So, the other day at RH Reality Check — a fantastic place I love and am so glad to have a column at, but the fundies do tend to seriously abound there — I was discussing what kinds of sex education programs exactly Obama supported for young children which the McCain campaign purposefully misrepresented.  In a word, it’s good touch-bad touch stuff, about personal safety and boundaries, the kinds of things ECE and elementary educators and community educators have addressed for an age. Nothing new here to see, kids.

When someone suggested parents could opt out of this, I had to ask why anyone would, really, and how, exactly, one was supposed to teach that age without ever addressing these issues with children since they tend to come up just among children themselves with some frequency.  I got a response which read,

Here we see why all this “opt-out” business is a sham. If Ms. Corinna’s mentality is pervasive among public school educators, then as a parent, “opting-out” of sex ed for your child is tantamount to entering yourself in the school’s sex offender database.

There is more (fairly fruitless) discussion there, but when I read that, all I could do on this end of the connection was silently mouth, “The fuck?!?”

(And not just because I’ve never worked at a school with a sexual offender database, nor can I imagine that I’d ever, as an educator, finding myself looking to use a child as any kind of weapon, retaliate against a parent or presume that a parent who objected must be abusing their child.)

It wasn’t progressives who have been at the root of, or in support of, sexual abuse panics.  It’s not progressives or educators (or both) who would do children and their families harm by false smears because we couldn’t have things go our way.  It’s not been progressives who look to annihilate, execute, terrorize, slander or otherwise go nuts harming or killing people to weed out “the (invisible) enemy.” The Patriot Act? Vietnam? The Rosenbergs? Lynchings and whites-only swimming pools?  The Salem Witch Trials?  Our current immigration laws? Not us, dude.

And then it struck me: I keep seeing this common theme over the years where it appears that neocons and fundies aren’t so much worried about us making OUR mistakes, or doing things the way we tend to do them.  Rather, they seem much more concerned that we are going to make THEIR mistakes, or use the tools and tricks they have tended to wield (and we have tended to strongly protest) against them.  I also feel like a certain sector of that population is so drawn to the idea of a fearful, omnipotent god simply because they don’t trust themselves without one.  What keeps them “in line,” or behaving in the way they feel they should, is driven strongly by a potential punishment if they behave differently.  In other words, I am seeing a whole lot of projection.

This is but a theory, and it may or may not be apt.  If it is apt, it’s going to be mighty tough to convince a group of people who don’t trust themselves without a certain structure — I’m not entirely sure real esteem can even happen in hierarchy — why some of us can be trusted without it and don’t feel we need it, or even if we share it, see it differently, incorporate it differently in our lives, and don’t feel that those without it are automatically untrustworthy.  In terms of hysterical panics — like the red scare, like the ritual child sexual abuse panics, like terrorist panic — if they see them as valid (and they tend to) and not as grave errors and abuses, it’s going to be tough to get them to see why we disagree, and why for those of us who do disagree, we are incredibly vigilant about NOT doing anything remotely like that as part and parcel of who we are and what our own ethics are all about.   If it is apt theory on my part, what is this really about?  Is it as basic as being about low self-esteem (when it isn’t megalomania), or is that totally simplistic and ridiculous?  If it is that basic, how, exactly, do we help raise their esteem, particularly if it’s trapped in power-over/power-under, and particularly when so often we’re the -under in that equation?

I have an aunt-by-marriage on my mother’s side who is one of my favorite people in that family.  She’s a longtime born-again Christian in a family of Irish Catholics, and I can assure you she wouldn’t be saying the kinds of ridiculous things I keep hearing from people who say they are like her. When we have a conversation, now and then she injects some scripture in, but in the way you have a conversation — it’s an inclusion, with room left for everyone else’s inclusions as well. She voices what she does because she is expressing something for herself, making a connection, looking for her thoughts to be one part of the whole quilt of the discussion.  She’s also always been massively supportive of me and what I do, is a big fan of the book, and is a very potent but gentle caller-outer of bullshit and hypocrisy.  Maybe I need to ask her about this.  I feel like she’d get what I’m saying (or tell me I’m being totally bizarre) and have some interesting perspective.

