Update: One Facebook page hosting the image removed the image discussed below because, in her words, “it attracted the most unseemly characters to the page, and the last time it was posted it contained the most vile comments from men who have no business anywhere near a pro-feminist page.” Other people who posted the image directly, including me in one case, were censored, suggesting that one or more readers complained to Facebook. Apparently, the community censors had a busy evening. The issue persists that Facebook employs a sexist sense of responsibility for its content.

……………………….

The picture below is a delightful and humourous celebration of women’s anatomy. It’s been posted all over the ‘net, including multiple Facebook pages — including mine. But this morning it was gone! And it’s gone from every other Facebook page I know of that had posted it.

Facebook stole the cupcakes!

Yet, countless Facebook pages continue to be littered with content that celebrates rape as humor. If you want to post rape jokes on public Facebook pages, all you have to do is label them as “humor” or “satire“ and you can rap on rape to your heart’s content. Search for “You know she’s playing hard to get when” and you’ll see that Facebook’s policy is worth bupkis.

So, Facebook allows the persistent presence of public content that assaults women’s anatomy, but it censors content that celebrates women’s anatomy.

Still want to buy into Facebook’s initial public offering?

By the way, the closest thing I can find as a source of this photo is Megan Bochum, on Facebook. So, Megan, if this is your photo, please accept the credit and my gratitude for sharing it.

Love,
K-B

April 5, 1969. San Francisco.

Hrmmmmm. Brrrrrmmmmm. 

I can hear the deep thrum of the bass guitars from the rock group on the sound truck way ahead in the line of march. It resonates in my chest. They’re playing a piece I don’t recognize, with strange minor harmonies like music for the end of the world.

“Who is it?” I ask some people coming the other way.

“The Grateful Dead,” they tell me. 

“Far out!” my friend says. “And we’ve already passed The Byrds and Jefferson Airplane. The best rock groups in San Francisco are part of this demonstration.”

“Everybody’s part of this demonstration,” I say, glancing around at the throng that curb to curb fills the wide street in the Haight-Ashbury district. Many are hippies, with long hair and love beads — a tribe I will soon join. They have been passing us six Los Angeles church ladies as we sit resting on a low wall for what seems like an hour — more and more people carrying signs, and chanting, “Hell no, we won’t go.” Their faces are grave, because we are protesting graves, so many American graves from the senseless Vietnam War.

October 15, 2011. Encinitas, California

But that was forty-three years ago, and today I am on my way to go with my sister Diane and her husband Dave to another protest march for a different painful issue — the recession. Here in this wealthy North County beach town, we are going to show our participation in the Occupy San Diego movement. Will it be like the old days? I hope this will be not just an exercise in nostalgia, but a useful political action.

When I arrive at my sister’s elegant house, she has squares of stiff brown cardboard and a box of felt pens ready. “Let’s make our signs before lunch,” she says. We hunker down on the floor like kindergarteners in art class and discuss the possibilities. “There are so many issues that are part of this mess,” she says. “The banks, election reform, the wars, health care, the corporations and the rich not paying their fair share… But we need to ask for something specific, something that can actually be done.”

“Yes, and we need to say it in three or four words so people passing by can get it in one glance.” Peace is always the central issue. That hasn’t changed since 1969, so I pick up a pen and print “Cut the military budget” in big letters. On the back I write “Out of Iraq and Afghanistan.” I have to think a minute about the spelling of the last word.

“Put a skull on it,” Di suggests. I have a hard time with the shape, but when I add round black eyes it looks pretty good. My sister the financial planner is more subtle; her sign says “Corporate money corrupts Congress.”

“Nice alliteration,” I comment. She starts decorating the “c’s” with triangles that look like teeth. “But where did you hear that we’re not supposed to have sticks for the signs?”

“That’s the way it was with the crowd on the news last night. I guess it’s for safety. And by the way, I read that oil combines with pepper spray to reduce the burn. Do you want to use some face cream?”

“Di, come on. This is Encinitas.”

“Well, I saw a kid get sprayed on television last night.” She’s right; I remember.

“And another thing, did you use sun screen this morning? And did you bring a hat?”

“Yes, yes. Jeepers, you’d think YOU were the big sis.”

We eat a quick lunch of cold chicken and fruit. I am anxious to get going, afraid that we will arrive after the march has departed and we won’t be able to find the others.

“Aren’t we going to wait for Dave?” I ask when she picks up her purse and her sign.

“He’ll come later, after his meeting is over,” she assures me. I ‘m surprised to find that I’m a little uneasy not to have a man with us.

When we arrive at the assembly place — the intersection of Encinitas Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway — we see that the plan is not to march anywhere, but to hold a stable occupation of all four corners. I rejoice to see that there are lots of protestors — maybe 500 — most of them in their forties or fifties, nicely dressed and holding hand-lettered signs. There can be no doubt that this is a grass-roots movement and not sponsored by any outfit rich enough to pay for professional signs. We join the group and begin holding out our slogans to the oncoming traffic. People show each other what they have written and exchange approving words and high fives. Many facets of the causes of the recession are expressed on the signs. The big placard of the tall man next to me says, predictably, “We’re mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it any more!” Another urges “Bail out people, not banks!” My favorite is an adaptation of a commercial “going out of business” sign with “America is” written in at the top, and “Politicians for sale — cheap!” added at the bottom. That is, it’s my favorite until my heart rejoices to spot an older man holding a reproduction of the iconic Mothers for Peace image: a single flower and the words “War is not healthy for children or other living things.” He and I exchange reminiscences of the Old Days, and I tell him I used to have a lapel pin with that image on it.

