aEvery day I wake up and the world is beautiful. But every day I learn of some new atrocity happening to women. I don't want to shut off the news because then I may forget about those around me and do nothing. I may go on with my day thinking that things will be better tomorrow when the truth is, nothing happens without action.

It is none of your god damn fucking business if I have an abortion. If you don't believe in science, that's not my fucking problem. I would never ever murder anyone. I have a conscience. I would never harm anyone with the intent to harm them. I am a moral and good person. I'm also an intelligent person. I'm also a woman. I can make my own decisions and I can also accept advice if someone wants to give it. I am not a fucking toy, or a doll, or property. No woman is. You enslave women by making rules for just them. They may not be proper slaves yet because the process is just beginning, but since we never really had full equality we are already have way there. We are not allowed to ask for raises in our jobs even though we get paid less. We are not allowed to where clothing that might cause someone to get all rapey. We do not get jobs as easily as men. We cannot make decisions about our own health.

For my whole life I have felt like I was guilty of something, but I realize now that I'm guilty of having a Catholic background in my family and being a woman. I'm guilty of being born. Of existing and wanting to exist and wanting to think for myself.

I'm sick of people making decisions for me when I am smart enough to make my own. Everyone makes mistakes. My mistakes should not be made by someone else, nor should I not be allowed to make those mistakes. I am not a man but men should respect me. I respect men who respect me.

I don't want to raise a daughter in this world where women are treated like cattle in even the best of societies. Even the freest of societies we are told to where certain clothes or we will be the cause of anything that comes our way. Not only is this demeaning to all men by saying that they have no control over themselves, that they are simply animals with no senses and no humanity, but this is disgusting to me because I believe we should not have shame about our bodies. There is nothing about a womans body that truly makes a man rape her. There is nothing to be ashamed of, but because of growing up in this world I am ashamed of so much of myself. I should not feel this way. I am disgusted by every single person who has ever made a woman feel bad about herself. I am disgusted with this society's treatment of women. I am disgusted with this society's treatment of non-white people. And of course, disgusted with the treatment of black women in our country.

I know that it's hard to empathize sometimes when you have never, and could never, experience what it's like to be another person in actuality, but it's not that hard to treat people nicely regardless. It's so easy to be nice to people and to treat them as if they were no whatever difference you perceive them to be. Difference is good, but treating every difference with respect is so easy I cannot believe how many people apparently have a hard time with this.

It's sunny out today, so I am going to go outside and feel the sun warming my skin. I'm going to be happy with myself and with my life and my baby. I'm going to do everything the best that I can do it, and treat people with all of the respect that I truly have for them. I will work on my own respect for myself, trying to build that up after it's been systematically destroyed by our culture or sexism and racism and capitalism.  I am going to work on being less materialistic.  I am going to try to be a better person.  I am also going to look into ways that I can help prevent or even reverse these horrific laws against women and I am going to enjoy doing this.  I am going to be happy knowing that I am doing what I can to help.  I am going to work towards one day being so happy that I cannot help but make others happy.  

So, today is a good day.  

Kan jy dit asseblief herhaal?

Can you repeat that?

I think when I'm learning a language the easiest way to learn it is to read and hear what people are saying.  So when I go to a new country I love to take the bus, and sometimes the metro, and watch as signs go buy while also listening at how stops are pronounced.  Of course it's also nice to hear people speaking around you to pick up on the way they speak or the way things are said and the different accents.

There are some places where they don't announce the stops on the buses.  These are harder places to learn the language on your own and usually this requires you to annoy everyone everywhere on how things are pronounced.  Luckily for me, when I was in Ireland I was in a relationship with someone who spoke Irish and didn't mind at all telling me how things were pronounced.  Perfect!  Well it would have been perfect if the relationship had lasted longer.

When I lived in Holland I was able to pick up the language because they do announce the stops on the bus and the bus was very cheap so I took long rides around town just staring out the window.  I could have been fluent very quickly had I stayed there longer.

Now I'm old.  So apparently when you get older it's harder to learn languages.  I'm not sure if that's actually true but I'd prefer not to think so, so I won't do any research on it.  I'm going to stay optimistic and try to learn my languages.

