The lies we tell to get by

I have a boyfriend (please leave me alone)

Yes I am totally mentally distraught about this pregnancy and would get lots worse if I had to continue (please give me an abortion)

No extra flatmates (please give me enough resources to support my whanau)

It's not you, it's me (please let me go)

I'm driving tonight (please don't spike my drink)

Maybe, I'm not sure, but perhaps we could do it this way? (please listen to my excellent idea)

No I don't mind you asking me if I'm having more kids, it's okay (please don't get angry with me)

Sure I can work late (please see my worth)

Oh yes, baby is a great sleeper (please think I'm a good parent)

Thanks, you look great too (please stop talking about my appearance)

---

We live in a society where women often need to lie to get by.  Honesty is often the preserve of those who have a high level of safety and comfort.  May we live in a world where we don't need to lie to get by.  We don't live there yet.

Words are like weapons, they wound sometimes

"Sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you."

Not so.

Time after time we see this, people who suffer, and seeing no other way to end their suffering, end their lives.  Charlotte Dawson is the recent high profile case, and there will be likely be many that go unreported in Aotearoa NZ this week alone.

And so often it comes back to the sometimes thoughtless, oft-times callous, many times deliberate ways in which we wound each other with words.

For those who have not had the experience of a mental illness which magnifies the slights of others inside your head until they echo around and around with no way out, well it is a hard thing to understand I suppose.

But please be assured that the little mean cutting things we sometimes say to each other can contribute to serious blood loss, in the mental health sense, for some.

In all the sharing around Dawson's death, this is the best link I've seen - genuinely useful both for those with depression and those around them.  Despite having depression for over a decade myself I never made the clutter connection until reading it yesterday.

Let's be a little kinder to each other, or at least try.

I got angry.

Cross posted from "Well behaved women rarely make history".

Tonight was a new low.

I left Auckland feminist drinks, also lovingly called Boner Killer Drinks* early.

Early, because I was so angry at a man attending, that I was scared of what I would say, who I would upset, and trouble I would cause.

So here is a little love letter to the guy involved, and perhaps the woman stupid enough to bring him along to something he was obviously opposed to.

I was angry when you made jokes about high heeled shoes and car washing fundraisers, because you obviously expected a rise out of us. And I’m really sorry, but the wide range of young feminists around the table have more valuable shit to worry about that telling other people how to dress.

Did you really think those jokes were fresh? Normal women have to hear that crap all the time. As people who identify as feminists, we are targeted for crap like that daily. I can’t believe you thought you were unique bringing that shit to our table.

I got angry when you made jokes about “accepting our lord and saviour Jesus Christ into our lives” because that exact phrase is really triggering for me, and you didn’t know that because you didn’t ask, or care.

In fact, all you seemed to want was a response.

It didn’t matter that the response wouldn’t be interesting, or make better conversation, or expand horizons, you just wanted to get someone angry.

I got angry when I finally tried to shut you down by joking that “I’m sorry, I can’t hear what you are saying, I’m too busy objectifying your beard” your girlfriend fired up because someone else yelled “Yeah, take off your top”. (which by the way was very funny) .

So you can literally sit there and bait us, in our own safe place, but we can’t pick on you, because why?

I got angry when you tried to enter a philosophical debate about abortion by talking over the top of a history major, about the history of genocide.

When you talked over the top of the women trying to explain their point.
WHEN YOU TALKED OVER THE TOP OF YOUR OWN GIRLFRIEND WHEN SHE TRIED TO HELP YOU ARGUE. Why in gods name would you do that!? She was the only one out of the two of you actually qualified for the discussion, since she is the only one who has to get pregnant.

I got really angry when you said “urgh let’s go” and then DIDN’T GO!!

You could have just left. It was our meeting, our space, our time. Why the hell when you realised you didn’t like it, didn’t you just leave?

But no, you stood there arguing so long that I had time to get up and leave.

I got angry in the car on the way home. Angry at myself for not saying all this stuff, angry at you for talking over me when I tried. Angry at your girlfriend for bringing someone unsafe to our safe place.

So angry.

And then I got angry at not expressing it.

Because you know what? Neck beards like you exist in my life EVERY FUCKING DAY.

You are my boss.

You are the doctors I work with.

You are my family members.

You are the men on the street.

You are the jackass who came to feminist drinks and had a laugh at our expense.

You were the one person I COULD have shouted at, and I didn’t.