The crowd keeps on growing, and with it, a feeling of jubilation. The traffic passing four ways at the intersection is an ideal situation for getting our message to the most people in a short time. Cars honk approval as they pass, and we yell encouragement back at them. I am astonished at how many passers-by seem to be with us. They wave and smile and — oh joy! — flash peace signs with two uplifted fingers. In sharp contrast to my former experience in demonstrations — for peace, for civil rights, for women’s equality — there is not one ugly shout, not one mean look. Can it be that the American public, even in this conservative upper-middle-class town, is fed up and ready for action? With the guidance of the protest leaders, we begin to chant joyfully. “We ARE—the ninety-nine percent!” and “WE’VE been sold out! YOU’VE been sold out!” We cross the street with the change of light, holding our placards high; we lean out from the curb to show our messages, and the shouting and honking gets louder and louder. My sober, scientific brother-in-law Dave turns up in the crowd, having as much fun as a kid let out of school.

Then a massive red truck comes down the street and honks with a mighty air horn as he turns the corner. Laughter and cheers greet the driver. The story passes through the crowd: “His mother is standing on that corner, and she called him on her cell phone and told him to get his truck over here.” But then — “The cops have pulled him over! Let’s go protest his arrest!” A group of about a hundred hurries down the block.

“This could get ugly,” I think. I tag along at first to see what will happen, but then decide to watch from across the street like a wise coward. Soon the group straggles back. “What happened?” I ask.

“Aw, they gave the guy a ticket. I’m hoarse from yelling at the cop, but it didn’t do any good,” says a young man. I give thanks that nobody lost control and shouted an obscenity at the police and got themselves arrested. THAT would make a pretty story on the evening news. The media, I had learned, always goes for the most sensational aspect of any story. So where IS the media? The protest has been going on for two hours, and there has been no sign of interest from local TV stations. I notice one young girl taking notes and ask, “Are you the media?”

“Well, not really,” she says modestly. “I’m doing an article for my high school newspaper. Can I interview you?” So I give her my best sound bites. At last, when things are beginning to wind down, an NBC channel 7 truck arrives, and a lone cameraman sets up on one corner with a tripod. I tell him the story about the truck, but he just looks at me with a blank face and tired eyes. Later, I hear that an elderly woman sitting in a chair on the curb has been coming to this corner with protest signs for four years. When I talk with her, I find that she is articulate and informed, and has run for Congress three times, so I go back to the cameraman, point her out to him, and am gratified when he takes his mike over to interview her.

Di and I, although we are exhilarated and still having fun, are getting tired arms from holding up our signs, so we reluctantly decide to leave, but Dave is enjoying himself and elects to stay for a while longer. On the way home I feel cleansed and hopeful, but that evening when we look at the news, although it is heartening to see crowds all over the world supporting the movement, I am discouraged to see that for our little North County protest the camera has caught only one of the four street corners, making the crowd look meager. However, the elderly woman in the chair is given a good fifteen seconds on camera to make our many complex points.

But was anybody listening? Did we make a difference forty-three years ago in race relations, gender equality, ending war? How long is it going to take this time?

. . . . . . . .

Patty Campbell is a former librarian and belly dancer who lives on an avocado ranch in Fallbrook.

Occupy Encinitas photo from The Leucadia Blog.

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

Friday, August 26, was Women’s Equality Day. Sadly, it’s a bit of a misnomer. Besides, how many people actually know what it is that the day celebrates? It surely is not equality. Women don’t have equality. Even I don’t have equality, and I am no pantywaist — but the same rights, responsibilities and opportunities as men? Oh my goodness, no. Women, as a class, have not yet achieved any of that.

What we have is the right to be oppressed by ludicrous expectations for our gender, including that ever popular slut-mommy routine straight men are taught to favor; by mass media representations that tell the world what is most valuable about women are our breasts and penetrable orifices; and by the often unspoken yet screeching mantra to suck it all up for family, god and country.

As for responsibilities, women are burdened with an embarrassment of riches. While we have the responsibility of providing one of the pro forma two household incomes that keep everyone in the latest cell phones (if we’re not toting that bale as a single parent), the onus remains on us for the vast majority of household work and child rearing — along with maintaining extended family and friend networks, managing household finances, negotiating service provider contracts, and distributing the intangible benefits of our core competencies. It’s akin to leading a business, except only 28 of the Fortune 1000 corporations have female CEOs. That they are paid 8 to 25 percent less than their male counterparts should not be considered commentary on their job performances, but, rather, a reflection of their body parts.

And then, there is the cornucopia of opportunities that are showered upon women like sweet manna from heaven. Actually, I’d say they’re more like the ammonia swirling from a unkempt pissoir. Among many, there is the opportunity to be denigrated for our emotions, our bodily functions, our weight, our femininity and our lack thereof; the opportunity to be sidelined with the label “bitch” for characteristics that earn men promotions; the opportunity to fend off unwanted sexual advances by those who interpret the length of our skirts or size of our boosiasms as an invitation to pounce; and the opportunity to earn an average of 80¢ to each dollar a man earns — whether he’s average or a numskull.

So, what’s a woman to do? I suppose it helps to point out such peccadilloes, but I’ve been writing about them for way too many moons. Last year, it was the Woman’s Day advertising campaign that touted vagina deodorizing as a career advancement tactic. In 2009, it was the fear of feminism that inhabits conservative male rhetoric and inhibits progress toward equality. Before that, it was the shunning of the term “feminist” and on and on.