Here is the new one I've come up against, as a linguaphile I sincerely want to learn as many languages as possible, but I have come to the realization that it's just not possible to learn every single language that I wish and do the upkeep to keep it current.  So which languages do I learn?  I want to have the most access to the most people in the whole world.  That's the goal.  Well I know English.  French I will need to get fluent in again.  Then of course Spanish.  Now I love Russian but it's actually not spoken in all of the countries where it used to be because of the end of the rule of the Russians.  Some people might even be offended if you try to speak Russian to them.  I think it's still quite widely spoken but there are some places I would need a back up.  I have heard that some Eastern European countries have begun to use German as their second language, so that may be a good option.

It seems like the most practical languages to learn for where I want to travel are German, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian and probably Mandarin Chinese.  I probably won't start on Chinese anytime soon but it would be useful to learn in certain situations.

I think the best way to learn is of course to be submersed.  I hope to be able to learn languages as I travel.  For now I will take my time being a mother and in the spare time I have, learning a language.

Poor families get screwed because people aren't paying attention

Reducing benefits for poor families increases child hospitalizations, and increases the likelihood of malnutrition.  The levels of malnutrition in this country are embarrassing if we are to continue to call ourselves a great nation.  We have enough money in this country to feed everyone and house everyone and yet ... well look at the poorest and the increasing number of people who are poor and the reducing number of people who are able to get any help.  It's disgusting to say you want to be a part of country and then say you will pay no part of the taxes, you will help no one around you, and say that this is somehow the american dream.  It is ridiculous to say that, in this country, the rich are providing the jobs and the economy, they are not.  They are often outsources jobs and they are paying minimum wage to people who still put more money back into the economy than they do because they don't pay taxes.  Even the poorest families who do not qualify to pay taxes pay taxes in their local authorities.  Just so fucking sick of these selfish fucking people and their selfish bullshit.  SO SO sick of it.  I will give money to those who need it, and I do not fucking complain about paying taxes because I know that they are necessary.  I think what we need to change is where those taxes go.  If my taxes go towards paying for someone elses tax break, then I am not happy.  If they go to states that refuse to use the money that they get from the government for earned low income programs like financial assistance, but instead go towards giving the rich more money, that is not ok.  That is in fact not what taxes are for.  Taxes can be good, and they can make everyone's life more manageable by putting money into safe roads, good schools, environmental projects like recycling, healthcare, then we would have practically no one going into bankruptcy over things like school, health care costs etc.  This is a wealthy country.  Instead of using our resources and money to pay for the rich to get richer, we should make sure that every person in this country is fed, cared for and educated.  I believe this truly with all of my heart.

Healthcare/Police corruption Rant

How can the republicans bitch about "illegals" raising our healthcare costs because they don't have health insurance and then go to the hospital on "our dollar" but then say they don't think everyone should have health insurance which would spread the risk pool and lower healthcare costs enormously.  Oh wait.  I know how.  Pretty much everything they say is a fucking lie.  By they I do of course mean the politicians not the voters.  The voters are either selfish or horribly horribly misguided/misinformed.  They say that "forcing" them to buy healthcare is an affront to their freedom.  Which is a load of bollox.  They want to stick their fucking business in women's vaginas and ovaries and then they have the fucking nerve to say that asking people to share the risk pool for insurance is an affront to their fucking freedom?!!  I know that a lot of people don't understand the bill, but it's not like it's forcing people to drop their insurance and pay for some different insurance.  I don't even get the fucking mindset of these idiots.  They are so selfish they would rather bitch about freedom than just pay taxes for a fucking national health care system that would make people like 50% of those who are in bankruptcy because of medical costs, non-existent.  Just because they are all addicted to money and even thought they don't need it they want every single penny of the money that they think they earned even if it means a few million children die a year of starvation or lack of medical care.

