansing on the left and “nurturing” your courage “with a little extra care down there” on the right (emphasis, mine):

So, come on, get it? If you didn’t get it before, do you get it now? Do you see? Do you understand why suffrage is just not enough? Fleet Laboratories paid somewhere in the range of $519,920 for two full-page, four-color ads telling women they stink.

Happy Women’s Equality Day? Pshaw!

I’ll stop demanding equal rights the day Fleet Laboratories stops telling women their crotches smell bad, the day breasts are no longer a marketing strategy, the day we are paid the same as male executives and they stop sharing twat jokes on their Blackberries at board meetings. And, oh, the day Fleet dumps their idiotic ad campaigns and puts the money into a scholarship fund for young women who embrace every bit of themselves, including their vaginas. Yep, that’ll be the day.

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag and The Progressive Post.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

“What the hell is that?” I asked indelicately.

I slowed the car, and my daughter and I rolled past a plump gal, in cheerful hospital scrubs, folding up a hand-lettered sandwich board that read, “Do you think you’re pregnant? Free ultrasound.” She stood on the side of the road, under the awning of an RV that, according to its signage, hosted a mobile ultrasound unit.

“OK, that’s weird,” said my wonderfully astute Katie.

Indeed, Fallbrook is weird, in ways good and bad. Having had a recent adventure in ultrasound land, however, we were temporarily inclined to suspect more of the bad.

Just a week or so before, beset with a common medical problem, we had dutifully reported to the Fallbrook ob-gyn recommended by Katie’s general practitioner. That the specialist was male was nearly inevitable in our town; that he proceeded to lecture us in the exam room was astounding.

“Now, if you’re pregnant,” he began, “you need to know that I don’t perform abortions and Fallbrook Hospital doesn’t allow them, and there are long-term complications associated with abortion. I’ve—.”

“She’s not pregnant,” I interrupted, “that’s not why we’re here, and you need to know that we are 180 degrees from you on the abortion issue. Ours is not the right family for your message.”

And wouldn’t you know it, he persisted!

“As a physician, I have a responsibility to explain the risks of the procedure, including the psychological risks. I’ve had women in here break down in tears years later when asked how many pregnancies they’ve—.”

I wanted to tell him to keep his focus on crotches and leave the psychology to those qualified in that specialty, but I opted for, “Perhaps I wasn’t clear: We’re not interested in discussing abortion with you, Katie’s not pregnant, and we are quite well informed about the issue. For example, the long-term effects of abortion are wildly misrepresented by anti-abortion groups, and if you actually need to address an unwanted pregnancy with a patient, you should provide accurate, unbiased information.”

Katie, sitting forlornly on the exam table, let loose a groan — one of disgust, not pain. I shut up. The doctor stomped out. And for this, we’d had the costly ultrasound.

Yeah, so, the hand-lettered sign on the side of the road touting free ultrasounds smacked of questionable intent to us. I googled it.

Lo and behold, the mobile ultrasound unit was a gift from the San Diego County taxpayers to the Vista Pregnancy Resource Center. Funny, I don’t recall being asked to sign the card. Indeed, I’m sure I wasn’t, because I wouldn’t have given tax dollars to an organization that indoctrinates its clients.

But County Supervisor Bill Horn would. He gave $50,000 of discretionary tax dollars to the Vista Center for the mobile ultrasound. And now the center makes the RV available to the Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center twice a month.

Ah, there was our explanation. But it still felt weird.

Perhaps it would have been wiser if Horn and the religious organization had relied on private contributors, rather than taxpayers, to fund their religious agendas. In fact, it kind of seemed as though that might be a little bit more legal, given our separation of church and state, so I googled a little bit more.

Turns out that Horn also gave 10,000 in taxpayer dollars to the Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center to help fund its 2009 fund raiser.

How did he get around the law like that?

Well, in a recent San Diego CityBeat article about Life Perspectives (another religious recipient of Horn’s generous tossing of tax dollars), John Sansone from the County Counsel’s office explained it all. In the last three years, Life Perspectives has received $80,000 in grants from Horn for the group’s annual fund raiser “Life Walk.” Because the grants were for the events, not for the religious anti-abortion curriculum materials that Life Perspectives sells, Sansone said the grants “may fall into a legal gray area.”

“In his ass,” said my wonderfully astute and equally indelicate Katie. And she has a point. Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to promote religious doctrine, so just how stupid do we have to be to buy the line that Bill Horn can, instead, fund fund-raisers that fund religious doctrine?

