Points of Interest

…provided you’re interested in me pimping writing. And why wouldn’t you be? I have only your best interests at heart.

Clarion people are awesome people and they are (in the words of Heather Albano) doing awesome things. For example:

Ken Schneyer’s “Tortoise Parliament,” is available in First Contact: Digital Science Fiction Anthology Vol. 1 (get it for the Kindle, feel snazzy).

Grady Hendrix, who will not stop until he clasps the whole of the writing world in his fist of iron, has no less (and probably a few more) than three projects to check out:

His story, “Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor,” is in the June 2011 issue of Lightspeed Magazine. Buy the physical mag now or check out the story online June 21st.

His novel, “Satan Loves You,” is available as an e-book for only 99 cents. Grady has a uniquely hilarious voice and his stories always push envelopes in useful, thoughtful ways. For 99 cents, you really can’t afford not to buy it.

And the Southern-Gothic, YA-mystery “The Magnolia League,” which Grady explains here sounds incredibly cool.

The dandy Liz Argall has a quietly dystopian and thoroughly unnerving short story, “A Study in Flesh and Mind,” up at Daily Science Fiction.

Also at Daily Science Fiction, fellow Clarionite 09er Mishell Baker’s bitterly funny (perhaps amusingly tragic?) story “Break.“

….and “Torn,” from Clarion 2010 alum Leah Thomas (who I sadly never managed to meet in person while at MSU, but find delightful online), is fun and energetic and makes good use of an oft-ignored creature.

Man, DSF is the place to be!

Also a place to be? Anthologies, man. Anthologies.

Like, “More Scary Kisses,” which features Heather Albano’s story, “The Dark Season.”

And Dark Highlands Anthology: Volume 2, which includes my own true (ish) ghost story, “Specter.”

You can also catch my flash fiction piece, “Fish Tail,” very, very soon at The Raleigh Review. I’ll put a more exact link on the writing page when it’s posted.

Also, curiously alluring man of mystery H.V. Chao has a story, “The Interview,” in this paperback (and e-book!) edition of Diet Soap.

Last, but definitely not least, Clarionite Matt London and his awesome ladyfriend Jordan tied the knot in the most wonderfully nerdilicious way possible. Awww!

 

 

Writing

Clarion, cool stuff, promo, read this, writing

June 7, 2011

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Graduation Thought Round-Up

I’m not much for the ends of things.

As I may have mentioned before, I like to pack, I like the excitement of moving to a new place. Even this year of constant transition hasn’t managed to beat that out of me (though, okay, had you talked to me while I was repacking the trunk of my car for the fourth time because a box of underpants was preventing it from closing, I may have been singing a different tune.)

However, once I’ve folded all my clothes, stuffed newspapers in all my glasses, turned my car into a nearly-completed game of tetris (only with, you know, cardboard) I’m kind of…done with the whole scene. When I feel the end of something rolling on, inexorable, I check right out. It frustrates me when I have to devote any more brain or feelings time to something that is, in my head, already dead. I remember once leaving a summer job that I had a complex but ultimately really positive relationship with. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t unhappy, but I could not wait to get the fuck out of there. Because I was done. I wanted to do something new and I wanted to clear the ground for the next phase.

I haven’t posted a blog in a long time because

A.) I’m lazy

B.) I’m busy (I moved to Brussels for the summer and went on vacation and turned 23 and graduated from college and wrote, like, a whole shitload of words)

C.) I don’t know exactly what to say

I graduated about a month ago now and…what do I think about that? It’d be easy for me to talk about the many things that frustrated me about my college career, all the things I felt I screwed up and the changes I would make, when they finally figure out time-travel technology. The last leg of my undergrad was a rough one for me with a flurry of logistical issues that made my life deeply unpleasant for the last few months there. My friends had all moved on by then. I lived alone, a continent away from my boyfriend, a state away from the people I knew and loved. It was a lonely, head-down time; I just sort of powered through it, because what else was there to do?

