Who decides who is “fit” to parent?

The latest issue of Ms. Magazine is out, with this excellent article on child-welfare institutions’ discrimination against poor and non-white mothers. In the article, author Gaylynn Burroughs recounts instances where children were taken away from parents on the ground of “neglect,” meaning being too poor to provide adequate shelter, food, or medical treatment. Instead of helping mothers get access to what their children need, child-welfare workers remove the child from the home and place him or her in the foster-care system, which in some places, might be even worse.

I’m glad to see this issue being brought to light. The DHS/foster-care system has long been a tool of the establishment for enforcing racist, classist, sexist, and otherwise regressive social mores: just ask a Native American. Or, take my example.

When I was a teenager, after my mom left her abusive husband of 10 years, she was frequently the target of DHS (Department of Human Services) investigations. Because we were non-Christians, nosy neighbors were constantly calling DHS with accusations of Satanic rituals, child molestation, and promiscuity on the part of my mother. Visits from caseworkers were frequent, if random, occurences; they would snoop through the kitchen cabinets, rifle through our dresser drawers, and worst of all, have private interviews with my siblings and I. The questions were as disturbing as they were ridiculous:

“Have you ever sat in a circle and lit candles?” Well, yes. That’s what we do. Last time I checked, it wasn’t against the law.

“Have you ever seen your mom naked?” Actually, yes. But we knew we had to lie on that one. Although we were raised to see the human body as beautiful, natural, and normal (what a radical concept!), we were savvy enough to know that narrow-minded autocrats would sieze on that sort of thing and we’d be in foster care before the sun was down.

“Has your mom ever had a man over to stay the night?” You’re kidding, right? My mom didn’t even start dating again for at least five years after she divorced her ex. But let’s set that aside and just look at the premise underlying this question: that if she acted like any other adult woman in a free society and indulged in sexuality (privately, with another consenting adult), that would somehow make her “unfit” as a mother. Well, if once you become a mother, you must stop engaging in sexuality, how do you explain siblings? So does that make the mothers of more than one kid (except twins, triplets, etc.) unfit mothers by definition? Do fathers get asked this question? This is just 16th century Puritan prudery with the power of the state to back it up.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Years later, when I was a mother, my ex would call DHS on me for the exact same reasons. This time, I was the accused. And in this system, you are guilty until proven innocent.

In this type of system, non-conformists and outsiders must be constantly on guard; it seem that only the childless can afford to be public with their chosen lifestyle. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of cases like mine, where people who don’t fit the norm - they are too poor, they aren’t Christian, they are gay or lesbian - are punished with (or threatened with) the loss of their children (The Wild Hunt has an excellent blog post on this here). It’s the number-one reason why so many non-conformists stay deeply inside their closets. And when the lesbian moms and Buddhist dads are afraid of speaking out publicly, even to defend themselves against bigotry or discrimination, our society has been bullied into conformity just a little more.

The obesity epidemic is a class issue

I am so tired of hearing about the obesity epidemic in this country, always followed by self-righteous finger-pointing about our “poor choices” and how we’re all a bunch of “couch potatoes.”
Now, I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of actual burger-munching, over-indulging couch potatoes out there. But when such a large percentage of the population (64.5% of adults age 20 & up are overweight, 30.5% are obese - this according to the American Obesity Assn.) is affected, we cannot rule out cultural or societal factors in creating this so-called “epidemic.” Because you don’t catch fat from being around fat people.
First off, America as a whole does not encourage a healthy lifestyle. Since the introduction of Levittowns in the ’40s and ’50s, our towns, suburbs, and countrysides are based on a very car-centric plan. Shops, workplaces, and homes are simply spaced too far apart for walking, and many streets don’t even have sidewalks. Public transit, walking trails, and parks - all the things shown to increase physical activity and reduce obesity - are all but unknown in many parts of the country.
And let’s not forget the very important part food plays in all this. A healthy diet is one rich in fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and complex proteins. Hydrogenated oils, processed sugar and white flour, monosodium glutamate, high-fructose corn syrup, and other artificial additives common in commercial food have been shown to adversely affect blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels, and to cause - directly or indirectly - obesity. Yet these additives are so common as to be nearly impossible to avoid.
While it is true that healthy whole foods, free of these and other additives, are available, they are simply out of reach for the vast majority of Americans. First, whole foods are generally only available in some urban areas.
Secondly, and most importantly, the prices of whole foods are anywhere from twice to five times the prices of regular commercial fare. Ironically, in the same country where obesity is skyrocketing, at least 36 million Americans going hungry because they simply can’t afford to pay bills and buy enough food. The leading cause of hunger: low-paying jobs (source: U.S. Conference of Mayors, www.foodfirst.org/progs/hum…erica.html ). In this situation, paying $2.69 for a loaf of whole-grain bread is out of the question. You buy the $0.69 white bread. You stock up on the cheapest things you can afford to fill your belly - the exact things that are highest in processed starches, lowest in fiber, and filled with additives.
As the Surgeon General’s “Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity” (2001) pointed out: “Environmental factors provide the greatest opportunity for actions and interventions designed for prevention and treatment of obesity, and behavior change can occur only in a supportive environment with accessible and affordable healthy food choices and opportunities for regular physical activity“  (italics mine). We can start with paying all workers a living wage, so they can afford to buy good food. We can also demand our congress ban additives which are being shown to cause obesity and other illnesses. And we can get involved at the local level to push for public transit and more walking space. Together, we can take back our health.

