the segue into reproductive rights is not subtle here. it's been a long month for me

After many grueling years, I have (somewhat) narrowed down the time period in which my period will strike (sometime within a twenty-eight day period, more precision is needed, but this is progress, I promise you), but on rare occasions, I actually realize, with dawning shock, that this thing that has occurred monthly for over half my life (minus one year for Child) is indeed on the horizon, and I add it to the list of random-ass observations about Myself and My Body I'll forget about until next month.

(To be fair, my thyroid for the last few years did a serious number on me when I'd tentatively nailed down that my abrupt interest in Breakfasts #2 and Lunch #3 and sleeping like an Olympic sport as indicators; when I now get a I Must Eat Until Something Breaks and Rip Van Winkle My Life Away, I call my doctor and get a medication adjustment, so you see how this isn't my fault. Sure, that's only in the last five years, but go with it.)

I am suddenly, for no particular reason, terribly, terribly attracted to genderswitch. Like, I am completely uninterested in what fandom; I just want that label. And I'm going to be blunt and say it's not the exploration of the complexities of sexuality and gender and privilege; even if the storyline never explores it at all, somewhere in my mind is a soft, quiet satisfaction that these characters will have a moment while buying tampons thinking that taking the entire store hostage for some goddamn Ben and Jerry's is a legitimate life choice. Hell, just taking the store hostage sounds like a pretty good idea.

Recognizing that the cliche of PMS for women is a cliche and perpetrates harmful stereotypes about women is there, I know that; I also know living it changes my perspective on this phenomenon dramatically. Example, one may or may not be standing in the freezer section realizing in dawning horror that they are out of chocolate covered cherry ice cream and torn between tears and assembling an army; I am not saying this has happened to me, but so far, HEB has not run out of chocolate cherry covered ice cream either. I cannot promise that I wouldn't start an Occupy: HEB splinter group that will lead a bloody revolution down the frozen food aisle. I may outfit everyone in Vendetta masks, like Anonymous and Occupy got very drunk and had some seriously unprotected sex by the frozen vegetables (where else?) and the monstrous offspring grew to maturity reading feminist literature authored by Vlad the Impaler's sister who paid attention to his penis issues and didn't like it (work with me here).

A friend sent me an email about PMS being added to the DSM V, which I was thinking about in theory until, you know, today and it hit me that I will not, in real life, admit to PMS to save my soul, even though I totally acknowledge it exists for other women. Admitting the cliche isn't entirely false sets up the really strange dichotomy of perpetrating a harmful stereotype (and boy, I have actually read blogs that made me feel guilty about the ice cream, fuckers) while also betraying the entire my body does these things and that's okay. Far easier not even to address it at all than be torn between worrying what I'm doing for all women by admitting homicidal urges (crazy bitch) and worrying I'm like, denying a legit medical condition that I have literally minimal control over other than embrace ibuprofen and time when I will write the scenes that involve blowing up shit to intersect (fantastic stuff).

Combining this with all the nightmares occurring right now with women's health rights, it hits me all over again that every woman is a living, breathing ambassador for her gender/sex, all the time, with every breath they take. I was horribly, bitterly upset with legislation women's rights as introduced by women in a way I'm just not when men do it, because my expectations of men that I did not personally give birth to (read: one) is something less than sea-level. This is because I continue to look at this as just a feminist issue, and I think I need to remember intersectionality because the women who introduced this legislation and most of those who perpetrate it will never be affected by it. And it just hits me all anew how much of this is perpetrated specifically on women to make sex itself an economic issue.

To put it another way; in some states, they are trying to pass the my religion require me to check the state of your vagina and fuck HIPAA, prove your birth control is about anything but preventing pregnancy. Looking at the FPIL (Federal Poverty Income Limit) and doing some quick math assuming basic hormonal birth control, a family needs--very, very roughly--2 to 3 times FPIL to (probably) afford it (I am leaving out so much here it's not even funny, but I'm using my state's median average income and the income limits for Medicaid and Food Stamps to work out a rough equation on how this would work). I don't think any legislation worries about middle to upper class women, who seem to surprisingly not have a child a year; women in middle to upper class also don't have the same problems getting an abortion.