But I don’t really want to slag university, or my experience there. Finished now, I can look upon it with kinder eyes. College gave me Clarion which gave me the world, so many worlds. College gave me SACI and CARE and showed me that I could make things better for women in terrible situations, that I could offer them things and that I could be good at it. Most importantly, college gave me my best friends, my roommates. Wonderful, smart, silly, kind-hearted women who will always be the best memories of this time in my life. College gave me road trips in the rain, 3D movies, smoothies at the mall, mojitos in front of guitar hero, late-night screenings of Rainbow Bright: Why Does That Whole City Appear to Be Made Out of Penes? I remember flying through the dark on my bicycle, the cold green Michigan night in my eyes and ears and nose, heading to the warmth of Nicky’s dorm room and a weekly Pushing Daisies appointment with the neatest people I knew.

There’s more than a little bit of grief mixed up in all of this, of course. All that time, when I was pulling at the bit and desperate to be anywhere else and do anything else, I never noticed the full value of what I had. And it will not be that way again. For good or for ill, life is happening to all of us. I wrote this to Ed sometime last summer, it’s still true:

“Once, my friends and I spent a weekend at a lake house. We played in the sand and burned in the sun and sat up all night talking and I realized at the time how absolutely lovely it was (specifically, we cycled around sleeping in the guest bedroom and one night I found myself unable to sleep and I just sat in front of the open window in the dark and listened to the lake crash upon itself outside. I want to live by water, by a living, moving thing. And that immense heartbroken whispering it makes. It was dark and cool and I thought: this house is full of people that I love, sleeping and dreaming. And it was a kind flotation or comfort, I wanted to enfold them all and in the same way, I was enfolded by them, by that feeling of being ensconced in a group of people who meant so much to me. Much like water, I think.) Since then, much unpleasantness has occurred, and when I think back on that moment, it becomes for me not just something that was great, but the last thing that was great. Sort of emblematic of a time in our lives we didn’t realize was a brief one indeed. “

Grand Tour

friendship, graduation, hope, thinky thoughts

June 7, 2011

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How Not To (Long Distance Relationship Edition)

So, I’ve been thinking for a while about doing a blog post about long-distance relationships. Because I hate them and think they’re doomed to failure and swore I’d never enter into one. And then…I did. Like, a super-long distance. For many months. And I’ve been bad at it and I’ve been good at it and I still don’t know if I “believe” in them or not, but I certainly understand their occasional necessity.

But this actually isn’t about any of that. Because, as I was aimlessly googling on this topic, I discovered this and oh, how I had to write about it. Thus:

(At Least) 10 Things I Will Never Do With My Long-Distance Boyfriend (and one thing I kind of already did)

6. HoochyMail!
Okay, so maybe Frank doesn’t like this one so much… HoochyMail is a website where you enter information and it automatically generates a story with your names in a MadLib type fashion. You choose the story level: sexy, x-rated, or off the wall. I did this for Frank, and cried laughing reading the story the website generated. I think Frank just stared at his computer with his eyebrows bunched up.

Yep, I’m gonna agree with Frank on this one. An x-rated MadLib? Can’t we all agree that that’s the least sexy concept ever? Also, isn’t the whole point of a MadLib to insert the word “cum” into otherwise unremarkable situations to hilarious effect?

…heh. “Insert.”

11. Make a website!
Make a website about your relationship that you both can work on. It is a great way to track your progress in your relationship, and what a great idea it would be to add a timeline….

I really hope that’s the only bit of data that future scientists discover when they attempt to piece together this era. “And you see here, Jenkins, where they’ve exhaustively described the linguine prepared and enjoyed on their fifth and a half (because that time they just got a sandwich on Jane’s lunch break didn’t officially count) date? Clearly, this formed the backbone of some sort of primitive religion…”

17. Send fun coupons
They can redeem them the next time you see them. These are great to include in care packages along with other nice items they may enjoy.