Reefer Madness, pt. II

Oh, the horror! Kids are finding new ways of getting high!
Jack Shaefer of Slate Magazine has an excellent article on the media’s hysteria over the next “drug menace”: Salvia divinorum. Apparently kids are smoking it and getting scared. So eight states have banned it, without one shred of scientific evidence that it is harmful in any way.
This is basically the same thing that was done to most other drugs in this country - first alcohol (which was thankfully reversed, thanks to jury nullification), then cannabis, then LSD…etc. etc. Every time the press creates a new drug menace, usually based solely on anecdotal “evidence” about how horrible its effects are, it is only popularizing it for some (usually young thrill-seekers) and demonizing it for others (usually older moralizers).
It seems our “leaders” never learn. It’s a cycle of stupidity and self destruction that’s clear to anyone with a functioning brain cell: based on hysterical conjecture alone, the new menace is declared illegal, driving it underground, criminalizing a whole new swath of the citizenry, feeding organized crime, and eroding our civil liberties even more - at this point in history, between the war on drugs and the war on terror, do we even have any left? Is there any hope of sane, rational discussion about our nation’s drug policy? Sadly, I fear not.

Best. Starship Captain. Ever.

[note: a much shorter version of this essay is in this issue of Bitch Magazine]
She’s tough. She’s sexy. She even uses power tools. She’s Futurama’s Turanga Leela (aka “Leela”), and despite being a one-eyed cartoon mutant, she’s one of the most positive representations of women anywhere on television.
Unlike Wonder Woman, the feminist icon of the ‘70s, Leela has no super powers. As a mutant, she grew up in an orphanarium, bullied and rejected because of having only one eye. As an adult, she’s frustrated and dissatisfied with her love life: her standards are just “too high.” But far from making her seem less sympathetic, her weaknesses and mistakes make her character all the more, well, three-dimensional.
Still, Leela is a force to be reckoned with. As captain of the Planet Express Ship, she’s by far the most competent character on the show - and she knows it. Usually, Leela ends up saving Fry’s (ostensibly the main character’s) ass, instead of the other way around. She’s a master of Arcturan Kung Fu, despite having trained under the sexist Master Phnog (to quote Phnog: “You don’t have the will of the warrior. You have the will of the housewife, or at best, the schoolmarm”). When all of Earth’s men were drafted into Capt. Zapp Brannigan’s army, she dressed in drag and physically surpassed all the other, male, recruits.
But don’t get the wrong idea - Leela isn’t just a heartless fighting machine. As an animal rights activist, she’s protested her own employer’s irresponsible tanker route past an endangered penguin preserve on Pluto and flown dangerous missions to save innocent animals.
Leela isn’t the only female character on Futurama. Amy Wong, an uber-wealthy Asian-Martian, stands in for traditional notions of femininity. And as such, Amy is nearly always criticizing Leela: “you don’t really have the thighs for a miniskirt,” or “ooooh, cute boots; do those come in girls’ sizes?” Little wonder that in every what-if episode, Leela kills Amy.
But what’s really important about Leela is that in a media culture where “feminist” equals “unattractive” and confidence, at least in a woman, equals bitchiness, Leela is portrayed as strong, self-confident and desirable: the show’s main character, Fry, is desperately in love with her, and Zapp Brannigan (whom Leela once pity-fucked, to her everlasting regret) is obsessed with her.
It’s no wonder the feminist press hasn’t taken notice of Leela. The show’s target audience is 18- to 34-year-old men, and nerdy men at that - scripts regularly incorporate quantum mechanics, string theory and old Star Trek episodes. Though honestly, Groening’s female characters in “The Simpsons” are also strong, capable and intellegent, so he’s got some feminist cred already. But by portraying such an overtly feminist character in a show aimed at men, Simpsons creator Matt Groening has boldly gone where noone has gone before. Futurama airs on Comedy Central at 9:00 p.m. CST. Go check it out, seriously.

