We Can Control Ourselves*

Revolutionary (Angela Davis) 1972, Wadsworth Jarrell at Soul of a Nation
The Broad Museum, Los Angeles

To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.

Angela Davis 

It's a rainy Sunday morning in Los Angeles, and I'm listening to Erik Satie because it goes well with rain, with melancholy and gentleness. Last night, Carl and I went out with our friends Jason and Leah. Jason is the co-host of our podcast Who Lives Like This?! and given the intimate conversations we've had together and with the wide array of guests on the show, I feel as if I have known him and his wife for far longer than two years. We met downtown at the Broad Museum to see Soul of a Nation, the work of 60 artists that explores "the historical and cultural influences that define their unique approaches to Black art both as a vehicle for change and an expression of self-exploration." (Artnet.com) It was a thrilling exhibit with a wealth of female artists, most of whom were new to me.

Carolyn Mims Lawrence, Black Children Keep Your Spirits Free

What a weird week of near paralyzing stupidity from the southern states and the Republican party and the religious right. I'm repelled, for once, by the snark of memes, by jokes and satire, my ordinary easy and dogged sense of humor replaced by rage. There's no hilarity in cruelty and oppression, in the stripping of women's rights, in the muscle of the white patriarchy and gross subversion of what it means to honor and protect life. Oliver donated to a woman's reproductive health clinic, unprompted by me. Henry said that he was thinking of volunteering as an escort at a health clinic, but he was afraid he wouldn't be able to control his own anger.

The word channel. Channel your anger, I told him, even as I have to channel my own.

Donate HERE.

* I imagine I have readers who agree with what's going on, and I have no conciliatory words for you. The following words are from an ultrasound technologist, though, a confirmed source -- perhaps you will be moved in your tiny minds.

Abortion issues

So here’s the thing:

This Alabama abortion ban is a big deal, in a very bad way. Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky… I’m looking at you too, but we’re going to focus on Alabama. If you’ve been living under a rock, let me catch you up. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey just signed a total abortion ban into law, the most restrictive law in the United States. The law will ban abortion at every stage of pregnancy for every reason.

This is not OK, not reasonable, and definitely not acceptable.

If you don’t know me well, maybe you don’t know what I do for a living. I’m an ultrasound technologist. My colleagues and I look at babies in every stage of pregnancy every day. I also work in a high risk unit. My unit and I look at babies and mothers in varying states of mental and physical health. If you think an abortion ban sounds good, then I am a good person to ask about why it isn’t.

So, let me tell you:

• About the woman whose baby developed with no skull, and the brain just floating around. Her baby still had a heartbeat, and she would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman whose baby has a rare chromosomal condition called T13. Her baby’s organs grew outside its body, and had a cleft palate so bad that there was no nose. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman whose blood pressure is spiking so high that she passes out and is likely to stroke out before her baby is born. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman with such a severe form of hemophilia that giving birth will probably be fatal to both her and the baby. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the 13-year-old whose school isn’t allowed to teach her science-based sex-education, so she didn’t know how to prevent pregnancy or STIs, but whose body is not developed enough to carry to term without being damaged. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman who was raped by a "friend" who wanted to “make sure she got home safely.” She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman who has PCOS, so only has periods every 3-4 months and can’t find a birth control that works for her. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman whose abusive partner removed the condom without telling her (it’s called stealthing, and it happens more frequently than you’d think). She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman with the cornual ectopic pregnancy that isn’t reliably in the uterus, and could grow to a size that will kill her. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman who has two kids she can barely feed already, and whose birth control just increased in price. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the 18-year-old who just started college and is going to be the first graduate of the family if she can just stay in school. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman whose IUD slipped slightly, and is now endangering both her and the pregnancy it was designed to prevent. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the many, many, many women who just don’t want to be pregnant for reasons that are their own. Health issues, abusive relationships, financial issues, social issues. They would not be able to access abortion.

Some of these might sound like reasonable exceptions to you. And you would be correct. But no one should get to decide what happens with another person’s body, not even to save a life. You need written permission from a corpse before life-saving organs can be taken from them. You cannot be forced to donate blood, no matter how dire the situation. And no one else should get to decide what a woman does with her body -- end of story.

But it’s not the end of the story, is it? Because here’s the kicker: If you consider abortion to be a murder (and some people genuinely believe that!) then miscarriage can be second degree murder. And this is already happening all over the world -- El Salvador, Ecuador, and the U.S. Women are being jailed for miscarriages and stillbirths because they "might have done something to cause it." If you start down this path of jailing women and doctors for making healthcare decisions that affect no one but themselves, then you get women who don’t go to a doctor for a safe procedure, and instead order pills online or use whatever metal instruments they can find to end their own pregnancies. Women who are honestly experiencing a miscarriage (which is medically called a "spontaneous abortion," just FYI) will not go to their doctor for help. They will bleed out on their bathroom floors or die of septic shock. And I haven’t even talked about how this will disproportionately affect women of color, LGBTQA+ women, or trans men. This isn’t about the “sanctity of life” anymore. It’s about controlling women.

