The Need

People call me brave

But I don't want

To be brave

I need to be safe

People call me strong

But I don't want 

To be strong

I need to be held

People call me quiet

But I don't want 

To be quiet

I need to be heard

People call me fierce

But I don't want

To be fierce

I need to be loved

People call me a lot of things

But I don't want

To be a lot of things

I need to be known 

Musings on Travelling While Female

I recently travelled to Chicago with my 19 year old daughter and I have some thoughts about it.  Lucky you, eh?  

If you have not recently travelled, while being female, in this rape culture, let me take a few minutes to fill you in on what I (we) did to attempt to keep ourselves safe.  
NOTE:  I say 'attempt' because, while we did a lot to travel "safely" and be "smart", we were at no time guaranteed that we would ultimately return home safely and without experiencing trauma.

We were staying in an AirBnB (our first time) once arriving in Chicago and to feel safe about doing so I...

• verified the hosts on AirBnB
• searched them on social media
• Google searched their names to verify that they did not come up in news stories, etc
• Google street searched the address given as the location
• read the host's reviews from past travelers 
• made sure that check-in would be mid-day to take advantage of daylight
• communicated with both hosts via their respective mobiles beforehand and asked questions to see if they would answer them differently/the same (I did this sparingly as I wanted to keep the majority of communication through AirBnB where it can be documented)
• texted my partner with the street address, names of hosts and listing on AirBnB 

That was all before even leaving my home!  Once we had travelled to the hosts condo I...

• made sure that we walked into the condo together AFTER making sure that there was no one else present in the hallway leading to the condo door
• I left my purse on my body so that I would have a defensive weapon of some kind
• I instantly looked for and took note of exit strategies (for instance, I noted that the windows were old and single pane glass, making it easy to throw something relatively small through the glass to draw attention to our location and being around the corner from UIC there was near constant foot traffic from students in the area)
• during a brief tour of the small condo I watched the host more than I looked at the décor

After receiving keys and verifying that they worked for both doors, our host left us alone in the condo and I...

• searched each and every room
• looked inside of every closet
• opened cupboards and drawers
• searched vents for cameras or other devices
• checked window locks
• checked door locks
• made another mental note of more/other escape routes and exit strategies

During our travels to Chicago by train I/we...

• sat near each other
• took note when each other used the facilities 
• went together to find the café car to get food
• noticed anyone sitting near us

While exploring in Chicago we...

• made sure our mobiles were fully charged before leaving our AirBnb (although mine did die while we were exploring on our last day there)
• purposed to stay to well-lit, heavily trafficked areas of the city
• purposed to not walk at night (we did end up walking to a restaurant one of the nights but it was 2 blocks from our condo and in a well-lit, busy with student foot traffic area)
• stayed together at all times
• discussed where we were going, and pulled it up on our Maps app, before leaving the condo, do avoid looking like dopey, lost tourists as much as possible

It was an exhausting 3 days, and all in effort to just feel safe!  At no time were we actually 100% safe.  

As women, just existing in this culture is exhausting.  We do SO many things on a daily basis to try to guarantee our personal safety just going about our lives; from locking car doors immediately after getting in, to not going out alone, to having some sort of defensive weapon at the ready when approaching our own cars in a parking lot... in broad daylight, to critically taking note of every single person that we interact with in public, to analyzing and over-analyzing everywhere we go and everything that we do.

Goddammit, I should not have to travel with a man in order to be safe(r) in this world!  Fuck!  

So, #ThanksMen, for creating a world for women where this is our reality.  Can you please help us fix it now?  

We are dying here...  

Sunday Sermon

#Sundaysermon

If you are a christian who claims to believe in the god "of the bible", we need to talk.  It would be grossly hypocritical of you to claim this and then choose to follow only the convenient portions of the bible, only the parts that can be wrapped in pretty, flowery wording.  You don't get to dress up your god to make its appealing parts more attractive, in hopes of glossing over its ugly parts.  Because, yeah, some of us have noted its ugly parts.  And we have an issue with that.

If your god is responsible for -

Matthew 19:14

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

Then it is also responsible for -

Deuteronomy 22:28, 29

28 If a man finds a girls who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizer her and lies with her and they are discovered,

29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.