Implausibly stupid. Or, put another way, as stupid as Bill Horn thinks we are. This is the same Candidate Horn who was overheard in 1995 saying it didn’t matter what he promised on the campaign trail, because the voters wouldn’t remember once he was in office.

Oops.

Apparently it also doesn’t matter that Horn gave 34,000 in taxpayer dollars to a Pregnancy Resource Center (the County website didn’t indicate which one) for computers and a photocopier. Now, do you suppose it copies in gray or color?

And in 2009, Horn gave 35,000 in taxpayer dollars to a Pregnancy Resource Center for moving expenses. Maybe the moving van was gray?

And in 2004, Horn earmarked a $100,000 matching grant for a Pregnancy Resource Center to acquire a “maternity home.” Maybe they were planning to paint the home gray?

And there was the $50,000 for the RV, which was, frankly, more earth tones than gray.

And those examples are just what was available with a quick search of the County website and local news reports.*

Now, to cut Horn some slack, it is possible that the religious groups he has funded with taxpayer dollars are not actually promoting religion. This thought sent me back to Google, which produced the following reality checks:

From the Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center:

Volunteer staff is the heartbeat of this ministry. … Qualifications: a love relationship with Jesus Christ.

What you can do as a volunteer:

Pray.
Serve as a volunteer counselor, receptionist, or office volunteer.
Host a baby shower at your church.
Speak at your church or civic group about the sanctity of life and the work of Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center.
Serve as a church liaison for our baby bottle fundraiser or walk for life.
Organize the Sanctity of Life Sunday activities in your church.
Ask your pastor to preach on the sanctity of life and other related topics. …

Interestingly, the Fallbrook Center also promotes renewed virginity for those who repent being sexually active outside of marriage and ask God to make them whole in their hearts — and down there, I suppose.

I really hope none of my tax dollars is being used to teach that nifty bit of doctrine.

Another interesting note is that the Fallbrook Center claims they “recieve[sic] no local, state or government funding. We are completely dependent on our community to supply our annual operating needs.”

That would be another “oops” I guess.

Life Perspectives’ curriculum website provides an equally enlightening reality check. This excerpt is from the Teachers Notes for a teen pregnancy module:

[I]t’s clear that even students who are involved in churches continue to be sexually active and may experience unplanned pregnancies. In 2003, research at Northern Kentucky University showed that 61 percent of students who signed sexual-abstinence commitment cards broke their pledges. Three surveys of single Christian adults in the 1990s determined that only one-third were virgins. Studies also show that there is little difference in the abortion rate between women who go to church and women who do not. We need to work together to find ways to be more effective in helping our students make difficult choices that are in line with God’s direction for their lives.

OK, let’s all be honest: Bill Horn is giving tax dollars to religious organizations that — along with any services they might provide — are promoting religious doctrine. If anyone dares deny this, I suggest we all get down on our knees and pray that God might guide him or her to renewed honesty.

Of course, we can also vote for Bill Horn’s opponent in November, Steve Gronke.

In the meantime, Katie and I are casting our votes against doctors who indoctrinate women in the exam room — by finding a new ob-gyn.

Love,
K-B

* In a separate vein, there were a couple other grants worth noting: Horn gave $5,000 to the Santa Margarita Gun Club in 2009 for “ammunition, food, and travel costs including accommodations for the Gun Club’s trip to a national tournament in Camp Petty, Ohio”; and Horn gave $15,000 to the Fairbanks Ranch Association’s teen scholarships for drivers ed. Yep, Fairbanks Ranch (a “gated community of exclusive estates”) — the ritzy part of Rancho Santa Fe. Wouldn’t want all those Bimmers and Jags dinged in the school parking lot.

UPDATE: Hmm, according to the Association’s website, “Fairbanks Ranch is the distinctive home for select families.” Families that cannot afford to pay for their kids’ drivers ed?

Crossposted at The Progressive Post.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Note: ICU RV photo from the ICU website; Life Perspectives’ Life Walk photo from the Life Walk website.

On Fallbrook’s medical community

Mother 1: The ob-gyn tried to deliver an anti-abortion lecture during my kid’s exam.
Mother 2: Maybe it was just business development.

At Café des Artistes — on Sofia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette

Patron 1: Was Marie Antoinette bisexual in the movie? Did she go after the handmaidens?
Patron 2: Not in that movie.
Patron 1: She did in my movie.
Patron 2: The one in your head?

Read more Fallbrookisms…