Just how long does it take for folks to recognize the inequity of inequality?

It’s been one full lifetime since the impetus for Women’s Equality Day. Still wondering what makes the date so special? It’s the day in 1920 that women in the United States were finally allowed — allowed! — to vote. It took a constitutional amendment, and what actually changed? Well, in 1919, Great Aunt Cappie was studying to be a surgeon, learning to cut folks open from stem to stern and work medical magic with their innards. But she couldn’t vote: She wasn’t deemed to have the temperament for such decisions. Then in 1920, her mental and emotional capabilities, formerly belittled by men who feared women’s suffrage, suddenly received a constitutional upgrade.

In fact, Aunt Cappie didn’t change; it was an attitude adjustment and the presumption that women’s votes could be added to their husbands’, a presumption that lingers in some backwater bedrooms to this day.

But for the rest of us, what has women’s suffrage produced? Of late, it’s the likes of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, who think deriding their political opponents just like the boys if not more so, opposing women’s and civil rights, and winking — or belatedly blinking — their mascaraed lashes make them prime female presidential fodder.

If only they respected themselves a bit more, but apparently one lifetime has not been enough. And I’m not sure which is the greater hindrance to equality: men who fear us or women who play us.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag and San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

Pissoir image from affordablehousing.org.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

When I last worked a corporate job, I wished for a wife.

Now, as I study the shifting distribution of labor between females and males, I feel a little guilty about that. And as I find I have the time to offer to take the week’s suits to the dry cleaners, I’m no longer concerned about gender implications. And as I see the burgeoning acceptance of same-sex marriage and the trend from women referring to their “wives” to women referring to their wives, I wonder how the definitions and demarcations of women’s work and men’s work might change in the next few generations.

Back then, though, I really wanted a wife.

Oh, I had a perfectly good husband. He would welcome me at the door with a smartly shaken martini as I dragged myself in when most folks were contentedly farting in front of prime time TV, trot me back out to the car to take me to dinner, and offer up a quick boink before we crashed for the night.

While that was quite lovely — and loving — what he didn’t know was, well, there was a whole lot he didn’t know. Because I didn’t tell him.

I didn’t tell him that I would have loved to crawl into the womb of my home with a bowl of pasta and a foot rub.

I didn’t tell him that I would then have noticed the fur balls and felt compelled to gather them up before settling back into the loveseat and pasta.

I didn’t tell him that his inevitable suggestion that I leave the fur balls for the housekeeper would have angered and then saddened me.

I didn’t tell him that scooping them up himself was an option.

I didn’t tell him that dining out and housekeepers and smartly shaken martinis helped perpetuate a job I hated; a job that built a pool and remodeled a kitchen and took us around the world and paid for the college fund and rescued family members and kept us in the style to which we had happily become accustomed; a job that sucked big, hairy elephant schlongs.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t tell him I hated the job quite that much.

I hated it, because I spent 10 or 12 hours a day with a tribe of white, middle-aged men, in a culture in which the thought that Hurricane Katrina did a much-needed cleansing of New Orleans was actually uttered — and got a laugh. A culture in which the suggestion that a particular employee would not be able to do her public relations job if she gained any more weight, was met with concurring nods and silence. A culture where forwarding twat jokes at executive team meetings, from one Blackberry to another, was SOP, while Christian computer screensavers and the CEO’s scripture-of-the-day emails fronted for their sins.

No, I didn’t tell him quite how much I hated it. How I hated the sight of the boardroom table and reclining upholstered chairs. How I hated the smell of the place. How I hated the tribe’s privileged touch as they thumbed through reports, most often prepared for them by absent women. How I hated the lot of them, and how I began to hate my husband, simply because he was one of them, a white, middle-aged male. Nope, I didn’t tell him that.

And I didn’t tell him that I hated myself even more, for working in such a belittling, patriarchal, misogynistic environment.

And then I left.

And then I didn’t hate anyone anymore.

And then I began to forget why I wanted a wife when I had a perfectly good husband.

Except … although I’m ashamed to admit it, on occasion I still wish for a wife, the comforts of the feminine giver of care, a consoling bosom in which to bury my troubled brow, the smell of baking shortbread I didn’t knead myself, a void of fur balls in the living room.

Do you suppose that makes me a sexist pig?

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

What a juxtaposition! As Father’s Day approached last week, the Pew Research Center released a report on fatherhood that indicated mixed grades for the U.S. rendition — or, more aptly, renditions — of the oft neglected, negated, nullified institution of fatherhood. Based on an analysis of the most recent data from the ongoing National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), the Pew folks reported that the presence of fathers in the same home as their children has taken a big dive since 1960 — from 11 percent of children living apart from their fathers then, to 27 percent in 2010. But the data also indicate that fathers who remain are doing more stuff with their kids — eating together, helping with homework, playing together — you know, more actively parenting.

This is interesting because, as I recall, back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s — maybe more recently but less vocally — feminists asked fathers to take a more active parenting role, to share parenting responsibilities equitably, and what has happened? Some fathers did and some fathers ran.