Because I’ve gotten really good at being angry and keeping my mouth shut.
At letting people like you talk over me, walk over me, violate my boundaries, and make me feel unsafe. And I just play nice and try to get away as soon as I can. I don’t want to be a “bad person” and give feminism a “bad name”. God forbid a feminist be angry, why would we be angry?

Mostly I’m angry at the fact I live in a society where one half of our country genuinely feels that their opinion is more valid/important/correct than the other half. And it’s so ingrained that you are probably going home thinking you did us a favour giving us something to think about.

We read about this shit, we research it, we debate it, we watch it, we work on political change, and read policy documents. We work in sectors where we make a difference.

There is very little that you could have brought to that table that someone hadn’t heard before, and yet you assumed we would actually change our minds based on your awesome argument.

So please don’t bother coming back. Because I’ve figured out what made me angry. And next time I won’t just leave.

*or #AklBKD if you want to keep up on twitter

Guest Post: Dealing with Infertility: a How to Guide for friends and family

Many thanks to Foggy in Nelson for this contribution, on the eve of Mothers' Day.  Wanting to write this has driven FiN to set up her own eponymous blog, (the below is crossposted) which I'll be adding to the blogroll shortly. 

 

I’ve thought long and hard about whether to pen this post but after 12 hours of feeling churned up about the issue I have decided that getting it all out on paper (the laptop version) will help with the processing of my feelings, and maybe serve as an educational and useful tool for a few people out there.

 

Fertility, or lack of it, is an awkward issue. It can destroy friendships, relationships, and the self esteem of those involved because of the sheer hugeness of it all, combined with the insidious silence that is often associated with all things to do with female reproduction.

 

I have known since age 23 that I have a fertility ‘issue’, having been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) following years of irregular periods, strange weight gain, body hair and oily skin. I read up on PCOS, took the information to my GP, who ordered the necessary blood tests and internal uterus / ovary scan (fun – not) and confirmed my thoughts. I have PCOS, which means that my ovulation is out of whack. It doesn’t make pregnancy impossible, but it certainly can make it more challenging. I’m fully aware that I may have to go through the horrors of hormone treatment, medication and IVF, and that there is still no guarantee of a child at the end of it all.

 

It’s always been in the back of my mind, but it wasn’t until my marriage to S in 2009 at age 29 that the reality started to really weigh on my mind. S and I visited our GP, whose advice was to ‘get cracking’, which we promptly have done but to no avail yet.

 

One of the total arseholes about having PCOS is the irregular periods, meaning that 5-6 times a year I have ‘hope’; my period hasn’t arrived for 8 weeks and we immediately think ‘ooh, could it maybe have happened naturally’. Then comes the purchase of a pregnancy test with the heartbreaking single blue line as a result.

 

This doesn’t just affect me, it affects S deeply too. The only times I have seen him cry during our marriage is when he admits how painful our conception issues are for him. It must be doubly difficult for him; having to comfort me and the (irrational but real) guilt I face, while also feeling heartbroken himself.

 

I sometimes wonder if people are aware that we are not childless by choice, particularly given my commitment to my career (whatever my career will morph into!) and passion for feminism, choice and women’s rights. The reality is that until re-connecting with S I wasn’t desperate for children (although I did have a plan to have them one day), but once we had started dating again I have been burdened with an overwhelming desire to make a small creature that is part me, part S. I love the idea of having children who look like him, maybe have his personality, or mine, or their own! Yes, I can rationalise that it’s probably hormones talking, but that doesn’t take the pain away.

 

The reason this has all come to a head is the pain of having to endure another round of “mum’s are the best”, “being a mum has completed me” nonsense that comes up during the commercialised marketing opportunity that is Mother’s Day. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem celebrating mothers (mine is amazing), but I DO have a problem with the sheer hype about Mother’s Day that has the opposite effect of a celebration on many people; those who have lost children, those who can’t have them, those who are trying and trying to have them, those who have lost Mother’s, those who have become estranged from their Mother’s, those who were adopted and desperate to find their birth Mother, those who had their children taken from them when it was socially unacceptable to have a baby out of wedlock.

 

I am grateful that my Mother has always seen Mother’s Day as a commercialised waste of time, and has instead encouraged us to do nice things for her on a regular basis. She would rather us attend her PhD graduation, make her regular cups of teas and have long phone chats, instead of making a big fuss of her on a random day that has been designed to generate $$ for companies.