We can control ourselves.

Things That Made Me Cry in My Mind, 5/1/19

1. Kamala Harris grilling Barr (so much money and time literally wasted on these hideous people running the country even as we watch it burn, drown and fall)
2. The briefing filed by the Trump administration calling for the complete and total dismantlement of the Affordable Care Act (anxiety, again)
3. The story of the young man in North Carolina who charged the shooter and tackled him and was killed, the photo of him and his impossible life, interrupted by training on how to do such a thing and ended by doing such a thing (disbelief that people think owning guns ensures their safety and freedom)
4. The man in Georgia who lured a teenaged girl off a website for girls with eating disorders to come live with him, engaged her in brutal sex acts and kept her in a cage for some of that time but will not serve any prison time because of the eight months he spent in a detention center prior to sentencing
5. The New York man who was sentenced to probation only for raping a 14 year old girl he met while driving a school bus, who, according to the judge, only raped one girl, rather than multiple
6. People close to me who recently made statements supporting the racist POSPOTUS who is also a sexual predator  and who also would take away the very thing that enables my family to live somewhat more comfortably with Sophie's epilepsy (the tears were real)
7. The article about retail botox centers where you can get injectables as conveniently as hair blow-outs

Reader, I imagine you'd rather see a list of things that make one grateful. 

1. The fluke of a blue whale, seen yesterday from a boat just off the shore of Newport Beach (the tears were real) 

Friday Evening Three-Line Movie Review

As I sat and watched the documentary RBJ about the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I couldn't help but think about the dead journalists, the babies in cages, the piles of black bodies dead or in prison, the tainted water of Flint, Michigan, the taxes in the form of tariffs, and, of course, the reproductive rights of women, particularly those who are poor or minorities. The movie demonstrates with startling clarity how far "we've" come, because of this woman and her fight for equality, and it also underscores how much is at stake and how far backward we're moving with the despot on the throne and the same old white men calling the shots. The movie is worth going to, though, if you're in need of some galvanizing, if you want to see a fierce woman fight for everything that is good, partnered with a man who supported her every step of the way, and you wonder how the hell we're going to carry on her legacy with so much against us, because WE ARE, we have done it before and we will do so again, and we owe it to her for helping us.









More 3-Line Movie Reviews

Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Learning to Drive
Love and Mercy
Not a Three Line Movie Review
While We're Young
Ida
Force Majeur 
Gone Girl
Saint Vincent
Get on Up
Begin Again
Chef
The Immigrant
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

On Being Beautiful and Angry

Tonight I dragged my sorry ass self, newly recovered from a cold and cough, to a screening of a remarkable documentary about the movers and the shakers of the feminist movement from 1966-1971. It's called She's Beautiful When She's Angry.

Wow, people. Just wow.

I watched the movie with a few hundred other women and a scattering of men in an historic building in Los Angeles called the Ebell. The women were of all ages and races. The movie is funny and moving and most of all, rousing. I feel such gratitude toward these women who came before me, who so doggedly and -- yes -- angrily demanded their rights as equal citizens. The movie isn't just about white, straight women but about all women, including women of color and homosexual women. It does an excellent job, too, of demonstrating that despite all the radical goings on of the time -- the anti-war movement, the student rebellions, black power, etc. -- women were left out and not counted even by these so-called liberals and radicals. I sat on a little hard-backed folding chair and laughed and teared up at the audacity of these pioneers and radicals, realized how much I take for granted and how much left there is still to do.

I felt galvanized by these women and their history, and I felt strengthened and more accepting of my own anger and radicalism -- not just about women's equality and, particularly, reproductive rights that are being whittled slowly away, but also by this cannabis movement and my role in it as, often, a quite angry mother in confrontation with an established power structure.

I received an email the other day from our local Epilepsy Foundation affiliate with an announcement of the annual Epilepsy Pipeline Conference in San Francisco. Last year, I attended this conference and was an invited speaker on a panel. I spoke of our experiences with cannabis and didn't get the greatest reception from the physicians and "professionals" in the room -- they were either dismissive or uninterested, one was downright hostile -- but I had numerous people come up to me privately and confide their gratitude that I had spoken so openly and honestly about our experience. One guy told me that when I spoke it was as if a bomb had gone off in the room and blown everyone up. I have to say that my ego surged when he said that, but deep down I was embarrassed, too. As a woman pushing against boundaries in the medical world (and it started long ago for me and well before the cannabis revolution began), I haven't always been confident. I'm even now not always confident, particularly when I am admonished for being angry. I've been called too angry, too outspoken, undiplomatic. Several relatives have publicly shamed me and called me a miserable person. Someone anonymous not too long ago left the condescending comment You're a great writer, but you're too angry. I'm going to be honest and say that those comments hurt me, that I hold remnants inside of me that dictate what a good girl is, what a humble woman does, what makes a lady, and that I'm none of those things.