Of course it’s not fair to assume a greater number of men now live apart from their children simply because feminists expressed concern about the division of parenting work, and the report doesn’t address the why of the data. Certainly the increasing divorce rate is partially responsible, that and the persistent social rule that women should take on the majority of parenting responsibility, which places the majority of children of divorce with their mothers. If anything is obviously to blame for fewer men living with their children, it is the white, male, dominant culture that invests its all in keeping women as the primary child caregiver. But whatever the dynamics behind the data, the report is as interesting as it is dismaying, and I highly recommend reading it: “A Tale of Two Fathers.”

One note, however: I found only one reference to same-sex couples in the NSFG (the basis of the Pew report), and that was in a portion of the questionnaire I found online. It read: “For the next several parts of our interview, the questions about marriage and other sexual relationships are limited to those with opposite-sex partners. In the final section of the interview, some questions will ask about sexual experience with same-sex partners.” I couldn’t find the final section of the interview online. I also couldn’t find indication that the NSFG questionnaire includes the same parenting questions for fathers in same-sex couples and those in opposite-sex couples, or a live person at NSFG to answer that question. And it’s a question that warrants pursuing.

In the meantime, after exploring and mourning the Pew report, I received an email message from the White House with the subject “Celebrating Fathers.” The message sent me to linked webpages jam-packed with hopeful and encouraging fatherly stuff. What a relief! There was a little fatherhood pitch from the President (whose father exited the family when Obama was two, so kudos to Obama and those who reared him!), an updated fatherhood.gov website promoting the Strong Fathers, Strong Families campaign; a new DadTalk blog intended to provide helpful fathering information; and my favorite page, which hosts the be-better-fathers propaganda commonly known as PSAs (public service announcements) — and I really enjoyed some of them. In contrast to the mass media in which men of color and many fathers are relegated to the roles of scary criminal, sex object or complete moron, what a refreshing treat to see them being themselves, practicing cheers and cooking dinner and just stoop-sitting with the kids.

However, after being inundated with a spectrum of daddy messages, I found myself wondering why men even become fathers. Are their motivations any different from mine for pursuing motherhood — biology, narcissism, errant rationalization? And what better way to find out than to ask them, which I did, and here’s what some of them had to say. …

This, from a local humorist: Why am I a father? Well, my wife looked so cute that night (she still does), and this reproductive urge just bubbled up. We mated. We reproduced, thrice. Now my kids are doing the same thing. Cute women — I guess that’s why all guys become fathers.

This one got into the meat of the Pew report: Like my father and his father before him and my mother’s father before her, I am a father by biological consequence. I had a collision with the mother of my sons, and fortunately for us, we have continued to have such collisions. But there’s a non-biological reason I’m a father. When things between my wife and I were not good, I decided to stay. Broken homes were pretty common when I was a boy. My wife’s parents divorced, too. So when we had hard times, as I suspect all marriages do, divorce was an option. I would still have been a father but the family would have been divided. I remembered how that felt as a son and decided to stay with my wife, which meant working with her because we could not go on as we were. After my parents’ divorce, my father drifted away. In a sense he resigned from the job. I’m a father because I spend time with my sons, and I can do that because I love their mother, which is how I became a father in the first place.

My friend of rosy hue once again focused on the positive: I am a father because my children fill my days with laughter, joy, and a sense of peace. They are also our most precious gift and best hope for a future filled with possibility.

This one always starts out with a joke, good or bad, just start with a joke: So, a very good question. There are of course some wiseass answers: Didn’t anyone tell you about the birds and the bees — or did you miss that class; couldn’t outrun the shotgun; whatever. But, I think my reasons are mostly self-serving. First, having the boys meant I didn’t have to grow up. Not that I would have anyway. There are so many memories that have filled my life because of them, and their pain has been my pain, their success my pride, their joy my joy. I can’t imagine that life would have been nearly as dear or as fulfilled had I not been a father. And the other reason is to attain immortality. We are all terminal. There’s no getting out of that one. And, for the majority of us, there won’t be a library or building named after us. But the legacy most of us leave behind will be our children. In them we can find the reason for existing.

This guy’s a writer — always has an artful beginning, a middle and an ambiguous end: My fatherhood was unplanned and found me 17 years ago in a moment when I already had more to manage in life than I knew how to do properly. However, I grew into it naturally and it changed me for the better. The bond I have formed with my daughter from infancy has made me stronger and more than once saved me from despair. I am proud of my daughter and what she is becoming. I am sure her achievements will surprise and amaze me in the future and continue to give my life more significance than I have been able to give it, hampered by my own doubts and failings, through my own lifetime of effort. Her future will be surprising and I have no dread or feeling of apprehension with respect to my child with the sole exception that the world she is inheriting upon her graduation last night from Fallbrook High seems precarious and degraded. I wish I could make it all better for her, but it is clear to me that I cannot and that all I can do is try to put a brave face on a dire situation and not discourage her or weaken her in advance of the challenges she will be facing.

This is from a fellow who fathered many more than he spawned: One of the most important things being a father has taught me is to check the oil. Sorry I’m late. I was coaching baseball with my son, for my father-less grandson. And I love/cherish every moment of it.

And this one drives it home to its core: Why am I a father?

– Because of some primordial drive to procreate.
– Because a man of my generation was expected to marry and have at least one child, preferably          more, (but not “too many”) if he was to be respected in the workplace.
– As I age, because I may need care if I do not have a spouse to do the “job.”

I suppose the why of it might not matter: I am certain what does matter is how we do it, fatherhood and motherhood, and how we do it does not have to be restricted to the binary choices our culture foists on us, choices based on location or sex or sexuality. We could simply choose to do parenthood equitably — for our kids.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

Note: Stoop-sitting photo from the Maryland Historical Society.