If your god is responsible for "lovingly" sending its own self/son/portion of the trinity to die for all of mankind's shortcomings, then it is also responsible for causing one of its beloved followers to believe he needed to sacrifice his only, loved son.  With all of the horror that coming to that decision would have caused a human being.

Save your breath and all of your arguments.  I've heard them all before.  The "human error" one is prevalent when this topic is brought up.  That being, that it is taken into account that humans wrote the bible, it has been interpreted multiple times from its original languages, and that can account for some of the parts that we collectively find offensive/outdated now.

Nope.

You don't get to excuse your god's failings that simply.

Throughout this book that is its mouthpiece to its followers, we are told that, while humans were gifted free will, god is omnipotent.  Are we then to believe that an all-powerful being allowed the then ignorant and simple-minded people to misrepresent it so appallingly in its own book?  For example, slavery.  Did god know slavery was wrong and just forget to relay that to his followers way back then?  Did god know that slavery was wrong and just not care that it was practised?  Did god not know that slavery was wrong and human empathy and morality has since surpassed that of its supposed creator?  Does god still not know that slavery is wrong?

The options now are

1. that god isn't real and this book was written by ignorant peoples of ancient times to control other ignorant peoples

2. that god is real but it is not omnipotent and could not control how it was represented in its own book to its own people

3. that god is real, is omnipotent, and is also a summary of all of the ugly parts of the bible as well as the pretty ones (which means your god loves you a lot but is also okay with you having to marry your rapist)

The fact that these ugly parts of your god are in his divinely inspired instruction manual poses a moral dilemma for any who claim to follow the god of this bible.  You must unquestioningly support the god/bible, in all of its flaws, or you hypocritically pick and choose what you believe and which you will support and follow.  

FB Rants 07/01/17

This isn't my rant, these aren't my words, this isn't my personal experience.  But it could be ranted by so many women, it is so many women's words, it is so many women's personal experience.  We are every woman and these words are very important. 