So I say, fuck them!  How dare they legislate against women and the middle class and the poor!  Fuck them!  I will vote until the day I die but I sure as shit don't have any illusions that my vote is going to make as much of a difference if the system wasn't horribly tainted by money and selfish rich people who don't believe in sharing.  I am horrified by these people.  These are people who let elderly people die in their homes during winter because it's too cold and they can't afford their medication, which keeps them alive, and their heat.  They think they can stick it out but they end up dying.  Or elderly who live in Florida, and because these same people think it's their god given right to litter and pollute all they want even though there is absolute fucking proof of global warming caused by humans, and the elderly couple dies of heat because again they can't afford their medications and their air conditioning.  Or they can't afford to move.

How fucking dare they think that somehow they are more important than anyone else.  Do you think they will every have to watch a child die of starvation or because they have no health coverage?  I don't think they even know what it's like to take out student loans for their children.  I don't think they know what it's like to take the bus that only comes twice a day because they don't want to pay any of their precious pay check for public transportation because they don't use it.  I have no problem paying taxes whatsoever.  I have a problem paying taxes only in that the wealthy pay little or no taxes, with creative accounting, and with the way the tax law is set up, and I believe everyone should pay their fair share.  I believe in tax laws forcing them to because I don't believe that self regulation works.  I have seen proof that self regulation does not work in the banking crisis, the housing crisis, the oil spills, fracking, etc.  All of those things and the disasters that have been caused from poor management and no oversight are because of lack of regulation.  This is why I am not an anarchist. I do not believe that people can govern themselves.  I believe that what happens when you let people govern themselves is slavery.  You have to have enforcers and they must be inspected by others who in turn must be inspected by others, and at some point, and at all points must be beholden to the public and inspected by the public and elected and appointed by the public.

I will just use an example of where the public should really have more control but does not seem to even have the proper access to information.  The Denver police department appears to be reaching new levels of corruption.  They have always been corrupt, as long as I have been alive at least, and this is not good.  This is proof that the corruption runs deep.  The internal affairs head they just assigned has been proven already to be corrupt.  This is why there should be public reviews and they should be able to decide when to overhaul such a corrupt department.  When I was a young teenager there was a group of people who started this practice of filming the police all of the time.  They did this because the police were constantly beating people up and committing horrific acts of violence against people because they knew that if they were caught by the department, nothing would happen.  So these people literally were like the neighborhood watch but to find suspicious police, and this helped.  This was something that managed to get violence down so much that it amazed a lot of people.  However, I think a lot of people stopped doing this because the department didn't seem to be committing so many acts of violence.  Now people have started to do this again, and it is sort of a more national thing, and the police are fighting back.

I can't really go into the story I want to tell but I'll just say that there are cases where the police have pursued those with cameras and beaten them up and stolen the footage.  On more than one occasion.  Even more occasions they simply take the recording equipment and delete everything on it.  In a way the cameras around the city, in a big brother sort of spread but at a much smaller level than say the UK, are an asset to the public because they have caught several moments of police brutality and they have been given to the news or other sources where it has been published and often the police are punished.  But never harshly.  I have maybe only once heard of police actually losing their jobs because of brutality.  That is not good.  That means that even when the police are caught, they still are on the job.  Some officers have such a high number of complaints against them you wonder how long a sentence this would be for a normal person.  If you beat people up 50 times and were actually written up for 20, you would most likely be spending some time in prison, and you would definitely lose your job if you did it while working.

Anyhow, I know I always get off topic but these are rants.  So basically I'm sick of the selfish nature of conservatives.  I'm sick of people saying deregulation is the only way to get businesses to grow.  It's bullshit and causes such dire consequences that it's already caused the collapse of the our financial market and the poisoning for millions of animals and thousands, probably actually millions, of people.   And the Denver Police Department is corrupt.  I'm sure there are many with this problem, as I said I believe that police are a necessary part of society, but I think that we must start over.  We must completely scrape out the system and start over.  It is rife with corruption and the system is set up to even encourage this corruption, which means that this is a hard fix.  We have to fix from the top down and this also means starting over in many places.