Dawn and I were fast friends in our little redneck high school, and music was our common ground. I suppose we needed some, given our differences. Dawn was of a wonderful and volatile blend of Italian and Irish stock, which made for riotous dinners amid a constant familial roar — and my first meal of homemade pasta and red sauce served with raucous nonchalance, while Dawn hid behind her discomfort. I came from Southern pabulum laced with eccentricity — social introductions were made in hierarchical order and there were no elbows on our table at which we dined with oh-so interesting foreigners on cheap caviar and raw steak.

As Dawn’s house was sweet succor to me, so mine was to her, but neither of us could stand her own tribe, leaving us no mutual escape, at least not inside.

Instead, we spent much of our time together riding the back roads of Morris County, windows rolled down, wind in our hair, crooning to Joni Mitchell. Her Court and Spark album had been released my junior year, Dawn’s senior, and Joni’s lyrics carried us into the jazzily ethereal world of free men in Paris, the Empire Hotel lounge, ladies in lacey sleeves, men who made friends easily, dancing up rivers in the dark, feeling unfettered and alive.

But it was Twisted that drew our essential blood, binding us in sisterhood forever.

Because we were twisted, the two of us, oh yeah, twisted, we were. Or so we wished. Hoped. Yearned for.

Unlike Joni’s other songs, in which she deigned to wait for a man, feared she was falling too fast, knew she was in trouble, hoped to be sparked, distrusted them yet still acted kind, Dawn and I, we wanted to be ruthless, wild bitches, and Twisted allowed us that. Twisted allowed us to flaunt parents and band practice, analysts and preachers.  We didn’t have to listen to anyone’s jive. We could create our own. And we did.

While our parents intoned our many failures to perform as young ladies, with all our crazy ideas about college — or not — about virginity — or not — about being nuts — or not — we knew we were crazy. Our own kind of crazy, and Twisted was our anthem. The national anthem of Dawn and Kit-Bacon. A duet for two insane altos.

But it was our kind of insanity, stoked by pot and screeching wheels that left manure spraying in our wake. The kind of crazy that drew us to the farmer’s son, the one with orgasmic eyes, slung like a bull and just a little bit alcoholic; that drew us to the pockmarked thug, the one with tears in his eyes and fear in his heart; that drove us careening around them to the train station in wild search of art in Manhattan.

And we found it. There. And in each other. Because, as Joni sang, we knew we were geniuses. We knew there were much worse things than missing drivers on the top of double-decker buses. There were things that could hurt us, crush us, ruin us. But we could drive faster and sing louder and we would survive them.

Sure, they could laugh at us, they could lock up the liquor, they could take away our keys, but they couldn’t make us cross our legs at the ankles. Because we were, indeed, Twisted.

Love,
K-B

Twisted

By Annie Ross and Wardell Grey, recorded by Joni Mitchell in 1974

My analyst told me
That I was right out of my head
The way he described it
He said I’d be better dead than live
I didn’t listen to his jive
I knew all along
That he was all wrong
And I knew that he thought
I was crazy but I’m not
Oh no

My analyst told me
That I was right out of my head
He said I’d need treatment
But I’m not that easily led
He said I was the type
That was most inclined
When out of his sight
To be out of my mind
And he thought I was nuts
No more ifs or ands or buts

They say as a child
I appeared a little bit wild
With all my crazy ideas
But I knew what was happening
I knew I was a genius…
What’s so strange when you know
That you’re a wizard at three
I knew that this was meant to be

Now I heard little children
Were supposed to sleep tight
That’s why I got into the vodka one night
My parents got frantic
Didn’t know what to do
But I saw some crazy scenes
Before I came to
Now do you think I was crazy
I may have been only three
But I was swinging

They all laugh at angry young men
They all laugh at Edison
And also at Einstein
So why should I feel sorry
If they just couldn’t understand
The idiomatic logic
That went on in my head
I had a brain
It was insane
Oh they used to laugh at me
When I refused to ride
On all those double-decker buses
All because there was no driver on the top

My analyst told me
That I was right out of my head
But I said dear doctor
I think that it’s you instead
Because I have got a thing
That’s unique and new
To prove it I’ll have
The last laugh on you
‘Cause instead of one head
I got two
And you know two heads are better than one

© 1965 Prestige Music

Southern colloquialisms are so darn charming — with those well-honed nasty edges! Growing up, my family had particular fun with them, as we were wont to play with most words, great fodder that they were for what we considered erudite scoffery (a perfectly good word, if only the Oxford English Dictionary would admit it!).

We could take a nattily nasty little idiom — That fellow’s been hit with the ugly stick — and turn it into a folksy yet classist slur — Far worse, my dear, he’s been hit with the uncouth stick. Of course, we failed to acknowledge that criticizing someone’s social station was as lacking in good manners, refinement and grace as the poor schmuck at the unhappy end of the stick.

However, after years of navel contemplative therapy, fond re-reading of Emily Post, and pragmatic acceptance of Miss Manners’ heartfelt but faulty contemporization of traditional social graces, I had rid myself of such unbecoming behavior. I deemed my time better spent on serious injustices than on sniping at folk who wouldn’t waste their time at the Maryland Hunt Cup, something I now avoid myself, given the inclination of the fans to wear jeans — jeans! — to the horse race on My Lady’s Manor. (My Lady would be horrified!)