Actually, Ed and I once had a conversation about this. And I told him that the day he makes me bargain for physical contact with a goddamned coupon is the day we are done. He was sad, because he’d already made a whole stack of “One Free Hug” coupons, but it’s okay, he’ll make coffee sleeves out of them or something. He’s green like that.

But seriously…coupons are the creepiest, unsexiest, old personiest thing to introduce into a relationship. It makes doing nice things for the person you love explicitly transactional and equates your hugs, kisses and whatevers with dry goods and dented cans of pineapple. No coupons. Really.

20. Send a Hip-Hop gram.
You can send a song to your love with their name actually in the song. And it’s free! All the lovey dovey type songs are only meant for sending to girls for some reason…

This suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of either Hip Hop or singing telegrams. Or possibly both. Actually, probably both.

22. Take an online compatibility test.
SimilarMinds.com offers a compatibility test that you can take with one or more people. Fill out the form and they will send an email to whom you choose so they can take the test. Once you have both completed the test, you’ll get an email that tells you your results. Want to know our results? Frank and I are 75% similar and 81% complementary. I hope that’s good!

There’s something similar on here about “love quizzes” or something like that. But I can’t help but feel like these are annoyances at best and, at worst, the kind of doofy little thing that can get you all worked up if you’re already in a strange and stressful situation. Like, say, loving someone and being unable to interact with them on some of the most important human levels. And then before you know it, you’re pounding car bombs and wailing about how your 64 percent similarity score means that your significant other is probably boning a clerk from 7/11, like, right this instant. I advise staying far away from Cosmo for similar reasons.

23. Make them cookies

I would totally do this, actually, if they wouldn’t be all stale by the time they got there. I make awesome cookies, man. Unfortunately, Ed doesn’t really bake. And you just can’t demand that someone mail you grilled cheese or vegetarian curry from Belgium. Not that I haven’t seriously considered it.

44. Share LDR bracelets.
Get one for your girlfriend/boyfriend, or for yourself too.

Show off your long distance pride. A keychain option is also available. You can include a special message too!

An actual conversation that Ed and I had in January:

Me: So, at New Year’s, my grandmother asked if you’d given me a promise ring.

Ed: …is that like a decoder ring?

So, um, we’re not so much for the commemorative jewelry. Although, a relationship decoder ring would totally rule and I would use it all time because, quite frankly, I’d like to feel more like a WW2-era spy.

But really, what would your long-distance relationship keyring say? “Never drive faster than your long distance relationship can fly”? “My other car is in a long distance relationship with a Russian tank”?

54. How much do I love you?
This next idea is an email game created by Evan.
I made up this little game for my gf and I to play… all you do is email each other “how much you love them” and the point is to use analogies and try to top the last one sent. Example would be: “I love you like pigeons love statues.” And then she’ll reply with one and keep trying to make them better and better, really makes you think when your out and about working and whatnot. You find yourself trying to look around for an idea for a better one. Just a little something that you can have some fun with. =)

I’m sorry, people resent couples enough without adding this cutesy bullshit into the mix. Plus, “I love you like pigeons love statues”? Like, feces are involved? That’s a glimpse into your private life that no one wants, sir.

59. Hold hands.
Thad is the genius behind this next idea. Thad writes:
Last weekend when my girlfriend, Cheryl, was visiting I got another idea for you to add to you list. We were visiting a bookstore in western Massachusetts that is housed in an old mill — its an amazing place and it was a great time to go through children’s books with Cheryl (she’s an elementary school teacher) but its not the subject of my idea. As we were driving south on I-91 to Springfield, Massachusetts to meet a friend for dinner we happened to pass the Yankee Candle company factory. She had heard that you could dip your own candles so we decided to turn around and find our way there. As it turns out, you can’t actually visit the factory itself, but they have a pretty amazing visitor center with shops and restaurants a bit farther up the road. And yes you can dip your own candles and other wax creatures. The idea I wanted to share is that you can also do wax molds of your own hands. We each did one, and are planning to trade them off. This would make a nice wonderful gift, and it was a really fun experience. They’re only $5 each and it only takes a few short minutes. So if you’re in the area, I strongly recommend a visit to the Yankee Candle Shops in South Deerfield, Massachusetts.