To clarify this, no man or woman who has the power to introduce this legislation will be affected by it. Even a little. Minimum income for legislators is usually well within the buy as you go zone, and I bet you don't know this, but after reading the bill, I don't think it applies to the health care of the actual legislators, which just shocks me beyond words.

Again, all this legislation is about women's reproductive health, which is sexism, no question, but there's this weird current that keeps making me wonder if there's an actual, if unspoken, idea that sex should be--I have no idea how to put this--a reward for personal economic prosperity. Like, you have to work to afford food, shelter, clothes, and the idea that there's an entire facet of the human experience that you can do for funtimes without attaching some kind of tax to it is just wrong. Rush Limbaugh's queries for Sandra Fluke to webcam her sex life was beyond words creepy-creeper sexist, but for me, reading through the transcripts and staring blankly at the destruction of WHP, of Arizona's birth control nightmare, of everything to do with the attack on reproductive rights and I wondered why a party that lip services religion would want, in any way, to institutionalize de facto prostitution, that sex, like shelter, food, clothing, should be something that you have to, in a capitalist society, meet a minimum income level to afford to have.

In related news, AZ Central Political Blog reports that HB 2625 (Jesus says I have a right to know about the state of your uterus) has been pulled from the Senate Rules agenda as of 12:40 AM today. Can anyone confirm I'm reading that as something that happened today?

ETA:

On a more personal note, this has been a very, very bad few months in my vocation, which possibly may have shown up here a few times; the shootings at HHSC local offices, the legislation, watching my former clients, my friends, my family, my community, the working class, single mothers, the poor, being fucked over.

My mother has been a lifelong moderate Republican. This week, she told me today, she changed her party affiliation at the demise of WHP. My mother has never voted for a Democrat in her life; this year, this election cycle, she is voting for Obama.

Last week, I told svmadelyn that I needed just one good thing to happen now; I didn't care what. Arizona tabled a birth control bill that violated human decency as well as women's rights; my mother, born and raised in an intensely conservative Christian household and married to an intensely conservative man, will vote Democrat in the fall.

So I got two.

Comments

[lately]

This this this this here. And by not engaging with the economic facet to it, we don't get to the heart of this dragon, and we have less of a chance to slay it.

Ugh. Fuck everything, seriously.

(thank you for this post, though, seriously)

[seperis]

Classism is so freaking complicated because so much of it hard intersects with race and sex that it's like a gordian knot to sort it out. I don't even deny there's a religious faction that actually believes this nonsense, but Republicans aren't nearly as religious, racist, or sexist as they are intensely capitalist as far as the political agenda goes (this does not apply to personal beliefs of constituents). All of this legislation is to strip funding on reproductive rights, and like with the drug war, the target is almost always the poor, working, and lower middle class. You get higher than that, money is miraculous about getting around these kinds of problems (allowing for sexism and racism heavily involved in the money-buys-everything equation).

Also, thank you for the comment: I read it a few times trying to work out if my post made sense and got where I wanted it to go.

[lately]

Intersectionality is so critical, and so absent from most commentary in the popular press. There are some people who get there, but overall it feels like a fringe argument.

Time and again, it seems the only way out is to squash capitalism. Which is a hard sell. :P

[seperis]

A lot of the problems with classism are so goddamn poisoned because it's still put up against racism as a competitive sport, it drives me nuts. It's used so often as a refutation of racism (but white people are poor too!); the thing that makes me wonder is that the people writing those kinds of screeds don't tend to be of the poor and working class. Which makes sense; you have to hit a certain level of economic stability to have the free time to explore racism and how it limits economic opportunities, while in general the conservative media plays to a combination of bootstraps and factioning the poor and working class by playing up the entire "THIS COMPANY GETS SPECIAL PRIVILEGES JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE [insert minority here]" while not mentioning that all the other companies being hired are white owned because that's not, you know, relevant.

