On Unemployment and Getting Back To Work

Good Morning, y’all.

There’s a hell of a lot of discussion about people not wanting to go back to work to collect enhanced unemployment benefits.  And that reasoning is bullshit.

White mug with image of a bird and text that reads: There are not enough hours in the fucking day for your bullshit.

Photo: Kristine Hansen

Mug: Effin Birds

First, you don’t simply switch on an economy over night.  It takes time.  People need to find childcare or elder care before they can work.  And those types of care have taken a hit during the pandemic, with facilities shutting down and people who engage in such care going into other areas for employment.  Some may need to wait until the school year starts again in the fall.

Second, people have found other jobs or gone back to school.  And if they found a job that pays better, going back to minimum wage or a tipped minimum wage is not going to happen.

Third, many people need a break.  The last 15 months have been traumatic, and in ways that hit those “essential workers” in the service industry that make tipped minimum wages or anything below a living wage. Would you want to rush back to that job with the same wages?  Service industries ripe with harassment and bullying?  Wages that, much more often than not, are NOT a living wage?  That “OLD” normal didn’t work for everyone.  

Fourth, many people simply don’t want to go back at all.  

Finally, think about who is saying and reinforcing this statement.  The party and the people that don’t want government benefits or entitlements at all, and who routinely try to cut and/or eliminate them.  It is no coincidence that the party and the people are those that adhere to white patriarchal, capitalistic belief systems.  Those that have their roots in colonialism.  There is a through line between “People don’t want to work and get off unemployment.” to the excuses used to enslave, indenture, and historically underpay human beings (lazy, don’t want to work, need supervision, etc.) who weren’t white and male.  If you don’t see it, you need to sit and have a think.

Because here is the thing:  people want to work, they want to contribute, and they want to work for a wage that supports them and their family.  They want to be treated with dignity.  What about a $2 tipped minimum wage is treats the server with dignity?  What about a minimum wage permits anyone to support themselves, let alone a family?  

Mug:  Effin Birds

support trans youth.

Good Morning, y’all.

Yes, there is a lot going on for all of us, and you should pay attention to the conservative war on transgendered children underway. The right, who continues to position themselves as defenders of the Christian faith and protectors of children, are introducing and passing laws that limit transgender children’s rights and access to a full education and healthcare, among other things. They are legislating actively to harm children. They are neither acting in their professed Christian way nor in the best interest of children.

Photo: Kristine Hansen. Mug: Society6

Yesterday, HB 1570 was passed in both chambers in the Arkansas legislature. The bill bans trans youth from accessing health care and health insurance coverage. At least 11 other states have proposed or are debating similar laws.

In 2020, Idaho passed a ban on transgender women and girls participating in women’s sports. Courts have blocked that law for now, but 25 states, including Tennessee, Oklahoma, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Kentucky, introduced similar bans. South Dakota’s governor killed the law and then enacted an executive order that places restrictions on trans youth participation in sports. The Arkansas governor signed that state’s law, which prohibits transgender participation on female teams from kindergarten through college.

These particular laws or executive orders are sought under the guise of equity in sports participation for girls and young women. They are attempting to legislate a problem that doesn’t exist. (Read Megan Rapinoe’s Op-Ed, “Bills to ban transgender kids from sports try to solve a problem that doesn’t exist”)

Using religion, junk science, and the words of TERFs to defend these actions, conservative politicians will continue to work to limit trans youth’s access to a full life. This is hate. This is discrimination. This is harmful. There is no love in these actions. There is no care. There are only small-minded actors with a limited view of humanity and people. Limited views that want to keep us all in a binary and dependent.
March 31 (tomorrow) is International Transgender Day of Visibility, an annual event dedicated to celebrating transgender people and raising awareness of discrimination faced by transgender people worldwide, as well as a celebration of their contributions to society. Support the Trans community.

Stand up for trans youth. Make calls. Donate time. Donate money. Learn about the issues and start talking to others.

Resources:

Trans Student Educational Resources. https://transstudent.org

National Center for Transgender Equality. https://transequality.org

El/La Para TransLatinas. https://ellaparatranslatinas.org

Transgender Law Center. https://transgenderlawcenter.org

TGI Justice Project. http://www.tgijp.org

Transgender Law and Policy Institute. http://www.transgenderlaw.org

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project. https://srlp.org

Megan Rapinoe’s Op-Ed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../megan-rapinoe.../

texting with a friend.