Breast feeding

I didn't think that I would want to breast feed for more than a year.  I talked with people and said, "yeah a year sounds good."  I knew I wanted to breast feed for at least a year though.  At least 6 months.  Oh then there was all this breast feeding trouble and people started to tell me it was "ok to use formula" and "you haven't failed anything."  I think a lot of mothers will understand when I say, I totally felt like a failure when I wasn't making enough milk and I thought I wouldn't be able to breast feed.  When I told me friend she said, don't give up.  She told me it took one of her friends 9 months to get it right.  I found hope in this.  I think most mothers will also understand that this was actually very important to me.  My dad, who I love very much and is almost perfect in my eyes, did not understand.  But how could he?  How could any man understand except from seeing the motivation, longing or pain in the mothers eyes? Men will never have this experience and they will never have these problems.  The most they can do is empathize, but when you can never ever experience a problem how can you really understand?  I don't blame him, but I do wish he understood better or empathized more.  I think to him it was like he saw me miserable because I was so tired and upset that it wasn't working and he thought we could just fix that by putting my daughter on formula and then I could get sleep and she would get fed.

I don't know what I would do without the lactation consultant at the hospital, and then following that, the support I've had from the LLL group that I go to on Tuesday mornings.  The women in the group, all breast feeding or interested in breast feed, all have amazing stories and are so supportive and helpful.  It inspired me, as well as I'm sure more lactation consultants have been originally inspired, to do something along the lines of starting a group and taking the steps to help women with breast feeding.  It's amazing how much strength it has given me and how much I treasure it now.  I still have supply issues and I am still struggling, but it is so important to me and I feel so connected to my baby. It makes me sick to think that women would choose formula over breastfeeding if they have a choice.  Obviously there are so many situations that make breast feeding difficult or impossible if you have some medical problem or have had some operation that makes it impossible.  But it also seems impossible to so many women because they have no one to help them or explain to them what is going on when things aren't going perfectly.

In South Africa, they have recently decided to promote breast feeding to all mothers, because of the infant mortality rate.  Good and bad with this one though because they suggest it to all mothers, even those with HIV.  And in a county where, in some places, the rate of infection is above 50% that is a bit dangerous.  But think about poverty and how much formula costs anyway.  So if you have a free source of food that is MORE nutritious and so helpful in other ways like giving your child immunities and keeping them from getting sick while they are young, or at least keeping their immune system strong, why would you not be utilizing this already?  I don't have that answer because I think the campaign to get women to stop breast feeding happened before my time, but I can only imagine that it has something to do with making money and taking away women's power.  Telling them that their natural ability to produce milk isn't good enough and 'here buy some of our expensive product.'  I mean this for every country where they have done this.

In particular Nestle, which sold infant formula to many underdeveloped countries where there were no national standards, and this caused mass malnutrition and even death.  Nestle claims that the instructions were not followed properly, but they were still instrumental in pushing a product above a mothers own milk, which in turn caused the death and sickness of many infants.

In the U.K. they have recently also started telling mothers to breast feed for at least six months, but tend to ignore the issues that many mothers have with breast feeding, especially as it has been lost as the natural way to feed your child and has become much less common.  I was lucky to live in a place where they value breastfeeding there is a huge support network for breastfeeding mothers and breastfeeding awareness when I had my daughter, but most people, I would even guess the majority of  people in the world, do not have this.

In the United States I do not know why we have such a high number of women who have problems with milk supply, but if you have ever been to a group online or in person, this is one of the biggest problems.  I won't go into some of the causes but as for when you are doing everything right with the actual act but you still aren't producing enough, I think it boils down to diet.  The people in this country are more obese than not.  Even those who are not even fat, often are very unhealthy with their diets, and often lack enough nutrients to be at a low level of malnutrition.  Several reasons for malnutrition and being overweight and all of the other problems have to do with our access to food, our knowledge of food and sadly, the food itself.  The food we eat just does not have the nutrients in it that it should.  Even organic food has these problems, but not nearly as severely as mass produced non-organic.

Women with Celiacs often have trouble conceiving, and also experience a higher level of miscarriage if they are getting gluten in their diet.  I think the same can be true for breast milk production.  There are foods that dry up breast milk, such as sage, spearmint, the list goes on, but what if there are allergies or intolerances that are specific to certain people that cause reduction in breast milk production?

