Her Struggle (and Success) Deserves to be Known

WARNING: This post will contain descriptions of violence and sexual assault. It is the truth as I remember it. If you don't like that, don't read it. I'm writing this because my cousin Sherry was killed last week in a murder-suicide in her home in Cedar Rapids Iowa. You can read the article in the main newspaper for that city here.

I hadn't seen or heard from Sherry since 1989 after one of my visits home from college. As you can see in this obituary for her, her life was unknown to many of us who grew up with her. But I knew more. I want to tell you what happened during that visit, the history of her life as I knew it to that point, because sadly she had been conditioned to accept less than she was worth in life. That wasn't right. The truth deserves to be known, because maybe, just maybe, it will make someone out there realize that what happens today to their children will impact those children's entire life.

Therapy Dogs Group; Sherry second human from left

As readers of this blog know, I'm a survivor of childhood abuse. As horrible as that was, it was a bright sunny life compared to my cousin Sherry's. I wish I had more photos to share than I do, but I remember reading a book about Liza Minnelli as a child, a kid's picture book, and looking at my cousin Sherry and telling her, "You look like her." Sherry had pale skin, dark eyes, and black hair that she always wore short. She also wore glasses, which I thought hid those beautiful eyes, so I'm at least pleased to see that in her adult years she stopped wearing glasses. I tried to find out more about her life. She worked in the public and community school system in Cedar Rapids. I found the above photo of her and a group of people who worked with therapy dogs: Sherry is the second person from the left. A local TV station in Cedar Rapids had this report that mentions her work and the aftermath of her death.

A high school classmate of Sherry's contacted me privately to let me know about a fund that is currently being raised to help support Sherry's work with therapy dogs at the school where she worked for many years. If you'd like to help, please make checks out to Prairie Hill PTO then mail them to:
Prairie Hill Elementary
Attn: Scott Schipper
401 76th Ave SW
Cedar Rapids, IA 52404

Sherry became a very valued member of the school system she served. This is from the Prairie Hill Elementary School where she worked: During the week of March 2-6 we would like to take the time to honor the life of our friend Sherry through the giving of random acts of kindness. We believe that even through hurting it is important to spread joy and make a positive impact on our community, family, and friends. Each student will be bringing home a small card to pass along when they do a random act of kindness. Take a picture of it, or write a short story describing it, or both and submit them to us. We will be turning them into a collective display, or book, or both in the coming weeks.

But let's go back to my first memories of Sherry and what I knew about her life before she left home, left town, and left our family in 1989.

Sherry lived with her grandmother, my aunt Maureen, and her brother, Jeff, from the time she was at least three until she left home soon after high school graduation. I don't have the legal records, but I recall being told that Aunt Maureen got custody of them because their mother, Maureen's daughter, had abandoned them after years of an abusive marriage, and Aunt Maureen was worried about them being the two youngest kids in that house. They might have been better off in foster care or with another family member.

My aunt Maureen was a nasty piece of work.  Prior to Sherry and Jeff she had two adopted children: a son she claimed could do no wrong who later committed suicide, and a daughter she claimed was a liar and could do nothing right, which sounds exactly like what she said about Sherry and Jeff. Her sexism is astonishing to me today, and I have to wonder how many male abusers are raised in an environment where they feel free to do whatever they want – and how many female survivors are raised in an environment where they feel as if they can do nothing right.

Jeff raped Sherry. Not once, not twice, but over the course of her entire life. She'd tell me about it, but she rebuffed my attempts to get her to at least go to the school counselor. Any words anyone said against her grandmother brought out fear and anger; our last discussion was an argument, because I was urging her to tell the authorities and get away from that woman. I ended our argument by telling her that when she wanted help, she knew where to find me. I've been wracked by guilt this week, thinking that I should have called the police, should have grabbed her and made her tell someone. I couldn't even do that to protect myself; I wasn't yet conscious enough of my own power, let alone trained in any way to really help another survivor.

I witnessed a sexual assault when I was visiting my aunt Maureen's home in the early 1970s. I was four, Sherry would have been three, and Jeff was seven or eight. We were playing a game in another room while my mother and her sister (Maureen) visited in the kitchen. Jeff scooted over, grabbed at me, and tried to put his hands down my pants. I punched him. While I hadn't been able to protect myself from the adult man who had previously molested me a few times, I was big enough to defend myself against Jeff. I remember him looking at me with confusion and then just scooting over to his sister and shoving her skirt up and putting his hands under her panties; she was crying but didn't fight back. I ran into the kitchen and told my mom and Aunt Maureen, who came back into the other room, where now the other two kids were sitting apart, Sherry with tears in her eyes and Jeff with that perpetually confused and vacant look he always had. My mother grabbed me while my aunt Maureen was yelling that I was lying, that Sherry was lying, that Sherry always lied, and how poor Jeff was an angel.

My mother never took me back to that house when I was a child, and I have no more memories of my cousins until I am in the 9th grade and Sherry showed up in the 8th grade in one of my classes. My mother did that often – she'd simply remove me from a dangerous or abusive situation, and we'd never talk about it again.

Suddenly my aunt Maureen's health took a turn for the worse, so my mother was driving her to doctor's appointments, and we were spending more time with them again. Sherry and I were in junior high school, and Jeff was in high school by that time. Aunt Maureen was always saying that Jeff should date me, an idea that spread to other female family members ... CREEPY! The house they lived in seemed like a normal house except for Sherry's and Jeff's bedrooms. To get to Sherry's bedroom you had to go through his – or, put another way, the only way for Sherry to get out of her room was through Jeff's ... who sets up a house like that? Was that how her mother's bedroom had been set up? Did this same thing happen to her mother? A cousin recently told me that she heard through the family that Aunt Maureen moved Sherry into her bedroom and put a lock on her door later in Sherry's teen years but I never heard or saw that.