If you aren’t anywhere near Massachusetts, don’t worry! You can also find hand molding kits in any crafts store. Just think… you’ll be able to hold his/her hand whenever you want to! Thank you for the awesome idea Thad!

…

…

…holy fucking shit. Yikes. I’m just picturing some dude in his lonely apartment, delicately clutching a wax facsimile of his girlfriend’s severed hand…just…wow. Wow. One or both of these people are going to end up in eight garbage bags at the bottom of a river.

95. Create a timeline and predict your future together
This next idea comes from Mia. Her and her boyfriend created a timeline together predicting and setting date goals of major life events including:
When to move in together
When to get married
When to have your children
etc…
Don’t get too serious about it, just make it a fun, even silly

Totally fun and silly! What could be more whimsical than discovering that your significant  other has the two of you on a detailed, long-term schedule and that you’re going to have to pick up the pace if Tad Junior is going to graduate from Harvard on time?

Make Babies!
Well, not real babies… haha. MorphThing.com is a website that can take two images (one of you and your boyfriend/girlfriend) and generates an image of what your future child might look like. It is the coolest thing ever!

Full disclosure: I morphed the shit out of Ed and I. I can’t resist these things! Even though, last time I did one, it suggested that my closest celebrity facial match was Dolph Lundgren. According to sophisticated interwebs morphing technology, our baby will be whiter than summer yachting camp. Seriously, they gave our morph!baby blue eyes? I don’t have blue eyes. Neither does anyone in my immediate family, to my knowledge. And it was actually paler than I am. Paler! Than! Me! Also, it had a lumpy, misshapen head. Given this evidence, though, if we do ever have a kid, I wouldn’t have to defend myself from accusations of infidelity with an encephalitic viking. “Remember? The internet told us this would happen!”

I think this has strengthened our relationship already.

In as much seriousness as I can muster, loving someone from far away is really hard and not anybody’s recommended lifestyle. So, you know, if you have to make a morph!baby or do simultaneous karaoke to stick with someone, then go for it. This is silly and often weird but I can’t really knock on the attempt to hold on to someone when all the normal avenues of relationship building are closed to you.

…except for that hand thing. That’s some proto-Ed Gein shit right there.

Uncategorized

Ed, relationship advice, severed hands, silliness

April 13, 2011

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A Sputnik to Call My Own

“She was born in a barn in 1896 and she died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper. She was an astronaut.”
-Mad Men’s Bert Cooper, shoeless Ayn Rand enthusiast

There comes a time in every young woman’s life when she must put aside childish things and finally order a damn business card. Or two.

Okay, maybe three.

I am someone with business, and I am certainly someone with a desire for more business. Plus, business cards are cool; a little portable form of representation. My goal is to have them/ have any discretionary income with which to buy them by World Fantasy Con this fall (which, if you’re not attending, you should totally attend because it’s awesome and also because you could hang out with me. How can you not want to do that?)

I have a general idea of how I’d like the card to look and I’ve been doing some preliminary research (um…googling. Informed consumer, over here!). And, honestly, it’s pretty fucking bleak.

For example, a google image search for “space girl,” turns up a myriad of what I like to call the Totally Superfluous Gun (common additional elements include the Incredibly Impractical Spacesuit and Boobies)

This is not to suggest that I am not in favor of sexiness. Sexiness is rad! But these women are uniformly…well, incompetent. They are limp-wristed and doll-eyed, they hold their ray guns like someone told artillery makes their boobs look perkier. Hell, even putting aside ray gun operation, even walking seems to pose a challenge for these chicks. Their chests bow outwards and their knees knock together uselessly. This poor lady had to lean against a wall for support! What the fuck? Are they newborn baby giraffes or something? Learn to walk under your own power, woman!