Oh, dear. Having written that last bit, I realize that perhaps I’ve more work to do on my classist self.

Frankly, though, something much more disturbing has sent me sidling back to my Southern hierarchical roots, something that suggests that maybe some people are, well, some people are sort of— kind of— rather like— oh— better than others.

I know, I know, it’s an unseemly thought, but first let’s be clear on terms: I do not mean “better” in the biblical sense, as in the better folks will transcend life’s earthly bonds to soar into their heavenly and glorious reward, while those who are betterness impaired will descend into the stinking ignoble fires of hell’s perpetual torment.

Aw, jeez, stop right there. I mean, take a gander at what I just wrote. I don’t believe in all that Southern Baptistism, but it is acutely obvious that I’d like to propel some folks downward with a swift kick hindward. Ignoble fires, perpetual torment? Jumping Jehoshaphat!

So, what has given me the vapors? Is it the devolution of my social conscience? What’s got my dander up into a blizzard of judgment?

Welp, I devoted my spring break to a media content analysis — counting the incidence of indecent words and references to rape, racism, homophobia, violence and picking on sick kids — and, although the exercise appealed to my left cerebral hemisphere, it didn’t do much for my psyche. The experience elicited some rather powerful reactions just hankering to be heard.

In fact, if I were not a lady I’d use some very strong language, and, actually, I am not and, because I’m not, I’ll be clear and direct: People who spew hate in rancid tabloids, in deceitfully bigoted organizations, in unexpurgated online comments, in the prurient pages of glossy misogyny, in massively heinous hatemails — all you all suck.

And what did I learn during spring break— dare I put the thought to words?

Hmmm, indeed I dare: When it comes right down to it, chillun, people who choose to hate, people who hate anonymously, people who lie about hating, people who humorize hate to render it invisible, these people who hate are just not as good as the rest of us.

There. I wrote it. I own it. And I gladly acknowledge that particular prejudice. Because there are folks out there who have been hit with the hate stick — their poor mamas must be spinning in their graves! — and, although our Constitution might protect their vile vomitus, they deserve to be pilloried for it.

Perhaps this conclusion is a remnant of my Southern Baptist heritage; I am ever recovering. But you know what? I’m OK with that. I’ll just set a spell and think on it while I calm my fevered brow with a cool mint julep.

Love,
K-B

Notes: I no longer fancy the races; they are damnably uncivilized for the horse.

Stock image from Library of Congress, originally published in Puck, February 3, 1909.

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

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Since traipsing back to college at Cal State University San Marcos (CSUSM) in January, my desktop “To Do” list has begun to look like the spidery reaches of a graphic organizer, replete with interrelated concepts and sequencing.

Would you think such disparate concepts as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), household recyclables, misogynistic fantasy novels and garden snails share an affinity? Probably not. But my SPLC contact is buried in my stored files in the shed. The shed is next to the recycling bin and the recycling can in the kitchen needs to be emptied. I have a review copy of a sexist book, flung to my office floor in a moment of critical pique, and I figure it will be an easy sale for the Friends of the Library to one of Fallbrook’s many sexists.

So, I can scoop up the book, leave it on the kitchen counter to await my next trip to Main Street; snag the recyclables and trot them outside to the bin; stomp a few plant-ravishing snails along the way; pick up the file I need in the shed; and, because it takes a few minutes to complete the circuit back to my office, call my attorney along the way — I forgot that one, but I owe her a call. Then I’ll dump the sexist book at the library on the way to hitting the Café for a good laugh with the good old boys. Or maybe I’ll dump it in the recycling bin, rather than perpetuating its idiocy.

Either way, I could indeed use the laugh because I’m as burned out on the time-task-project management required to be a full-time student, work, and parent my kid, my mother and my husband, as I am burned out on idiocy. (Just kidding, Honey.)

For example, the idiocy perpetuated by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ). That man needs a lesson in rape myths. The main sponsor of HR 3, Smith was hoping to use the bill to redefine rape as “forcible rape,” and thereby prohibit federal funding for abortions for all the low-income rape victims whom he believes do not deserve federally funded abortions. You know, the gals who are asking for it or didn’t fight back hard enough, the seductive Lolitas or drunks or druggies or the mentally disabled.

After reproductive rights activists pointed out Smith’s idiocy, “forcible” was removed from the bill’s language, but the idiocy continues: The bill would still prohibit people from using their own health savings accounts to pay for abortions and it would prohibit tax deductions for health insurance premiums for plans that provide abortion services.

What can you do? Call your representative and ask him or her to vote against HR 3, which will pass in the House anyway; then you’ll need to call your U.S. senators and ask them to vote against the Senate version of the bill, which will probably do the trick.

Then there’s the House of Representatives Republicans’ collective idiocy (all but seven of them), in the form of an approved amendment to the federal spending bill, the “Pence Amendment,” named for Rep. Mike Pence, (R-Ind.). The amendment would defund Planned Parenthood, a supposed deficit-reduction move. Were the anti-reproductive rights vendetta against Planned Parenthood successful (an unlikely outcome, given the Democratic majority in the Senate), it would ultimately cost the nation significantly more then we would save, because the organization also provides millions of low-income families birth control, cancer screening, and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, services that would be lost were the amendment to make it through the Senate.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA.) did a fabulous job of pointing out the anti-abortion Republicans’ idiocy:

What can you do about this one? Again, call your U.S. senators and ask them to remove the Pence Amendment from the spending bill.

