End of the Month Controversy- Israel and Palestine

street art by Banksy

Once upon a time, civilization emerged in what we call Mesopotamia.

Mesopotamia means "land between rivers," and the rivers it refers to are the Tigris and the Euphrates, in modern day Iraq.

Many civilizations emerged there. many cultures and religions. Many more emerged nearby, each spreading deeper into the three continents that Mesopotamia bridged.

One of those culture and religion is my own. Five thousand years ago, the Jewish people were nomads, wandering through the deserts that surrounded Mesopotamia. Four thousand years ago, they became the dominant culture in land at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, to the west of Mesopotamia. Three and a half thousand years ago, they were conquered, and their country fell, and they once again became wandering nomads. They wandered to Egypt and were enslaved.

Or at least, some of them were. But a great many Jewish people remained in the former Israel, farming and shepherding, living under the rule of other peoples. So many, in fact, that for another thousands years or so, they remained the dominant culture. Part of what kept them so dominant was the assistance of another nearby people- the Persians. After Xerxes (known in Hebrew as Ahasuerus) took a Jewish girl named Esther as his queen, the Persian Empire was one of the first places and times in human history where Jews were allowed to live as they pleased- worshipping their own God, controlling their own commerce, and existing in their own communities. The Persians even allowed the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem. But the land that was once Israel was on the border of another two continents, and constantly at play in the wars of other people.

It was around that time that the Romans, living to the north of Mesopotamia, took over what was once a desert belonging to no-one, and then a Jewish country called Israel, and then the property of Assyrians and Persians and other assorted middle eastern peoples. Within a few hundred years, Jesus was born, and the number of Jews living in the modern day middle east began to become a number of Jews and a number of Christians, and even more numbers of people of neither faith or heritage. A tribe of Jews wandered off into Africa and became lost for millennia, the Christians moved farther north into Europe.

Half another thousand years after this, Mohammed was born and an empire began growing around him, in the land to the south of Mesopotamia. This new culture pushed north into Europe, and east into Asia, and west into Africa- through the land that previously belonged to the Romans and the Assyrians and the Persians and the Jews and nobody.

So now Israel was part of the massive empire of the Caliphate, which covered all the northern part of the African continent, modern day Spain, India, and Turkey. It was a massive empire.

And the Holy Roman Empire fought with the Caliphate, and the land that was once Israel and had belonged to dozens of passing tribes over the past four thousand years traded hands many times.

The Holy Roman Empire didn't only fight against Islam. It also fought against Jews, now living in Europe. They were tortured and killed, and many fled. Some wandered deeper and deeper into Europe, some went back through the former Mesopotamia into India, and some went to their former territory, the former Israel, because they believed it to be their homeland.

When the Ottoman Empire came, that land once again traded hands, and still the Jews who had decided to remain there after the fall of the Jewish country, and the fall of the Persian Empire, and the fall of the Romans, etc. etc., lived in that place- with the slowly accumulating European Jews, and all the other peoples who had come and gone, building their shrines and temples, and taming the desert.

Meanwhile, persecution against the Jews continued in Europe. The Jews wandered farther north, farther east, and as pogroms grew in frequency in Russia, many European and now American Jews embraced a new philosophy- Zionism- and began immigrating to the land to the west of Mesopotamia in larger numbers. In the decade before World War 1 alone, forty thousand Zionist immigrants landed on the shores of what they knew as Israel. And tensions between the Jews and Arabs, which had always been fraught, began to rise.

With the first world war, the Ottoman Empire was cut into pieces and distributed as spoils to the victors- assorted European powers.

The British took what they called Palestine, and kept it under their direct control. European and American Zionists continued moving back to the desert, planting apricot groves and building settlements and cities.

And then came the Holocaust.

When World War II ended, the new United Nations agreed that in order to prevent another Jewish genocide, the Jews needed a home. The British offered Palestine, where many of the Jews were going anyway, and gave it to them.

There were already Jews there. What overnight became Israel again was already home to hundreds of thousands of Jewish people.

America was hostile to Jews. Europe was hostile to Jews, with the exception of a several Scandinavian states who had welcomed Jewish refugees as early as the sixteenth century. Nobody wanted to offer their protection, but Britain had a sliver of land that happened to already be home to more Jews than almost anywhere else on earth, and only having owned it for a few decades, they figured they wouldn't really miss it when it was gone.

But as we know, Jews weren't the only people in Israel. The two thirds of the non-Jewish population in the territory was made of all sorts of people. There were Muslims, who had been living there for half a thousand years, since the Caliphates spread up from what was now Saudi Arabia.

There were Christians, who had been living there since the Roman Empire.

There were dozens of other tribes, with their own religions and their own cultures, who had been living in the land to the west of Mesopotamia since before history.

So the great powers of the world agreed- send the Jews to Israel, a country the size of New Jersey, and the problem is solved. Within a year the Jewish community grew from 30% to 80% of the populations.

The day after the British left, every Arab neighbor attacked the new state. Miraculously, Israel survived. Twenty years later Egypt announced plans to "destroy Israel,"and Israel went to war with its neighbors again, this time expanding territory into the Sinai and the West Bank. After that, the Arab neighbors met and announced their conditions: No recognition of an Israeli state, no peace, and no negotiations. It's an attitude that has continued in Hamas.

And so, despite the existence of a modern Jewish state, there have only been three places in the history of Judaism where Jewish people could live essentially in peace.

The first was Israel as it was four thousand years ago, in its half millennia of autonomy and prosperity.

The second was Persia, when Jerusalem was returned to the Jews to administer as they saw fit.

And the last is the United States, in the last half century, after the struggles of the Civil Rights movement suddenly changed the perception of Jews in America from a maligned "other" to "white." (Ironically, American persecution of Jews had gained momentum during the Civil War, when Ulysses S. Grant issued orders evicting Jews from American territory.) But as the government of Israel continues to grow more and more conservative and aggressive in its fight with Hamas, even America is less welcoming.

There are 8.3 million Jews living in America, spread out through all 50 states. There are 6.3 Jews living in Israel- a territory the size of New Jersey. There's another three million scattered across the world. That's all the Jews on earth.

Everywhere but here and Israel, Jews are a persecuted minority. Hate crimes against Jews continue in France, the country with the third highest Jewish population. Hate crimes against Jews continue in Russia, where they aren't given citizenship.

And Israel's neighbors continue to threaten its total and absolute destruction.

Israel's government is in a position that most of us cannot begin to comprehend. Vastly outnumbered by enemies who take every opportunity to attack, but still they MUST abide by expectations of far distant allies.

And in this situation, the Israeli government has done very, very bad things.

The way Israel treats the peoples of Gaza and the West Bank is unacceptable. The hardships they inflict are often compared to apartheid, and not without reason.

But each time Israel eases the restrictions they place on Palestinian territories, Hamas responds with attacks.

This does not excuse the actions of the Israeli government.

Many Jews (even in Israel) are not Zionists. Many Jews don't believe a Jewish state is a good idea. Many Jews don't believe the Jewish claim to the land that is now Israel but was once Palestine and Roman and Ottoman and Persian and Assyrian and just a desert to the west of Mesopotamia is a valid claim. Some Jews interpret the Torah in such a way as to forbid a Jewish state in Israel.