Old Timey Photo of Clique taken 1986 or 1986

Aunt Maureen always made Jeff accompany Sherry when she and I wanted to hang out just the two of us, but somehow, sometimes, we got her away. She joined my clique of friends by the time we got to high school; it got her away from that house for a while, and she got to see what other boys were like. Our clique was for the artistic geeks, you could say, focused on a core group of students in the same year; neither Sherry nor I were part of that core group, but we were part of the basic members; we stayed until the core group graduated in 1987.

Date or Friend? Prom 1988

Some new people came and went into our clique as new boyfriends and girlfriends entered the lives of the basic members. One of Sherry's high school classmates sent me this photo of her with one a young man at the prom in 1988... I don't recall him so he might not have interacted with our clique very much. During my senior and her junior year the core members were gone so we were moving into different groups of friends, a necessary thing to do given that we were not going to graduate the same year. Anyone know more about this uniformed guy named Tom?

Sherry & Boyfriend Summer 1986?

Getting away from her brother meant that Sherry could see new ways for boys and girls to interact. Okay, sure, we could be super goofy in our clique, but she also had boyfriends, including this dude, whom I later dated myself. Oddly that didn't cause a rift between us; dating among members of the clique was about as common as bringing in new girlfriends and boyfriends. Dating was more of a group dynamic, often with one-on-one dates afterward. We circulated between different houses -- some of us lived on farms, others in town, and once members of the clique could drive, we'd go to everyone's house. Going to Sherry's was very rare and very uncomfortable, because once more her brother had to be included. It was just easier to have her over to another person's house than deal with the atmosphere there. I never talked with the other clique members ... did they know what was happening? Did they sense the unease that both Sherry and I felt there?

It was difficult to talk with Sherry, even when I saw Jeff touching her inappropriately. I always spoke up and stopped him, I often sat between them in the back of the pickup, and he knew better than to touch me. But by then we all knew that telling the adults in our family would accomplish nothing. As I said above, she rejected any of my attempts to get her to tell a school official or even our minister, sometimes with a lot of angry words on both sides. Maybe she was told so many horror stories about her abusive father – and they are quite frightening – that she thought she had it good? She did tell me that she hated to be with Jeff because he came into her bedroom and touched her, made her do things.

A few years after I was far enough from Iowa to start dealing with my own childhood, I remembered the above incident with the game and the assault. I asked my mother about it, and she confirmed it. She told me more as well, like how her sisters and brothers had a family meeting about the abuse in that house. She told me, and my father later confirmed it, that she and Dad offered to take in Sherry, but that Aunt Maureen convinced them to let her deal with it, claimed she didn't know. Nothing changed in that house.

Sherry Senior Photo

After our argument about her reporting her grandmother and getting out of that house, I never heard from or saw her again. I did hear and see a few things about her within the greater family over the years. One of my sisters responded to a call from Sherry and helped her move out and find an apartment right after she graduated from High School. I met her first husband once at a family gathering – she'd left him and their kids; their two daughters are still alive. After her death, I learned that she kept in touch with her daughters and they seemed to have had a good relationship; I'm very glad to learn that but I won't share their names with you because I never met them beyond that one time. I don't know how many husbands Sherry had over the years, but she does not seem to have had more children. Considering the role models she had and how she was raised, I'm amazed that she had what seems to have been a relatively stable life in Cedar Rapids for many years. But she always tried to be so very friendly and helpful out in public. Maybe, like me, she felt she could help others, even if she couldn't help herself.

As for Aunt Maureen? She died while I lived in NYC, sometime between 1995-97. I baked a cake and we had a party to celebrate her death. This paralleled the Easy Bake Oven cake I'd made at age 8 when my sister, who had been married to my first abuser, filed for divorce from him.

And Jeff? I once picked him up and shoved him against a wall at the local bowling alley when I found out that he was harassing my eldest niece (at least eight years younger than him) over the phone and in person around town, and even showing up at her school.  I told him that if I heard that he'd even looked at her again, I'd kill him. I learned later that he was found guilty of child molestation at least twice – after his first jail sentence, he did it again and was arrested again. I believe he is in jail for life now; if not, he should be.

Through all of this, Sherry managed to get decent grades in school, make friends, and do activities such as band, chorus, and bowling. So I want to ask folks with good memories to leave comments here after I share some more photos with Sherry in them.

Sherry was active in band, where she played French horn. I hope she continued to play some instrument as an adult. She always went to state musical competitions. In the photo to the right she's the first person on the lower right. I remember that sweater with the fruit slices.

Band was great, not just for music, but also to make friends. You got to take trips to various competitions, and you'd share lesson time with others, so you could get to know each other if you wanted to. Sherry is in the center of this photo in the second row.

Sherry was active in chorus as well. In addition to our high school chorus there were several smaller ensembles – mixed, mixed à capella, and girls' chorus. Chorus wasn't as active as band in terms of travelling around, but you'd spend a few hours a week and do a handful of shows each year for the school and by extension our little town. Sherry is the second from the right in the first row.

Her love of and ability with music went outside high school as well. I remember being part of a quartet – two boys and the two of us – in our church that sang for services a few times. We did pop songs that could be spun as Christian. We were also in the church youth group together. I wish I had photos of those times together. But one of her friends sent me a copy of a photo of Sherry singing at their senior prom in 1989; she also sang with a group of girls as well as this solo I'm told. Prom is one of those "school" events that you don't have to do so I wanted to include this photo to show more of her individual talent.

Sherry bowled as well; she was a better bowler than I. This was an activity our clique did often; I wish I had photos of us all bowling, but these newspaper clippings will have to do. In this image we see the top bowlers, boys and girls, from the various grades. Sherry is the second from the left in the second row.

Here's a photo of my junior prom that included Sherry. In the first one, she must have been dating a junior or senior, or maybe she was part of the pre-dinner serving team.  I hope someone remembers and leaves a comment to clarify. Aunt Maureen made her dresses; my mother made mine.