Women Bloggers

There has been some discussion about women bloggers on various e-mail lists I’m on, and as a blogger who has a vagina, I thought I’d - what else - post about it.
There is some disagreement about just how many women bloggers there are. Some sources say there aren’t enough of us; some say we’re actually the majority of bloggers. My own experience - a totally unscientific sample, I know - leads me to believe we are the majority. Women and girls have kept diaries and journals for generations. Blogs are just the next evolutionary phase of that phenomenon.
So does that mean that the conventional wisdom of “women are less likely to express their opinion as men are” is flat-out wrong? That’s a good question. I think part of finding the answer is to qualify the circumstances under which women express their opinion or not. In “person-on-the-street” interviews, women may be less likely to express themselves (as seems to be the case) because they might not feel that they are safe in doing so. In the relative anonymoty of a blog, they might feel safer and be more likely to express themselves, though this is just a hypothesis.
As a woman who has been opinionated and outspoken all her life, I often don’t understand why women would pull their punches or acquiese in silence to things they oppose. Don’t get me wrong - I often faced hostility, degradation, or dismissal because of my outspoken ways. It is absolutely true that in 21st century America, women are not supposed to be outspoken (unless they are speaking out against other women or feminism, then it’s OK).
I’d like to do a survey of men and women: do you ever feel afraid to express your opinion? How often? Why? I think the answers would be interesting.

Women, Action, and the Media conference

The Women, Action, & the Media conference was a lot of fun, really informative and inspirational. For whatever reason, I completely forgot to bring my laptop, so here are my written notes:
3/28/08: I met Helen Thomas! THE Helen Thomas! She is so awesome - spunky and courageous. She signed my book and I got to shake her hand and get my picture taken with her. Being the professional journalist that I am, I forgot my camera. Luckily, another WAMmer agreed to take it with her camera and e-mail it to me after the conference.
Her speech was great. She talked about the strides we’ve made as women since the ’40s (when she started out) and how now, journalism is a women’s profession, as so many more women are in journalism schools. True that. She reflected briefly on each of the presidents she’s covered as the White House correspondent: JFK - her favorite; Nixon - always took the wrong road. She tore into Bush, but said her harshest criticism was reserved for Congress and the press. She was adamant about her opposition to the war. She was funny and inspiring, sometimes both at once. She got two standing ovations.
Afterwards, she was like a rock star, mobbed by adoring fans. I waited over an hour to get her to sign my book, during which time I met Jen Sorensen, creator of the “Slowpoke” comic, who is one of my favorite cartoonists, up there with Matt Groening and Tom Tomorrow, creator of “This Modern World.”
Cool vibes all around. Lots of women - young, old, straight, gay, white, black, Lebanese, whatever. I’m already having a great time and I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
3/29/08: I wish I would have brought my laptop - so much new media are represented here.
Today, the keynote speaker was Haifa Zangana, a novelist from Iraq. Here is a clip of her speech. The sessions I attended were:
By Any Media Necessary - a workshop on how to teach/engage young people to be critical of the media they consume. Led by Cara Lisa Powers, a media education organizer.
Beating the Old Boys’ Club - a panel of women working in the mainstream media who shared their experiences and gave advice on critiquing sexist stories and images to your employer. [I will include full info on panelists later]
Fact Checking Like a Librarian - Led by librarians and fact-checkers from Radical Reference, a group dedicated to providing solid resources to journalists and activists who question the status quo. We got some excellent resources for finding information about people and subjects normally marginalized in the mainstream media.
[I will have more detailed info and links soon]
This conference has been so much more fun and informative than I expected. I’ve met so many great people, learned so much, and am so much more fired up about the possibilities for change!
At first, I thought I’d just take the info I learned in the sessions back to the journalism department (who sent me) in a memo or e-mail. Now that I know more about new media and where the media are going, I want to give a whole presentation about that, about how the old paradigm of prepping journalism students to go into the daily newspapers is no longer viable (or soon will be no longer viable) - “print is just way too expensive.” The new media is alternative media. If we don’t adapt and integrate, we become extinct.
I really wish I could stay tomorrow. And I really want to come again next year.

A glimpse of the old Fayetteville

I’m sitting on the steps of the Walton Arts Center to stay out of the rain while I wait for the bus. It’s a crappy, drizzly Monday morning, and it seems like everywhere I look, Dickson Street is covered in yuppie storefronts and lame college bars and shiny SUVs. But then, I see a slice of the old Fayetteville drive by in an old, beat-up Chevy pickup. It’s an older lesbian, hair cropped close to the skull, a pair of large glasses on her tanned face. The truck rattles by, its bumper too rusty to support a license plate, held together with bumper stickers demanding peace and ecology.

I want to wave to her, even though I don’t know her. She feels like an old friend - a part of my hometown in a way that these high-rise condos and new brick shopping centers will never be.