Source

But Many Jews feel compelled to support Israel, because nearly half of the Jews on earth are there, and part of being Jewish is the constant awareness that somebody is coming for you. Somebody is coming, bent on destroying the entire Jewish people. And Israel is a damn fine target for those people who want to destroy the Jews.

Nearly half the Jews in the world live under the constant threat of annihilation from their next door neighbors, who explicitly demand their destruction. Nearly half the Jews in the world spent the last two months running for their bomb shelters over and over again as Hamas fired rockets. Nearly half the Jews in the world are faced daily with a choice to live in the land where their people have lived for five thousand years, or to flee alone into a world that despises them.

THAT is what's happening in Israel.

There is no doubt that the Israeli government is doing criminal things. But that is not the same as the Jewish people.

Yet, because Israel is THE Jewish State, and because Jews, as all minorities are, find themselves compared to and represented by the most visible entity with the same label, the rest of the world takes out its frustration at the Israeli government on "The Jews."

That's why Jewish students at American universities are being assaulted on campus. This is why random Jewish couples in New York City are being attacked by strangers on the street. That's probably why a 65 year old historian was beaten to death this month in Philadelphia. Because all across the world there was already a nasty streak of anti-semitism, and it is being fed by fury at Israel. The factions of people already attacking Jews has adopted the same language and set of complaints used to attack Jews a century ago.

It is much more complicated than a country ripped from the hands of one people and given to another.

It's more complicated than Jews versus Muslims. The majority of Jews in Israel are not religious, but the ultra-orthodox members of the Knesset have passed laws excusing ultra-orthodox Israelis from their mandatory military service. In what is, for Israelis, not a religious war, the Jews with religious motivation have eliminated themselves from the lines.

It is even more complicated than Jews having their own country to run as they see fit, because the increasingly conservative and violent government of Israel is making it harder for non-Israeli-born Jews to become citizens.

And it is more complicated even that that- because American Evangelical Christians are founding and promoting charities with the sole purpose of moving more Jews out of Europe and into Israel, with the hopes that when ALL the Jews are in Israel it will bring about the second coming of Christ, and the world will end.

But it also serves to convince the growing Anti-American movements in the Middle East, like offshoots of Al Qaeda, that America is connected with the Zionist movement, creating more hatred towards Israel and Jews, and funneling more rockets and fighters into Gaza.

THAT is how complicated the situation is.

Hamas and Israel agreed to another ceasefire yesterday. After fifty days of death and destruction, mostly in Gaza, another shaky attempt at peace is here.

When it fails, as it probably will, be careful in where and how you assign the blame. It is not anti-semitic to be anti-Zionist. Just remember that a people and a country are not the same.

Remember that if the Israeli government wanted to kill Palestinian civilians, they'd all be dead already.

Remember that if the Palestinians weren't oppressed, they wouldn't accept Hamas.

Remember that the people living in Israel, people living EVERYWHERE, have only ever wanted to live free from persecution, regardless of which Empire erased or redrew the borders last time around.

All of this fighting- it is all based on invisible lines in the sand. The same sand we've been fighting in for five thousand years.

Remember that five thousand years is a long time. And remember that we can't change history to suit our needs. It is not black and white, good and evil, right and wrong.

It's a series of events that occurred, and if we are careful, we can learn from them.

And maybe, then, we can build a lasting peace.

The Content of their Character

DD at the park

"What's that sound, mommy?"

"There are people outside, marching in the street."

"Can we see?"

"Sure!"

I threw open the door to the balcony, and watched my children take tentative steps down onto it. They're not normally allowed, and the thrill of taboo with the tumult of the shouting crowd below brought excitement and wonder to their eyes. The gentle morning breeze lifted their curls from their faces, and they gazed down at the throng.

"Why are they yelling?"

"Some of them are yelling because they're happy. And some of them are yelling because they're sad."

"Why are they happy and sad at the same time?"

"Fifty years ago, another group of people marched in Washington DC."

"Where Aunt Something Funny lives!"

"That's right. It was much much more people. And they marched because some people want to be mean to other people because of how they look."

SI crooked her eyebrow at me, and I saw the gears turning.

"This wasn't like the march we went to at the big statue, where people are mean because of what you wear. This was because sometimes people are mean to people because of what color their skin is..."

I couldn't finish. Maybe because I'm emotionally fraught from a whole week of pain and nausea and doctor's visits, maybe because there is so much left unsaid when you talk about the evils of the world.

I couldn't finish, because I so badly want it to be not true that the greatest, kindest of people are those who are torn from the world too soon.

"Do you girls want to watch a movie about it?"

"Yes!" They bounced back into the house.

And before breakfast, we sat in front of the computer, and watched Dr. Martin Luther King (SI said, "I like to call him Dr. King!") deliver a speech that brought me to tears.

I remembered being in fourth grade and talking about Dr. King.

I remembered being in third grade, and my black teacher breaking down in tears as she recounted the Kennedy assassination.

I remembered watching this same speech a dozen times. A hundred. And never taking in the same things.

I know that when the bells ring throughout my city in a few short hours, I will break down and cry.

I am happy, because so much has changed since even my childhood.

I am sad because there is so, so far to go.

Because right now, we're moving backwards. Away from that mountaintop.

But I want my children, all children, to live there. Where they are never less-than, where all human life is treated with dignity.

We sat and we watched, and I know they didn't understand it.

And sometimes, I don't understand.

None of us are free. So long as oppression denies the inalienable rights of anyone in our society, we are all complicit. We are all caught in the mechanics of an engine driven by greed, and hatred, and fear.

But maybe in another fifty years.

Maybe in fifty more years, I can stand with my children and my grandchildren and maybe my great grandchildren on the mall in Washington and things will be truly changed from how they are today.

Maybe at last we can all cash that check.

Race in America - End of the Month Controversy

Talking to my kids about difficult subjects

All this talk about Mily Cyrus at the VMAs and cultural appropriation has me thinking back to a subject I have wanted to discuss for a long time. (So no, this isn't a post about twerking. Sorry.)

The thing is, race is an incredibly difficult thing to talk about. I'm much more comfortable talking about general otherism, about the reality of privilege, or about economics and class than I am talking about race.

Race is something I've always found it difficult to wrap my head around.

You see, I am not white. That might come as a shock to you. I'm Jewish. Oh yes, I can pass. Lots of Jews can pass. And just as many, if not more, can't.

I have two biological sisters. My older sister is paler than me, but she doesn't pass as well. That's because of her hair- her hair that is indisputably ethnic. My younger sister doesn't pass as well either. That's because her skin is so dark that she's sometimes mistaken for Middle Eastern of non-Jewish descent, which can be particularly awkward when it's a Palestinian who's making the mistake.

Me, Aunt Genocide, Aunt Something Funny

But I pass, mostly. I've got blue eyes and pale skin. So I "pass."

But I've known I've been "passing" my whole life.

I've known since I was very little that I wasn't white. It's one of those things, people don't experience privilege unless they're excluded from it. Part of privilege is that you're "normal" from the get-go. When you're not part of it, you're a novelty.