 

I make the comparison with Valentine’s Day. I’d rather S made me cups of coffee when I’m working on an essay, gets up in the morning with me when I have to get to the airport early and buys me flowers / chocolate / wine / ice cream occasionally. It would suck to be in a relationship when it was only celebrated once a year. I would likewise encourage those who go overboard on Valentine’s Day to also think about the effect of their celebrations on others. Since struggling with our infertility issues I have become acutely aware that shoving my happy relationship in other people’s faces could actually be really hurtful for those who are going through a breakup, separated from a loved one, bereaved, or single and lonely.

 

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t celebrate the happiness in our lives. But we should also do so sensitively and also keep a look out for our friends and families who have tough burdens to bear and think about their needs.

 

One further point before I leave you with some ‘do’s and don’ts’ for supporting a friend or family member who has infertility issues. Being a mum is not “the best”. People who say that are unintentionally ostracising and demeaning the work and lives of those who are not mothers. Just because we’re not mums doesn’t mean we can’t be “the best”. It doesn’t make us less loving, less caring, less hard working, less smart, less connected to people, or less valuable. We do other things that matter: we advocate for people, we work as cleaners, doctors, teachers, bus drivers and politicians. I am no less a fully-fledged adult woman because I haven’t popped out a sprog yet.

 

Do:

• Involve us in the lives of your children. Just because we don’t have them doesn’t mean we don’t like yours. Invite us to birthday parties, baptisms, school assemblies etc. When you leave us out but invite your friends who do have children you only ostracise us further.
• Do allow us to say ‘no’ though if it is a bit too hard.
• Ask us about our work and actually put some genuine interest into it.
• Organise a girls’ night, get a babysitter, and keep children out of the conversation.
• Remember that we childless ones can have sleepless nights, stress, and sickness too.

 

Don’t:

• Pity us. Treat us as human beings with full lives, because we don’t need children to have a full and interesting life.
• Expect us to get super excited when you get pregnant / have a child.
• Give advice on how to get pregnant, or promise that we will get pregnant one day. How could you possibly promise that?
• Tell me a story about someone that I’ve never met with PCOS who got pregnant after trying for years. How could that possibly help me?
• Forget about your childless friends after you’ve had a baby. We’re still here!
• Stick endless posts up on Facebook about your children’s nappies, teeth, sleeping routines etc. No offence, but no one really cares.*

 

 

 

* Ok, so that may be a little harsh, I don't mind hearing about children occasionally but when it's all I ever see it's quite a put-off and makes me assume that you have nothing else to talk about. For me, seeing your posts about kids all day is the other side to you putting up with constant political posts from me.

it doesn't have to be nasty to get the ratings

i have to admit to being a master chef fan. even though i don't like cooking and don't watch cooking shows. and even though i don't like too much else that comes under the banner of reality tv. i really enjoyed UK masterchef. i didn't really like the aussie or nz version when they started, but they definitely grew on me as the competition went on.

it's hard to say what i like most about this programme. it's partly because of the skill involved, partly because the food presentation looks so lovely. it's amazing to watch ordinary people extend themselves and take on some really tough challenges, and achieve some spectacular results.

what i loved most about the nz show (well, after the rather harsh dressing down given to karyn towards the beginning) was the lack of nastiness. the competitors generally behaved really well towards each other and were quite supportive. it was such a nice change from, say, gordon ramsay (never managed to sit through one of his shows) or simon cowell. it was just really nice to see people competing cleanly and with integrity; taking responsibility for their mistakes and generally being very good role models.

the winner, brett mcgregor, is such a genuinely nice guy. i have to say that i don't think he was the best of the top 12, but he certainly deserved to win. maybe i'm not watching the right stuff, but i believe we get to see a lot of this type of person on tv: someone who's committed to his family and a really good sport.

and the best thing is that even with all these well-behaved and lovely people, and with the lack of nastiness and open conflict, it was riveting television. i'll happily admit to having tears in my eyes at the end of the show.

on a similar theme, i've never watched any of the "idol" series from any country, but i have followed this year's american idol a bit in the last weeks. not for the contestants, but mostly because i'm enjoying watching ellen on the show. again, i just find i enjoy watching someone who usually (though not always) has something nice to say, even to the contestants who haven't done so well. she seems to be popular enough as a judge - although i haven't watched any other series to make any kind of decent comparison.

so i guess what i'm saying is: more please! i want to see more of nice people behaving well on tv.