This year's Epilepsy Pipeline Conference, as far as I can see (and the schedule could very well change), has no representation of cannabis as therapy except from a huge pharmaceutical company. This doesn't surprise me, and my initial impulse is to feel cynical and bitter. Now, don't think that I haven't done a lot of soul-searching, wondering if maybe I am too angry and combative, that I'm not going to ever be invited to speak at any of these functions again because I don't tow the party line. I wonder if I should be less angry, perhaps even tone down the truth of our story with the goal of persuasion. Is it better to tone it down and try to reach more people? Is it better to compromise one's truth?

Nah.

Watching this documentary and seeing what those women (and those before them who struggled for suffrage) did and how they handled oppression opened my eyes and strengthened me.

I am beautiful when I'm angry. You are beautiful when you're angry.

Here's a trailer for the movie:



Here's the website with information about screenings and the forthcoming DVD issue.

She's Beautiful When She's Angry

Smells Like Bullshit, Round 4,567,893

I used to regularly do a Smells Like Bullshit post, back in the days when George W was at the helm, and it was near impossible to spend a day without catching a whiff. I've done less ranting and raving on this blog to some of you's delight and haven't really engaged with any conservative trolls in ages and ages, mainly because it's pretty boring to listen to rants and raves from whatever viewpoint you espouse. I'll admit to always having what might be called a problem with authority that hearkens back not as long as my childhood, as I was quite a good girl back in Mid-Century Times. It might have started when my 35 year old boss at the retail brokerage firm where I was working advised me to take on the railroad companies and I said NO! and he said Don't you think we know best what's good for your career? and I said, NO! and quit my job right there, packed up my little photos and African violet and objets d'art from my desk, turned off the gargantuan computer and walked out the door. True, I became a waitress at a restaurant on Music Row and was later trained as a cook by a wife-murderer on furlough, but I didn't respect his authority, either, and I would have been hard put to come up with entertaining stories about utility companies and the craven men who worked in the corner offices of that company, anyway.

Anywho.

My first impulse this morning when I read about the Supreme Court rulings (both the Hobby Lobby and union ones) was f!#*k the Supreme Court. I've always hated the word supreme anything. I like even less the phrase the law of the land which apparently means less and less in this godforsaken primitive country anyway. It's the law that women govern their reproductive rights, their bodies, their health. Isn't it? Apparently not. Screw all the fundamentalist Christians who believe their right to practice their religion trumps a woman's right to get appropriate access to medicine and treatment. I imagine the legions of crafty women who shop at Hobby Lobby making little rubber Jesuses fly around on dinosaurs at this point and their husbands coming to pick them up afterward with machine guns slung over their shoulders, the better to protect them from the likes of us. What kind of name is Hobby Lobby, anyway? Is this a joke? The Supreme Court and Hobby Lobby sounds like a new Taco Bell menu item and definitely smells like bullshit.

The Nineteenth Amendment

Alice Paul and National Women's Party - August 18, 1920

We can put aside acrimony today toward those who might relegate women's role to the backseat of history and even desire to keep them there (ahem -- Ann Romney**) and just revel in the extraordinary achievement of those women who protested, fought, starved themselves and ultimately won the right to vote. On August 18th, 1920, Congress ratified the 19th Amendment. Thank you, ladies.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

**The article referenced was satire. I'm taking the liberty, though, of imagining that Ann would have had utter disdain for anyone as radical as a suffragette.

It's time for another round of

with an UPDATE below:

I haven't had a good rant in a while, but this whole birth control/religious freedom thing makes me crazy. I think it's bullshit.

What's wrong with this photo? 

That's the first panel of witnesses, all religious leaders, that House Oversight Committee Chairman Republican Rep.  Darrel Issa of California, called to a hearing where he also denied a female witness, claiming As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness. You can read more about it here. 


What's wrong with that picture is that each man sitting there is a representative of some of the most conservative Christian churches and Jewish orthodox temples in this country. Here's the list.  I know I'm supposed to respect a diversity of views, but frankly, they make me sick.


Let's face it, ladies: the conservative establishment, in whatever guise you want to call it, has been slowly and  inexorably working backward  to dismantle reproductive freedom and a woman's right to choose for decades. They're making progress. Those same figures decry the lack of human rights in countries like Afghanistan, but I tell you what. They're really not too far from living in caves themselves. They're just dressed in suits and collars instead of robes, and their wives, if they're allowed to have one, in pearls and cardigans instead of burkhas.

UPDATE:  Less of a rant and more measured -- Read HERE.