I was the freaked out kid at the pool who all the middle aged white ladies surrounded, to take turns touching my hair without permission.

I was the good natured token Jew, listening to every story about every other Jewish person anyone else in the room had ever met.

At nine years old I sat on the floor with my best friend in the wee hours of the night, patting her shoulder and trying to comfort her through her paroxysms of grief that I was condemned to Hell and she would have to go to Heaven without me someday unless I could somehow stop being Jewish.

I am not white.

I am also not black. I do not share the universal cultural experiences of being African American. I don't have to choose between demanding equal treatment or being an "angry black lady," I've never been pulled over without cause, I'm not faced daily with the cultural appropriation of my incredibly large and visible minority by the even larger and disproportionately more visible white population.

But I am enough other to both to have experienced some of being either.

Being white isn't just about having pale skin and fine hair. Being white is about being the standard. About how any deviation from that standard is bad, and you are less accepted and even tolerated for it.

But being white also means that you have a pervasive ignorance of the experiences outside your privilege. This is something I know. When I was thirteen, I was playing a game with some theater friends of my older sister. I was pretending to be an alien, doing research on humanity. I asked her friend, an African American man, to describe his family. He told me he was raised by his mom. I asked if that was typical. He said yes, and I was shocked. And then I got a lecture from him, as well as another friend of his (also male and African American) about the dearth of male father figures in their communities. In their childhoods.

Although at thirteen I didn't exactly have the words for it, I saw my white privilege for the first time.

(And really, if you are not familiar with this particular social issue- take three minutes and watch this video. I'll wait.)



So even though I'm not white, I know what white privilege is.

But I still have a hell of a time talking about RACE.

I can say to my kids, "Part of who we are is persecution. Our entire Jewish culture is based on a history of fleeing Inquisitions, Crusades, genocides, pogroms... Every holiday we celebrate is under the cloud of five thousand years of otherness. When Columbus sailed to the New World, your ancestors were fleeing his homeland for the Netherlands with nothing but the shirts on their backs. When the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, your ancestors fled Polish persecution for Israel. When the Civil War threatened to split your country, your ancestors were fleeing a genocide in Russia. When your great great grandfather came to this country, he would never see his family back home again- they would all perish in the Holocaust. And when your family came to this country, they were not welcome, in the way you feel now, mostly. They were other, Christ Killers, hook-nosed yids, traitorous money-lenders. That is how the country we love and call home saw them."

And I do love this country. Truly. And I am grateful for it, and to it. And it is my obligation to help it continue to grow and mature and change for good. And part of the debt I give my country is my children.

American children.

Children who, unlike me, have a white parent.

DD, she has my older sister's ethnic hair. She has my younger sister's dark complexion. She will not pass as well as me, and definitely not as well as her twin sister- who has finer hair, bluer eyes, lighter skin than I- who so nearly "pass."

So what do I tell my children about race?

I don't know what box to check. I'm not Caucasian, I'm more Middle Eastern. But realistically, I'm not Middle Eastern, either. I'm not non-white Hispanic, I'm not Asian or Pacific Islander, I'm not Native American.

The only box I can check is "Other," and write in, "Jewish."

Because race isn't about the color of your skin. Not always. But it's also about that.

When my three year olds tell me that their friend from school has a big sister with pretty brown skin, so when THEY'RE big girls, THEY will also have pretty brown skin, I bite my tongue.

I don't want to tell them they're wrong, because they'll figure that out on their own. Because I don't want to be the person responsible for making them suddenly see that there is a difference beyond the superficial in the color of their skin and another person's.

I don't want to be the one to put the words of privilege into their vocabulary. But even more, I don't want to leave them unprepared to ignore the words of bigotry and hatred.

I have long come to terms with the idea that it will fall upon me to explain anti-semitism to my children. The pervasive anti-semitism of a largely "accepting" majority Christian culture.

I've already had to explain that I don't want to watch Sesame Street today, because of shit like this:



That reminds me all too plainly of shit like this:

And this:

So, yes, I definitely want to direct this conversation with my kids. I want them to know that people are different, and that's GOOD. That people have different kinds of skin and different kinds of hair and different kinds of faces and different kinds of genitalia and different kinds of histories and different kinds of intellectual ability or disability, and the endless variations of humanity are a testament to how amazing we all are.

But I also want to explain to them, before somebody else does, that some people still see something else when they see somebody's brown skin, or kinky hair, or long nose.

I want to be the one to explain to them that, because they have light skin and light eyes, people will be nicer to them. Almost universally. And that as nice as it might be, it's wrong.

But I don't want to have these conversations, because they are based in a truth that can't be hidden, and can't be candy-coated.

I don't want to be responsible for showing my children that racially motivated hatred exists. I don't want them to start thinking of people in terms of race, because with racial awareness comes judgement.

But at the same time, they need to be aware of people's cultural and racial experiences. They need to know why certain behaviors are unacceptable- yes, including Miley Cyrus's twerking. They need to know that racial experiences are different, and that difference does not imply relative worth.

I have no idea how I'm going to have those conversations. There is no guide book to discussing race in America with half-white, non-black children.

It's far too nuanced and delicate a subject for any one book to handle.

But it is essential. It is essential to teach our children that racial biases exist. It is essential to teach them that our culture, as a whole, embraces them. That if they're not careful, one day they'll realize that they trust white skin on sight, and don't trust brown. Or that they'll expect every news report about a criminal to be about a person of color. Or that they'll be surprised when the bad guy in their movie doesn't have darker skin and coarser hair than the good guys.

I want my children to see these messages for what they are- ignorant assumptions made by a class that is spoon fed privilege from the day they're born.

I am in charge of making sure this is the message they receive. I need to take ownership of that. I need to make sure I raise people, American citizens, who don't accept their privilege.

The only way to end this culture of privilege is to ensure that those who benefit from it reject it. That when we are in the position of privilege and somebody else is struggling through persecution, we stand up and take ownership. I want to know that someday, if my kids see that their brown-skinned friends are being treated differently than them, they will approach the culprit and demand an explanation.

That is the debt I owe to a society that has largely accepted me as one of its own.

But I also want them to point out their differences when they are ignored. Point out the hurt it does when their culture is appropriated. I want them to take pride in their uniqueness, in their racial and cultural heritage.

And the best way to teach a child anything is to set an example.

And so I charge you, every one of my lovely readers, to step back from your life for a moment and look for the privilege you experience.

Do you know that you have a place to worship, no matter where in the country you might move?

Do you know that you will get fair pay for your work?

Do you know you can call the police if you are in need and they will see you as an innocent victim?

Do you know that if you speak the language of your childhood home, you will be understood?

These are privilege.

Be aware of it. And consider what it feels like to answer "no" to any one of those questions. To all of them.

The burden of educating my children on race and privilege doesn't fall only on me, it is ours as a culture. My lessons mean nothing without the contrast of reality, or the television they watch and the people they meet and the pictures on magazines on the rack at the grocery store.

It's time we all took some responsibility for that.

Sunday Blogaround -4.22.12

Hello!  And welcome to another edition of the blogaround!

There was a lot of great stuff out there this week... as every week.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!