This is just a brief look at what I feel about this issue.  I am so grateful to my friend who gave me suggestions and helped me continue to breast feed even when I thought I would fail.  I hope to help set up networks of people like this all over the world, but for now I'm going to have to wait to write more about this issue because I have to go be mom.

I would like to talk about how it should be more accepted in society and less of a burden on women and so much more but as I said I must go.  Hopefully I will remember this for next time.

Rich white dudes

I had a discussion today with someone who was trying to convince me of how awesome Ron Paul is.  I attempted to tell him why I don't like his proposed governmental structure and why I don't think it'll work or is a good idea, and he was actually someone receptive but then turned into the "your a commie!  You want us all to die" guy.  Which is the same fucking thing you hear from right wing conservatives whenever you aren't budging to their opinion.  Usually they aren't so long lasting in their argument though.  So much respect for not immediately calling me a cunt or a slut because I told him I'm pro choice.

But in the end we ended up with him saying I wanted a dictatorship, and I said that we had to end our conversation because he was just making random assertions with no basis in fact and there was no point in arguing with someone who already had their picture of who I was in their head.

Let me start out by saying, I am not into dictatorships.  I'm not entirely sure how me saying you need oversight could be construed as saying that.  When I think of oversight I think of people checking on people who are also held accountable by other people.  I don't think of one dude making all the decisions without question or push back.

But more importantly, we talked about states rights vs federal rights.  I think the problem with arguing with people about this is that it's just a fundamental difference in how people see the world.  Some people think the federal government should play no role in their lives, and other people, people like me, think that there is definitely a place for a federal government.

To me, the place of the federal government is to make sure that everyone plays fair, and that when things go wrong, they can provide a safety net.  If states like Oklahoma, Georgia, South Dakota, North Dakota, Texas, Arizona, etc. want to make it so that a woman who has a miscarriage (medically known as a spontaneous abortion) they SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO DO THIS!  This is a complete misunderstanding of human anatomy and science and is just fucking awful and scary.  But states, like those previously mentioned, would.  They would make having a miscarriage, or an abortion, or getting birth control, illegal.

Now I shouldn't even have to defend myself as a women against these laws in this fucking day and age, but for some reason I do.  This country has a large number of what seems like a growing group of science hating (or maybe just not understanding) people who think that only sluts are raped (and if you use birthcontrol - automatic slut) and the only reason for abortion is because you want to murder babies.  Well there are a lot of reasons for abortion and for birth control.  Some women will die if they have a baby.  In Ron Paul's interview with Piers Morgan, he said only women who were honest raped (I'm not going to bother looking up the whole quote because you can do it on your own if you don't remember this interview) should have the option of possibly getting an abortion, and not even abortion but like morning after pill.  Like if you go to the hospital right after being honestly raped (like because women usually lie about being raped right?  but I actually think he is referring to like hardcore tie down knock out rape, and is trying to say date rape or some less violent version like coersion isn't rape) then you can get a plan b or morning after pill.  But, and  here's a thought, what if you are really scared, or you somehow can't just go to the hospital because like...you don't have insurance and some hospitals won't even let you in the door without insurance?  So then you are fucked and you are forced to have a baby?

Now I'm pro-choice.  I believe it's none of my fucking business if someone else doesn't want to have a baby and they are pregnant for some reason or other.  Rape or not.  But I understand that religious people sometimes believe that it's life.  Well, these are the people that get on my nerves, not because I don't think they have brains but they just aren't fucking using them.  These are the science deniers.  First off, no one is saying that abortion is fun, or a type of birth control.  Abortion is hard, expensive and traumatizing for most women.  But pro-choice people understand that there will always be need for abortion services.  Guess what, not everyone is religious and believes it's a life.  And guess what?  Sometimes there are other factors that make having a child a risk.  And guess what?!!!  Some people know that they would make terrible parents, or they are not ready to have children yet, and they also understand that there are already too many children out there who are looking for homes and adoption is just putting another child out there when there are already so many who need adopting.