I loved my dress color so much, and we were always looking to save money, so for my senior prom, my mother just changed the details of my previous year's dress, while Sherry sported a new design and color. Which do you like better -- white with red or this blue one? I like them both on her.

Some of her friends from high school have sent me other photos since this post went live on Friday, March 6, 2015. I wanted to add in some of their images of her with her friends. The most common private comment I've received from these old friends were that my memories have answered questions for them and that they, too, lost touch. I think it is only fair to show Sherry with the people who did care for her over those years in Vinton. Like your high school days, I'm sure, the last day was one of mischief and lots of photos. Here we see Sherry (back with her arm around a teacher/secretary) and a group of others cleaning out their lockers and threatening to throw away textbooks.

Here we have her with a group of girl friends some of whom I know were in my grade. I love how happy she seems here. Yes, it was the 1980s... check out some of the puffy hair styles.

Please, please share some fond memories of Sherry in the comments.

Feeling Devalued -- Personal Demons or Reflection?

I'm a full-time writer now and that was both an easy and a difficult thing for me to do.

Easy to become a full-time author because I've always written.  In my childhood scrapbook my mother created I have my earliest short story from just when I was barely able to write, not my telling about my summer but an actual fictional work.  It was easy because even when I shouldn't have been writing I was constantly pulled into writing by my internal voices or Muses as artists like to say.

It was difficult to become a full-time writer  because it pulled me out of society and away from people.  I would have to make an effort to be around and with people.  That can feel forced and artificial but I do try.  But it was also very difficult because suddenly I would like immediate or even timely feedback.  Furthermore income as a writer is spotting and since I'm not a professional writer in the sense that I'll write anything to get paid, I get paid far less often than I might.

Sometimes like this week I feel devalued, underappreciated, and wonder if any of this is worth my time.  This is dangerous for me because I do have a history of suicidal thoughts. Of course that assumes you think having such thoughts is dangerous is that acting on them is wrong in the first place.  I'm told it is wrong and dangerous but to be honest, I don't necessarily agree.

So this is what is going on recently that may be contributing to these feelings.  Just so you know, I am aware of counters for each of these yet right now those counters feel more like lies to me that reality.

First I only have two conventions planned this year -- I've pulled back for economic and logistical reasons but this makes the few I have very important emotionally. I knew I wouldn't sale much at the last one without a new book I can physically sell but knowing didn't soften the emotional blow.  The other convention is in September right before my birthday and if that doesn't go well it could be emotionally very dangerous in a way I'll agree is dangerous.

Second even though I've recently marked a big milestone on The Chocolate Cult I've gotten only one comment on this on the blog itself and little feedback elsewhere.  What is the point of going through all the steps I do when no one cares enough to just say "this is awesome" or "I'm glad I stopped in to read today" or a similar thought.  Whenever I read something online I always leave a note of some type because I know how lonely it can be.

Third I've been sharing the betaed chapters of the first book in my next series and not getting much feedback though what I have gotten is helpful and the dialogue is good.  I've got a gamma editor lined up to go over the entire thing to look for plot or character problems -- a step I've never taken before -- before I even send it to my literary agent.  I'm sharing parts of myself and not getting much back until yesterday and today when suddenly a reader replies to five chapters... a bit too late for me to make any changes before my gamma has it, right?

Fourth I need to go through the last edits for this book chapter but I'm not feeling it even though they are probably nothing.  Last time I heard none of the other chapters were in for the first edit so why should I bust myself to hurry? Why can't others be on the ball? Why do I have to be the reliable one? Why can't I be one of the reliable ones?

Finally the last book in my trilogy came out and while I got kudos for the announcement the vast majority of my attempts to do any real promo stuff such as find reviewers has been met with silence.  I've seen my announcement shared once and yet every other day I'm sharing similar announcements from other writers and artists -- this feels very unfair to me and it is making me angry.

As often happens when I get angry that turns inward.  There must be something wrong with me that lets people ignore me.  What is it? I'm a dominant in charge lady in my house, I'm often the organizer of my friends and family when I was around them.  What the hell is happening to me?

It makes me feel and think things that I'm told are bad and dangerous but that actually just makes me feel these things more strongly.

#YesAllWomen -- The Chocolate Priestess's Story

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I wanted to expand on a post I did on Twitter and Facebook for the #YesAllWomen movement... or at least I hope it will become a movement that actually turns into actions and changes.  One way to try and do that is to continue to share stories so I'm going to start off what I hope is sharing by the rest of my sisters writing this blog.  Original text from my FB post is in Italics.

I am a survivor.

Some people still use the word victim perhaps because that is what the police use or what those who want to "help" use.  The problem with using or accepting the word victim is that it emphasises your powerlessness.  While your power may have been taken from you it was not all taken from you.  The fact that you survived, that you are here, shows that.  You could have given up, you could kill yourself, but you didn't, you haven't, you are here.

You are a survivor.

I survived childhood abuse ranging from the psychological to the sexual at the hands of men, boys, and even a mother. I tried to tell but nothing helpful was done.

When I was about 2 and a half, the boyfriend of my only sister who still lived at home digitally raped me while he put a hand over my mouth and told me that my sister liked this.  My parents weren't home and my sister was in another room.  He was fast and brutal, he was done by the time my sister came back into the room.  I didn't tell her because according to him she liked this sort of thing.

What type of little sister doesn't want to be like her big sister?

The next time he assaulted me it was with his brother at their house.  They opened their pants and brought out their dicks, they didn't touch, they didn't have to because their words, tone of voice, and actions threatened me.  I ran this time, I fell down the stairs trying to make my way back to my sister who was talking with their mother.  I told, the mother and brothers denied; I can't remember what my sister did other than take me home, but the boyfriend was with her.  I told my mother but the boyfriend said I was lying.  My mother believed me but didn't do anything other than forbid me being with the boyfriend without her there.