"A Defining Moment" - The Mom Pledge Blog
Elizabeth of the Mom Pledge has started a two week series on giving birth.  It's amazing how awful moms can be to each other when it comes to something as simple as how your child came out of your body and into the world.  Each day the Mom Pledge Blog has (and will) feature another birth story.  I highly recommend checking it out!


"Willa Dawn's Birth Story" - Super Mom Blog
I love birth stories!  Summer is a mom blogger I've been reading for some time- and I've been anxious for this post since she announced she was pregnant... a few weeks before I was getting ready to announce I was pregnant.  So happy that she has welcomed her newest daughter into the world!


"National Public Gardens Day" - Toddling Around Chicagoland
This is a great event.  We did it last year, and had TONS of fun.  Find out what public gardens are near you and participating, and celebrate the spring outside.  In style.  :)

"Friday Fun, Photo Version: More Planking" - A(n) (Un)common Family
For some reason best known to herself, this mommy blogger's three year old has started planking.  No explanation.  Just... planking.  Yes, there are pictures.


"Rock, Paper, Scissors" - The Hossman Chronicles
There's a new sheriff in town at the Hossman house.  I love this post, first of all because of how well Daddy Hoss deals wish issues like marital strife and the bittersweet realities of children growing up, but also because I have Mommy Hoss-like rock, paper, scissors skills.  And I can imagine this someday happening to my family.  Sort of.

"The Potty and the Pussycat" - Misadventures in Motherhood
Jenn cracks me up on a regular basis.  This post has a trifecta of my favorite humor elements.  Terrifying public toilets, random friendly animals, and attempts by Americans to get by in a foreign country in the native language.


"Attention: Baby" - Happy Hippie Homemaker
Rachel is due about two weeks after me.  It's always nice to share in the vicarious misery, excitement, and fear of a new baby, and this incredibly brief post sums it up perfectly.

"Till Death Do Us Part" - Suburban Rebel Mom
M and I have conversations like this.  Except there are no dragons involved.


"Dog" - Life With Gemelos!
I am so jealous right now.  As you might already know, I really want a dog.  Unfortunately, it doesn't make a lot of sense to get a dog right now.  Period.  So many reasons.  While I don't want a German Shephard (believe it or not, those just aren't big enough for me), I would LOVE IT if we lived anywhere near a breeder.  Taking the girls out to play with puppies?  PLEASE???????




"Yom Hashoah- Never Forget" - The New Glasers
This week marked Yom Hashoah.  This is one woman's personal account of how her family has been shaped and changed by the events of the Holocaust.  She's writing from Israel, which adds a different kind of flavor to her perspective- in the United States the day passes almost unnoticed.  In Israel, it is a Big Deal.


"The Post That Never Should Have Existed" - Poop And Other Things Moms Talk About
And now for something completely different.  Moving past the awesomeness that is the title of this blog, this post is hilarious.  All about bad days as blog fodder, and when the line is crossed between, "This will be hilarious," and "Dear God get me out of here."

Day of Remembrance

April 1, Kristallnacht

With apologies to Aunt Genocide (my sister the Holocaust scholar), who will probably want to correct every single historical detail in this post.  And then some.

Today is Yom Ha'Shoah.

"Shoah" is the Hebrew word for "disaster," or "calamity."  It is also the word that Jews the world over have been using since the 1940s (and probably earlier) to describe what happened in Germany, Poland, and throughout the spread of the Nazi movement, to the Jewish people.

Here in the United States as in many places, we call it, "The Holocaust."

But "holocaust" means "burnt offering."  It's a title that I, personally, find... distasteful.

Because a burnt offering is a sacrifice.  And because the burnt offerings of those years were corpses at the alter of the ideal of Aryan superiority.  And to call that a sacrifice is not accurate- it was different from a sacrifice.  It was not a choice, or an obligation, or even an inevitability.

But it was a disaster.  And a calamity.  And a horror.

As my mother helps her parents prepare to leave their house after decades, she has come across some interesting objects.  One of these is a doll.

My great-great-uncle Hy found that doll in a concentration camp.  He was looking for his family.  He was looking for the people that he knew and loved, that helped define him and shape him, and connect him with his past, his future, and his history.

I can't imagine what was running through his mind while he searched that camp.  What he found was a doll.  A small, homemade doll.  He picked it up, and he mailed it to the only little girl he had any connection to anymore.  My nine year old grandmother.  Sending her that doll must have felt like the closest thing he would ever get to reuniting his family.

The Shoah began before what we think of as the Holocaust- it began decades before.  Centuries.  Millennia.  When my family fled Spain- when Columbus was sailing the ocean blue, Jews were packing their bags and leaving after Ferdinand and Isabella's edict- there was already a precedent in place.

Many of them went to Poland, where they were given religious freedom by King Boleslav.

They felt safe in Poland, and there they remained.  Spreading their roots, building their communities.  Not just in Poland, but around Poland.

It was over two hundred years that they lived, somewhat peacefully, with the Polish people.  And then the pogroms began- systematic killing and violence of Jews.  Over the next few centuries, this violence drove the Jews into Germany and Prussia.

It was 100 years later that the rise of sentiments and policies that lead to the Nazis would begin.

And that's where my family was.  In Poland, in Lithuania, in Germany.  My great-great-grandparents.  My great-grandparents.  My ancestors.

The people who's names and likenesses I and my parents and my children bear.

My great-great grandfather (on my mother's mother's mother's side) fled Poland and established himself in the United States.

My great-great-grandparents (on my mother's father's father's side) managed the same feat.

I know nothing of my father's lineage this far back, but the names I've seen printed and etched at Ellis Island.  I do know that all who remained are now gone.  Whole swathes of my family, of my history, of the story of how I came to be and who I am... they are gone.

The name we have chosen for Baby X is my great-great-aunt's name.  I never knew her.  She was my great-grandpa Abe's youngest sister.

I grew up with her story, though.  When the family was fleeing, they hid in the false bottom of a hay cart in the wee hours of the morning while a friend smuggled them to the docks, to board a boat to America.

Soldiers with pitchforks stabbed at the hay.  They were looking for people just like my family, Jews, trying to escape.  Through the ordeal, the children (and there were many of them) all miraculously remained silent.  Including Baby X's namesake.  She slept peacefully through the ordeal, only a baby, never waking or crying.

She grew up, fell in love, and married before dying young and tragically.

It was a fate she never would have enjoyed if she had remained in Europe.  She would have died young and tragically, but not in the freedom of the road and the company of her husband.  She would have died almost anonymously, one of millions crowded into camps and systematically annihilated.  Her name replaced by a number on her arm.  The name my daughter will carry on.

Today is Yom Ha'Shoah, the day of Remembrance.

I might have had many more cousins.

I might have had a family so large and and so close, the sort of family that my husband has.  I might have had a community in my mind of names and faces and laughs and idiosyncrasies of the people connected to me through blood.

Instead, I have memories of museums.  Of empty shoes and coarse, striped fabric.  I have memories of my great-grandfather's silences, of stories he would write down but not discuss with me.  I have memories of dates and of events that occurred before I was born, but which are etched into my soul.

I remember.