This stuff hurts my freaking head, man.  Not because I’m an idiot, but just because I’m so tired of thinking about it and trying to figure it out, especially when I’m trying to do so at the same time I’m trying to discuss things reasonably rather than giving it all the hell up, calling them a big doodyhead and heading off to enjoy my rights while I still have them.

Speaking of interesting perspective, I FINALLY came into touch with someone who is pro-life, and who is also feminist, vegetarian, antiwar, antioppression and against the death penalty.   I have been trying to find someone like this for YEARS, because I felt like the ONLY productive discussion I could ever have with someone who was pro-life was with someone who wasn’t kidding around when they talk about valuing “life.”  So far we’ve had some amazing exchanges, even though we’re really just getting started, and while I don’t expect either of us to agree with the other when all is said and done, it so far seems pretty enlightening and awesome for us both.  Cool stuff.

* * * * * * * * *

Over the last couple weeks, I have, at last, met a goal I set last fall of having 10-mile rides here be not only something I can do, but my average ride, having accepted that the 20-mile rides on flat land that were the mainstay in Minneapolis and Chicago cannot happen on the hills here.  I’m peeved it took me so damn long to get there, but 10 is now not easy, but doable, and I can exceed that distance on a good day, too.  Friday morning I actually just spaced out for a while on a trail and wound up doing 13 by accident.  Didn’t space what distance I’d done by the time I had to pedal the long grade up to get home, and my pubic bone still feels like a dart shooting straight up my coochie everytime I sit down or try and do something more pleasant with that location, mind you, but still.

* * * * * * * * *

By the by, we’re starting a new guest-blog series at Scarleteen written entirely by people of color on all things sexuality and sexual health.  I have a nice handful of cool people on board who are going to get started, but I would love to have even more.  Anyone interested? We’re also getting started on our election materials, so if anyone wants to help there, that’d also be fantastic.

* * * * * * * * *

In other news, it came up during a hangout with friends at the house that I’ve had more than one editor make clear that if I were willing to write a memoir about my adolescence, I’d probably have a contract in three seconds or less.

While it’s entirely possible I’ll do that at some point in my life, a) that point isn’t now, b) there’s no way I’d do that unless most of my family were dead, just because the worst offenders would make my life a hell yet again otherwise, and c) I can’t figure how I’d write something that’d mostly make someone want to off themselves while reading it, since so much of it would be about plain old awfulness.

But then it occurred to me that what I could do is simply write nothing but the GOOD moments that occurred during that occurred for me between the ages of 10 and 16.  Given the number of them, you’d have a clear understanding of how awful most of it was for me.  The extra bonus is that it’d also be a very, very short book to have to write.

I’m calling it 57 Minutes of Joy.

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Yeah: I’ve been just plain speechless.  A rare occurrence, to be sure.  Savor it.

I don’t know if it’s watching neocons identify sexism like it’s this brand new kind of insidious ugly which has ever existed before last weekend,

…if I’ve been too tired from tending to pregnant teenage girls living  in the world the rest of us do and whom no one is looking to elevate to sainthood (though better a slut than a political prop, to be sure),

… if it’s a certain sector all but rubbing their slimy hands with glee with the prospect that all this groundwork they’ve been laying and getting laid (fitting, that) will bring us to the point where they don’t even have to pretend we’re not fulling embracing facism anymore,

… or if I’m just starting my usual slow descent into election dread, in which case “Fuck me,” is really all one could have to say.

posted in Heather Corinna, in which I throw up in my mouth a little, the god squad | permalink | comments (6) »

Antichoice, bible-thumping, sex-only-okay-for straight-marrieds-and-only-for-procreation trolls are really funny when they suggest Plato or Socrates as a suitable defense for their agenda and as in alignment with them when it comes to sexuality. Especially when they were serious.

Know what’s even funnier than that?

When it’s that day you need to tidy up the toys. So you go to head downstairs, your hands so overfull with dildos that you drop them and — bOINg! BOing! boING! — they all go down the stairs.

It’s peppy penises! A prancing phallus! A jouncing Johnson! Springing Schongs! Ding dong!

It’s almost as funny when after the Great Dildo Circus of 2008 is over (wah!), after you’ve gathered them all back up and are going to the dishwasher, tears still on your cheeks from amusing yourself so, you look up to see your neighbor crossing the lane, stopping dead in her tracks and looking at you as if…well, as if you were a woman laughing and crying all by herself loading an armload of dildos into the dishwaher.