He came into my room a few months later at Christmas just to show me that he could still get to me if he wanted to.

The way my mother dealt with it was a pattern that made my mother partner to the abuse.

When I was assaulted by a cousin and witnessed him assaulting his sister and told both my mother and their grandmother who was their guardian... my mother kept me away from them for a good five years until we were in the same school.  I found out years later that my cousin raped his sister regularly after that point all through high school until she finally left.

By the time I was raped at the age of six by a high boyfriend of a high babysister, I didn't even bother telling my mother.  I just hid my bloody underpants in the trash and demanded a lock for my door.  I think she must have known because I never had a babysitter after that; my parents took me everywhere or we just stayed at home.

Her actions said that this was just something that happened that girls had to learn to deal with... I often wonder what happened to my mother when she was a girl but she never wanted to talk about it and she's dead now so I'll never know.

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I could have given up at that point but for some reason I instead started defending others and I learned to defend myself.

I should have given up, hidden away, since that was the pattern my mother showed me.  I didn't and I think I didn't because I had nieces and nephews ranging in age from only six months younger to 18 years younger.

Maybe my personality just isn't cut out for not defending others?  Maybe it's the same drive that pushed me to be a storyteller, leader, teacher, and dominant in my household.  By all rights it should have be nurtured out of me especially when coupled with my mother's psychological abuse that tried to get me to be the servant of all... YUCK!

I channeled her "lessons" into protecting others and by the time I was 16 I was starting to apply those lessons to protecting myself.

I survived a psychologically abusive boyfriend in high school who used to use his pets in an attempt to coerce me into activities I didn't want. I can't say the way I fought back was ideal but the coercion stopped.

I had a few boyfriends in high school and I stupidly went for the asshole instead of the nice boys who wanted to just please me.  I don't think it is because I really liked bad boys more, because frankly other than his attempts at violent emotional manipulation he wasn't bad in most ways.  He used to threaten the kittens on his farm, actually put one in a microwave and threatened to turn it on unless we went back to his bedroom and did something... I fought back by turning the tables on him sexually and I actually beat him up a few times in response to his threats.  The threats stopped.

Now I'm not saying that was a great way to fight back but frankly I never should have had to fight back at all!  He could have just asked for sex or even tried to seduce me into sex, that's part of our mating rituals, but threatening tiny animals?

These experience taught me some important things -- go for the nicer boys and you have the power.

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I survived sexual assaults when I was at college both in the USA and in Italy. I fought back each time and even contacted the police who managed to catch one of them.

Of course there may always be someone out there with more raw physical strength or the benefit of surprise.  You can't control others, only yourself.  I think it is very sad that I was trained by my high school in self-defense workshops to defend myself but it came in handy.

I was sexual assaulted by a complete stranger in my own dormitory in the basement one day.  I had seconds to think of what to do with him on top of me on the couch where I had been just watching TV waiting for my laundry to be done.  I told him that this was cool but I really needed to check my laundry and then I'd be back and not distracted by it.  I don't normally lie, I don't see the need 99.9% of the time, but I had lived with lies my entire life, I know how to do it and I did it well then.  I went out of the room toward the laundry and then up the stairs to get my RA who called campus security and the police.  The police were almost pleading with me to press charges, make a statement; I was surprised that they thought I'd do otherwise.  It turned out that this man had done this at least three previous times; he did it once more but because of my report the campus security was able to react faster and soon the police had him.

I don't blame the other women he assaulted for their assaults; I do blame them for not doing more about it after the fact.  I know that won't be a popular thing to say and I've probably pissed off my sister writers here on Butt-Kicking Women but I feel strongly that this is the truth.  As long as women do nothing, as long as we just mourn and cope then we continue to be powerless not by because we are but because we chose to be.  When you are quiet, when you refuse to press charges, when you shy away from letting others know, then you support your abusers continued behavior and you become his partner in crime just like my mother.

I didn't just stop there -- I wrote letters to the school newspaper and my hometown newspaper letting them know what happened to me.  I even stepped out into the hall when tour guides were bringing prospective students and parents to campus and told my story if I heard the tour guide make a stupid claim about how safe the dorm was.  I'm sure the university higher ups hated me.

In Rome I was fondled three times on the public bus system -- those were crimes of opportunity and crowdedness and I could have ignored them but I didn't.  The first I was with my boss from the library where I worked and told him immediately as I stepped away; he glared at the perp and stepped between us.  The second time I jerked away and told the guy off and some wonderful old lady started hitting him with her big purse.... big purses my Italian girl friends told me held big books so you could hit men who did that in public.  It was so common that no one stepped in when the old woman hit the perp and young women were prepared to carry big books to do this.

The third time I am most proud of my action because this time I grabbed the assaulting hand, curled mind into a fist around it, and punched back with it into the perp's own groin as hand as I could.  He gasped and pulled the stop cord and got off as quickly as he could.

I stopped taking the bus after that and just walked everywhere I needed to go unless I was with friends who could all gather around in a group.  Was that being afraid and letting my fear guide me or was it removing myself from potential threats?  I'd like to think it was the second.

I helped a group of other survivors in support groups, worked for the sexual violence awareness program on my campus, and as many of you know worked as an educator on sexual issues for a several years even when it brought me negative attention back in NYC at Columbia University. I've worked to educate not just the general public and those in the support groups but also health care providers.

I've done many things that I hope have been helpful not just for women but for men as well in regards to sexual violence and sexuality.  I pushed at Drake University to have a men's table for our Sexual Violence Awareness Week.  I reached out to men I knew had been raped or assaulted just to offer a shoulder, an ear, just plain old recognition that it happened to them, too.

I've spoken up to defend the men in my life when they have been targeted by other men for a perceived weakness in their manhood.

After I stopped letting myself be attracted to the "bigger man" and starting dating real men, I realized that they, too, are targeted by other men.  This ranges from the messages they receive in mass media to the fearful looks they get from women when they are in elevators or just walking down the street to actually assaults and insults from other men.