But maybe it was the “girl,” in “space girl.” Perhaps it was a pejorative that doomed me to returning only “Inept Jailbait in Space”? But “space woman,” gave me more of the same, except with more instances of the apparently really trendy space shorts. “lady astronaut,” resulted in a lot of pictures of that woman who got famous for diapers, death threats and mental illness. “Female astronaut,” the driest term I could think of, produced a lot of actual photos of real astronauts (and at least one picture of Christina Aguilera preparing to fellate a space shuttle. NASA training really is comprehensive!) Plus this gem. “Wrenches are hard!” YOU AND EVERYONE ON YOUR TEAM IS GOING TO DIE IN SPACE!

Dude, whither the fun, stylized representations of female space adventurerers who look like they could survive something more taxing than a trip to the space-hairdresser?

Do you know why I wanted a picture of a spacegirl on my business cards in the first place? (if you said “because spacegirls rule,” I award you half-credit. It’s true, they do.) Because, for a while, my resume declared me a “writer. explorer. idealist.” And then I realized that was unbearably pretentious. But I still wanted to convey that idea. Exploration; it’s what I want and what I offer. What are writers, after all, if not mapmakers, historians and investigators of new worlds?

Not all hope is lost. This is cool. She looks prepared and thoughtful and useful. And she clearly knows how to work her gun. There’s a lot of fun in this one, and she looks like a sharp chick. Here is a spacesuit that looks like it could actually withstand…um…space. And I like this a lot, though it’s really not, stylistically, what I want. It has an optimism and an eagerness and a determination that I’m looking for. I don’t want a photograph, though (trying for something more retro pulp and cartoon-y. More representational than individual) and there is a notable lack of ray guns. But that is the kind of idea I want to put out into the world: we look up, we look forward.

*note: I’m not trying to criticize individual artists here so much as express my discomfort with the idea that our go-to image for “a woman in space” is overtly sexual and not much else, the trappings of competence (guns, spaceships, tools) only serve to underscore how…silly she is. And the fact that appending “woman,” “girl,” or “female,” to anything seems to be the most direct route to pictures of nipples in exotic settings. That concept is pervasive and really doesn’t have much to do with the creators of the images I’ve linked here.

Feminisim

complaints, feminism, Strong Female Characters, thinky thoughts

March 29, 2011

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Devil and Nicole Taylor’s Ire

I always roll my eyes when people call some totally banal thing or activity “addictive.” No one is turning tricks in a Denny’s parking lot for another hit of Farmville, you know? I feel the same way (but much more vehemently) about the distressingly common “raping/raped/rapes/ my childhood.” You know what rapes a childhood? Rapists. Who rape children. This concept does not belong in any sentence about your feeling that Snarf’s new voice actor doesn’t live up to the rich Thundercats legacy.

Can I digress in an entry that’s actually composed exclusively of digressions? Let’s find out!

Anyway, what I was getting at with that was, although I hate that bit of nomenclature, this has been taking up a suspiciously large amount of my free time lately. It’s a text-based options game that lets you take on a character and guide them through a variety of adventures, your decisions determining the trajectory of the game. It was produced by the fantabulous Heather Albano and a number of other clever people. My favorite was Choice of Dragon, but that may be because I have long cherished a fantasy about stalking through the countryside indiscriminately eating peasants. Ch-ch-check it out!

I’ve been sort of aimlessly researching Brussels recently, preparatory to my return there in the spring, and I ran across this, which I hadn’t realized existed. Of course, it makes a lot of sense. The ex-pat lifestyle can be enormously isolating, especially if it’s something you’ve followed someone into. It can produce an extraordinary dependance. Resources are tough to get to even in one’s home country where, presumably, you’d have a superior understanding of how the government is structure. Add to that a possible language barrier and citizenship tangles and it could be a recipe for misery. I’m glad this organization exists and think their “volunteer ambassador” program is really neat. If I ever find myself living abroad for an extended period of time, I hope it’s something I’d be able to participate in.