Almost, but not quite.

P.S. The San Francisco trip was very brief, but very nice. Having lots of time with Robert & Carol is always a treat, I was able to spend time with Melissa twice (and I do not know what it is about us, but we have the coolest thing that happens when both our brains are in the same space), met a lot of very lovely people, had a productive meeting, and spent a ridiculous amount of money on too many cups of impossible-to-resist Blue Bottle coffee, which was — unfortunately for my wallet — stumbling distance from Robert and Carol’s pad.

Honestly, I have had a lot of good coffee in my life, have even trained people to make it as a gig way back when, but I do think I can say I have never had better. And they do vegan mochas with gorgeous shaved dark chocolate which you get a thick mouthful of at the end of the cup. Heaven.

I thought the reception on Friday was a good time and the presentation/discussion Sunday went well. I wish, for the latter, that I hadn’t had to abbreviate answers to VERY big questions due to time, since it made me feel like I was almost diminishing some issues I thought were big’uns, but one does what one can.

posted in Heather Corinna, Auntie Heather's Helpful Hints, sex/life, simple joys, the god squad | permalink | comments (4) »

Before I head off the San Francisco — where for the religious right to get at me, they’d have to crawl through an ocean of queers first, who probably would rub their cooties all over them and turn them gay — after a few hours in Slumberland, I feel the need to sum up my week in but two words: holy shit.

Which does a rather amazing job, really, of saying it all in very short order.

posted in Heather Corinna, reproductive rights, activism, women, abortion, in which I throw up in my mouth a little, the god squad | permalink | comments (2) »

Every now and then, I seriously have to wonder what on earth I can possibly do to convince determined, self-assigned missionaries that I am a seriously lost cause.

Do I change my sigline in places I write or discuss to, Don’t bother: I’m in hell already? Do I wear the blood of baby goats or a hairshirt when I go out to do talks? A t-shirt that reads “Jesus Loves Me…but he told me to tell you that he’s getting pissed off at you?”

Just passing through, having dealt with some wacko in the comments of some of my recent columns at RH Reality Check. I actually don’t have to deal with this stuff as much anymore as I have in the past — I think most of them have long since figured out that if they bring this stuff to Scarleteen, it never sees the light of day, and if they email me, I hit delete. We’ve also had some amusing exchanges in the past where when they did find a way to go on a preach-a-thon, the teens they were so sure were so malleable and not-at-all-wise to their shit basically have told them to shove it and get the hell out of their space.

It tends to only be when I branch out somewhere new anymore that they come back out to pray play. (Today I couldn’t help but sing Don’t pray for me, Saint Christina…) Can’t say if it’s a coincidence or not, but this week one of my favorite “Bad, bad, evil sex lady!” emails (I actually only got the one this week: again, anymore, those really are the strong minority these days) was someone explaining to me that I clearly was unqualified to give anal sex the weight it should have because I used the word “jellybean” — a clearly frivolous, flippant confection, unless jellybeans connote something else I’m not aware of — in the title of an advice answer.

What reaction I was supposed to have to this missive beyond the one I did — wild laughter, which I presume was not the wanted reaction — I couldn’t begin to tell you. Why this was someone’s Very Serious Issue that day which deserved even three seconds of their time, I also just do not know. But I did at least seriously consider switching to creampuffs the next time I talk about assfucking. Creampuffs require artistry and are a bit more upper-crusty, therefore I presume them to be a more suitable choice. Plus, that should keep the appropriate amount of homophobic innuendo intact.

Obviously, I could prattle on about these kinds of annoyances forever, but there’s just little point. It’s not likely to even come to a full halt, and even if I didn’t do what I do with my living, I’d probably still have to hear this crap from someone at least every now and then. Heck, I had my mother’s mother calling me a devil while praying for my soul as a child for as far back as I can remember (primarily because a) I was technically illegitimate, b) no one baptized me, and c) there was just something so clearly and essentially wretched and evil about me that someone needed to save me because this shit obviously wasn’t going to save itself). I’m afraid I’m just plain old savior-bait.

But that doesn’t mean I still don’t want to kvetch about it for a minute now and again.

Okay, my minute’s up. That’s better.

posted in Heather Corinna, apropos of nothing, workworkwork, burning questions, the god squad | permalink | comments (6) »