Good Evening, y’all. 

Yesterday, after texting about Marvel, the Suez Canal, and other topical issues, a friend – a rather prescient friend – texted me a screen cap of tweet that reads:  “It’s so horribly telling that, so often, as soon as a woman realises you’re gay you can sense a reduction in hyper-vigilance.  The threat level has fallen.  I often find myself making my gayness very clear ASAP for this reason.  I don’t know if straight men realise the extent of this.”  Most of the week, I had been thinking of the flipside of this statement.

Photo by Kristine Hansen / Mug: Illi Art Collection / Gift of Michael and Eric.

I saw a female friend post something about women’s obsession with serial killer podcasts and shows that was meant to be funny.  And for me it isn’t funny.  There is a through-line from the statement “[Cis] Men are afraid women will laugh at them.  Women are afraid men will kill them.” to women’s obsession with those podcasts and shows.  Watching them is about knowing the worst – What if a man murdered me?  What would that be?  Would I be able to survive?  How would I get out?  In my own home, what are the ways out?  Where are the knives?  Anything else I could use to defend myself?  That’s what that obsession is about.  

That fear, the fear that men will kill us, is a trauma we carry from young ages.  I cannot tell you the number of men – and I mean MEN – who asked me if I was a natural redhead from the age of nine or ten onwards.  In high school, a fellow redheaded female classmate and I would discuss this and how best to respond.    

At the age of 45, I still tell my woman friends to text me when they are home safely, regardless of their ages.  We are all still hyper-vigilant about our personal safety.  That doesn’t change with age, wrinkles, weight, or strength.  

When I’ve felt most safe among men is among my gay male friends.  Dancing.  Having a meal.  Having a drink.  By safe, I don’t mean I expected any one of them to throw themselves in front of a punch or fight someone.  Rather, I felt they wouldn’t harm me.  I know I’m not alone in those feelings.

Until my friend texted me that screencap, I hadn’t thought about the shift of the emotional weight of it to our gay male friends.  Toxic masculinity transfers hypervigilance and fear, and the trauma from both, to women. We in turn let that trauma and fear go in the presence of gay men.  And those gay men who sense our hypervigilance and fear – at risk to themselves – feel the need to make their gayness known clearly and early so that we will let go.   These men take on that emotional weight.   How beautiful and loving and heartbreaking.  

All of which is to say we need to kick toxic masculinity to the curb to save us all the trauma and the emotional weight we shift among each other.

 That’s the evening tea.

My First Tattoo

Good Morning, y’all.

I found this mug this morning.  I’d forgotten I kept it.  It’s a memory of my first tattoo.  Here’s that story. 

I’d always wanted a tattoo, but hearing the advice of others, I waited until I knew what I wanted.  You are committing something in ink to your body permanently.  It should mean something.  It took even longer than my cousin who did get a tattoo after once telling me no tattoos because they’ll look awful when you are old and wrinkly.  (Who cares?). But around my 27h birthday, while shopping with my friend Ericka, I figured out what I wanted.  

I have long believed that a joyous life is the goal.  Happiness, used frequently as the mark, is fleeting.  You can be happy one hour and not the next hour.  Joy, on the other hand, is life’s undercurrent that keeps you going.  Even when you most despair, joy is what moves you forward.  A symbol for joy.

Coincidently, my Stepmom (Can we get a better word for this person?  Kathy has been in my life since I was four.  I’m open to suggestions.) called me to inform me that for that year, when I was home in Chicago visiting family, my birthday present would be a tattoo.  In fact, it would be a family trip for all to get tattooed.

So, around my 27th birthday, Kathy, my Dad, Kathy’s nephew Jim, his wife Jen, and I all hopped into Jim’s and Jen’s conversion Jen for the trip from the northwest suburbs of Chicago to Jade Dragon Tattoo.  (My brother wanted to go desperately, but he was not yet 18 years old.). Kathy was getting her second tattoo, on her ankle, and that required her to be in a separate room to recline accordingly.  Jim and Jen were getting tattoos – which number I couldn’t tell you, but far beyond Kathy’s second and my first.  They, too, were in private back rooms given the location of the tattoos they were getting and/or the clothing they would have to remove in order to get those tattoos.

