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the body horror of being pregnant

When my child was a few months old, my partner and I skyped with an old friend to catch up. Of course we talked a little bit about pregnancy and recovery, and I mentioned how my pregnancy was absolutely worth it and I would do it again.

“Oh, so not that bad, then?” She said, naïvely.

I laughed. Hard. “No, no– it was definitely the worst, most painful, awful thing I’ve ever done. It was just also worth it for me.”

***

At first I thought I was pretty well-informed on what to expect. I knew about “the first poop,” I had a realistic idea about recovery time, I knew pregnancy can cause all sorts of changes like developing new allergies or going deaf. My aunt is blind in one eye, my mother had a prolapsed uterus, a massage therapist had hyperemesis gravidarum. I felt that I was braced well enough for what pregnancy could throw at me.

[Narrator: she was not.]

***

After childbirth, an unexpected thing happened. I got even more political, and I didn’t think that was possible. Also, my priorities shifted around a little bit. I am now vehemently emphatic about paid parental leave, am furious about the “meh” approach governments are currently taking to climate change, and I became incredibly more committed to being pro-choice.

I love being a mother. I love my child. I can’t imagine my life without them now. But pregnancy … no one should ever have to go through that torture unless they want to. If I want to torture myself? Fine, I’m a masochist, whatever. My babies are worth my suffering. But if the government is torturing me?

So, just to illuminate exactly what my pregnancy was like– both for those who think forcing people to be pregnant when they don’t want to be is a walk in the park, as well as for people who are curious what might happen to them if they do want to be– here’s my experience as completely as I can tell it.

***

I knew to expect nausea, especially during the first trimester. I knew that “morning sickness” is a misnomer. What I didn’t expect was to be sick all of the time. I usually only vomited in the evenings, but I was still miserable every other hour of the day. I couldn’t eat anything except rice and bamboo ramen with peas and mushrooms, and even that was a struggle. I would just lay on our couch in the fetal position, groaning, while my partner tried to watch TV.

What I did not even remotely expect was exhaustion to hit me like a freight train. I have a consistent sleep schedule– 2am to 10am. I’ve been like that for years. I’ve tried to forcibly adjust it, no dice. 2am to 10am is when I sleep. Well, before the first trimester. Then I would fall asleep whenever my body decided it was ready to sleep. Reading a book, watching a movie, playing a video game — while actively cleaning my house. I thought “oh I’ll just do this task while sitting” and I woke up two hours later in a pile of laundry with a half-folded shirt in my hands. Every single day I thought of all the first-trimester pregnant women who had jobs that took them out of the house. How. I still do not know. How is that possible.

And that’s not even the worst part. I have a MTHFR mutation that puts me at increased risk for miscarriage. Because accessing OB/GYN care is practically impossible in my area, my GP helped me while I waited for my first appointment. She recommended I take Lovenox, and gave me the various studies showing how Lovenox plus methylated folate and aspirin helped reduce miscarriage in people with my mutation.

Y’all.

That is the bruising from maybe three or four injections. They were daily injections. We ended up having to inject all over my belly, hips, sides, and butt trying to give the bruises time to heal before using the same injection site again. And did it hurt. Every injection burned like fire for long after the shot was over. We followed all the pain-management tips we could find and it still hurt like a motherfucker. I wept with gratitude when the OB specialist saw my bloodwork and said she didn’t think it was necessary to continue the Lovenox. I’d done 84 injections at that point.

And that was just the first trimester.

The second trimester came with all the typical stuff you hear about — having to get up multiple times in the middle of the night to pee, etc — but mine also came with a migraine that did not let up for even a single moment until I gave birth. We tried every medication and modality possible that was safe for pregnant people to treat migraine, and nothing made a dent. It was excruciating, and there wasn’t anything we could do if I wanted to stay pregnant. For months all I could do was lay in the dark and cry. Eventually we found the Allay Lamp and at least at that point I was able to read again without pain, because on top of the pain was the boredom. Most of my fun activities use screens, and the backlights were like icepicks straight through my eyesockets.

The latter half of the second trimester and the third trimester are honestly a blur, because that’s when things got truly terrible. Oh the Migraine From Hell wasn’t enough? How about we throw in Restless Leg Syndrome From the Abyss, The Total-Body Itching from Beyond the Inferno, or Ballooning Weight from My Worst Nightmares? OOOOOoooo what if we did all three?

Goddess. Restless Leg Syndrome. I had experienced it occasionally before– it can be a part of my fibromyalgia– but it was usually manageable. During pregnancy though, it was inescapable. Constant. If you’ve never experienced it, thank your lucky stars because it is indescribably awful.

And then the itching my GOD the itching. My sister-in-law stayed with us for a bit in 2021, and she had a run-in with poison ivy. I helped her treat it and wrap it, and each time I saw the sores all I could think was that is what my entire body felt like. It felt like poison ivy blisters covered every single inch of my skin. Laying in bed trying to go to sleep was wretched. Between my legs and the itching, I was barely getting 2 or 3 hours of sleep a night, and I was so unbelievably tired. Prescription sleep aids barely helped. I had to sit in a blazing hot shower and slap myself for roughly thirty minutes before going to bed just on the off-chance I might be able to sleep for an hour or two if the ambien also worked. Just thinking about this is making my scalp light on fire.

Oh and I also had horrific heartburn. Because why not. And I couldn’t do the usual method of determining if I’d developed gestational diabetes, so I had to do finger prick tests for like a month because something was just slightly off in my results. They never explained why I was gaining so much weight, either, even though I’d only increased my caloric intake by the recommended amount. I went from 153 to 210, and no one had an answer as to why that was happening. Turns out, it was the most massive placenta anyone in the hospital had ever seen in their life, and two weeks after delivery I was 160.

Which leads to the grand finale: childbirth.

I was in active labor (not early, active) for thirty hours. I have no idea how long early labor was, because I had no idea I was in labor until my partner suggested we time the distance between the “intense” moments. I’d been in active labor for two or three hours before we figured it out. I’d been asking my midwives and other folks “how will I know I’m in labor?” and the answer had always been “oh you’ll know.” Turns out, no, it’s entirely possible to not know. When we timed the “crests” and they were 4 minutes apart, I was like “no way this is labor, this is barely worse than a period” (I am never underestimating my period pain again, btw) so I called the midwife to ask what she thought. Halfway through a sentence I had to stop and groan and the midwife laughed and confirmed yup that’s labor.

By the time we finished the hour and a half drive to the hospital— yes, the closest hospital to me that could manage a high-risk pregnancy was that far away– I was at 7cm and back labor had started.

I cannot describe the particular horror that is back labor. It’s more common in first pregnancies, especially with “sunny side up” babies like mine was. I’d decided for what seemed like sensible reasons at 36 weeks to try delivery without an epidural, so I went for another six hours just for the midwife to say I’d only manage to dilate a single centimeter. Those six hours were the most cursed, miserable, blindingly excruciating thing I’ve ever experienced– yes, including kidney stones and a hemorrhagic cyst rupturing in my abdomen. And the worst part was I had to do them all on my knees, because no other position was even remotely a relief, and I hate being on my hands and knees.