Before I got married my then boyfriend and I were walking down a street from my summer apartment to campus where I was working.  The frat house were on the way and as we walked some asshats decided that they needed to not catcall me but insult him by telling him how he didn't deserve a hot babe like me (also insulting to me by the way since I wasn't a work of art for them to jerk off to but another human being).  I turned around at one point and marched back and told the ringleader off. He was shocked, didn't know what to do, my boyfriend had to pull me away before I started getting physically violent.

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See just like I was motivate to protect my nieces, nephews, and others, I was motivated to protect him.  I've done this for other male friends and partners, too, but I also try to get them to talk and act on their own.

These asshole who were raised to think that they have a right to take whatever or whomever they want they don't listen to women or girls, they might or might not listen to their mothers, but they very well might listen to you.  Men, boys, fathers, uncles, grandfathers... the ball here is in your court.  Either teach yourselves and each other to control yourselves or you may discover that women and girls will reach out collective limit and fight back in a way you really don't want.

My point -- stand up for yourself and your loved ones, teach your children to stop all of this gender and sexual aggression, or in my opinion you are also the abusers that the rest of us must survive.

I haven't and won't do the one thing that is really going to make a difference -- raise my sons to be human beings and my daughters to be human beings, too.  I haven't had kids, I won't have any, for a lot of reasons.

Instead I try to empower the young women and men I've taught, I try to treat boys and girls I interact with fairly and evenly, but I'm not a parent so I have to trust that those of you who are can realize that YOU are the only real change that can work.

What have you done to stop the cycle of violence?

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Image Credits, Sites I found each image at:

Image 1: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/yesallwomen?source=wtfrt&position=2&query_id=-1

Image 2: http://radioornot.com/blog/yesallwomen-and-chriss-dad-is-right/

Image 3: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/470663166675144705/TETKi-RX.jpeg

Image 4: http://eyesonlife-ginahunter.blogspot.com/2014/04/violence-against-women.html

The Feminism of Hair Color?

Recently at our face-to-face meeting for the group of women that co-author this site I mentioned that I was looking to start making my hair darker, to bring back the red that I used to love about it.

Everyone looked surprised.

For most of my 44 years I've never entertained the idea of dyeing or coloring my hair, not even for a costume party.  There were many reasons for this stance.

Disgust with the idea that women must be beautiful and that beauty = youth.

A sister who when training as a stylist shared horror stories of the damage done to her and other's hair by the harsh chemical used to perm and dye hair.  I loved my curly, auburn hair (not always but 95% of my life) and was afraid it might be damaged by such treatments.

Feeling that it is an expense that is unnecessary and thus as long as I'm not the primary income earner not really something we need to waste our resource upon.

My mother used to dye her hair as a way to hide her illnesses from us all. When I figured out what was happening this turned into one of our most intense fights of the entire time I lived with her.  How many times did her health get worse because she was hiding things and refusing to see the doctors?  How dare she lie to us this way on top of all the other lies she was telling us and herself?

I recently talked about this in therapy just a bit so if discussion of dead mommy issues distresses you, stop reading now.

One of the factors contributing to my auburn hair was the fact that my mother had strawberry blonde hair (my dad's was black).  In four of their five kids, four of us had auburn hair.  Natural auburn hair isn't common and I grew up feeling like it was a gift I'd been given.  While I never knew what my body should look like and was often told it was fat and ugly or too skinny and ugly, I was always told I had beautiful red hair.

My hair is the one thing I loved about my physical self.

Then it started to go white.

White not gray.  There is nothing in my hair to turn gray. It turns into a golden red, then a blonde, and finally a perfect white.  At first it was only on my bangs and I thought "Cool I can look like Rogue!"  Who wouldn't want to be her?  This image is the one I grew up seeing on TV shows by the way so you can see I was hoping the entire top layer of my hair would go white but not the rest... unrealistic I know but hey, it was a fantasy like the show right?

The whiteness increased as my stress from graduate school increased and then when I couldn't even get a job because none existed in my field right after I finished... don't get me started on that... I felt like it was all for nothing.

Still I didn't dye my hair.

Yet when I saw my friend who is a stylist we talked about dying my hair.  Oh, I asked all about damage and he looked at it and heard what I wanted -- natural, little to no difference from the current red parts of my hair -- but suddenly I was ok with dying it.

I'm not dying it however.  I have too much white now and it simply is unlikely to take but he did recommend this product:


I couldn't find that where he suggested but the good ladies at the shop he recommended suggested this and I am very happy with the results even just after three days!


So what's changed?  As I thought it about it therapy and today I realized what changed is that my mother is dead.

She can't tell me what I should look like anymore.

But more importantly I don't have that strong association of hair coloring = lying to your family.

While I'm not saying that my concerns about beauty and youth are invalid, indeed I think those are very important feminist and humanist concerns. But part of feminism is the idea that women should be able to choose free from pressures that only focus on their biology and attempt to shove them into tiny little boxes that dictate their lives. Now freed from the association between lying to martyr your health I have been empowered to choose and that is very feminist if I do for myself not simply because I feel I should or I must do it to fit into someone else's model of beauty.

So I'm trying it.  I'm using this shampoo and conditioner and I'll see what happens.  After all two days of it my family and therapist said I seemed younger, more vibrant... I think they may mean riveting, huh?

Exercise? YUCK!

Before my mother died I decided to lose weight.  I went back to teach at the university level for the 2012/13 terms and found that I must have found my tipping point in terms of weight.  Five pounds later the problems I was having stopped but I decided to try and keep going using a planning tool I found on WebMD.

My mother's death probably made it easier because now I just have me to decide if I'm fat or thin not her random proclamations..

I lost a good amount, half of what I wanted to lose in the course of the two and a half years I've given myself.  My doctor was pleased, I was pleased, we looked forward to my blood work.