Time and again, it seems the only way out is to squash capitalism. Which is a hard sell. :P

The freedom to get into debt to the point where you are the equivalent of an indentured servant is one of those things that still makes me wonder. I don't necessarily have a problem with capitalism in itself at all; what I do have a problem with wielding it like a religious doctrine with a closed canon and define it so goddamn narrowly.

[synecdochic]

In my experience, the worst offenders in the shit sweepstakes are generally straight white men who grew up poor and bootstraps! who pull the whole "what's the benefit I'm supposed to get from being a white man? 'cause I don't see it, I worked hard for everything i got" (without realizing how much worse they'd have had it otherwise).

This is not to say that everybody who grew up poor pulls this shit, but many of the worst offenders who do pull this shit grew up poor.

[seperis]

In my experience, the worst offenders in the shit sweepstakes are generally straight white men who grew up poor and bootstraps! who pull the whole "what's the benefit I'm supposed to get from being a white man? 'cause I don't see it, I worked hard for everything i got" (without realizing how much worse they'd have had it otherwise).

No, I agree with this completely, and conservative talk radio (amongst other offenders in conservative propoganda (and sometimes even in liberal)), validates a purely economic view without at all admitting the social (racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism) disadvantages that equally if not moreso affect how easy it is to get a job/keep a job/get paid well/etc. Even education in social justice isn't enough to combat that echo chamber of white/male/straight/abled privilege that validates and encourages further minority oppression.

Re-reading my comment, I think I didn't emphasize that enough and I apologize; I was trying to think of some of the reasons that denial of social injustice in economic prosperity continues to exist despite all evidence to the contrary.

[synecdochic]

Oh, yeah, I wasn't so much disagreeing with you as adding another observation, etc.

(The bootstraps! thing pisses me off so damn much, omg. Five minutes' rational thought would make it clear that it's not universally possible! arrrgh.)

[princessofgeeks]

Karmageddon, here on dreamwidth and on Archive of Our Own, writes lovely thoughtful genderswitch fic.

Also I hear you on the frustration and awfulness regarding women's health issues. I live in a very red state and it's just horrible.

[seperis]

Thank you for the rec!

Red state solidarity! *fistbump*

[princessofgeeks]

also stultiloquentia wrote a very interesting Jack Becomes a Woman story for SG-1, Good Morning Penthesilea....

Yes, red state. Woe.

[out_there]

*hugs* I can see how this would be a horrible time for you.

To clarify this, no man or woman who has the power to introduce this legislation will be affected by it.

Which is frequently the case. The truly horrible ideas that pop up aren't solely suggested on a basis of sexism -- there's a lot of penalising the poor there as well. Why they think that people on lower incomes will have less children if contraception is more difficult to get boggles me, but it does seem to be the underlying idea.

[seperis]

A part of me thinks there's also a sense of noblesse oblige in that; the poor dumb poor people blah blah blah. But there's just so much to unpack there that I can't even start to work it through and I spent half my life in the working class.

[out_there]

Yeah, I'm right there with you. As someone who spent went from middle-class, two-income family to single parent, living on welfare for the 12 years post-divorce, my feelings about class and welfare are tricky and slightly impossible to really be sure about the logic and rationality of it.

Other than "welfare = good" and "access for all to medical treatment = right, not priviledge".

[mecurtin]

Looking at the FPIL (Federal Poverty Income Limit) and doing some quick math assuming basic hormonal birth control, a family needs--very, very roughly--2 to 3 times FPIL to (probably) afford it (I am leaving out so much here it's not even funny, but I'm using my state's median average income and the income limits for Medicaid and Food Stamps to work out a rough equation on how this would work).

I would appreciate it if you could explain/show your work, so I can explain to commenters on my obiwi posts that no, it's not just a matter of "skipping one trip to Olive Garden".

But that's great news about your mom. I hope it's a *really* big iceberg, the one she's the tip of.

[seperis]

This was a rough sketch using the SNAP income worksheet and the FPIL; the SNAP worksheet evaluates eligibility for SNAP (food stamp) assistance and the WHP income limits to get an idea of how a person's budget would handle it. Let me get something with more citations than the Texas Works handbook. The big killer on most of my math is the spotty health insurance question and the really difficult to calculate availablity/access/transportation issue.