As we say each Passover... in each generation there are some who would rise and try to destroy us.

The Assyrians.  The Egyptians.  The Persians.  The Greeks.  The Romans.  The Christian Crusaders.  The Inquisitorial Catholics.  The Cossacks.  The Nazis.

I have no doubt there will be another some day, and I will probably live to see it.  It will probably take the form of military action against Israel.

I'm not a Zionist, I don't believe that Jews are entitled to that land or that it's even necessarily a good idea to have a "Jewish State."  But regardless of what I believe when it comes to Israel and war and genocide, I believe that it is my job not only as a Jew but as a human being to remember the lesson of the Holocaust.

Never again.

Never again can we stand idly by as a people are willfully destroyed.  Religions, cultures, races, sexualities, these are not only abstract concepts by which we can divide masses into categories- these are people.  Aunts and uncles and grandparents and sons and daughters.  Jews and Gypsies and Catholics and homosexuals.  Hutus and Cham and Armenians and Kurds.

Piles of corpses that survivors sift through, hoping and fearing to find a familiar face.

A face that looks like it could belong to them.

Today is Yom Ha'Shoah.

Wealth, The Mommy Wars, Some Family History, and the Nature of Parental Stress

My granny is the little girl on the right

Part of the Mom Pledge reads, "I want to see moms work together to build one another up, not tear each other down. Words can be used as weapons. I will not engage in that behavior."

Words like "Mommy Wars," words combined into 140 characters that set whole presidential campaigns against each other.

I'd like to address this, if I may.

The thing about life is that no matter what you're doing, you want to have somebody tell you how impressed they are with what you do.

You want to have somebody who made a different choice than you say, "Wow, I could not do what you do.  You work so hard.  You impress me so much.  You must be exhausted.  You must feel amazing about yourself."

Or, you know, some sort of paraphrased version of that.

So today it's been hard for me to get away from the back and forth over the comments that Hilary Rosen made about Ann Romney.

What she said was, “His wife has actually never worked a day in her life.  She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and how do we — why we worry about their future.”

Now, these are two entirely different statements.  If Hilary Rosen had left off that first sentence, this wouldn't have ever turned into an issue.  Of course the left believes that the Romneys are out of touch with the majority of Americans.  Let's face it, they are.  But that isn't what the argument is about.

This has been made into yet another occasion for people to accuse each other of accusing each other of being lazy.

I know that sounds like nonsense.  That's because it is nonsense.

Do stay at home moms think that working moms are worse parents?  Do working moms think that stay at home parents are worse parents?

No.  Nobody actually cares.  This only matters when somebody feels that they are being accused of being less than the best parent they can be for their children.

Being a working mom is hard.  But a lot of women in this country don't see it as a choice.  They see it as a necessity.  If they're the only parent, or if their spouse is in a low wage job, they may not have an option.  And then they see stay-at-home parents as having the luxury not to "work."

But they know that staying at home with kids is work.  It's just work that our society doesn't seem to value very much.  The United States is one of only a tiny handful of countries in the world that doesn't require employers to pay maternity leave.  In many countries, that pay can go to either parent.  In either case, a parent can stay home, if they choose, with their child.

Not so here.

So now in this country, we have a situation where some women CAN choose to go to work, or to stay home.  You have many families, like mine, where the choice comes down to whether or not the cost of childcare exceeds the benefits of a second income.

So the so-called Mommy Wars have grown around the ability women have to work, the frustration of being torn in one's desire to both contribute financially and their desire to contribute in the many intangible ways of being a constant and positive figure in their children's lives, and the frustration of people who make different choices being happy.

Because, you see, their happiness is an affront to anyone who has made a different choice.  If your life is willfully different than mine, and you are happier than I am at this moment, your happiness is an indictment of my choices.

...this is crazy talk.  But we all do this.  We all see somebody else being happy and we think that because we're exhausted or sick or overworked or somebody three feet tall has peed on our favorite chair twice that morning, they must have made a better choice.

And we can't stand that.  But we've made it up ourselves.

I was talking to my mother the other day about how tired I was.  How I couldn't imagine how she did it when she was in labor (for a month) with my younger sister.  How I had no idea how single mothers could do this.

And then she told me about my great-grandmother's diaries.

You see, my great-grandparents were wealthy.  Mansion in Chicago, vacation house in Aspen, property across several other states...  My great-grandparents were patrons of the arts (the Dadaists in particular), had the sort of living room that has a full grand piano "in the corner," and built a bowling alley in their basement.  My great-grandfather refused a request to invest in Henry Ford's early plants- although whether that was a poor business decision or a good choice based on Ford's anti-semitic sentiments is up for debate.

My great-grandfather was independently wealthy, despite the wealth of his father, who was also a construction magnate.

My great-grandmother and her son

My grandmother was in many ways closer with the house manager than her own mother.

But my great-grandmother, the wealthy socialite weathering the Depression in mansion, hosting her benefits and having chamber orchestras over to play parties with centerpieces made of gilded lilies...

(Yes, she actually gilded lilies.)

She agonized over her work.

Her journals were full of worry, worry that her baby was sick, that her household help couldn't do things as well for her children as she knew they needed to be done, that she was terrified that she was incapable of caring for her three children alone, that her son wouldn't speak after learning to speak Spanish during their years in Mexico.  She had so much to do and that she was pulled in so many different directions.

She was terrified and exhausted.  She was overworked and miserable.

She was, in short, a mom.

Then there's my grandmother- her daughter.  In her stories of her early motherhood, she and my grandfather are living in a rapidly collapsing house in backwater Florida in the late 50's, subsisting on food stamps and around $3,000 a year.  My grandfather turned down an opportunity to compete in the Olympics because back then, that meant forgoing any sort of income.  And besides, he was focusing on his Ph.D.  In these stories, my grandmother mastered the art of stretching her food stamp allotment into real meals for her family, every day.  She made pasta out of her flour rations, she made sauces and soups from every last scrap of meat.  And of course, her children were mischievous or dangerously ill in turns.  She had truant officers stopping by her house to discover that her children weren't in school because they had scarlet fever, mumps, and measles.

My grandparents

She was frustrated and exhausted.  She was worried and overworked.

In short, she was a mom.

I have no idea how either of those women did it.  And honestly, I don't know how I do it.

The problem with wealth is that it does nothing- nothing- to make you happier.  The more you have, the more you come up with to do with your time and money.

You have the money to hire a nanny to watch your children?  You will commit to all sorts of other activities or causes that will depend on you, and you will be pulled in more directions.

You have four houses?

You have four times as many rooms to clean, four times as many lawns to care for, four times as many cobwebs to combat.

You have committees and causes and charities.

You are working.  And you have your kids.

You have less money?

Well, you have fewer rooms to clean, fewer cars to keep up.  Fewer bills to pay.

There is no world where this is easy.

But your bills take up more of your income.  You have to "work" harder to stay on top of them.  You have to make choices between phone or gas, food or car, rent or a medical bill.  Even if you're subsisting entirely on government aid.

You are working.  And  you have your kids.

And kids?  Kids are a lot of work.  Kids are hard.  Kids are exhausting.