And the fetal monitoring bands. I have no idea why, but having them on was the fucking worst. I was going through quite a bit as you can imagine and those monitoring bands– even though they were on infrequently, and for short periods– were my absolute nemesis. Finally, hours and hours after we’d made it to the hospital my midwife recommended an epidural so I could sleep. Given the baby’s position and the lack of progress, she didn’t think I was having a baby anytime soon. She was right, it took another 14 hours.

Imagine with me for a moment that someone is taking a chainsaw to your back while shoving a white-hot poker up your ass. Now, imagine while this is happening to you, that you have to sit perched on the edge of a bed with your back arched like a screaming cat. There with me? Now, stay that way and be perfectly motionless and silent for fifteen minutes. Not thirty seconds, or a minute. For a quarter of an hour, while a serial killer is trying to saw you in half. That, theydies and gentlethems, is what it’s like to get an epidural placed during back labor.

The epidural in, I was able to sleep. Developed preeclampsia, so that was a fun little emotional roller coaster ride. Eventually, though, I’d dilated enough it was time to push.

And heavens to betsy did I push. For four straight hours. Every single contraction I gave it everything I had, for hours. At one point they were talking about the potential for a cesarean and I looked at my partner and said the following:

I know. I’m hilarious.

After more than three hours of pushing, though, the OB on duty came in and explained the baby was coming down diagonally and was still too far up the birth canal to get with a vacuum, so we could go straight to doing a C-section or try with forceps first. I have stairs in my house, so I said let’s try the forceps first.

I was pretty out of it at this point, but my partner said it was like watching the dining table scene from Alien. The baby went from all the way behind my pelvic bone to completely born in a single contraction. Blood sprayed all the way up to my face, and the sound that left my body was unworldly. I sobbed the entire hour she was sewing me up, and I had a third degree tear. For the uninitiated, that means I was ripped open from stem to stern, pretty much.

But I had my baby, and they were perfect. Thanks to spending zero time in my vagina, they were totally unsquished and looked like a model Gerber baby from the first moment. After an hour in the NICU, all 10 pounds of them were in my arms and I have only been happier … pretty much every single time they smile at me.

***

Oh you thought this tale of horror was over, did you?

Nope.

***

Anytime someone mentions “the first poop” now I get angry. It is not “the first poop.” It is the first half dozen poops you liars. I struggled with pooping for weeks and weeks, and bowel movements are still– almost two full years later– not comfortable. Oh, did you know that hemorrhoids are common with pregnancy and labor and permanent. No one fucking told me how once you’ve got one that sucker is on your asshole for eternity. Granted it doesn’t bleed every single time I poop– bleeding is rare now, true — but it’s there. I shit my pants a couple of times, thanks to the combination of laxatives and stimulants I needed in order not to become impacted. Surprise! You want to change  your baby’s diaper? Nope! You’re going to be lurching down the hallway holding a half-changed infant screaming for your husband to come upstairs so you can shit into the toilet instead of your underwear.

That’s never shown up in any of the movies. Huh. Wonder why.

I also needed pelvic floor therapy for months, because of the whole baby-exploding-out-my-vagina thing. I couldn’t sit regularly. I had to perch and sit ramrod straight if I could sit at all, but I was usually lying down or standing. Do you know what pelvic floor therapy is? The therapist sticks their fingers up your vajayjay for half an hour and talks about the weather. It is weird. And uncomfortable. And also the only way I’d ever sit up again.

I had to throw out most of my shoes because they no longer fit. Turns out a bunch of pregnancy factors can affect your shoe size. Diastasis recti is no joke, which I had thanks to my ten-pounder baby. All the cramping as your uterus tries to shrink back down to something approaching its pre-pregnancy volume is something else, too, especially when you’re constipated.

I did nothing but sleep and breastfeed for the first six weeks. I could barely even eat, and mostly just choked down protein bars the first week. Once again, people who have babies and then just jump back to work six weeks later how. HOW. Not having at least six months paid parental leave is a CRIME. Every single session Congress doesn’t pass paid parental leave they are committing a CRIME against anyone who’s given birth.

***

I have a healthy, happy toddler. I’m relatively fine, now, although I am still not used to not being able to control my farts and I’m not a huge fan of having to cross my legs every time I sneeze. Everything around the middle is just a whole lot more jiggly now, but I’m getting used to it. I can look in the mirror and see how my body made a baby. Somehow, me and my body got through it.

Because I wanted to go through all that.

I chose it.

May 12, 2022 by
Feminism

my ray of happiness right now

In the summer of 2006, my mother suddenly announced one day that she, my sister, and I were going to Texas for the week to stay with her best friend. Visits to Aunt Christie’s weren’t unusual, but they were usually a little more … planned. But, it had been an extremely difficult time for my family. Things at our spiritually abusive “church” were coming to a head, and me and my mother had been some of the pastor’s more frequent targets for a while. We were reaching our breaking point, but at the time it was unthinkable that we just, y’know, avoid church for a week or two. No, people needed legitimate reasons not to go to your “home church,” and one of the few acceptable excuses was going out of town.

On the way, my mother asked me to read New Spring, the prequel in The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, to her as she drove. I did, and both of us were so instantly in love with the world that even before we got to Aunt Christie’s we stopped at a Barnes & Noble and bought the rest of the series in paperback. Mom would read one, then I would, and together we read them all in a week or two. And then re-read them. My mother started scribbling in a notebook to keep track of all the different plot threads, trying to figure out mysteries like “where is Demandred?” and “who killed Asmodean?” As a Right Proper Millennial, I found a fandom message board called Tar Valon (based on one of the cities in the books).

I think I might’ve mentioned Tar Valon in passing a time or two, because it’s the reason why I started deconstructing. The people I met on that forum took a woefully uneducated fundamentalist homeschooler under their wing and were able to show me some facts about the world. They saw my brash, arrogant, cultish zealotry and reacted with compassion. I’ll be forever grateful.

During one of the semesters in college where I was re-reading The Wheel of Time in order to escape the nightmare of my existence, a floorleader approached me one night and told me I had to hide them under my bed because the art on one of the spine’s was upsetting someone. But I got mulish and stubborn– a lot like my favorite character in the book, Egwene — and asked her what rule I was breaking by having it. When she couldn’t give me an answer, I told her that I would do what she says when she could give me a rule. That was the end of it.

To say that The Wheel of Time had an impact on me is a bit of an understatement. I was the same age as Egwene when I started reading these books, and in a lot of ways it feels like I grew up with her. Our stories have shared many of the same beats. Besides her, The Wheel of Time is a world filled with powerful, accomplished, impressive women. Women allowed to be soft, flawed, mistaken, growing, changing. Women who run the world but aren’t expected to be perfect. The fact that the series is fifteen books, and massive ones at that, meant that it was an entire world I could live in when my own life was traumatizing.

So it’s not exactly surprising to me, personally, when faced with global catastrophe and unending depression and anger and powerlessness, that I’d end up going back to something truly capable of comforting me. In September 2019, Sony announced they were producing The Wheel of Time as a television series, and it was like all my dreams had come true. Ever since then, I’ve been obsessed with anything to do with production, and it’s been one of the few things in my life that is 100% fun and stress-free. I’ve sewn costumes for it, I’ve made Wheel of Time-specific Twitter accounts, I decorated my entire house for Bel Tine, the holiday the characters are celebrating at the start of the first book. I even cold-pitched my favorite online magazine to see if they needed a Wheel of Time beat writer– and amazingly, they said yes.