Bullies and how people enable them

I don't like bullies. I don't like adults who threaten and yell and generally throw their toys to try and get their own way, who belittle others to wield power over them, particularly when it is their default setting in life to operate that way. I guess that's one of the reasons Paul Henry's behaviour bothers me so.

The big problem with bullies is always how to deal with them effectively. When I'm talking to someone else about how to deal with a bully the first step I always suggest is to get together with anyone else who is being bullied, or who may not support the bully. Bullying works on the basis of isolating victims from each other, encouraging people to keep their heads down so that they will avoid the unwelcome attentions of the bullies. If you can overcome the isolation you are halfway to winning. At least you can bitch about the bully with someone else, and acknowledge between you that it is bullying, and take a bit of the power back.

Personally I'm a big fan of naming stuff what it is. I remember pointing out to someone once that they were trying (somewhat ineffectually) to bully me. She was outraged and proceeded to prove that she was not bullying by standing between me and the door, in a small space, hectoring me with her finger, leaning over me and yelling. I believe there may have been spittle. Major not-bullying FAIL.

Right now I have a problem with a bully, and it's got me musing on the theme.

I should start by saying this is not a work-related issue. It's not my workplace and it's not anyone else's either.

The Bully has a long long history of this behaviour. She goes straight to the Yelling Place, and I have literally had to hold the phone away from my ear more than once. She once wrote another target of her bullying a twenty page letter outlining all the times she had been sinned against by this person. Who has time to write a twenty page letter about anything, unless they're being paid to write it, or maybe it's about love. Or like your first novel or something. Anyway, the point is that twenty pages of hate is pretty hard to sustain, for most people.

The Bully in this case has basically burnt off almost everyone else. There's one person staunchly in her corner, two people pretending this is all Someone Else's Problem,* and then me and one other who reckon the bullying sucks. So we have one Bully, one Bully-supporter, two Bully-enablers (by refusing to take any responsibility and looking away), and two Bully opposers. For those yet to be rescued by National's Crusade For (Literacy &) Numeracy, that's four versus two. Not looking good for the Bullying Must Stop camp.

And there is one other person in this equation too, who is in a leadership role, and it's their special brand of enabling that is really getting to me.

To my way of thinking leaders, whatever their actual title, have an obligation to ensure the good running of whatever group they lead. Implicit in that should be to deal with any bullying amongst the group. But too often leaders too get bullied, and to make it worse they don't see that's what's going on, because then they'd have to do something. So they pretend, to themselves and everyone else, that they are just being neutral and rising above a spat between those they lead.

This approach solves precisely Nothing.

It undeniably hard for leaders to deal with bullying, especially when they too are suffering from the Bully's activities. It's even harder when a leader is in denial, and just avoiding confronting the Bully about anything, even when the Bully does stuff that really is beyond acceptable. Contact the Bully makes with the leader only serves to reinforce the Bully's view that they are in the right, because the leader says soothing things to avoid being bullied themselves. Stuff like "of course I can see that you are both coming to this with Good Intentions and think you are doing the right thing" and "it's my role to remain neutral and not get involved in disagreement between you people down there."

So what do you do about a leader who abdicates their responsibility in this crucial area? Who is okay with giving power up to the Bully rather than confront behaviour that is unacceptable and should be dealt with?

Today I'm at a loss.


* Props to the irreplaceable Douglas Noel Adams.

Just desserts for Gordon Ramsay

It reflects badly on me that I've recently been visiting www.news.com.au, reading titillating gossip about celebrities I haven't actually heard of. One such celebrity is Tracy Grimshaw, a Channel 9 journalist who was recently on the wrong end of an inexplicable torrent of abuse from celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

During an interview, Ramsay made a somewhat rude remark about Grimshaw's appearance. She took it rather good-naturedly. At an event the following day, at a cooking display in front of a crowd of some 5000 people, Ramsay flashed a picture of a naked woman with several breasts and the face of a pig superimposed - and said the image was of Grimshaw. In what was clearly intended as a homophobic jibe, he went on to call her a lesbian.

The Australian public has revolted against Ramsay: even Kevin Rudd had criticised his behaviour. (One wonders, a little cynically, if Aussies would have been as quick to condemn a misogynistic attack against a less liked public figure.) Grimshaw called Ramsay out for reiterating the pitiful, sexist argument which is so familiar: 'If you don't like me, it shows you're a lesbian, or there's something else 'wrong' with you'.