I can give you this now, using the health insurance provided by the state of Texas for state employees and an arbitrary family of three in an urban area.

Family Size: 3
Health Insurance: $160 monthly/$1920 yearly
Script: $50 monthly/$600 yearly
Appointment fee: $50 yearly
Transportation to and from the clinic: $5 yearly
Transportation to and from the pharmacy: $5 monthly/$60 yearly
Total: $2635 yearly
Average Monthly: $219.58

General Statistics
Family Size: 3
FPIL: $1590.83 monthly/$19,090 yearly FPIL citation
Median Gross Rent: $883 monthly/$10,596 yearly (Austin) Rent Citation, Austin, 2009
Average Rent (2/2): $1054 monthly/12,684 yearly (Austin) Rent Citation, KVUE, January 13, 2012
Utilities: $70-$200 monthly* (this is top to bottom what I could find from various non-government websites when people who were moving to Austin tried to find out average utility. We're a green city, so a lot of construction is either created green or retro'ed green for the incentives. This applies only to apartments, duplexes, condos, not houses.)

I can try to work up a more--specific--formula, but the reason I went with 2 to 3 is, again, I can't control for access, and with WHP off the table and the budget cut to reproductive services in teh state legislature, there are places that have no options/access whatsoever if you don't have insurace, and extremely limited even if you do.

[mecurtin]

I don't understand what the cost of insurance is doing in there, as part of the cost of BCPs. confuse-a-mom, here.

[seperis]

Paying full price for a doctor's appointment is fairly expensive. Insurance and public programs cover the price of teh required doctor's visit to get the script as well as pay for or offset the price of birth control. These things aren't mutually exclusive, that's why WHP was so important, why funding for low income reproductive health is important.

[cathalin]

Awesome post. And thinking about the economics and the religious stuff behind a lot of this, I think maybe it's that the people in the Republican Party who *don't* actually care per se about abortion etc. can't be bothered to fight it, because of the privilege of class and money that they have. So basically, I do think there are True Believers, and quite a chunk of them now. But as you said, I think there are also plenty who are not, but this issue doesn't get them to speak up and go, oh hey, NO, to their fellow Republicans, because it just doesn't register or they're safe or their wives/daughters etc. are safe. Which... is horrible (not that they're safe, but that, as you said, the people voting on this stuff are people who it ultimately won't limit).

As someone who works every day with young people who come from poverty this angers me so much. Thank you for putting it all so well.

[seperis]

See, even with True Believers, there are among them those who believe their special circumstances are special, and a sadder number that due to their own regret for an abortion (for whatever reason) feel they are protecting women from a lifetime of guilt and depression (these are literally the only type of anti-abortion people I don't hate). The rest are a mixed baby-as-blessing/baby-as-punishment, religious extremists of all types, and people that literally think that women's higher purpose is incubation and do not get that is kinda of fucked up.

It ends up being a very complicated umbrella. A very fucked up one. Gah.

[jamjar]

Have you read the The only moral abortion is my abortion piece that made the rounds a few years back? The one about people who are anti-choice, except in their specific case which is, of course, special and unique.

[concinnity]

I was talking about this on a message board I frequent, and asked one of the ladies who suggested that the current fight against women was a red herring why she thought it didn't matter - since she herself possesses a vagina, it affects her. She said "I am a woman and have no worries about women's rights. Tell me right here about your stories...have you been refused birth control, an abortion...any of what you are wailing about?"

And that was when I lost my shit. And told her about this thing called empathy that some normal people have. And that yes, I and many many of my friends had and do use Planned Parenthood for birth control and basic healthcare.

I keep wanting to post about it, but I am so fucking angry it leaves me speechless with frustration. Last month I told my dad about this stuff - he has had major medical issues and was unaware - and when I told him he got quiet for awhile and said, "well, I don't hold with that." He has voted Republican for decades. This time while he probably won't vote Democrat, I know he won't vote Republican. It's something.