And they will always have more energy than you.  They will always have a leg up on you.  They will always have a million things that they need you to do.  That they simply cannot do for themselves.  That nobody but you can do for them.

Being poor is hard.  I've done it- it sucks.  I've been on public aid and literally lived off of leftovers from going on as many blind dates as I could squeeze into a week.  The closest I've been since I've had children involved food stamps and WIC, and I know the difference between relying on the public safety net and being totally without one.  As millions of single mothers in this country are.

Being rich is not hard in pretty much any of the same ways, but it's not as much fun as you probably think.  My family has been rich.  It didn't solve our problems.

There is no world where this is easy.

Even when my family was rolling in it, my mother was still dealing with four teenagers who, while independent and intelligent, were just as crazy and disaster prone (and in some cases, much much much more so) than any other teenager.  There were car crashes, bad boyfriends and robberies.  There were brushes with the law and curfew violations and plenty of standard rivalries.

My mother?  She must have been exhausted.

And when we were all little, and she was working as a secretary while my father worked on his Ph.D., she must have been exhausted.

Because all of us, all parents, everywhere... we are all exhausted.  We are all stressed.  We are all paranoid and concerned and determined to be better.

But we are what we are- human beings.  Human beings trying to raise other human beings.

And honestly?  None of us know how we do it.

You know what it's like to be 32 weeks
pregnant, working on your degree, fighting
off skin cancer and gall bladder disease, and
raising two toddlers?  It's exhausting.  This
is how I look most days.  It's not a failure.

Somebody else having a good day doesn't mean they made a better choice than you.  It doesn't mean they're happier than you.  It doesn't mean that they are judging you in any way.  It just means that they're having a good day.

Ann Romney?  She raised five boys, she's fought cancer and MS.  Yes, she is out of touch with the majority of Americans.  The majority of Americans can't afford to buy horses to help them through their MS, or furnish half a dozen homes.

But all of those things?  Those things are hard.  Those things are more things that Ann Romney has to do.  And she must be exhausted.

There are no Mommy Wars.  There is no battlefield where women are attacking each other for their parenting choices, or lack thereof.

There is only the horrible, self-critical part of our own minds that insists that we are being judged by everyone.  All the time.

And we are all working our asses off to do the best job that we can.

Next Year In Jerusalem, or Everything I Need To Know About Passover I Learned From The Ten Commandments

Thanks, Google!

Aunt Genocide and I are standing in the kitchen, watching Moses return to his adoptive father after a successful military campaign in Ethiopia.

Aunt Genocide looks over her shoulder, sweating slightly as she stirs a hot pot of molten orange honey and ginger.

"This movie is full of eye candy," she says.

"Oh yeah," I reply.  "Charleton Heston was so hot."

"Yul Brynner was hotter."

I grin.  "Oh, yeah."

I have been washing and chopping apples for what feels like an eternity.  I move on to grating nuts into the bowl, and add liberal amounts of cinnamon.

"Who plays Nefertiri, anyway?" Aunt Genocide asks.

I would Google it if the laptop weren't in use.  By us.  Watching this DVD.

Grandmommy points out that Baka the Master Builder is played by Vincent Price, casually glancing over her shoulder from her bowl of goo that will shortly become delicious matzah balls.  The pot of broth is waiting and simmering on the stove, full of onions that my mother cleverly spikes with whole cloves.

Aunt Genocide and I are stunned by this piece of information.

This DVD is one of my prized possessions.  M burned it to disc for me from the old VHS tape the year we got married- cementing my belief that he was the perfect choice of life-mate.  It is at least five hours long, heavily edited, and filled with commercials.  My great-grandfather Abe taped it off a local network back in 1988 or so.  When he lived in Chicago.  The commercials are so dated- it's amazing what you forget about the marketing of decades past.  Everything had a jingle.  Everything.  The Mets were doing well at the beginning of their season.  There was a different Pope, offering different Easter blessings in the same scenery and the same costume.  The cars were boxy gas guzzlers.  There was war in the Middle East.

All of that is background noise.  In fact, The Ten Commandments itself if background noise.

The Ten Commandments has been the background noise of Passover for as long as I can remember.  Certainly since around 1988, when I was four years old.  When the family seder moved out of Chicago and my great-grandfather Ezra's house, and into my granny's instead.

It's full of cheesy, dated nonsense.  Not cheesy in that 80's commercial way, cheesy in that Classic Hollywood kind of way.  With nameless Egyptian guards grumbling and warning, "That'll teach you, Stone Cutter!" as they tie Joshua to the curtains in Baka the Master Builder's tent so that he can be whipped to death.

His hands are caught in gently wound velvet ropes.  We, my sister and I, we know that really- he could just pull his arms down any time.  But honestly... he looks so pretty all tied up, waiting for Moses to come and save him.

Zipporah, responding to her husband's compliment that her eyes are as sharp as they are beautiful by looking directly and pointedly into the camera for a solid four seconds.

Nefertiri (played by Anne Baxter, in case you were still wondering), absentmindedly dragging a garland of flowers off the parapet to illustrate how careless and beautiful she is in her obsessive love of Moses.

This movie is full of eye candy.  Cecil B. DeMille really knew his stuff.

And Aunt Genocide, Grandmommy, and I are on auto-pilot.  We know this movie by heart.  We know this television broadcast by heart.  We can't replay the scenes in our minds without the same commercial breaks, the same Bartles and James commercials, the same constant reminders that Cadbury Eggs only come once a year, or that Max Hedron was on the cover of Time.

This is the background noise to Passover in my family.

I am making the charoseth.  Aunt Genocide is making the ingberlech.  My mother is making matzah ball soup.

Somebody is preparing the pecan sunshine cake- unleavened, of course.  Somebody is prepping parsley and mixing a caraffe of salt water.  Somebody is peeling an army's worth of hard boiled eggs.  Somebody is collecting pillows.  Somebody is setting the table. Somebody is arranging the seating chart.  Somebody is making place cards.  Somebody is putting candlesticks and haggadahs on the table, filling seder plates and arranging candies on trays for dessert.  Somebody is opening up cans of palm hearts for the relish dishes.  Somebody is saying, "Dayenu!" when somebody else mentions that we only seem to have one bottle of Manichewitz.

And great-grandpa Abe's copy of The Ten Commandments is playing.

This year, it's at my house.  Last year, Aunt Genocide's.  As my grandparents are selling their house next month, it will never be at my granny's house again.

But that doesn't matter.

It's not about where you celebrate your seder.  It's not about what you're having for dinner.  It's not about how comfortable you all are when you're crammed around the table.

It's Passover.  It's about celebrating our freedom.

We're free to watch a topless Yul Brynner dust off the sand from his chest with an ostrich feather.

We're free to make batch after batch of candies and cakes and eat them up in a night with the excuse that they aren't perfect.

We're free to joke endlessly about our antique and awkwardly translated haggadahs.

We were slaves in Mizrayim, but today we are free.

It doesn't matter who's house we are in for Passover.  It is always the same.  This year, Aunt Genocide determined that she will pass the ingberlech torch to DD.  I am reserving judgement, I think SI will be the better candidate.  I expect DD will pick up the name card decoration slack when I have moved on to more important tasks.