That didn't please us; it shocked us.  How could it have gotten worse?  My doctor's suggestion is to add in exercise.

Exercise? YUCK!

I hate exercise for two simple reasons -- it is boring and it is a solitary activity. Boredom is something I've fought against my entire life right from the second day of preschool.  As a freelance author I spent most of my day, every day, very much alone so something else that I can do alone just seems like more torture.

I've tried to workout with others -- either I can't find someone, we start then they have to drop out or are inconsistent, or I end up harming myself because our differences in sizes results in my over-extending myself.  Injuries result in more doctors' appointments and gained weight.  In fact I've injured myself so much over my adult lifetime that I have to be very careful of what exercises I do.

Which brings me to another problem with this entire "exercise" idea....

I do exercise, multiple times each, and every day.

I have stretches I have to do for my arms and my hips (past injury treatments that allow me to continue to function) and I have resistance/weight exercises I do for my arms (again another injury).  Actually my typing that I have to do for my career has to be broken down into a regime basically making it do double duty as career and exercise; this also limits the amount I can type every day a very annoying problem as an author.

So adding in more exercise?  When? Where?  How?

Some folks say exercising is a matter of willpower -- nah, it's a matter of schedule, it's a matter of emotional needs, and it's a matter of not injuring or re-injuring yourself.  Finding a balance isn't easy but given how unhappy I was with my blood work and how well the WebMD plan is working in terms of weight loss I don't want to change my eating.  The only thing left if I don't want to do medication is to try exercise.

As I wrote last time on this blog I'm trying to be more scheduled so I looked at my schedule.

I try to get up at 7am any way so could I fit a "first-thing" exercise into it which wouldn't interfere with other things on my schedule.  Moving some things back such as laundry doesn't work because that's an all-day thing and pushing it back even an hour runs into family time which is necessary for my emotional health. Then there's my volunteering at the IUAM and I need to have a firm schedule to make those plans.  Let's be clear traveling to any gym is a level of insecurity in terms of schedule -- traffic, weather, emergencies, these are too much to plan around and keep with the rest of my schedule.

In my basement is my recumbent exercise bike.  It doesn't aggravate my hip, it doesn't hurt my lower back, it is right here in this house, just steps from the laundry room and the rest of the things I have on my schedule.  It is easy to go from it to the shower and to get ready to go to the museum or out to shop or simply be ready to write for the day.

I started using it (again) this week and I'm aiming for 20 minutes, three times a week and getting up to 30 minutes by the end of this month.  Then I'll see how that seems to be working into my life, into my loneliness, into my health.  I've written it on my schedule, I've told my family, now I'm telling you.

Help me stay on track please and don't ask me to do things for or with you before 11am so I have the time to do this and still do my daily writing, previous exercises, and any chores that need to be started by then.  When you see me, ask me how it's going, let me know if I'm doing well, encourage me if I seem to be faltering (but don't nag or criticize because those are the fastest ways to get me to stop period).

Now you tell me what you need my help with in 2014.

New Lights and Trick or Treating

I love to review products... most of the time any way.  Oh there are times when the chocolate, the kit, the book, the product isn't good and I feel like I've wasted my time or potentially harmed myself (my family) by using it but those negatives are far less than the positive encounters I've had over the decade that I've been reviewing things semi-professionally.  As you might guess from my name I run a not so little group called The Chocolate Cult where we test, report on, and discuss all things related to chocolate in any form.  What you might not know is that I did book reviews and products reviews for private bookstores and a range of online sites for around 15 years now.

MG390 Pieces

I'm also a lifetime member of a cooking club where I've reviewed several items by using them in my own kitchen.  That club now uses a site called StuffStuff and I recently reviewed a non-kitchen item for them the Wireless UltraBright Spotlight Item MB390 from Mr. Beams.  I don't want to use the Butt-Kicking site though for just plain old reviews but I do want to use these reviews to talk about other issues where they apply.  In this case how outdoor lighting can be a way to empower yourself, protect yourself, and welcome/protect guests.

Putting this up required a bit more time and effort than the product blurb and the package itself suggested.  The directions didn't list all of the tools you need (drill, people, drill, and how many women have these?) nor how to measure the mounting platform before you start drilling in or screwing it in (you need to measure and mark it first or you'll be making an unnecessary mess).  Not everyone -- male or female -- simply knows these things about home improvements or installing anything outdoors.  It is entirely possible that someone who doesn't keep a drill at home (power not hand worked best for me) would get this, struggle to put it up with only a screwdriver, and then give up and just add this light to other easy kits and gadgets they've bought but found more challenging than they wanted. It does take batteries, four D-cells, so make sure you have these before you install as well.

I've had it installed near our front door now for about three weeks and it is still working.  You can move it so that the motion sensor comes on at a range of distance and front a range of directions.  Try it out then lock it in place.  With two physicists in my house we were able to figure this out quickly and it hasn't needed adjustments.  It come on when you are about half-way up the driveway or at least by the time you are at the end of the steps that lead to the walkway to our front door.  It is bright and that's great because this way I can leave the light by the door off and allow it to only work when needed.

I wanted to talk about Halloween which was last night but a severe high wind storm threat resulted in the city postponing official trick or treating hours until tonight, Friday, November 1, 2013, so I'll update this after the kids come and report on how well it worked. They better come, look at all the candy we have waiting for them!

And they did!  180 trick or treaters in total at our place.  The light stayed off as long as we had the other lights on and were out there but once we turned them on the motion detector went off as the door closed and then turned off after about 30 seconds.  Worked great!

Do You Love Your Body?

When most folks think of NOW (National Organization for Women) they generally think of political actions and then a whole bunch of stereotypes that have little reality.  NOW has also maintained a few radical feminist ideas as well even though they are very much a liberal organization.  Don't know the difference between liberal and radical feminism?  I'll talk about that in a bit; I have a minor in women's studies so I've studied the differences.