[seperis]

I would have probably had to walk away and scream somewhere. Dear God. I hate those kind of people. It's the weirdest combination of lack of empathy and pure naivety that is like a goddamn brick wall.

[drunkoffthestars]

I think remembering the economic is a really important point. I don't think about it nearly as much as I do the biblical crazypants, but there are so many situations/legislation that become blindingly clear once you add in the fact that so and so owns the rights to widget H and is bff with legislator N.

Also, the part where anyone with less money than them should not have any scrap of happiness or joy in their lives.

ugh, everything is so rage-making. A large part of me can't believe Perry with through with the WHP thing. I guess I haven't been around long enough. :(

[drunkoffthestars]

which is to say, thank you for the reminder. /o\

[lilacsigil]

This whole thing with Texas is disgusting - you're completely right to say that the people who have any say in this bill are never likely to face the consequences, or possibly even know anyone who does. I suppose one good thing about a country where a lot of politicians come up through farming and/or workers' unions is that there's always a percentage (like former PM Kevin Rudd and current PM Julia Gillard) who grew up in poor or barely lower-middle-class families.

[seperis]

God, yes. We need that so much.

[jamjar]

I think that's a good point-- it's sad, but necessary, to remember that even though something can benefit us all, *not* having it may only harm some of us. That's what having money means.

Also, random thing-- tabled is one of those things that means pretty much exactly the opposite in British English to American. I had to run it through my mental translator for your ETA to make sense.

(Tabling (UK)= bringing a motion to the table, formally raising and presenting it, rather than shelving it (which is what I think it means in the US?)

[seperis]

Oh, that's cool. I can actually visualize some bitter Puritans viciously reversing this saying just to be contrary once they got to America. *grins*

[jamjar]

Maybe they were just deeply cynical about the effectiveness of political debate.

[spaceanjl.livejournal.com]

This whole thing in the US scares me very much, and I am so grateful to be in the UK, where, however clunky and unwieldy and horrendous our Health Service is, the Pill is free. Such a simple thing, and it is so utterly terrifying to have this utterly medieval misogynist fuckery going on.

It's that nasty mindset that comes with an utter fear of women, a loss of power, of some kind of control. Nobody has quite stepped up and slapped anyone in the face for being an uppity bitch who should be back in the kitchen, but it's there, behind all of this.

I don't know - is it economic? Raise a disposable workforce of the poor, uneducated and dispossessed? Keep women out of a shrinking job market and penned back in the home? Revert back to the days of dragging women off the streets to check for virginity/diseases? Heck, why not start up with state sanctioned lobotomies for those who aren't conforming? Happy mindless baby factories.

People are going to have sex. They should be educated about it, they should be given the tools to protect themselves, and if that means using a condom or chemical method, so be it. I personally loathe religion, and feel it should be separated from the state in all ways, be that education, legislation or medication. Every part of your body belongs to you, and nobody else.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

This is where I get a little sketchy, because the more I read about the legislation, the more I notice that the arguments are sexist/racist/whatever-ist, the practical aspects are intensely--very intensely--capitalist. I mean, a presidential candidate actually advocates removing child labor laws and that poor kids should get jobs cleaning up the schools they attend, because God knows kids need to learn early how to be good servants for the wealthy and more stigma helps everyone.

And it's sexist, definitely, beyond words, but the Republican leadership before anything believe in the privileges of wealth. There is a reason that prosperity doctrine is an actual, legit belief system that takes "God helps those who help themselves" and interprets that as "Your poverty is because God noticed you are lazy, so obviously God hates you."

It's not simplistic, but here's an example of what I mean: a few years ago, the HPV vaccine was introduced. This is a vaccine that is to prevent a dangerous STD for women. The governor of my state, Perry, is intensely, intensely conservative with the entire religious thing going on, and within the party itself, this drug was considered a slut-pass for women.

(Perry signed away funding for poor women to get birth control and reproductive rights and he slashed the budget this year, btw. To give his perspective on his current actions.)