It is always our family.  Always filled with love, always filled with the same jokes, the same smells, the same foods, the same story.

Once upon a time, we were slaves.

This year, my house.

Next year, in Jerusalem.

End of the Month Controversy- Vaccinations

Influenze outbreak
From Brittanica online

Vaccinations have been on my mind quite a bit lately.

First of all, there's the fact that I'm getting DD and SI enrolled in pre-school for the fall, and that means... vaccination records.  And the fact that next week they have their two and a half year well check up, at which they're scheduled for Hep B shots.

And then there's the ongoing birth control debate going on around the country.  And frankly, I think these two issues are related.

Allow me to explain.

There are a lot of things that are going unspoken by the (mostly) men who are arguing against birth control.  And they're the same sort of (mostly) unspoken things that, reading or listening between the lines, you hear from people who don't believe in vaccinating their children.

"Nobody dies from pregnancy or childbirth."

From the CDC

You hear these politicians talking about how rare it is that a pregnancy *really* jeopardizes the health of the mother.  And yet...

Over the last decade, the maternal mortality rate in the United states has doubled.  DOUBLED.

There are probably a lot of reasons for this, from inadequate prenatal care to the rising rate of c-sections.  But that doesn't change the fact that, yeah, women die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth.  And twice as many American women are doing it as they did ten years ago.

Which brings me back to vaccinations.  I personally know several mothers who don't vaccinate their kids because, "Nobody dies of the measles."

Educated women.  Empowered women.  Women of my age, with many of the same life experiences that I have.

The children of my generation were pretty much all vaccinated.  I never had the experience of losing a classmate or a sibling to a preventable disease.  I never knew a child who was effected by polio.  I never even heard stories about, "a friend of a friend of my cousin's neighbor" who had a baby brother or sister that died of whooping cough.

And so for mothers of my generation in particular, vaccination can seem... unnecessary.  Why give my children shots- shots that will hurt them- so that they won't ever get a thing that just isn't a big deal anymore anyway?

And then there's the belief that vaccinations are linked to Autism.  Beliefs caused by a scam artist who has since recanted his so-called research, but who's claims traveled far and wide.

And then there's the fear of side effects.

Scary.

And then there's the issue of what the hell is in this shot anyway?

Vaccinating is a hard decision to make.  It's impossible to be 100% informed with a simple layman's pharmacological vocabulary.  It's hard not to be scared at the idea that you're intentionally putting something that you know to be harmful into your child's body.  It's hard not to feel guilty about causing your child pain by stabbing them with a needle.  It's hard not to feel vicarious terror at the idea of being stabbed by a needle yourself.  Needles are scary.

I still firmly believe that it's the right thing to do.

I believe that because there is a reason that nobody I know died from polio, or measles.

There's a reason that I look at adults with shingles and cringe at the idea of that ever being me or my child.

I have been so fortunate to grow up in a society that has come so close to eradicating these diseases.  But they're not gone.  And there are important lessons about disease that we can learn from history.

Like that a society that has never been exposed to a disease is more likely to be utterly decimated by that disease if they ever cross paths.  (Think Native Americans and smallpox.  Or European colonizers in South America and Yellow Fever.)

That it is easier to keep children alive when "common childhood illnesses" don't include measles, scarlet fever, or mumps.  Or smallpox.

These are all diseases that we don't have to have.  That we don't have to worry about dying from.  And that's because of vaccination.

Name that disease
Photo from Brittanica

When the girls' pediatrician first approached me about the chicken pox vaccine, I laughed and said, "I'll think about it."  After all, I had the chicken pox as a kid.  My sisters had it.  Everyone I knew had it.  And we were all fine.  I called my mother and I told her, "This vaccination thing is getting totally out of hand. Do you know they're vaccinating against chicken pox?!"

And she told me about how when she was a child her baby brother had nearly died of chicken pox.  How many children actually did.  And then she told me why so many parents back in my childhood would try so hard to get their kids infected by other kids.  It's because if you get chicken pox as an adult, it's 20 times more likely to kill you- and it never goes away.  You have shingles for the rest of your life.

I did a little research, and I learned that chicken pox related deaths have gone down 88% since the introduction of the vaccine.  And that is a staggering figure for less than two decades of work.

So yes, my children got that shot, too.

I'm going to be perfectly frank.  I hate getting my kids their shots.  I hate holding them down while a nurse stabs them with a series of large needles.  I hate listening to them scream and cry.  I hate that I am responsible for that.  I hate having to lie and tell them that it's not scary, when I know it's scary.  I hate pretending that I'm not scared.  I hate being complicit in their pain, when they simply cannot understand why on earth anyone would want to intentionally hurt them.

I would so much rather that I am occasionally responsible for that trauma than that they die.  For any reason.

If I could get them vaccinated against being hit by a truck, I would do it.  No matter how many injections it took.

When they're pre-teens, I'll be sure to get them vaccinated against HPV.  Because that's a whole category of cervical cancers that they won't get and need to be cured of.  Or die from.

Name that disease
Photo from NIH

If I could get them vaccinated against AIDS, you could bet your ass I'd do it in a heartbeat.  And thankfully, that day may be nearer than I previously believed.

It doesn't matter to me how unlikely it is that they'll be exposed to the measles, or to any other disease for that matter.

What it comes down to is that a case of the measles today is more dangerous that it was fifty years ago.  Not because the disease was more virulent.  Not because the medicine for treating it was better- it's better now.  What it comes down to is that fifty years ago, everybody knew what it looked like.

There's a fever.  There's a runny nose and a cough.  There's red, watery eyes.  That's before the rash shows up.  A rash I definitely couldn't identify on sight- to me the pictures of it look a lot like roseola.  With proper medical care, the mortality rate due to these former "common childhood ailments" is very, very low.  But there are other effects- measles can leave your child blind.  If you're pregnant, rubella can cause horrific defects in your baby.  Diphtheria can make your child fall into a coma.

And we've come so close to actually wiping out these diseases that I just simply wouldn't recognize them.  And neither, most likely, would their doctor.  She's probably never had a kid in her office with diphtheria.

I understand why many parents choose not to vaccinate.  Fear.

Fear of the side effects.

Fear of the pain.

Fear of the responsibility.

I share that fear.

Name that disease
Photo from Brittanica

My fear of my children dying from something preventable is simply greater than my fear of those other things.  Despite the fact that the vaccination is a certain source of pain, and the disease itself so much less certain.

What is certain is that I want to let my children play with other children, without worrying if those children have been to events like the Superbowl, where apparently you can pick up the measles.  Or if they've visited a country with less successful vaccination campaigns.

I want to let Grandmommy and Poppa play with their grandkids when they fly in from South Africa, or China, or any other corner of the globe, without wondering who they might have been exposed to at an airport or train station.

I want to take my children to visit other children, without fear that my children might be the ones spreading disease.

And yes, I'm afraid of making my children sick by giving them shots filled with toxic chemicals.

I am so much more frightened of rubella.  I am so much more frightened of my toddlers spreading pertussis to their new baby sister when she's here.

I'm not ignorant of the risks.  I know there are risks.  I know that every year, many children do die as a result of complications from vaccines.