Official Poster for 2013 Love Your Body

One of the more radical things they do is urge an internal change of major importance.  They urge women to love their bodies with an annual event called "Love Your Body" that I have tried to observe for a few years now even though the campaign has been going on for over a decade now. Part of this campaign this year is a new project called "Let's Talk About It" inspired by the National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.  As a radical feminist, as a survivor of eating disorder, and as a woman this event means a lot to me but as you'll discover below it is also a very huge challenge for me.

I've been losing weight and some might wonder if I can say that I love my body and still be losing as much weight as I have -- currently I'm down 50 pounds for 2013.  The fact is that I've always struggled with my weight and I don't mean that I've always been big but that I've never known what I should weigh, what is healthy.  I saw a nutritionist for several years and she told me to ignore all those charts because they never considered the individual, the ethnic background, the bone structure, and the rest of the physical and emotional health of the person. She took all of that into consideration and told me if I ever got below 145 pounds again she'd put me in the hospital.  But when I started to have troubling walking a few blocks after eating a full meal, I decided I needed to loss a bit... I've just kept going but I am consulting with my doctor and using a very stable and slow approach.

But my post isn't about weight as much as it is about how I've never been able to trust or love my body and I'm struggling to learn to do so.

You see I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and emotional/psychological abuse.  My body was something that was constantly used against me by males larger than I and by females who wanted to feel more powerful themselves by sending me conflicting messages.

My mother was the number one attacker. By the time I was in high school I don't think there was a day that I didn't hear "you are getting too fat" in the morning before I left for school and then hearing "you need to eat, you are getting too thin" at dinner that same night.

Can you imagine how confused that made me?

My body was unknown to me as a positive thing, it was unknowable to me even in terms of the basic idea of what I should look like or weigh.

Instead my body betrayed me constantly.

Getting sick often; too often it seems according to letters I received with my medical records many years back. Did my mother do something to me to make me sick because she got sympathy for being my caregiver?  I know she herself got sick a lot and it is no coincidence that she went into a wheelchair right after I started therapy to recover from my childhood abuse.  I do know that tests have shown doctors and I that I have a very weak immune system not because I'm ill but probably since before I was born.  Of course my mother almost died within a few years of my birth and she (and my father) told me that her doctors had suggested an abortion for her health -- she CHOSE not to do that.  (That is why I am pro-choice so strongly.)

My body was what was molested and raped three times by the age of six.  The memories, both conscious and unconscious damaged my ability to have healthy sex for years and years.  I think that part of my being fat or having eating disorders was an attempt to conquer my body, get control over what seemed utterly out of my control.

My body simply wasn't safe so I invested far more in my mind as a student then scholar and as an author and storyteller.  In my mind I could be in control, I could be free of this shell that tormented me from my earliest memories.

I can't say that I love my body.

I can say I am trying and NOW's campaign reassures me that I am not alone.

Promoting Guns (or Banning Them) Isn't a Solution

Not long ago I commented on FB about a Rachel Maddow segment on "trends in mass shootings" in the USA -- I asked if what she mentions were really all of the mass shootings there had been over the past 70 years.  Most people who replied ignored my question to jump in with their own personal gun agendas but a few had actual intelligent replies, questions, and ideas.

You can thank them for this post no matter how much it pisses you off.

First here is the clip from Maddow's show that I was talking about:



As a historian, as someone who considers herself to be fairly logical and rational yet capable of great empathy, I try to see all sides of an issue, often playing the Devil's Advocate -- not the movie, the rhetorical device.  It may take you a while to figure out my views on any subject because of this but once I have a view, once I have my ethics and morals checked against the facts and lined up in what I believe is a non-hypocritical fashion I am very unlikely to change my mind unless you have factual information that I lack.  Actual facts not selected statistics or your opinions.

The argument, it is not a debate because that implies a civilized discussion and the gun thing is not civilized in the USA, rarely is about facts on either side. For every statistic that one side pulls out, the other side discovers another one; for every story on one side there is a counter, real or not, on the other side.

The very fact that we can even talk about sides in this gun argument demonstrates the real problem with gun violence in this society: We don't give a damn about each other, not really.

You see there is no such thing as gun violence.

There is only violence.

Guns do not do violence any more than a knife, a rock, a bottle of acid, a book, or any other object or tool commits violence.

Human beings and other animals are the ones who can do violence and we do it very, very well.

Now you might think that all of this means that I'm pro-guns.

I'm not.

I'm also not anti-guns.

What I am is anti-violence.

And I say this knowing full well that a few weeks back I told you all how much of a challenge it can be for me to control my own actions when I get really angry.  I take responsibility for my actions and reactions and that is what is lacking in this gun argument.

Pro-gun folks claim that adhering to laws and regulations is against their constitutional rights conveniently ignoring that the rest of us have constitutional rights that their behavior and choices may stomp all over.

So often these same folks who are screaming we can't have regulations and laws about guns often support more laws and regulations about voting, abortion, getting federal or state aid, and anything else they dislike.  These same folks often tell us to not be afraid of checks at airports or the government wanting to know about the people you call or looking into your life because if you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?

I find this type of hypocrisy beyond acceptable.

How about this?  The laws and regulations are a way for the gun owner to accept responsibility for their right to own the guns.  Making sure you do the legal thing, making sure you follow regulations demonstrates that you value the nation, the constitution, and your fellow citizens.

Now before you get misled into the "but criminals" argument, stop and think for a moment -- of course criminals won't follow the laws or regulations, they are criminals after all. DUH!

But if you aren't a criminal why can't you follow the laws, why can't you support the regulations?  Isn't that what many of you would tell me when I didn't like a new abortion law or getting x-rayed at the airport?

I mean, you want the rest of us to follow all these other laws and regulations you support so why shouldn't you do the same for the laws and regulations that we support?

I think our gun laws are lacking in one specific area: education.