This left me in the front room with three open stations from which artists worked.  I knew what I wanted to have tattooed, the artist confirmed that the art was correct.  I proceeded to the middle station of the three where the young male artist began his work.

My Dad, on the other hand, wandered about “attempting” to decide on a tattoo.  I suggested a Viking or a Norwegian something.  He thought about a little scuba guy.  Avid scuba divers when they first lived in Florida, it had been long since they had lived in Florida and been scuba diving.  I pointed out that he was committing something in permanent ink to his body, and he hadn’t dived in years.  My Dad took this to mean I didn’t approve and has forever used this as the reason he didn’t get a tattoo.  Really, he just didn’t want to get one.  

At the same time, the tattoo artist working on me and the other free artists were circled about talking about me.  My clothing didn’t require me to remove everything – only to shift straps of my spaghetti strap tank and my bra – while my back was being tattooed.  I was a cute 27-year-old, and we all chatted, of course, with the male artists asking me if I had other tattoos.  

“No,” I replied.  

“What?  I don’t believe it.  Surely you have a piercing?”  

“Yes.  I do.”  

“Where?”

“I’ll tell you when my dad leaves the room.”

And so, it went, chatting about tattoos and piercings.  And I’ll tell you this, as soon as the tattoo artist working on my back stared, I knew I’d be getting another tattoo.  To all those people who say they will only get one:  HA!  That’s what we all say.  

It’s a great memory – and one, even though my Dad blames me – I treasure.  For its fun.  For its wackiness (We drove from the suburbs to the city in a conversion van in the early aughts for family tattoos.).  For the tattoos.

Now I have two tattoos, and I have plans for at least two more.

Mug:  Jade Dragon Tattoo

4 February 2021

Good Morning, y’all.

This year I am a student in Desiree Adaway’s Freedom School, a course taught from a black feminist perspective (Audre!  Angela!  bell!) focusing on analysis, intellectual framework, and practical tools to think critically about oppression and actively move towards liberation.  We started with one of my favorites, identity (Audre!). 

Among the reading for the first class is a piece that discusses the ways in which white women continue to promote, implement, and reinforce patriarchal and capitalist models of leadership.  One of the points made is that the focus on the future or a future vision that is valued or more important than anything that may be happening in the present – including challenges or problems that need to be addressed now.  And that focus is unrealistic because reaching that future vision is not a fix.  And more than likely, you don’t ever reach that future vision.  If you do reach it, it won’t fix anything.   (Why?  Those now problems you aren’t addressing.).  

On that point, this past weekend I was chatting with a friend who works at a firm in another part of the country.  That person told me that instead of the founding partner or any of the other partners (all white, with one white woman) addressing any of the firm’s issues regarding associate retention – structural, cultural, educational, etc. – the firm implemented a deferred compensation program.     

Let me repeat:  the firm cannot keep associates because of current issues with structure, culture, and education.  Associates leave.  As a solution, the firm looked to the future.  The firm will pay you 2/3 of a first year base salary and defer the final third until you have been here six years.  Your second year, the firm will pay you a little more and keep a little less as deferred compensation.  If you leave before the six years, you lose every deferred salary dollar.  Now lawyers graduate with a lot of debt, unless someone else is paying those bills.  Not only are these associates struggling to get by during these years on a considerably smaller salary, but the associates are still leaving this firm.  The future plan is not working.  Big surprise!

If the future vision is to be a viable law firm years down the road, the future vision plan isn’t working.  If the future vision is a law firm that lasts long beyond the lifetime of the founding partners – a legacy - the future vision plan isn’t working.  If the future vision is to keep more money as associates still leave, well, that plan is working - for now.  In the interim, people are miserable, and associates keep leaving.  They’ll keep leaving.  And the future does not look bright for your firm.

What fuckery is this?  It’s patriarchy.  It’s capitalism.  Your future vision is cutting you down now.

(I have so many other thoughts on this firm and the focus on future vision.  But this is all for now.)