I also know that the number of children who die from measles, mumps, rubella, polio, meningitis, and the flu is exponentially greater.

Name that disease
Google images

Do I hate myself for vaccinating my children?  While it's happening, yeah, I do.

But from the moment of their first watery post-shot smile onward, I am grateful.  There is so much to worry about as a parent.  There are so many dangers.  I absolutely cannot protect my children against all of them.

But I can protect my children against a growing list of diseases that could harm them- that could cause them permanent disability or death, or even just a few really awful weeks or months of illness.

I am afraid.  We are all afraid.  Parenting is terrifying.  But we all do the best that we can.  And I believe that the best that I can do includes vaccinating my children.

Note: I will not publish or respond to any comments attempting to link autism to vaccinations.  All of the studies that do so have been debunked, and I will not dignify those arguments by engaging on that topic.  All other respectful comments are welcome.

Feminism in the 21st Century

1920

February's belated End of the Month Controversy is brought to you by every rant that every person riding in a car with me has been subjected to through most of the winter.



The fact that feminism is a subject that can be considered controversial in this day and age, in this place in time, is downright absurd.

Since starting up my blog and becoming introduced to the mommy blogosphere, I have been continually surprised by the tenor of popular mommy blogs.

Ideas about "Biblical Womanhood," about "Traditional Family Values," and about the ideals of femininity and motherhood.

1971

Yes, there is a niche for "Power Mom Blogs," but the vast majority of the mommy blogs I have encountered, and in the past nearly-two-years I have encountered A LOT of mommy blogs, tend to share an opinion of what makes a mother, and essentially a woman, a success.

I convinced myself that this Return-to-the-Dark-Ages mentality was a symptom of isolation.  That mothers across the country who were lonely and seeking interaction with like minded people had managed to use the magic of the internet to form ties and build relationships.

...and then the Republican race for the presidential nomination started.

I was aghast when pundits and church leaders began claiming that Michele Bachmann had no place in the White House- not because she's a crazy person, but because she is a woman.  And then I heard those words come from the mouths of women.

And something inside my brain snapped.

Anti-equality poster from 100 years ago

As I've said many times, I frequently feel that I'm essentially misogynistic.  I don't particular like most women.  I don't find that I have much in common with them, small talk and recipe swaps don't hold my interest.

I like zombie comics, science magazines, hard rock, and getting dirty outside.

I don't wear makeup, I don't go shopping just to go shopping.  I've never had (and never WILL have) my nails done.  I get a haircut maybe twice a year, max.  I don't diet.  I don't wear contacts.

In short, there are a lot of activities that are largely the purview of women... and nearly all of those activities leave me cold.  But I don't hate women.  In fact, I AM a woman, and I take a great deal of pride in that.

I revel in my own femininity.  I take pride in my wild, unruly (but I think quite lovely) hair.  I love to bake and sew, I have a soft spot for 90's era female vocalists.

I am a complete person, with individual flaws and desires and needs and abilities.

I am a skilled individual.

The fact that I am a woman is utterly irrelevant.  Or very relevant, but not in any way definative.

1979- Marching for the failed Equal Rights Amendment

So the idea of a "woman's place" just makes me sick to my stomach.

And now, since our president has decided to (finally) make himself the closest thing to a "Feminist" president that I have ever seen, every single person who opposes the president on the principal that they oppose the president has put themselves staunchly against women.

There are states trying to drive out the League of Women Voters.

There are states trying to drive out the Girl Scouts of America.

There are states eliminating programs that provide women with basic, non-reproductive health care services.

Rush Limbaugh is on his show demanding that women who want their employers to cover their birth control put up videos of themselves having sex.

1917

The human uterus is being turned into the playground of reproductive rights politicking.

Anti-Obama legislators in congress are opposing laws to protect victims of domestic violence.

And all of it is being done in the name of "morality."

Because since the Bible and the Torah said so once upon a time, it is "moral" to treat women as second class citizens.

Because the height of feminine success is having a lot of babies, and "serving" your husband until you work yourself into the grave.

That is not a world I care to live in.  It's not a world I care to raise my daughters in.  In the world that I came to know and to understand, we had already fought these battles, and we had won.  We had marched in the streets, been arrested en mass, and clawed our way most of the way to equality.

Yes, women still earned three quarters of what men earned, women were still dramatically underrepresented in board rooms and government, yes women were still horrifically likely to become victims of sexual and domestic violence, but we were making progress.  And now we're just running backwards as fast as we can.

Whenever I hear a Congresswoman saying that women shouldn't have to vote, I want to scream.  Whenever some clown like Rush Limbaugh claims that a woman who takes birth control is by definition a prostitute, I want to start smashing skulls.  Whenever I'm told that I am a slut or a sinner for choosing when I have a baby, I want to commit truly violent acts.

And almost always, I want to commit those acts against other women.  The women who are complicit in their subjugation.  The women who stand next to their husbands, their "moral" politico spouses, and say nothing as their rights as human beings are maligned and ignored.  The women who say that other women should just stay with their babies and leave the thinking up to the men.

I do not think that men are evil.  I think that most people are stupid, and about half of all people all men.  But I think that any person who acts in their own worst interest is worse than stupid.  And any person who would attack another person, who would deny them their fundamental human rights, for a trait that they share with the "other," that person might just be evil.

Like the pastors who teach the children in their flocks to attack and abuse gay people, and then later are outed by jilted same-sex lovers.

Or "family values" politicians who have dozens of ex-mistresses, illegitimate children, and criminal activities on the side.

Or women, who claim that other women are somehow "less than" men.

Feminism isn't about women being better than men, it's about human beings being equal REGARDLESS of gender.

And the fact that that's a controversial idea in the 21st century...

That is simply unacceptable.

I think of the notes, written in the margins of my grandmother's high school yearbook.  She and her friends signed each others' pcitures with, "Eleanor for President!"

It was radical, at the time.

But they knew they were right.  They knew they were fighting a battle that they would inevitably win.  And now, I'm not so sure.  Now I worry about whether the unspoken emotion that is truly behind the anti-Obama fervor in this country, something that to me speaks much more about deeply rooted hatreds and fears rather than policy, is enough to make these women, these believers in a woman's "place," unite against their sisters.

1940- Eleanor Roosevelt and the Girl Scouts

Times are hard.  There is no doubt.  But no time is so hard that it necessitates giving up my voice, my personhood, or my freedom.

I might have friends who chide me for biting my nails, who tell me I need to "turn in my girl card" when I say I'd rather watch the Pirates lose than find out who's not getting a rose on the Bachelor, or who accuse me of not having any imagination or sense of romance for my hatred of Disney princesses.

But I don't care.  Their interests are their own.  Just as mine are my own.  And I'm not going to deny them any of their rights or freedoms because I don't understand what they're talking about half the time.

The same way I wouldn't try to deny the men I know any of THEIR rights simply because I don't understand day long pub crawls, or World of Warcraft.  Or, for a more direct comparison, because I haven't bothered to educate myself about prostate health, testicular cancer, testosterone imbalances, color blindness, male infertility, impotence...

We're all people.

99 years ago today

It's time to act like it.