Well, the first few episodes aired last week (one episode a week will drop from now until Christmas), and somehow they surpassed my sky-high expectations and I’m in love. Just like I read all the books in a week, I’ve already rewatched each episode three or four times. It’s going to be the only thing I think about, besides dealing with the symptoms of increasing my antidepressant dosage and taking care of my toddler and my day job trying to prevent homeschooled kids from being tortured to death. [exhales] See what I mean about needing a ray of happiness?

Well, I’d like to pitch the television adaptation of Wheel of Time to you all, because I think that if you’ve been reading me all these years this might be a television show you enjoy.

First, the behind-the-scenes angle. The showrunner, Rafe Judkins, is a gay man who grew up Mormon, and he has a very similar story as mine: Wheel of Time was also an escape for him, and he also really resonates with some of the main characters because, like him, they were different in a way that can cause your family, friends, and entire culture to reject you and fear you. The lead writer is Amanda Kate Shuman, and I just want to point out that the head writer on a show with a $100 million dollar budget is a woman. That is unheard of. Of the first four directors Judkins and the other producers chose for the first season, none are a white man– three are women, including two women of color. I dunno if you’ve watched This Changes Everything, a documentary about women “behind the camera” in Hollywood, but this is equally as unheard of. Three out of four directors are women? The solitary man is Chinese-British. This shows a demonstrable commitment to equal representation, not just lipservice about diversity.

There’s diversity in front of the camera, too– in fact, it’s so obvious, incels and white supremacists are review-bombing the show for being too “woke.” Of the main cast of seven, two are white men. Of the three women, one is played by an Aboriginal woman, another by a Black woman from New Zealand.

I don’t tend to describe fictional books or movies as “feminist,” because to me “feminist” doesn’t really work as an adjective applied to inanimate objects. However, the story is about a world where there’s actual equal representation of women in all levels of power, and the show is being made with feminist, progressive, anti-racist, and queer sensibilities and lenses. Without getting into spoilers, they’ve already taken a queer relationship in the books that lots of fans like to debate as just “gals being pals,” and made it unequivocally queer. My bisexual self is thrilled all the way down to my toes. I get to watch a fantasy show about a world I already love, and it’s going to be queer as hell. It’s going to have so many women! Women who aren’t raped constantly while the actors call it “complicated consensual sex.”

So, anyway, because I’m writing recaps for The Mary Sue, that’s of course going to be something I’ll be letting y’all know about until the season is over in six weeks. I hope that maybe y’all will enjoy being on the joyride with me as we try to ignore the crushing weight of end-stage capitalism, climate grief, collapsing democracy, and a global pandemic that’s still here only because people are selfish! Whoo!

November 24, 2021 by
Feminism

a womb by any other name

My partner and I have a perennial discussion about rhetoric, and how to use it. Surprising to exactly no one who knows us personally, my position is that shocking, jarring language can be useful when judiciously applied and his is that it’s extremely difficult — if not impossible– to persuade someone when they’re on the defensive. I rejoin with sometimes you have to jolt someone to consciousness and milquetoast, softening language can bury the truth under too many layers of put-upon civility, and then he comes back with how overt aggression needlessly gets people’s backs up and away we go in circles.

At this point, it’s a friendly conversation and we are getting better at recognizing it when it happens. Say, tonight for example. A friend of mine shared a post by Aayush Maurya about reframing “how we think about the uterus.” AJ saw it open on my desktop (including an image of the uterine reproductive system) and asked about it, and I related how much I enjoyed the post’s metaphor and language. One of the images Aayush uses is the uterus as a “fortress designed to protect the person from the developing cells inside them.” This sparked a discussion about biological reproduction and the terms we use for it.

Over the years, especially when I started trying to get pregnant in 2016, I’ve learned a lot about what reproduction looks like in my PCOS/endometriosis-inflicted body, and about the biological process works in general. Something I’ve noticed is that, as Carol Hanisch liked to say, “the personal is political” and the language we use around uterine reproduction is … fraught. I’m a cis woman, a mother. I’ve given birth. I’m pro-choice. While none of these identities are in conflict with each other, they do seem to come with different “built-in” (societally speaking) sets of language.

I adore divine imagery, metaphor, and language around giving birth, and love the sense of power it can help convey. Any time I look at my toddler asleep in their crib, there’s always the word miracle hanging just out of sight. I did that. My body made them. Holy shit. I am a goddess. When I was preparing for labor and childbirth, I surrounded myself with very positive, uplifting, encouraging messaging about my the capability of my body to go through something so intense and life-changing. I think that made a big difference when I was in the delivery ward at the hospital and well into my fourth hour trying to push  out a 10-lb baby who decided to come down diagonally.

I also have unabashedly used the word “host” to describe a generic, hypothetical pregnant person, and will do so in the future. I think it is incredibly important to be realistic about what pregnancy is biologically, to literally demystify pregnancy. In my case, in the years it took to become pregnant, I experienced several early miscarriages. Because of my political research, especially research into hormonal birth control, I knew that most zygotes fail to implant at all, and even after successful implantation, somewhere between 30-50% of those don’t progress. Based on what we know from IVF research, it seems like many attempts to combine sperm and ovum DNA result in abnormalities incompatible with life, and that’s a fact the uterine reproductive system handles well. There’s a tension between the needs of the host– yes, host– and the embryo and later the fetus. It is, biologically speaking, a combative relationship. Fetal cells will take everything they can, and the uterus is there, essentially, to stop that from becoming dangerous. Hence, the “fortress” imagery above. This was extremely comforting knowledge to me: I had not “failed,” I was not a “bad woman” for not being able to sustain a pregnancy– in fact, just the opposite. My body knew more than I did about whether or not that specific DNA recombination was a healthy one, and did the sensible thing when it wasn’t.

Later, when I did become pregnant, it was … unfun. Long story short, the placenta was freaking enormous, and it emitted a “we’re having twins!” amount of hormones. That was… I wish I could explain to y’all the itching because it was close to one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced. Months and months of my entire body feeling like it was covered in poison ivy blisters with nothing that could alleviate it, even for a second. Just. Ugh. Dear god. Nope. NOPE.

Thankfully, it is extremely unlikely that will happen a second time. Fingers crossed the same will be true of the six-month migraine. Honestly the worst thing about that was the boredom. All I could do was lay in the dark and listen to audio books and podcasts which I hate.

Anyway, in the midst of all of that, understanding how the developments happening inside of my body are, biologically, somewhat adversarial… it was helpful knowledge to me. It was good to know I couldn’t take frovotriptan for my migraine because that’s a vasodilator which would be an incredibly bad idea when a fetus and placenta are basically a little vampire shouting blooooood give me bloooood. I did not need to take medication that would open the floodgates on what is a precarious balance already.

Maybe I’m a weird sort, but having accurate language to describe this incredibly confusing experience is something I value.

***

The above is all “personal”– it’s my pregnancy and the language that was helpful to me as I experienced it. But, it’s also fundamentally political. Depending on how far this post reaches, people are going to get extremely angry that I’m using gender neutral language, that I’ve dared to use the word “host,” that I speak in practical, realistic, biological terms. That I do not appear to be mourning the miscarriages and have shrugged them off as natural.