Ramsay's behaviour towards Grimshaw was repugnant. But what bothers me at least as much is that Gordon Ramsay has built a career on being unpleasant, belittling and denigrating. There's a sizable audience who enjoys watching Gordon Ramsay treating other people like crap. I don't want to sound old-fashioned - but what's wrong with being nice, for fuck's sake?

Judge exceeds her brief

According to a Waikato Times article, Pregnant teen told to consider unborn baby, a pregnant 18-year-old woman has been told off by a judge for compromising the welfare of her unborn child.

The 18-year-old woman had been part of a group joyriding in a stolen car, driven by her partner. A high-speed chase ensued, during which the car's occupants lobbed stuff at the Police. The woman was done for unlawfully getting into a vehicle - fair enough.

What disturbs me, though, is that the fact the woman was pregnant was considered by the judge to have aggravated her offending. The judge told the woman she needed to 'clean up her act'. This bothers me for a bunch of reasons:

1) If there's any legal precedent for pregnancy being an aggravating factor for offending, I don't know of it (but I'd love to hear from any commentators with more knowledge of the law). I'm not even sure what this means - that women who offend when pregnant ought to be dealt with more harshly? If so, why? It's obviously not a good or ethical idea for a woman to compromise the health of her unborn child, but as far as I know, there's no law against it.

2) The unborn baby was just one life endangered during the high-speed chase. The judge's remark implies that the woman's welfare matters only insofar as her unborn child depends on her. At 18, the mother is not much more than a kid herself - and being young and pregnant can be pretty hard. This woman may need pastoral care, support and understanding herself.

3) Judges aren't qualified or employed to give people life advice. It really irks me that this judge took the opportunity to give the 18-year-old woman a public dressing down. A smarter, more ethical thing to do would have been hooking her up with support services actually equipped to support young, pregnant women.

I strongly feel that the way to help women care for themselves and their unborn children during pregnancy is through compassion, understanding and support. A punitive or belittling response to a pregnant woman who makes bad choices is likely to alienate her from potential sources of help. To make a good transition to being a mum - to taking responsibility for the life of another person - a woman has to feel that she's in control of her life, and has the respect of others in this important role. Giving someone a tactless telling off in a courtroom, and undermining her confidence to make good decisions instead of helping to develop this confidence, can only have the opposite effect.

Grace

My mother loaned me a book recently, and I never wanted it to end.

It was The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer, and sadly it did end, on page 268.

I loved it so much, in a bittersweet fashion, that it nearly compelled me to write a review of it, but as I suck at reviews I thought I would try to mention just one little part that leapt off the page at me, lodged in my brain, and keeps waving to get my attention.

The quote is on page 113, in a letter from Juliet to Dawsey, and goes like this:

Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Reverend Simpless calls it grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out in the world, and 'fruitfulness' is drawn in.

I've seen this called serendipity too, and probably one of the most common experience of it would be when you buy a new car and then you see that model everywhere. I suspect that it probably has more to do with the fresh eyes that new experiences give us; when we look we finally see what was always there but never noticed.

For me this was one of the hardest things about miscarriage. There were pregnant women and children everywhere, all of a sudden. They'd been lurking around the periphery of my vision, just biding their time, and then BAM! there they were, front and centre, reminding me of the hole within.

After a while we started laughing about it. Every second commercial seemed to be for nappies or teeny tiny little bitty clothing in pink or blue (and sometimes green). We would exhange glances, my partner and I, and give each other the gift of a secret smile that wasn't entirely honest in its happiness.

When a friend rang to tell us he and his wife were expecting their second child I fixed the grin in my voice (work has made me good at moderating my tone) and congratulated them. Actually I felt a flash of anger, rage almost, at their good luck and our bad fortune.

This story has a happy ending, and it's name is Wriggly. Not everyone is so blessed. There will be people out there right now, around you as you read this maybe, experiencing the invisible stabs of grace. They'll be averting their eyes from strollers, being over enthusiastic about someone else's baby photos, having an inexplicably grumpy month, or just seeming perfectly normal. You'll never know who they are, and maybe at some time you'll be one of them too.

So let's be gentle with each other. Not every hurt is voiced, not every scar is visible. Grace can have it's cruel side too.