Okay, so I watched Devil recently (because…don’t ask questions, okay?) and I came to a conclusion: M. Night Shyamalan is just fucking with us at this point, right? No functional human can be so utterly lacking in self-awareness, in even the most rudimentary concept of what people find ridiculous…right? RIGHT?

For example: at one point in Devil, a character drops a piece of jellied toast to prove the existence of the Devil.

Allow me to repeat that: a character drops a piece of jellied toast to prove the existence of the Devil.

Not only is that a criminal waste of jellied toast, it’s so fucking stupid that my eyes lodged a formal complaint with my brain immediately after watching it. And not only are we supposed to take this character seriously after that, we are actually intended to regard him as the Mulder-y voice of reason, surrounded by stubborn Scullys. No! He is a crazy person! Get him out of there! At the very least, he’s getting jelly all over the fucking floor and someone’s going to slip.

Plus, the whole central conceit is really bizarre. It’s like trying to learn how to play Poker from a really competitive seven year old. “And now I win because sevens are high and because…um…it’s Wednesday and because of Saturn.” The Devil needs a suicide to enter the world, he has to gather a group of people together in an enclosed space, he needs an audience (so…closed circuit television is always required. Okay. The 18th Century was hard on the Devil.), he has to kill them one by one, oh, and 2/3s of the way through the movie, he suddenly needs his victims’ loved ones (or just one guy’s loved one?) to witness it too. Jesus H. Christ, Devil! Mariah Carey has a less labor intensive rider!

Also, this is all framed as a bedtime story that Sir Isaac Toast-ton’s mother told him. What the ever-loving fuck? In what universe is this an appropriate bed-time story? Let alone one told over and over again! “Mommy! Tell me again about the suicide that ushers in the Devil who then proceeds to slowly torture several irredeemable sinners while others watch helplessly! That’s my favorite!”

You can’t even argue that it’s an instructive tale, really. The take-away from the story is that there’s nothing to be done about the Devil and sometimes it just happens and then, whatever, it’s the Devil. If you’re trying to scare your kids straight, wouldn’t the time-honored evocation of a standard Hell and a non-elevator-bound Devil probably do it? I say, if it was good enough for Cotton Mather, then it should be good enough for us. And the movie acts like this is a totally standard bit of Catholic dogma and, man, doesn’t everybody grow up regularly hearing about how we live in a cold and malevolent universe where unimaginable evil is constantly out to get us in highly specific ways?

Everything about that movie is lazy and stupid. So there.

Watching

domestic violence services, games, links, movies, thinky thoughts, why do I only go to see terrible movies?

March 1, 2011

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On the Occasion of My First Publication…

Honestly, I’m so happy I could spit. I won’t though. That’d be gross.

The Excision

I’m going to ask to be paid in Zimbabwean dollars, so I can swim in a pool of filthy lucre, Scrooge McDuck-style.

Also, today I finished the first draft of a new story in what feels like forever. It heavily features Paris and dogs and severed hands. So, all in all, it’s been a good writing day.

Uncategorized, Writing

Brain Harvest, first sale, spit, The Excision, writing

February 13, 2011

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Birth Control For Everyone

I just signed this, for reasons that are, like, 60 percent altruistic and 40 percent selfish. Of course, I believe that more birth control needs to be available for more women. This is a medical issue, it’s an economic issue, it’s a human rights issue. But I super-extra believe that birth control needs to be more available to me.

See, I’ve been doing the the BC merry-go-round for a while now, trying to make the best of a series of not-so-great options. I try to be educated and thoughtful about the things I put in my body and my reproductive health is incredibly important to me. And yet, everywhere I turn, I feel like I’m, at best, being told that it’s somehow luxurious or decedent to want to control the contents of your own uterus and, at worst, that I’m bad for wanting to do the same and therefore deserve some kind of fiscal punishment.