I know many feminist women whose primary focus is on how the medical establishment has typically treated pregnancy, labor, and childbirth. I myself was very careful in who I chose as my medical provider, especially after an utterly appalling intake interview I had at one place. I took courses from these “rah rah pregnancy!” types, read their books. Their “pregnancy is not a disease” perspective doesn’t sit easily alongside my personal experience, though. I never glowed, I was rarely, if ever, happy or excited or thrilled about the pregnancy itself. I had no wooey woo feelings about it. It was drudgery, a means to an end.

I know other feminist women who don’t hesitate to use the word “parasite” instead of fetus– and while that takes it one teeny tiny stop too far for me, since it isn’t technically a parasite because it’s not actually a different species … I get it, and I don’t balk at the idea. In fact, I have found it useful on occasion, to break people out of their notion that I am a woman and have given birth and of course that means I understand the miracle of life. And yes, I do get it. It’s indescribable and awe-inspiring that my partner and I somehow together made An Actual Person who is sleeping upstairs. I obviously used the word “baby” and not “fetus” during doctor’s appointments. Also, yup a baby-fetus is a parasite that saps all your energy in the first three months, then all your nutrients in the next few, before finally bursting out of your vagina in a shower of amniotic fluid, meconium, and blood.

People really do not like it when you pop their mental image that of tender, nurturing, cooing, rocking, hair-stroking mother.

Except I’m both. I’m all of the above. Like everything else about the human experience, this is not either-or. A certain brand of pro-choice advocate will deal exclusively in the literal, the biological– they will shock and jolt and jar, and I will cheer them on. But I will never stop thinking of myself as a goddess, and pregnancy as magic. One of the better memories I have from my labor experience is how my hair splayed out on the pillow apparently made me look like Lynda Carter’s incarnation of Diana Prince to the nurses and midwives, and my interior damn straight you know I’m Wonder Woman. To others, however, I will always seem extremely brutal and callous, preferring medical accuracy and scientific distance over rainbows and unicorns. I will not shy away from the complicated realities of pregnancy, and will endlessly push them to take off their rose-colored glasses. I will always be both of these things– medicine and magic.

I was about to write “no one is wrong here,” except y’know the religious fundamentalists who want my country to be a theocracy ruled by a god they created in the 1950s. Cuz they’re always wrong.

Image from Nouvelles démonstrations d’accouchemens by Maygrier
September 28, 2021 by
Feminism

ambivalence, not anticipation: on pregnancy

I’m pregnant.

I’ve been waiting to announce this until I felt … something. I don’t know the name of the emotion I’m looking for, I just know that I’m not feeling it and I expected to be. Y’all know I and my partner have been trying to get pregnant for several years and I am happy to have finally made it to this point, to be sixteen weeks pregnant and a few weeks into my second trimester. So far, things are going well and it’s been easier than I expected. The event we termed “evening sickness” (because of course anything my body does is going to happen at night, not in the morning) has died down, the symptoms I’m experiencing now are fairly minor, and the test results we’ve gotten back have all been encouraging.

But the story of my pregnancy has mostly been one of either ambivalence or frustration, not hope or wonder or happiness or anticipation or excitement. I thought I’d feel … I dunno, special? magical? and all I’ve really felt is tired both physically and mentally.

For example:

The first Monday after the positive pregnancy test I immediately made an appointment with my primary physician and started calling all the local OB/GYNs and midwives. I went over all my current medications with my doctor (which will be relevant in a moment) and we decided which ones I’d cease taking and which to continue. When the first OB office called me back to schedule an appointment, the receptionist also passed along a message from the doctor: I “must immediately stop taking Cymbalta” (they knew I was taking it after a brief questionnaire).

Of course I balked at this, especially since I’d already weighed the risks and benefits of all my medications with my doctor who’d prescribed them to me and knew my medical history and why I needed them. I told her so, and the receptionist asked if my primary was an OB. Of course not, I replied, but added I felt confident in her care and medical advice. At that point, the reception mumbled underneath her breath “well if you really cared about your baby…” and then proceeded to give me available appointment times.

I had known I was pregnant for less than a week at that point and I was already experiencing this nonsense. I’m on Cymbalta to treat C-PTSD, General Anxiety Disorder, suicidal ideations, depression, and Sensory Processing Disorder… but this doctor, without knowing my medical history or that I was suicidal before I started taking this medication, was ordering me off of it, without even speaking to me? I decided to make the appointment despite my reservations and as upset as I was, hoping the OB herself would be different in person (spoiler: she was not). Also, there aren’t enough OBs in my area to serve the population, so appointments were extremely rare and I was lucky to get in to see anyone.

That appointment was a disaster (I won’t describe all of it, but she was incredibly offended I was considering multiple medical providers and I wanted to ask her questions about her philosophy of care) and it was followed up with a formal letter informing me that my decision to see a midwife instead of an obstetrician was not recommended and “Prenatal OB care is extremely important for the health of your unborn child,” directing me to “schedule an appointment immediately.”

… I’m still considering blasting them on social media for this.

Another example:

Because of a genetic mutation (MTHFR C677T, for the curious), my primary decided to prescribe me Lovenox, an anti-coagulant because this mutation can cause clotting issues and puts me at a 50% chance of miscarriage at that stage (the general population risk is 18%). For me, taking Lovenox meant extremely painful daily injections for two months that left dark purple bruises 2-3 inches across at times. It was extremely good news when I finally was able to see a maternal-fetal physician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies and she let me know I could quit taking Lovenox. Handsome and I cheered “no shot! no shot! no shot!” every night for a week.

A petty example:

Recently I’ve made it to the baby bump stage where none of my pants fit, and finding maternity pants to try on has been … an unreasonably difficult struggle. Target had two pants in my size, neither fit. Kohl’s had one pair, but they were incredibly itchy. I drove almost two hours to visit Macy’s and Penny’s because their websites said they had maternity sections, but the one at Macy’s was completely gone (despite still being on store signage) and Penny’s “maternity section” was a single rack with six shirts on it labeled “clearance.” H&M had a maternity section but all their clothes are made for people shaped like twigs so I nearly had a breakdown in the dressing room after twelve pairs of pants made me feel like a lumpy meatsack. My remaining option was to order a bunch of pants in various sizes online, but I’m going to have to drive the same two hours in order to return all but one or two pairs I decide to keep (if any of them even fit, I am not optimistic).

***

And on top of all of that, I have this niggling worry what I’m feeling isn’t normal, or “right.” When I look down at my growing belly I don’t feel joy or anticipation. Mostly I feel … confused. Even being pregnant for over three months has not been enough to convince me this is real and happening and something worth feeling excited about. If anything I’m just annoyed my feet hurt, I can’t take my migraine medication (hello, headache I’ve had every day for three weeks), and I have to get up three or four times every night to pee.

Usually, planning things is my jam. I am the “research what to buy” queen, and it’s normally a task I revel in. The thought of decorating the nursery, instead of making me giddy and having me pin endless ideas (my typical response to home improvement projects) is filling me with dread. Figuring out what to register for is utterly overwhelming and makes my brain shut off every time I even glance at one of those “registry checklist” articles.

My therapist keeps telling me I can’t legislate my feelings — I can’t decide what emotions are “correct” or “appropriate” to feel and then allow only those feelings and banish all the others. My feelings exist, they’re there, and I have to deal with them as they are instead of insisting they be something different.