I recently had a client come in requesting pelvic work because of injuries from her first birth.
In her words, she had torn significantly, and had been stitched... badly - she described something I’ve heard about from several other clients, the ‘husband stitch’, in which a doctor stitches the vaginal opening too tightly closed in order to supposedly make future sex with the birthing woman more pleasurable to an imaginary future male sex partner.
Which, alone, makes me want to punch these particular doctors in the nads. Hard.
Because - does this really need to be said? Sure seems like it does:
WOMEN’S BODIES DO NOT EXIST TO PLEASE MEN.
EVER. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
This practice, like so many others, is a vestige of a dark age in which women were the property of men.
Please observe, dear reader: WE DO NOT FUCKING LIVE IN THOSE DARK AGES ANYMORE. Not here. Not now. And any doctor acting as though we do should lose his or her license to practice medicine IMMEDIATELY.
Birthing women are generally not asked about this: “Would you like this dodgy procedure?” It is just done to them - in a supremely vulnerable moment, I might add. Sometimes with a grody wink to the male partner in the room. Or so I am told.
But back to the story.
This client tore again with baby #2, and was attended to by a different doctor, who was shocked by the terrible work of the first doctor, and stitched her properly.
She had been in pain for several years with the husband-stitch, and then was no longer in pain. But she felt that the tone of her pelvic floor had suffered, and she wanted to work on her “tightness”.
Upon actually meeting this woman, she further revealed that her husband had been cheating on her, that she was fairly sure they would be separated within the year, and that her desire for a tighter vagina had to do with being able to keep a future male partner. She attributed the cheating to her vagina not being tight enough to please him.
This made me turn some colors. The room is thankfully dim enough that I had some cover.
Once I had recovered my wits, I told her quite precisely the following three things. Mark them well, women of my heart.
1) Your vagina is not a sheath for anybody’s cock.
It is the core of your body, the powerhouse of your pleasure, the holy portal through which you have, like a god, pushed two human beings into the world. It is not a fucking sheath for a DICK. So please, take the checkout magazine stands full of 1980s Cosmos that apparently line the aisles of your mind, and set them on fire, because that is a bunch of fucking nonsense.
2) If your husband is a cheater, I GUARANTEE YOU that it has fuck all to do with the tone of your pussy. If he is cheating, it’s because he is a cheater. Please give credit where credit is due. If the sex you have been having with him has suffered since your first birth, perhaps that is because you were in excruciating pain whenever you did it, seeing as some idiot with diplomas on his wall gave you an unconscionable injury by stitching you badly and playing into this 1980s Cosmo complex you’re harboring. But please understand: cheating is not about vaginal tone. Cheating - sleeping with someone else and lying about it - is about being an asshole.
3) You do not want a tight vagina.
That is a myth.
When we use tight as a descriptor, we are discussing the pussy as a sheath. We are centering our entire experience in the pleasure of a male partner. And while we, of course, care very much about the experiences of our lovers, their perspectives are not more important than our own, and we do not take responsibility for anybody else's good time. Please keep your eye on the proverbial ball here.
What you want is a strong vagina.
A vagina that can grip, control, pulsate, and fully release a penetrating object at will - a cock, or otherwise - with a full range of sensation. A muscular vagina. A free vagina.
If you do not have this experience, it is very likely because you - like many many many of the other women who come to me for pelvic bodywork - are, in fact, too tight. Your pelvic floor is hypertonic - it is in a perpetual state of spasm, and doesn’t remember how to release.
Much like a hand, a vagina has to be able to both grasp and let go in order to do much for you.
If it is hypotonic, it is like a hand that is floppy and cannot grasp. If it is hypertonic, it is like a perpetually clenched fist.
Far more of the women I meet under these circumstances come to me in the latter category than the former.
A tight vagina is a PROBLEM. As a physical reality, and as a concept.
Get with me on this. Strength is the key. Across the board. Change your language and change your life. Please. Inhabit your body like you are the boss of it, like your experience is important, like you are the one steering your world, like your pleasure matters. Because it FUCKING DOES. Female pleasure is raucously, explosively powerful. It is what brings women of all ages and races and sizes and abilities and orientations home into our own blessed bodies. It is the lever which moves the world. Its power is such a treasure that billion dollar industries have arisen to manipulate women, throwing a glamour around our gaze that divorces us from our own sensations, focusing our sense of worth on our looks and throwing our lived physical reality under the bus.
It is up to us to STOP FALLING FOR IT.
We are not owned. We are not beholden. And our bodies are utterly magnificent, exactly as they are.
Please start fucking acting like it.
Love,
PCWS

http://embodyworkla.com/blog/

They Just Don't Know

I had an interaction with my oldest offspring the other day.  I was dropping him off at a festival with some friends and he wouldn't be home until late.  And, being his mother, I couldn't help myself to remind him to be careful.  I believe it went something like this:

Me:  What time will you be home?

Him:  Probably around 10.

Me:  Okay.  Be careful.

Him:  Yup.  (Rolls eyes.) 

Me:  No, seriously.  It's a festival, there is a crowd.  Statistically crime rates go up in heat waves and it's been really hot -

Him:  (interrupting)  BYE! 

I drove away feeling the sting that I usually feel when one of my offsprings shuts me down, seems to shut me out or doesn't pander to my desire to prattle on about how they should live their lives so that I can be comfortable and feel that they are safe. 

Because they just don't know.

They don't know that I worry.  They don't care because they don't worry.
They don't know that, every time they leave, I question whether I've prepared them adequately enough to face whatever they will be facing while away from me.  They don't care because they are only thinking of packing as many experiences into their adolescence as they can.
They don't know that if something happened to them to cause pain, permanent damage or death, that I would be shattered into too many pieces to ever be able to be put back together again into anything that resembles human.  They don't care because they are invincible. 

Being a parent is finding a precarious balance between being unbelievably brave and terrifyingly fragile.  Every.  Single.  Day.  It is heroically rising in the morning, not knowing what each day will hold, but consciously living with the reality that large pieces of our hearts reside outside of our bodies and inside of these other beings.  LARGE pieces. 

All of the pieces.

...And they just don't know.