Because I’m poor. Not dire-poor, but the kind of ersatz, college-student poor that a lot of people my age are. I don’t have dependents, I have a secure job, I’m a lot better off than most people. But I still have a hard time swinging most forms of birth control. The Nuvaring, for example, was costing me 70 dollars a month, or as much as my fucking electricity bill. Also, it wasn’t exactly a monthly purchase (every three weeks) so it was even a little more than that.

Dude, you say, just go on the pill, it’s cheaper. It is that. But even then, the pill is usually 20+ dollars a month and can be more, depending on various factors. Plus, there is a reason there are approximately ten bajilleron forms of birth control: they aren’t one-size fits all and most of them can have some pretty gnarly side-effects for a lot of people.

I knew I didn’t want to use the pill. For one thing, is has a margin of human error much larger than I’m comfortable with. Especially when I’m that human being counted upon not to make errors. In a year of taking Prozac, I don’t think I’ve ever once taken it at exactly the same time two days in a row. When things get hectic, I’m lucky to hit every day in a week.

And of course there’s the other thing. With the Prozac (and even without it) introducing an unknown element into my body is a bit of a Mr. Wizard experiment. I knew I wanted to go with something as low-hormone as possible. Originally, I wanted an IUD, but for physiological reasons, that was impossible for me. I seriously considered the depo shot but subsequent research has indicated that is not for me either. In addition to the standard host of potential side-effects, one is also warned about “significant bone density loss.” Yiiiiiikes. I went with the Nuvaring as a temporary measure and I discovered that, not only was it frustratingly expensive, but even its relatively small dosage of hormones made me more emotionally unstable and slightly, but noticeably, decreased my sex drive (which, I suppose is one way to prevent pregnancy. But not, I’m gonna guess, anyone’s preferred method.)

Right now, I’m interested in the Implanon implant and I’m doing some research to see if it would be a good fit for me. I complain at least on a bi-weekly basis that not having babies shouldn’t be this difficult. But, in reality, I’m really, really lucky. For one thing, I have the time and resources to try all these methods and see if they work for me, for another, I have recourse if I’m not able to afford something. It’s impossible to guess how many women there are who are sticking with BC methods that make them sick or unhappy-or going without entirely-because they can’t afford to do anything else.

Not only do petitions like this one matter, but we have to work to stop this implicit cultural idea that birth control is somehow inherently hedonistic or dissolute. Women shouldn’t be shamed or punished for being responsible and proactive about their own health. And this is about health. Quite frankly, pregnancy can be incredibly rough on the human body. Not to mention the fact that US has one of the highest rates of maternal death of all developed nations. No, being up the stick isn’t a disease, but it is a condition and it isn’t exactly safe or comfortable either. And it should be voluntary. Voluntary for everyone, not just those with sufficient income.

And, goddammit, can we stop suggesting that “just don’t have sex” is at all a reasonable counter idea here? You know, just cut an essential and delightful part of the human experience out of your life and your relationships. Just ignore a bodily imperative that humans almost never successfully suppress. Let’s just categorize sex as something that only people with money can have. Seems totally reasonable. In this economic climate, forcing people to wait until they’re fiscally prepared to have a child (the biggest and most long-term expenditure most of us will ever make) before they have sex just isn’t a tenable position at all. Plus, I really believe that removing the moral stigma around birth control might even be more important than removing the prohibitive cost. Because right now, you see a lot of people (young people especially) who feel like it’s better to risk conception than to seek out birth control because BC is like this Slutty Point of No Return and if they just don’t go to the doctor and get a script, it’s like they’re not having sex at all. Let’s increase transparency, let’s encourage people to be active rather than passive about their health, let’s improve access for more people.

Let’s make life better, okay?

Feminisim

babies, birth control, class, economics, feminism, poverty

February 4, 2011

7 Comments