I don’t want to feel frustrated, annoyed, confused, or at best ambivalent. I want to feel happy– I want to be reveling in the anticipation. I feel like I should have the second trimester pregnancy “glow” and all I know is people congratulating me makes me feel an emotion I can’t name. Embarrassment? Resentment? I want to disappear? There have even been moments, when I’m particularly exhausted and my back has hurt so bad that day I can’t really move around, where I’ve felt regret and I’m filled with shame. We were actively trying to get pregnant for years and I feel regret? Over a decision I consciously re-made every time I had sex? I hate that in conversations with acquaintances and friends I feel like I’m constantly faking it. Good news: I’m pregnant! Except it doesn’t feel like good news, just … news.

I’m doing everything I’m supposed to. I’m taking my prenatals, I’m trying to eat well and drink enough water. I’m going through all the motions– making appointments with chiropractors, getting routine bloodwork done, putting lotion on my belly. But now the recommendations are all things like “talk to your baby! you and your partner can read books out loud!” and I’m still struggling not to refer to the eventual person growing inside me as “it.”

This isn’t the pregnancy announcement I wanted to write. But it’s an honest one.

Photography by Tatiana Vdb
February 26, 2020 by
Feminism

when I was a pro-life hypocrite

This week, a Facebook post written by Jamie Jeffries and submitted to the “Are You Even Pro-Life?” Facebook group went viral after Hayley Farless shared a screenshot of it to Twitter. Jamie has since deleted it, but if you haven’t seen it, here’s the text:

I talked a mom out of abortion in February [2019]. Her baby is 6 months old now and was just removed from her families [sic] custody by DCS (unfortunately it was probably a justified removal)

But this family put ME down as next preferred placement for this baby. Dude me?!?!?

No. No no no no no no no no no!

I do way too much for this work already, a 6month old will break me, destroy my marriage and physical health. I just can’t!!

It makes sense to me why a post like this would go viral and get almost seventy thousand retweets: in the fight for reproductive justice, most of us are aware a lot of supposedly pro-life people are hypocrites in many different ways. Support for war, the death penalty, locking children in cages and refusing them life-saving medical care, sending Salvadoran refugees back to be tortured and slaughtered, etc., all rather fly in the face of the “pro-life” label.

It is unusual, though, for the hypocrisy to be laid bare quite so … emphatically. This woman stopped another woman from getting an abortion, but now a baby would “destroy” her life? A lot of us felt taken aback by the sheer audacity and utter lack of self-awareness.

Jamie wrote a separate update, which she has also since deleted, clarifying what she meant and insisting people were deliberately misinterpreting her and taking what she’d said out of context. Which, to a certain extent, I get. In a moment of vulnerability, she said something raw and unedited for a particular audience who she knew would interpret her words in good faith and assume the best of her character and intentions. I have a lot of compassion for her being in this position– she’s getting threats, Facebook suspended her account … I can imagine being Jamie Jeffries this week is pretty horrible.

I’m also feeling compassion for Jamie because … I used to be her. Only worse.

In the beginning of 2009, my fiance at the time raped and impregnated me. Eleven years ago I did not have access to the language to describe what had happened to me as rape– I had no idea pleading with him to stop, saying no, physically resisting, made him a rapist and me a victim; because, after all, I must have done something to “incite his lust.” I didn’t understand he’d raped me, but that didn’t stop the panic and despair when I was a week late, then two weeks late, then more.

There were a lot of reasons why I could not be pregnant in 2009. It would ruin my reputation. It would ruin my career, most likely. I’d be expelled from Pensacola Christian College and while my parents loved me and would support me, I knew, effectively, my life would be over. Pregnancy was the end and I knew it. I also knew, deep down, I could not have his baby. I could never have articulated why. I could not have explained to you if he found out I was pregnant he might kill me– or worse marry me right away and shut me away forever. I knew he’d blame me for destroying his life. And I knew, instinctively, carrying around his blame would spell disaster for myself and any family we had together.

Eventually, I booked an appointment at the closest clinic. A few days later in an event I have always viewed as nothing short of miraculous, I miscarried. It was the worst period of my life and I bled so much I thought I was dying, but I was almost sick with relief. I wasn’t pregnant anymore.

Even after all that, I was proudly and solidly pro-life for another three years.

How was that possible? How could I have decided to have an abortion for myself, and still be pro-life? How could I stomach the brazen hypocrisy? How did my brain not explode from cognitive dissonance?

Because, you see, my circumstances were special. My circumstances were different. My circumstances justified abortion and made it the only possible choice.

That’s the argument of Jamie’s second Facebook post– she gave paragraphs upon paragraphs of excellent reasons why having a baby would disrupt her life and make it completely unmanageable. After reading her reasons, I was very sympathetic to why she couldn’t take in “Baby Z.” Adopting or even fostering a six-month-old would have been too much for her and her life.

What Jamie doesn’t understand and what I didn’t understand a decade ago was nothing makes us special. Nothing makes our reasons “good enough” and other people’s reasons “not good enough.” Jamie had good reasons for not wanting a baby right now. I had very good reasons for not wanting to be pregnant in 2009.

… but so does every other person who wants an abortion.

Photo by Sarebear
February 8, 2020 by
Feminism

getting over modesty culture: a step-by-step guide

One of my first-ever blog posts here is about the first time I ever bought jeans for myself. That day was so impactful I can still vividly see myself reflected in a dressing-room mirror at Aeropostale, listening to my friend and one of the employees chatting outside about my situation and the extreme demands I’d been under as a Christian fundamentalist woman. I can still recall the dread and panic I felt, desperately trying to feel any sense of liberation or joy in what I’d decided to do in a fit of gleeful rebellion. I want to wear jeans, I told myself. I want to be normal. I will not feel ashamed for wearing pants. There is nothing wrong with pants. There is nothing to feel afraid of.

Much, much easier said than done.

While I never experienced the same intensity of emotion again, and I did leave the mall that day with a pair of discounted GAP boyfriend jeans (hmm I wonder why a pair of baggy, unflattering jeans were on clearance?), the process of rejecting fundamentalist modesty culture was a journey of infinitesimally small steps. Looking back over the road I’ve traveled, though, I can see five clear steps I took that helped me escape the shame and abusive self-talk I was taught to feel about my body and how I dressed it. These steps, of course, may not work for everyone and they are not meant to be a replacement for self-discovery (and therapy!), but they did help me so maybe they can help you.

***

1) Wear the styles you like.

A few months after I wrote about the Aeropostale dressing room, I told a story of how my grandmother took me shopping for my birthday and I kept pushing myself away from any of the “worldly” styles I actually liked and toward the drab and “modest” clothing I knew I should want. There are a multitude of reasons why I so carefully steered me and my grandmother away from fashionable styles, and one of the biggest I’ve never delved into here was why I forced myself into colorless, shapeless sacks all the time. Yes, clearly those items were the most modest by the rules I’d been given, but I was also harassed and bullied by nearly all the women at church for my body.

I became an adolescent in a small church where every other girl was willow-like. Painfully thin (largely because of malnutrition and starvation, I would realize over a decade later) and narrow and straight. Even my sister fit into this category. And then there was me: still thin and girl-like, but developing obvious curves. A woman I idolized repeatedly “joked” about having too much junk in my trunk and my Sunday school teacher told me I needed to wear spanx or control-top panty hose every day because my bottom was “tempting” her husband. That harassment continued all the way through my teen years, and I turned to unflattering clothes, trying to make myself as ugly and unappealing as possible because I was scared.