Things That Just Aren't Real, Part 2: The "Need" to Evangelize

I am soooooooooooo tired of people in my life trying to evangelize me.  And my kids.  Ugh! 

Being raised in an extremely fucked up microcosm of a severely off-track Baptist church I completely understand that one of the Christian imperatives is to "win souls", share the word of god and perpetuate one's faith to others.  But, fucking christ.  It's old.  It's rude.  I'm tired of hearing it.  I'm tired of my kids being seen as an unclaimed soul that is prime for influence into the MLM of chistiandom. 

The best evangelizing is a decent person living a good life.  If you happen to be this person and your personal belief system includes a deity, let people come to you and ask.  Don't assume that they want to know or need to know.  When I see someone living a good life I do not assume that they are doing so because of a god.  Don't be an asshole and assume that your good life is somehow a billboard advertisement for an other dimensional being who needs help recruiting more followers.  A good life is a testament all its own.



Your beliefs don't make you a better person.  Your behaviour does. 

Things That Just Aren't Real, Part 1: The "Walk of Shame"

It is another summer weekend here in southwestern Ontario.  If you were out in a big city at all on Saturday or Sunday morning you might think that you saw something.  But you didn't.  Because what you thought you saw, doesn't exist.  It isn't true, it is not a real thing and if you imagined that you saw it that just proves that you are a misogynistic, sexist, damaging-myth perpetuating asshole.
This thing that doesn't exist is...

The "walk of shame".

Nope.  If you think you saw a person performing this act, what you actually saw was an abominable snow man, a yeti, or perhaps the Loch Ness Monster.  <----  This one would be true especially if you were by water.

This cultural stigma is almost always aimed at women.  Because there is a presumption of shame if it is suspected that a woman has - gasp! -  consented to sexual relations.  This is suspected when an asshole person sees a woman making her way back to her dorm room, waiting at a bus stop in the city, walking some city blocks, all in clothing that indicates that she wore them out to party the night before and is now making her way back home.  I am positive that we all pass a lot of the male species performing this presumed shameful walk, we just don't recognize it because they look like regular people, like their regular selves.  (This opens this discussion up to another conversation about society's pressure and expectations on women to look a certain way when "going out".  To present a certain level of aesthetically pleasing, appearance effort.  After all, a vagina comes with a requirement to look like you care about yourself, goddammit.  Pretty is the rent women pay to exist.
......................That should be a conversation in another post, because I could digress all.  day.  long.)  And these male species that we pass performing this certain walk?  Well, they don't even know they should be ashamed at all.  Because society hasn't told them that they should.

So, why do we pin all of the shame of a sexual encounter (even a supposed one!) on the female side of the equation?  Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!?!  Why do we hold women primarily responsible for the sexual morality of everyone in this fucked up Western culture?

STOP IT!  

This mindset is helping to create and perpetuate a horrible phenom that is referred to as 'rape culture'.  This is proving over and over again to be a deadly, dangerous thing for the daughters of our culture.  It is not doing any services to our sons, either.

Here is what we can do about this:  if you are out early on a weekend morning, and you see someone that you suspect is performing this so-called 'walk of shame', recognize that you are judging someone and presuming of their sexual morality solely based on their appearance.  Something that is absolutely none of your business.  Whatsoever.  Like, at all.  Once you've realized what a sexist fuckwit you are, you can do one of two things (or both, if you are really an asshole):  1.  crotch punch yourself and move on with your life, worrying only about your own morals, or, 2.  just move the fuck on with your life.  Drive away.  Walk away.  Carry on with your day exactly as you had planned.  Knowing that what someone may or may not have done the night before with their own genitals has nothing to do with you.  Let someone walk home from wherever they were, in whatever they want, in peace.
Women deserve to be left alone to make their own sexual choices, without the offer of patronizing hand holding from presumed morally superior asshats.  Let a girl walk without shame!




Special shout-out to celebrities that are using their bigger platform to bring awareness to these issues and not wallflower themselves in the face of a frightening culture.  Amber Rose is one that uses her voice for this cause and has started a movement for it.  If you know of others, feel free to post them in the comments.  :)  

  http://www.amberroseslutwalk.com/