However, when the HPV vaccine was released, Perry immediately tried to pass a law requiring it for Texas girls. This is one of the articles exploring that. (http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2010/feb/06/rick-perry/perry-says-hpv-vaccine-he-mandated-would-have-been/) This is a conservative Republican who belongs to teh religious right, but he mandated this for girls because, dum dum dum, former aid was affiliated with the private company supplying it.

This is not unique, btw. This is something that Republicans do.

[spaceanjl.livejournal.com]

Feh, everything comes down to 'cui bono?' eventually, doesn't it? Most politicos, if they truly worship any god outside their mirror, it's Mammon. I remember your post on the school cleaning, part of what made me think of the whole Metropolis/Brave New World underclass thing.

[the-moonmoth.livejournal.com]

Fuck me, this makes me want to weep. In the UK, the HPV vaccine is given to all teenage girls through their school, for free.

[kitsunec4.livejournal.com]

I'm lucky enough to have a pretty generous health insurance, and to work at a medical center in the US. So for me, the HPV vaccine was covered...so long as I paid the $30 co-pay per visit. For three visits, it was $90.

The thought of getting that for free is mind-boggling. I had to ask my doctor at yearly check-up about it, how to go about getting it, etc.

[nrrrdy-grrrl.livejournal.com]

If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.

Early on I had PMS that bordered on hysterical pregnancy, then it mellowed out, then in my 20's my friend pointed out that I became engulfed in existential despair every month around the same time and she suggested perhaps it was my cycle.

I had no idea that it CHANGED! That my period would feel different in accordance with different stages of maturity! It blew my 23 year old mind. I was totally pissed that there could still be things about my vagina I knew nothing about.

Then again, when I was 18 one day I was convinced I had cancer in there and my boyfriend had to come over and tell me what I was feeling was just my cervix. Thank god he brought along his copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves and gave it to me as a gift.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

If you have a smartphone, I recommend the app My Days. I always forget my period, but after tracking it for a couple months, this thing has me to within a day.

[clari-clyde.livejournal.com]

Oooh, thank you for that rec. When I got the original iphone, many of the cycle tracking apps I found were based on calendar rhythm instead of NFP/FAM so I wasn’t aware that there is now one based on FAM.

That said, if (general, plural) you know FAM—if you don’t, just get any book by Toni Weschler—women have been doing the same thing for decades with pen and paper before spreadsheets.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

IDK exactly how it does it, but I just put in my period start & end each month, and after a few, its guesses are right (this month was the first it got it on the nose. It also does ovulation & you can put in notes. I have android but I'm sure something exists for iPhone. Happy bleeding!

[traveller.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be at a reproductive justice conference all day tomorrow (specifically dealing with how it intersects with race in Louisiana) talking about a lot of these same things; we (my organization) is hosting it with a coalition of other orgs so that we can try to get ahead of this shit. some days it feels like standing in front of a freight train.

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my dad, born in 1926, voted for a Democrat the first and last time in his life after two years of Bush. I think four years of the Tea Party and attacks on women would have had him registering with the Democratic party.

[miriad.livejournal.com]

The story about your mother actually made me cry. If any good can come out of the shit storm that has been the past few months, I hope that it's women (and men) like your mother who finally start to see what's going on and decide to vote Democratic.

I'm hoping that both of my parents, and my step-parents, will have the same change of heart. I'm more hopeful about my mother than any of the rest, but I'm still not sure.

[ranlynn.livejournal.com]

PMS, or as I call it PBS "psycho bitch syndrome". I didn't get the bloating & cramps that a lot of women get but for about 3-4 days before my period would start everything, and I mean EVERY little thing, would piss me off.

It was like a switch got flipped. One day something would happen that I'd just ignore as no big deal & the next the same exact thing would have me have me snapping and snarling at everyone.

And the real kicker was a *knew* I was being irrational. There'd be a little 'me' standing in the back of my mind watching myself going completely mental but I couldn't do anything stop it. Hot flashes aside, thank god for menopause.


I'm not gonna get started the republicans though, I'll just give myself a heahache.

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