Eventually, even considering wearing something stylish and fashionable was far too emotionally charged for me to handle.

College helped with this, mostly because my clothes identified me as an “ite” (short for PCC-ite, someone who closely lined with the school’s administrative ideology) and I didn’t want to be thought untrustworthy by my friends. While I always stayed firmly within the rules at school, I started exploring my options. My senior year, I wore a long crochet skirt from Newport News nearly every single day. I adored that skirt and the way it swayed around my feet as I walked. It made me feel good. Around the same time I also found a tie-dyed maxi skirt I still wear. I discovered I like V-neck and scoop necklines the best, and I prefer three-quarter length sleeves to cap.

Over time, as I continued wearing clothes I liked and made me feel good, it became easier to prioritize that feeling instead of the modesty rules I still carried around with me on every shopping trip. They were still there, but … not as critical. Not as loud.

2) Notice what you like on other people, and compliment them.

I have a bit of a reputation among my close friends and family that I am generous with my compliments, but what they don’t know is how this is a deliberate practice.

During my first year in graduate school, I was walking through a Wal-Mart foyer behind two other young women who were dressed very typically for a warm day in Virginia: shorts, tank tops, nothing unusual or even remotely scandalous. Walking towards us were a few women who were clearly fundamentalist of one stripe or another, and they were repulsed by the women walking toward them and did not hesitate to show their disgust on their faces. I thought wow, I used to be exactly like them. Then it occurred to me: wait, is this something I “used to do,” or do I still react this way? I wasn’t sure how deeply my background could still be affecting me, and how much I might be silently– but visibly– judging other women. To me, the easiest way to counteract any remnants of the shame I was taught to dole out on others was to actively work at finding something I appreciated. A haircut or color, a piece of jewelry, the sheen of fabric, cut of a shirt, a complimentary color. I even, on occasion, say one of those observations out loud.

Not only did this help me become less judgmental of other people, it helped me stop being so critical of myself.  I stopped evaluating every item I wore by old standards I intellectually no longer wanted to follow but still had trouble escaping their influence on my choices. It became possible to be in a dressing room and ask do I like how this looks? and not is this modest? What will people think? It was easier to assume that when other people saw me they either a) payed no attention (the most likely option) or b) saw something they liked.

3) Normalize fashion.

I discovered Pinterest in 2011, and it was a revelation. While I’m aware Pinterest hasn’t been the healthiest place for a lot of people, for me it was a gateway into a world I’d never really explored before. While some of us grow up with fashion and teen magazines, and I enjoyed surreptitiously flipping through Elle and Vogue during Barnes & Noble Visits, I had never had the experience of looking at clothes and coveting them for myself. I started pinning outfits and looks I liked with abandon. My Pinterest feed filled up with gorgeous coats, cocoon sweaters, architectural dresses, and elegant lace. There’s one outfit in particular I’ve been assembling for eight years and just found the last piece I needed a few weeks ago.

Because of this, I finally started to see clothes primarily as self-expression and to enjoy clothes as art. Not every piece will appeal to every person, and that’s perfectly fine. But I like what I like, and maybe it’s unique and maybe it’s not but I don’t care anymore. Clothes can be fun, pretty, and interesting, and can communicate nearly anything I want to say.

One of the hardest adjustments I made from fundamentalism to the more typical American experience was my baseline was so incredibly different from “real life.” Growing up I was surrounded by boxy denim jumpers, prairie clothes, and handmedown Gunny Sax dresses. Building a Pinterest board, browsing fashion glossies, flipping through Victoria’s Secret catalogues, all helped me establish a new baseline. When I went shopping for clothes, I knew what the items I tried on were meant to look like, how to style layers, how to build outfits and a flexible wardrobe.

4) Don’t push too far.

To this day, I still wear camisoles underneath sheer blouses. I still make sure I don’t have “headlights.” I wear unobtrusive undergarments and base layers. My shorts are all at least a handspan long below my hips. I don’t like wearing pieces I have to constantly adjust.

I learned this lesson the hard way– I’ve gotten clothes that I only wore once, was extremely uncomfortable, and could never make myself wear again. There was this gorgeous black lace dolman-sleeve blouse I picked up at Maurice’s. I wore a camisole underneath it, but the see-through black lace was just too much for me at the time, and even though I could probably wear it if I bought it today and I held onto it for years because I loved it so much … I could never put it on again without feeling an echo of that discomfort.

I also learned that some of my aversions to tight clothes come from sensory processing disorder, and not modesty indoctrination. I do own some skin-tight, painted-on clothes, but only when they’re comfortable and don’t make me feel like I need to crawl out of my skin. Sometimes that panicky feeling was modesty culture rearing its ugly head, and sometimes it was SPD. I learned to listen to body and accept that I don’t need to force myself into discomfort just in the name of “I’m not a fundamentalist anymore! I do what I want!”

5) Find what you emotionally need from your clothes.

Recognizing my wardrobe needs to meet emotional needs has been one of the most difficult parts of this journey, and I’ve never really heard anyone talking about this component. I think it’s hinted at a lot, especially when people with very distinctive styles talk about their fashion choices, but I think this needs to be more openly and explicitly discussed. Clothes help shape and communicate our identity across a wide spectrum of realities, such as race, class, ethnicity, culture, gender, etc. Given that clothes are so closely tied to identity, “I have emotional needs regarding clothes” isn’t exactly a surprising (and probably not unique) observation, but I only came to this understanding after talking about my clothing choices and modesty culture a lot.

Above I mentioned being harassed and bullied and how it affected my wardrobe, and one of the longest-lasting effects it has had on me is that I must feel sexy in my clothes. This is fundamentally essential to me. If I feel frumpy, dowdy, unstylish, unattractive, it’s comparable to feeling triggered. Not as intense, but I can start to feel physically ill and I become super self-conscious. I actually start to lose a strong sense of my embodiment– a term I used once was “amorphous blob.”

This doesn’t mean I walk around in 6-inch heels and miniskirts everyday– in fact, I live in jeans and hoodies during the fall. But they are skinny jeans that make my ass look delectable and hoodies I think are cute and don’t swallow me whole. Often I’m wearing ballet flats or motorcycle boots and I make sure to do my hair. When I’m looking for professional clothes, I only look at pencil skirts– no A-line for me, no way. If I’m wearing something loose on the bottom, what’s on top is tight and vice versa. I absolutely refuse to wear a shirt that covers my collar bone, and I do not care how cold it is, that is why I own scarves. I show off my boobs — sometimes I show a little cleavage, sometimes I wear a push-up bra. I accentuate my curves.

I need to love my body. I need to feel proud of it, unashamed, unabashed. My clothes help me get there.

***

Anyway, this post is getting pretty long so I’ll stop there. I hope it’s helpful.

October 21, 2019 by
Feminism

pillaging and the pro-life movement

Representative Steve King was back home this week, and yesterday he spoke in front of the Westside Conservative Club where the Des Moines Register recorded him saying the following. He was explaining why his heartbeat bills hadn’t made any progress, attributing it to his inability to “compromise” on “principles of life”:

And I started to think, we know the reasons why we [inaudible] exceptions for rape and incest– “because it’s not the baby’s fault”– but I actually started to wonder about this. What if it was ok, what if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?