So anyhow, I don't really want to talk about Ron Paul anymore because I'm sort of burned out on the issue.  I'll just say, I think that his positions on issues that I care about are bad enough that I could never be swayed to vote for him.

But my point here, is more that the people who defend him, don't even know what his policies would do to this country.  They don't understand at all how much damage his policies would cause.  Now I'm not saying that he could enact them all as president.  They don't really have that much power.  But I do think he could do some major damage.  I just wish we had some better candidates at all.  The republicans are all insanely anti-woman and pro-corperation and Obama has enacted some really fucked up shit.  Like NDAA.  And I am giving him credit because he's had the whole republican congress pushing back against every move he makes.  But a lot of those moves have been just horrible.  Deep sea drilling.  Even after the oil spill he is pushing that.  And now Fracking.  I hate having a two party system.  It makes voting really depressing sometimes.

So rich white dudes.  They aren't women, they aren't black or latino or asian.  They really don't understand.

Women's problems

I am furious at this country for having so many voting people who vote Republican.  The truth of it is, I'll bet the majority of this country does not believe in their hateful load of ideas that oppress Women and people of colour, but those people just don't fucking vote.  Voting is actually important.  I know quite a few people who don't vote because they think the system is broken, well the system is broken because they don't vote.  Yes I'm blaming you, non-voters.  I blame you for the two party system and for the Republicans, and for the shitty selection of Democrats in most places.  I blame you for our lack of healthcare and public transportation.

But since they aren't voting, we will look at the Republicans.  They are in power right now and they have fully waged their war on women.  They are trying to impose laws upon women that completely violate their rights as Americans.  For the party that claims to hate big government and love America, they sure act the opposite.  If they claim that a Democrat hate America one more time because they say something about wanted free healthcare, I think I'll fucking vomit.  How in the fuck does wanted the people of the country you love, to have access to care that allows them to live healthy lives, make you hate America?  It doesn't.  The Republicans have long known about brainwashing tactics.  They truly would love to live in a country like Russia where it's completely within their power as rich white men to stile whomever they please and fuck whoever they want giving them whatever disease they carry.  I don't even think Russia is quite as oppressive as the Republicans wish this country was.  

They are the most hateful selfish people I think I have ever come across in this country.   I wonder what percentage of them are members of the KKK or other equally racist groups?  They vote against the violence against women act.  They vote for internal ultrasounds.  They vote against healthcare.  They vote for fracking and oil drilling.  Is there anything that makes them look like they aren't a party of hateful old men?  Yes I know there are women Republicans, but the ones who speak out the loudest all have been saying that women should be subservient to men.  That they shouldn't have access to birth control.  

Guess fucking what!?!!!!!!  Birth control is used for other things than keep a woman from getting pregnant.  And I don't even give a fuck about that because we have the right to have sex and not get pregnant.  But for those of you without a fucking brain, there are so many uses for birth control that taking it away is literally endangering millions of women's lives.  What does it say about this country that we have  people in power who openly hate women and are taking away their freedoms and we sit by and do almost nothing?  Some of us are making a stink, but it's so few it makes me sad that I even have any hope for this country.  I love this country and it is going to shit because of Republicans and those other insane hateful conservative fucks.  

Fuck off, it's none of your damn fucking business who or where or when I have sex with, and it's not your right to tell me if I can have children or not, and when I can have children or not.  

I think this must be their way of cutting us down again.  We had the Inquisition.  We had the Witch trials.  I guess women must be getting too much power and respect again because they are doing everything they can to cut us down.  If women don't have access to birth control they will not be able to get jobs because employers will know that inevitably they will get pregnant.  

It's all about control.  It's all about greed.  I'm sick of believing in this country when it doesn't even believe in itself.  I will always vote because I believe in democracy.  The system may be broken but it's only broken because people don't vote.  We can all vote right now.  They are trying to change that and when they do, it really will be so much harder to change anything.  When they change voter registration laws and then eventually deny certain races of people the vote in other ways, then it will be so much harder.  And then you can think back to now when you actually could have made a difference.  When your vote would have actually count.