Organic is the new gourmet

I would love to eat only organic, free-range food – and I’m in good company. One study shows that 70% of Americans have at least some concern about the health effects of pesticides and other chemicals. Problem is, the cost. Organics are so much more expensive – Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky was on the Colbert Report last night, to tell us about what she learned taking the Food Stamp Challenge – where four members of Congress agreed to live on what the average ood stamp allotment would be for that week. Not surprising to any of us who have ever been on food stamps, she found that the amount of food stamps in the average family allotment amounts to about $3 a day – not enough to eat nutritious, healthy meals (even with the luxury of a stove to cook on and a fridge to store it in). The question was posed about the studies showing how poor people are statistically more likely to be obese; Congresswoman Schakowsky pointed out how with so little money to buy food with, the poor are forced to buy the cheapest, most processed, highest in fats, least nutritious food available.

The reason organics are so expensive comes down to, in the end, government regulation: the mega agri-businesses like ADM get millions of dollars in tax cuts and incentives, thereby keeping their costs extremely low. And in fact, if you look at the cost of everything else in America, food is the one thing that has not skyrocketed.

For once, I can’t get outraged by what is, essentially, corporate welfare. The reasoning behind it was certainly noble: to make sure that food would be cheap enough so that no American should go hungry. Even the reasoning behind most of the pesticides and chemical fertilizers used by the industry is somewhat altruistic: to grow as much food, to feed as many people, as possible.

The problem is, they can’t plead ignorance anymore. It has been 45 years since “Silent Spring,” Rachel Carson’s seminal (or should I say “ovular?”) work exposing the deadly effects of pesticides. Since then, study after study has shown that all the byproducts of our food-producing industry – runoffs from pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and animal waste – are deadly to both human and nature. Yet the industry, like any other entrenched institution, doesn’t want to change.

Here is where we come in. Of course, “voting with your dollars” is a very effective method for creating change. Because of it, demand for organics has far outstripped supply – and keeps it expensive.

But those of us who don’t have enough dollars to vote with can still demand change. With all the millions of dollars ADM and others get from us, the taxpayers, they must be held to task for their practices. With an invigorated and competent EPA and DoA, we could force the giant agri-businesses to use organic and sustainable farming practices. An army of county extention agents could offer information on organic farming to 4-H’s and individual farmers across the nation. And we, the people, could demand that our foods be healthy, pure, and sustainably grown.

At the Earthtones Festival

I can’t believe it’s already been three weeks since the Earthtones Earth Day Celebration Festival, April 27 – 29. Earlier that week, it had been looking a lot like it was going to be rainy and cold. Not what I had in mind. So, thinking sunny thoughts, I packed my camping gear (along with all my henna booth gear), grabbed a friend, and headed toward Eureka Springs in my dangerously overloaded Geo.

Two years ago, when my hubby was working construction, we bought about $200 worth of camping gear. Of course, by the next summer, he had been laid off and had to go back to restaurant work – which means he never gets a weekend off, which means we never go camping anymore. The new tent, the Coleman camp stove, the solar shower and rechargeable lanterns have all been taking up valuable real estate in our coat closet since then.

But finally, a good excuse to unpack it all! And The Goddess smiled down upon our humble hippie festival. The weather was warm and bright. The music was awesome. Our campsite was perfect – close enough to the stage to be able to hear the music well, but far enough back and sort of tucked away, so no drunken wanderers would come crashing into our tent at three in the morning. The people were kind, and we wanted for nothing – I did just enough henna to cover our costs, and people were kind enough to share whatever else you need at a hippie campout music fest.

It felt really good to camp again. Though the air mattress was really too small for two grown women, and the porta-potty got pretty funky by Saturday afternoon, it was worth it. Having a little campfire to sit around and listen to groovy music with the trees and the sun and the wind all around was just what my inner hippie chick needed.

The peace option

What if our country valued peace as much as war? Not such an easy question. But here’s an idea: what if the U.S. made the Peace Corps (or Americorps) the same, in terms of benefits and options, as the military?

So, should you choose to join the Peace Corps, your college tuition would be paid. You would get a fat signing bonus, and you would have housing and medical care available for you and your family.

The responsibilities would be similar - you would sign up for a certain period of time, and you would be obligated to serve for the full term. You would be “deployed” wherever you were needed most. You could choose to spend more time in the Peace Corps, and even become a “lifer.” Your pay, rank, and retirement benefits would be equal to that of the military.

What would the Peace Corps (or Americorps) do that would be so valuable to the U.S.? Instead of only going overseas to help build schools and so forth, it would operate much like the old CCC in the ’30s. Peace Corps volunteers would work on repairing damaged infrastructure like schools, community centers, parks, etc. With the right training, they could volunteer at free clinics, youth centers, and become tutors for struggling schoolchildren. The list goes on.

This type of program could really solve so many problems. Now, if only someone in charge was listening…