One final example, the idiocy of The Koala, a tabloid publishing company that makes a business of smearing hate language and sophomoric dribble through the hallowed halls of academia. Well, at least through the campuses of San Diego County’s three public universities.

Consider CSUSM Koalan Blake MacKenzie. He works at Chuck E. Cheese’s and apparently figures it’s OK to publish the “Top Five Things Retarded Kids Do At Chuck E. Cheese’s,” including “Shit in the skycrawl” and “Wait in line to play the paper towel dispenser.”

MacKenzie and his cohorts (Jeff Allen, Garret Crispi, Sammy Elhag, Aaron Jaffe, George Lee Liddle III, Blake MacKenzie, Scott Middough, Petja Piilola, Shane K. Walsh Jeff Weaver and Matt Weaver, the Koalans identified to date despite their effort to remain anonymous) are now targeting Christians with the “Top Five Differences If Jesus Had Been A Chick,” including that “Eating out your girlfriend on her period would be your communion.” Their mothers will be none too pleased to read the “Top Five Advantages of Marrying A Single Mother,” #1 of which is “Fighting over beating children [is] a perfect excuse for beating new wife.”

In their second issue recently distributed at CSUSM, Koala owners George Lee Liddle III and Sammy Elhag descended from promoting pedophilia to promoting incestuous pedophilia with their feature “Top Five Benefits of Going to Prom With Your Sister,” which declares “She gives GREAT head!” and “Who’s gonna care if she’s a minor?”

After students, staff and community members pointed out the Koala’s idiocy, Liddle and Elhag’s first issue advertisers withdrew their ads; issue two went from 12 planned pages down to eight; the sole advertiser in the second issue of the CSUSM edition is a San Diego strip club; and the idiocy continues.

What can you do now? Call the owner of Goldfingers Gentlemen’s Club, Aaron Goldberg of Finger One Inc (see contact information below), and encourage him to stop supporting a tabloid that promotes pedophilia, incest, rape, homophobia and racism.

Then, because advertising revenue from the UCSD and SDSU editions of the Koala are likely supporting the start-up edition at CSUSM, call Liddle and Elhag’s other advertisers to encourage them to withdraw support (see contact information below).

On a more ironic than idiotic note, is Koalan Jeff Weaver, who didn’t like what one newspaper reader called the Koalans: He complained that “Generalizing all koala members as a klan is offensive.”

Interesting, because when critics declared the Koala’s content offensive, the Koalans laughed and said, “If you don’t like it, don’t read it; lighten up; it’s comedy.” Yet Jeff Weaver is offended by a single word, a word that categorized him and his fellow Koalans as members of a secret fraternal organization that asserts white supremacy. In other words, a group of predominantly white men who attempt to anonymously damage every other demographic in an effort to feel superior.

Hmmm. Seems fitting, and rather democratic, that such disparate folks as a white heterosexual male and the Koalans’ targets — homosexuals, women, African Americans, Asians, Latinos, Muslims and people with cancer and disabilities — share an affinity: They all can be offended by hateful words.

It’s rather pleasing that one Koalan will admit it.

Love,
K-B

Call advertisers to ask them to withdraw their support of the Koala’s hate language. Call today. Read them some excerpts. Call often!

Goldfingers Gentlemen’s Club, Owner Aaron Goldberg: 858-530-0766

The Dank Bank: 619-589-0117 or thedankbank619@yahoo.com

The General Store Coop: 858-450-3080 or trex@generalstorecoop.com

PB Entertainment, Owners Mike Ettenberg and Jason Sampas: 858-598-7759

Porter’s Pub & Grill: 858-587-4828

Spirits of St. Germaine: 858-455-1414

Therapeutic Healing Cooperative: 619-717-8060 or 866-378-1726

Note: The concept map image is from “The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them” by Joseph D. Novak and Alberto J. Cañas.

Crossposted at San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

UPATE: Two more Koalans’ identities confirmed (see below). I suspect their mamas will not be proud.

We were sitting at the old soda fountain counter at the newish cafe in downtown Fallbrook, which is actually a small town, but everything is relative, I suppose. We were there, my daughter and I, because the café is where we go to escape other things — too much noise or not enough, the ennui of college homework, boorish thugs, the like.

We were also there because it’s entertaining, hanging out with the fellows who gather to shoot the shit with the owner, Michael.

Michael is from Brooklyn. And Italian. One of my favorite combinations.

The other fellows are all sorts of things, mostly seasoned things. Hence, the schmoozing is rich with masculine experience, varying sources of wisdom and lack thereof, all of which makes for a hearty dose of bawdy humor.

They let us join them because we laugh in the right places and we challenge them without being boorish thugs, and because I’m “pretty nice for a feminist,” or so I’m told.

So, we were sitting there with the guys, and we started talking about trust and mistrust, fear and hate, and their origins.

Doc said trust comes from fear. We drew a diagram, with trust building strategies in the middle.

Michael let out a Brooklyn snort of disagreement. “Nah. That’s not East Coast. On the East Coast, we trust everyone — until someone screws you.”

Then I got a call back from the FBI. Because I’m from the East Coast. Because I trusted boorish thugs to behave within the law.

And now it’s probably time for a recap:

The boorish thugs are the folks who publish The Koala (or the “Koala Klan,” as a North County Times reader so aptly dubbed them). The supposed student tabloid is actually a for-profit business that, according to San Diego County records, is owned by George Lee Liddle III and Sammy Elhag.