Considering all the wars and all the rapes and pillages taken place and whatever happened to culture after society? I know I can’t certify that I’m not a part of a product of that. And I’d like to think that every one of the lives of us is as precious as any other life. And that’s our measure. Human life cannot be measured, it is the measure itself against which all things are weighed.

I watched the full clip, and that’s the complete quote and its context. As I’m sure you can imagine, King was– understandably– instantly criticized for this. He knows that his position is not exactly popular among Republican legislators, even. At this point, some of his GOP colleagues are already calling for his resignation. I understand the visceral reaction to these types of comments because they do paint a horrifying picture. It’s already troubling that King and 174 other legislators constantly push things like his heartbeat bill, it’s already concerning the ways Republicans want to invade our private lives and take control of our medical decisions, take away our right to self-determination. Not even allowing exceptions for people who have been raped … it boggles a lot of people’s minds to think someone could have so little compassion for a person who’s already been incredibly traumatized.

What bothers me about the criticisms I’ve been seeing is, though, is that most of those reactions missed the point of his talk and the reasoning why he rejects any rape/incest exception amendments. His fellow Republicans, Democrats, presidential candidates, and concerned citizens alike are treating his argument as if it’s an aberration. As if his — possibly hyberbolic– comments represent some sort of fringe when in reality they are a logical conclusion of the forced-birth ethical construct.

I know this because I used to think the exact same way as King. I would never have used his framing or his word choice, but when I was a forced-birth activist, wandering around protesting reproductive health clinics and getting ballot signatures, I was convinced that the rape/incest exceptions were inconsistent with a “pro-life” stance. If all abortion is really murder, then making an exception for how a baby was conceived makes no sense.

Granted, my background is actually pretty “fringe.” Growing up in a deep south Independent Fundamental Baptist cult doesn’t really produce a lot of reasonable centrists. But here’s how I know it’s not fringe: Karen Swallow Prior, a professor at Liberty University, made the exact same argument as King in a 2012 article she wrote for Christianity Today titled “No Exceptions: The Case for a Consistent Pro-Life Ethic.” Prior, Liberty, and Christianity Today are as establishment evangelicalism as it gets. One of King’s apparent constituents* even explicitly agreed with him in his blog post “King is not Wrong about Rape and Incest Exceptions,” taking issue with how conservatives are distancing themselves from King. The fact that King’s views aren’t fringe even appear in his words; “Human life cannot be measured, it is the measure itself against which all things are weighed” sounded like a quote to me so I dug it up. King is actually quoting Governor Bab Casey, as in the 1992 Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

His “we’re all products of pillaging, really” framework also only works in a world where all political and legislative decisions must align with theocratic principles. It’s an argument rooted in the common evangelical understanding of Romans 8:28– all things work together for good, including pillaging. Including incest. Including rape. King is not arguing pillaging and incest are intrinsically good, but God makes them good. Rape resulting in pregnancy, in King’s view, is theologically a blessing, it is the mechanism by which God makes “all things work together” and transforms a horrific, traumatizing event into a life-giving miracle.

Needless to say, this theological thought process completely removes bodily autonomy, self-determination, and agency from consideration. What the pregnant person wants is irrelevant. That they are most likely going to be further traumatized by having their feelings about their body and what happens to it overruled every single moment of every single day. The only thing that matters to people like who I used to be and King is “God’s will,” and we all just have to accept it without question.

If we’re going to criticize King and every other legislator that agrees with him, we have to acknowledge the theological underpinnings of their arguments and criticize that, not just capitalize on the sensationalism of his examples and word choice.

*from the wording of Hart’s post it seems like King represents his district, but he does not explicitly say he is a constituent.

Photography by Gage Skidmore
August 15, 2019 by
Feminism

y’all. I’m in COSMO

Something that has been gently simmering away on the back burner of my life for a good long while is an article that dropped this morning, and one I’m proud to be a part of.

“Inside the Scam of the Purity Movement” by Sarah Stankorb, in Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Sarah is a writer I’ve been in contact with for several years at this point– I appeared briefly in another article she wrote for Marie Claire covering the stay-at-home-daughter movement. She’s done a lot of work to understand the point of view of those of us who have survived these cultures, and I have a lot of respect for her. You should absolutely read both these pieces– “The Daughters Great Escape” is just as good.

I do have two notes about the Cosmo article. The focus of the piece changed a little bit after our first interview back in November– our first conversation centered on the way that my experience and Harris’ experience overlapped, and why it’s not a coincidence that I Kissed Dating Goodbye was written by a homeschooler (about half of the top 12 purity culture books are written by homeschoolers, and we’re only 2% of the population. That’s a huge over-representation.)

In that interview, I talked a lot about how purity culture can trace its ideological heritage straight back to white supremacy, a fact I bring up every time someone asks me about purity culture because they can’t be separated. Purity culture’s roots are buried in the murk and mire of how white supremacy codifies bodies as “clean” or “unclean,” or “pure” and “sullied.” White bodies are good, pure, chaste and maintaining that state is of absolute critical importance– we must not taint our bodies with the “filth” of sexual sin or miscegenation. Black bodies are beyond redemption; black men are viewed as inherently sexually ungovernable and black women have no right to autonomy over their sexual and reproductive lives. This is a critical piece of purity culture that somehow always gets overlooked by editors when they decide to run a piece on it (insert eye roll here).

The second note I’d like to make is that, probably due to length constraints, one of the nuances of my story gets a little muddled in this paragraph:

Samantha Field, now 31, describes staying with a sexually abusive partner for years, believing that because they’d had sex, she was “disgusting garbage” that no one else would want. “I have to constantly fight against the lie that because I wasn’t pure enough, that because I had ‘dressed provocatively’ and allowed myself to be alone with him, that I invited it,” she wrote on her blog.

I did not have sex. I was raped. However, being a rape victim in purity culture made me unable to identify that what was happening to me was rape. I even verbally said no and physically resisted during one of the assaults and still did not understand that he was raping me. I was responsible for anything that happened to me– I must have incited his “lust” in some mysterious way (rape is about power and control, not arousal). I was alone with him, so of course anything that happened is my fault. It took me literally years to figure out things like “no means no” because of how badly purity culture damaged my understanding of consent.

I’ve written about this a bit. The post the Cosmo article references is this one, “How Purity Culture Taught Me to be Abused,” and I’ve also covered this for Rewire: “Purity Culture Itself is the Problem.”

Anyway, that’s a critical part of my story of surviving purity culture, and it’s a common thread among those of us from purity culture who are sexual abuse victims, and I just want to make sure that it’s a part of any conversation we have about it.

Many of the people in the article are my friends and colleagues, as well, and you should 100% check them out. I met Linda Kay Klein a while ago, and she invited me to speak on the white supremacist origins of purity culture at a gathering she hosted last spring. Her book, Pure, is fantastic and you should absolutely read it. Dianna Anderson wrote Damaged Goods and Problematic, and is as amazing in person as she is on twitter. Emily Joy is one of the fiercest, most badass people I know and I have loved all the work we’ve done together (the article mentions #IKDGstories, but we also covered the disastrous #GC2Summit a few months ago). I don’t personally know Lyvonne, but her work is definitely worth a look.