Mug:  Society6 / CynthiaF

22 January 2021

Good Morning, y’all.

Today is the 48th Anniversary of the United States Supreme Court Decision Roe v. Wade, the decision that found that child-bearing people have a right to abortion, overturning a hundred years of laws born of racism and sexism. 

The two factors that are most determinative to a woman’s ability to provide for herself (backed by data) are (1) personal bodily autonomy over reproductive decisions, and (2) access to education.  As to personal bodily autonomy, 1 in 4 women in the US will have an abortion by the age of 45.  Everyone loves someone who had an abortion.  

But being pro-choice isn’t enough.  Broaden your lens to encompass and include the right to access and have a safe abortion in a Reproductive Justice lens, which is an intersectional approach encompassing race, class, and gender politics focusing on access.  Reproductive Justice is the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.  Not only do you have the human right to make these decisions, but access to abortion, contraception, sex education, physicians, STI prevention and care, alternative birth options, adequate prenatal and pregnancy care, domestic violence assistance, adequate wages to support families, safe homes, and so much more.  (Explanation via SisterSong)

Consider what lack of access to an abortion can do.  Published in 2020, the Turnaway Study followed a thousand women over ten years – women who were able to have an abortion and women who were denied an abortion.  The study found serious consequences of being denied a wanted abortion on women’s health and well-being. Women denied a wanted abortion who have to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term have four times greater odds of living below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). In addition, women denied abortion are:

·     More likely to experience serious complications from the end of pregnancy including eclampsia and death

·     More likely to stay tethered to abusive partners

·     More likely to suffer anxiety and loss of self-esteem in the short term after being denied abortion

·     Less likely to have aspirational life plans for the coming year

The study also finds that being denied abortion has serious implications for the children born of unwanted pregnancy, as well as for the existing children in the family.  (Note:  the study describes women, but remember that people can be pregnant.) 

Since Roe v. Wade, forced birthers (because that’s what they are – people who believe in forcing a pregnant person to give birth) have pushed laws to eliminate access to abortion in various ways, including TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws, which are laws intended or resulting in restricting the availability or practice that are arbitrary or difficult to implement, do not improve safety, and are aimed at closing abortion clinics.  These efforts result in legal challenges that forced birthers hope will make it to the Supreme Court and that the Court will overturn Roe and its progeny cases.  Extremist groups target physicians and clinics, and more and more physicians who can provide abortions are less likely to do it.   

What can you do?  Continue to support – via funding or writing or marching or whatever your lane is – organizations working on Reproductive Justice.  And for today, consider a donation to the National Network of Abortion Funds, which provides money to pregnant people seeking access to abortion, including the cost of the procedure, travel to the clinic, lost wages, etc.  Many jurisdictions require a waiting period, multiple visits, and clinics are often located far away, requiring time off, travel, hotel, and the cost of the procedure.  The National Network – and its partner funds at the local level – seeks to eliminate financial and logistical barriers to abortion access. 

And the next time it comes up, work like hell to eliminate the Hyde Amendment.  We need federal funding of abortions. 

Mug: National Network of Abortion Funds

For more information:
Sister Song – Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective
Reproductive Justice: An Introduction by Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger
The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women and the Consequences of Having – or Being Denied – an Abortion by Diana Green Foster, PhD
When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973 by Leslie J. Reagan
Rewire News Group is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization dedicated to reshaping the national dialogue on all things sex by making it more inclusive, positive, and centered on justice. Its mission is to inspire you to own your relationship to sex, abortion, parenthood, and power.

helping those you don't know.

The world is aware of the tragedy that occurred on a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, last week.  A lone gunman shot members and volunteers of the Republican team playing in the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity and the plained clothes Capitol Police on site protecting the Majority Whip during their early morning practice.  

What I was shocked to find out is that the brother of one of my dearest college friends was there, Matt Mika.  It is known that Matt was injured critically.  Although he is progressing and better than he was when he was rolled in to The George Washington University Hospital, Matt still faces a long road to recovery.  With that in mind, please consider helping Matt and his family at this time on the Go Fund Me page set up for Matt. 

Matt signed the game ball for last week's game:  Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.  #9 Matt Mika.   In that spirit, onward.