Starting back about 2001, Liddle was the student editor-in-chief of The Koala at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). At that time, The Koala appears to have been a student-run tabloid: just juvenile prattle attempting to pass for shock humor, but instead, tripping into bigotry and hate.

Sammy Elhag is a bit more difficult than Liddle to pin down. There is a Sammy Elhag who lives in San Diego. There’s also a Sammy Elhag who co-owns some Internet properties.

Whoever he is, in 2005 Sammy Elhag and George Lee Liddle III filed a fictitious name statement for The Koala with the County. Do you suppose they hoped that hate would be profitable?

Liddle and Elhag now have three editions of The Koala, the original at UCSD, where it is a university sanctioned student organization and receives Associate Student (AS) funding; one at San Diego State University (SDSU), also a sanctioned student organization, but not currently receiving AS funds according to that university; and the newest, at Cal State San Marcos (CSUSM). According to CSUSM staff, the Koalans at CSUSM withdrew their application to become a recognized student organization and since then have steadfastly attempted to remain anonymous to the campus community, with some but not complete success (see staff roster below).

There is also one lonely fellow who says his name is Jeff Weaver. He posts narcissistic videos on behalf of a Cal State Long Beach Koala (which appears otherwise nonexistent), and is listed on the CSUSM edition’s staff roster.

An effort to launch at UC Irvine, may have withered on the vine, with it’s last posted issue dated January 2006.

Recent efforts to expose the identities of Koalans have made them very unhappy. Those who hide under hoods, literal or figurative, don’t function so boldly in the light of day.

And the latest from the Koalans? Well, having an incomplete understanding of the First Amendment, they reacted quite strongly to criticism of their tabloid’s content and their anonymity, and as primitive natures might, they went on the attack, one front of which is best described in their own words, with full names added where known. Warning: profanity ahead.

SDSU

this dumb bitch [who would be me] seems to be the ONLY person “outraged” over you guys

http://obrag.org/?p=32362

that same cunt has posted the same article in three different places WOW

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kit-Bacon … 1228966521

this is her fb page as well, shes fucking retarded she uses her full name as a handle on every website. If she ever gives you guys real problems it wont be hard to hack her email and turn up some dirt on her

She seems to think you guys should feel ‘shameful’ for your content. I say, get some koala shirts and wear ‘em loud and proud. Worst case scenario you’ll get laid. If any more ‘paparazzi-esque’ attempts are made by her to get photos of you I say take advantage of you, she’s treating you like rock stars so go with it.

SDSU

this is her cell phone number 1 760.522.1064

this is her email kbgressitt@gmail.com

step 1 is to sign her up for all sorts of shit so her phone doesnt stop ringning (preferably for lesbian dating sites)

step 2 is me finding someone that knows what to do in order to get her password

ill let you know if i come up with anything

MattW

How would we ever get her password

Aaron Jaffe

Lets just go ahead and delete all the shit about hacking. Take that stuff to PMs or phone messages/calls.

George Liddle

I’ve got a better idea. Don’t worry so much about this chick. She’s a fucking nobody. Focus on getting straight with your advertisers and then you’ll be in the clear. As long as you’re solid with your advertisers, let the haters hate. We can choose to have some fun with this lady or not, but signing her up for spam is lame. If you’re going to go after someone, at least do something interesting.

Now, back at the café, we folks don’t always see eye-to-eye. Sometimes we really infuriate each other. On occasion, one of us might actually storm out, for instance the morning after President Obama was elected. One poor man left his coffee and scone sitting on the soda fountain counter. But he returned the next day and jumped right back into the repartee. He trusted us not to attack him. And we all still love each other, despite our many differences. It’s the feminist way: Embracing diversity, striving for equality; they are darn fun, much more fun than fear and hate.

But what do you do with a group of men who haven’t learned to challenge others without being boorish thugs, who cannot overcome their fear?

My brother thought a visit from a special ops team in the dark of night might give them adequately extreme wedgies to keep them on the straight and narrow for the rest of their lives. Ah, that visceral fight response.

My husband, the Marine, just called his law enforcement buddies. “Networking, Honey. Networking is everything.” Spoken like a leader who wears his Blackberry on his belt.

My kiddo just shook her head and laughed. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with.”

Apropos of a writer, I figured I would stick with words. Although the Koalans deny it, language is powerful enough to cause love or hate, to create community or harm it, to reveal truths or deceive in the guise of comedy.

And because I’m a feminist and I know those who embrace thuggery most often do so out of fear, I feel some sympathy for the Koalans. They broadcast their fearful hate of women, of homosexuals and ethnicities, of nonwhite races and people with disabilities. Perhaps Doc will explain to them some of his trust-building strategies.

However, because I’m also a pragmatist, I’ll accept whatever assistance law enforcement might give me. Because conspiring to hack into my systems and usurp my online identity, and scamming my family’s credit card are not comedy; they’re a bounty of bad behavior. And that’s not relative; it is absolute.

As I’ve written before, what goes on the Internet stays on the Internet. And one day the Koalans will be looking for jobs in competitive marketplaces where respect for diversity and clean criminal records will be deciding factors.

Or they can try making a living off George and Sammy.

Love,
K-B
(*With an appreciative nod to John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces)

The Koala Owners: George Lee Liddle III and Sammy Elhag

The Koala at San Marcos Staff: Jeff Allen, Garret Crispi, Shane K. Walsh, Jeff Weaver and…

Crossposted at:

OB Rag

Progressive Post

San Diego Gay and Lesbian News