Photography by Angie Smith, who was absolutely wonderful, and owned by Cosmopolitan.
February 5, 2019 by
Feminism

I was arrested for protesting Kavanaugh’s nomination. Here’s why.

The image at the top of the post shows me being arrested at the #cancelKavanaugh direction action organized by the Women’s March and the Center for Popular Democracy Action. You can see my head just beyond the woman in orange.

There’s still a lot to process from yesterday, but I wrote down what motivated me to be willing to do that for Sojourners, in “A Christianity that Makes Room for Rage.”

The rage I began expressing scared many of the people who knew me, who cared about me. They came from the same faith tradition I’d been brought up in, a tradition that teaches that “negative” emotions like rage, despair, sadness, anger, and bitterness have no place in a Christian’s life. My rage deeply concerned them, and I began receiving a consistent stream of worried messages, texts, emails and phone calls. They all tried to persuade me that I could only be healed if I let go of my rage, but I knew deep in my bones they were wrong. Rage was the only sensible path forward, the only roadmap I had to recovery.

I slowly came to understand that if I was going to remain a Christian, I needed to find a path that had room for the rage and grief I carried with me as a rape survivor. Rage is the only human and rational reaction to the trauma I’d experienced, and I could not smother my humanity in order to remain a Christian.

Read the rest of it here.

Photography by PBS.

September 28, 2018 by
Feminism

being cannon fodder in the war on women

I turned 31 the day I found out about the first allegation against Brett Kavanaugh. Two days later, I read Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s story for the first time, although she was still reluctant to be identified.

It has been fourteen days of hell.

The second I picked up my phone and saw the headline from the New York Times in my notifications, I felt myself instantly brace. My stomach became a bottomless, yawning pit and every muscle in my body tensed. I closed my eyes and felt my soul begin to prepare for the coming barrage. Emotionally, the closest image I’ve been able to conjure that captures what it’s like is “Bastogne” from Band of Brothers. The words from that headline screamed into my heart like the piercing whistle of an incoming shell. Old battlescars, like the one his watch made when it dug into my knee as he blooded me for the first time, begin to ache.

I wasn’t ready for this. I’m never ready for this. Every time, I believe I’ve gotten a little bit better at handling all of it, that I’m a little more battle-hardened. For about a week I even fooled myself into thinking that I was managing. Looking back at the last two weeks, though, I have not been even anywhere close to calm. The evening of the 17th was the first sign of the damage I was taking, the first time I was forced to acknowledge the shrapnel ripping through my body. I got a migraine, so I implemented my first line of defense, a stronger version of naproxen or ibuprofen. By the next morning, those defenses had crumbled so I buffered them with a dose of frovatriptan, a medication that costs $547. Two hours later, I needed another.

It didn’t work, and by that night I was clutching my head, digging my fingers into my scalp, and all I could do was lie in bed, rocking myself back and forth, and moan through the endless, agonizing hours of the night. The groans I couldn’t keep inside belonged in a frontline medical ward, not in my comfortable suburban home. The next day, I tried another two doses of frovatriptan … but nothing helped. Finally I was able to drag myself into the hospital, where a nurse stabbed me in the leg and injected a massive dose of toradol straight into my bloodstream. I limped back to my car, and barely managed to drive home. The bruise I have, days later, is a dark mottled eggplant two inches across.

I haven’t been able to sleep. Each day for the last two weeks I’ll lay in bed until exhaustion eventually drags me back into my nightmares just as the sun rises. Every hour I desperately try to dig my foxhole just a little bit deeper, give myself just a little more cover. But nothing can block out the constant whine of bombs, the sharp punch of gunfire. Innocent until proven guilty drops down and sends a scattering of dirt and rock into my face. This is obviously a political hack job goes off like a grenade and I can practically hear my sisters, my comrades-in-arms, screaming in anguish. She’s lying, and I flinch as that one lands just outside my meager shelter and I don’t even really feel the pain until I feel the blood trickling over my skin.

But then my world is rocked and I can’t tell down from up as an crushing shockwave blasts through me. What boy hasn’t done this in high school? and I know I’m screaming, I know it because I can taste the blood in the air and I can feel my throat ripping itself apart, but I can’t even hear it.

Valiantly, at first, I load my weapon and charge into the fray. Innocent until proven guilty doesn’t apply; we’re not demanding that he be stripped of all his rights and sent to prison, just that he not be rewarded with one of the highest offices in the land– we are allowed to use all of the evidence available to us to practice sound judgment and discernment in selecting a Justice nominee. I’m horrified as I watch this volley practically bounce off the enemy combatent’s armor. But I know my duty, so I keep going, keep trying. Here’s a study about false accusations and the kinds of person who make them, Dr. Ford doesn’t fit that pattern, she’s a credible eyewitness. Still, I’m pressed on all sides. Isn’t it important for our elected representatives to consider a serious allegation like this, no matter where it comes from? And it’s like my well-honed arguments turn to dust in my hands. None of it matters. Nothing makes a difference.

So I retreat, and hunker down, and hope to wait out the storm of bullets and fire raining down from the sky. But I can’t, not when What boy hasn’t done this shatters me. It breaks me, and now all I can do is try to drag my wounded body away from the front lines, crying out for help, begging someone, anyone, to get me to safety.

My partner comes home and I’ve managed to prepare a meal for the first time in over a week and I try to eat the roasted chicken and vegetables I usually love but everything tastes like sawdust and churns in my gut so I leave half of it uneaten. I am tired. Weary. Struggling. Again, there’s a pop from a distant rifle and my phone screen is like the light from a muzzle flash. Senate Democrats Investigate a New Allegation of Misconduct and I look up to see Deborah Ramirez climb down beside me and for the first time I feel a glimmer of hope.

It’s just a glimmer, though, and the night is dark, and long, and terrible. For the first time since the battle began again I scream aloud, and rage, and beg my partner for an explanation– any explanation that could comfort me in a world where people hear Christine’s story and aren’t drawn to their knees in compassionate surrender, but level the field with a warhead like what boy hasn’t done this. I see it puff up into a mushroom cloud as my local representatives join the chain reaction— if what Brett Kavanaugh did was that bad, I wouldn’t even qualify for office! Vote to confirm him!

My partner holds me as I shake, and sob, and he shores up the only desperate defense I have left: what the fuck?! How the fuck is this possible?! How can they do this?

HOW THE FUCK CAN THEY DO THIS?!

How do you hear about a young woman, a little girl, being dragged into a room and forced into a bed, then mounted by a man several years older than you and you’re screaming, begging, for him to stop, for someone to help you, and he silences your cries, silences his conscience, and begins to tear the clothes off your body?

My screams turn into whimpers, and the sobs quiet into tears that pour down my cheeks without wracking my body to get out.

***

I am still suffering. I still have not been able to sleep. The migraine is mostly gone, but it hovers, waiting to strike at the first sign of weakness. But tonight I rallied– I joined a conference call to plan a direct action at the Capitol on Thursday, and polished my battle armor once more. It lays on my dining room table now, two pieces of posterboard that still smell faintly of ink. Dr. Ford is an American Patriot and Christine is my Hero will be both my battle cry and a missile to cast into the halls of Congress when I join my band of sisters in those whited sepulchres. On Thursday, I’ll be joining Christine in No Man’s Land while she takes all the fire.

I hope, I pray, that we will emerge victorious.

September 26, 2018 by