Before I could get a driver's license I had to take driver's ed and pass two different exams.  Then as I moved to two different states I had to study their driving laws and pass their exams.  I do it without complaint because it is logical to ask people to have a basic understanding of the laws and how to drive a car.

Why wouldn't it be reasonable then to require gun safety and gun usage education before you can buy one?

Beyond reasonableness of the regulations or not, the very existence of gun laws does not really address the problem of violence with guns, other weapons, or human body parts.

Laws do not magically create adherence to them and enforcement by authorities can only do so much unless you want to see every constitutional right you have completely disappear.

People obey laws for one of three reasons -- fear of punishment or belief that following them is useful or because you are raised to simply obey.

This is the problem with gun laws and violence involving guns -- people do not fear the punishments, they do not believe the laws are useful, and they believe they can do whatever they want whenever they want.

Violence happens when we lack control and when we lack empathy.

If you are out of control and you have access to a gun you are likely to use it to commit violence; if you don't have access then you are likely to use another tool or your body to commit violence.

If you don't believe that other people (or animals) are worth very much (or anything) and you have access to a gun you are likely to use it to harm others; if you don't have access to guns then you are likely to harm others in different ways.

Now some folks say that they feel safe with a gun or safer... than what?  I could understand feeling safer if you are wearing armor or if you stay locked in your house or surround yourself with walls of bodyguards.  A gun is not a shield, it will not prevent someone from harming you or your loved ones, it may only end that harm sooner.

Unless you intent to just randomly shoot anyone who looks at you or makes you feel unsafe (making you the violent one by the way) the gun is a way to react to violence or the threat of violence.

On September 16, 2013, a man went into the D.C. Naval Yard and shot people. Even when authorities that were trained to use guns well came, it took time and more harm was done.  Some folks claim that had guns been in the building to begin with that the shooting could have been stopped... no, it may have been ended sooner but it could not have been stopped.

Stopping the gunman (his name I won't give because he doesn't deserve that kind of attention) from doing any harm had to come before he took his gun out to begin with.  How could that have been accomplished?  Well, the armed guards could just shoot everyone who came into the building, they could run everyone through x-rays or do cavity searches on everyone, they could even have simply refused to let anyone in because if no one is inside no violence can be committed inside.

But you see a gun isn't necessary to do harm to others.  Soon after the D.C. event a different type of public violence was happening in Indianapolis that I'm betting a fair number of you haven't heard about.  On September 23rd police reports about a man around Indy stabbing people started popping up on the city news stations that we watch.  The attacks happened so quickly that the victims barely had time to react.  Having a gun wouldn't have stopped them from being stabbed because they were shocked this happened to them in the first place and simply could not react for a few seconds while the stabber ran off.

You gun can only react as fast as you; it can only shoot as well as you, it is only a tool you use.

Sometimes we get lucky like we did yesterday (October 3, 2013) at the Capitol Hill in D.C. again when a woman rammed her car into barriers around the Capitol and then tried to drive away.  No one other than the aggressor was shot but two others were injured by the car.  I don't want to say more about this because details are going to continue coming out.

It isn't men who are violent.  Women, teens, even children have committed incredibly violent acts with and without guns.  Guns just get flashier headlines and have the potential to harm more people in a given period of time.  But then so would a bomb and I don't see people screaming that they have a right to keep and carry around bombs.

The best tool we as a society have against violence begins when each baby is born.  If we teach (as parents, as family, as friends, as neighbors, as cities, as states, as nation) each baby, every day from the moment of birth until what we all hope is an old-age death that violence is not acceptable and not a solution then we have a shot at stopping violence.

Guns can only shoot either start or end violence; they can't prevent violence from happening.

So don't tell me that your guns or your gun laws will prevent violence. Stop lying to yourself and to your nation.  Person up!  Take responsibility for ending violence from day one until the very last day of your life.

Non-Heroic Attitudes on "Heroes of Cosplay"

I'm a science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc fan and author so I had to check out the new SyFy series "Heroes of Cosplay" even though I don't normally watch competition shows.  I've seen some episodes of a few other art competition shows in the past and thought may this might also have commentary on geek culture and conventions that have been getting so much attention on the Net this year especially in regards to women in the subculture. After three episodes I feel that I need to express some of my thoughts.

Episode one made it clear that this was not a regular competition series.  This isn't "Face Off" (SyFy), "Design Star" (HGTV), or "Top Chef" (Bravo) where a group of competitors have specific tasks they most complete and then a winner or loser is declared for each episode.  Thank goodness!  I find so many of those shows contrived and I get bored after awhile as the artists and chefs start arguing while they are supposed to be creating.  No, "Heroes of Cosplay" follows eight artists who compete in the cosplay category at science fiction, anime, and related conventions around the USA. The ninth "hero" is Yaya Han who has turned her own cosplay and competing in contests at convention into a career.  Given that only one man is a "hero" on this show, though there are support male staff, assistants, and lovers of some of the other "heroes" I hoped this show would address some of the fandom problems that have be getting Net attention this year.

My hopes were almost dashed in episode two when our cosplay competitors get together at the convention to welcome the newest member Chloe Dykstra.  Up until this point in the show I had been impressed with the helpful advice and commentary from Yaya Han .  However during this dinner the other cosplayer competitors there, the vast majority of whom are female with only a few supportive males at this dinner, start making comments about how certain body types should not be doing cosplay and when Chloe objects they basically tell her that she is naive and they are trying to protect people from rude comments in person and online.

STOP!

What?

One of the threads in this episode before this dinner was Yaya telling us and Monika Lee (whom she sees as a good friend and protégé) that sexy shouldn't be the focus for cosplay.  Yaya is the "Ambassador of Cosplay" and at first I thought the "sexy isn't the point" was a pretty cool statement to make.  Yaya's own career shows that she tries to make the characters she is playing come alive, yes, some of them, many of them, let's be honest, are sexy because this is how women have been shown in much of geek culture.  I thought she might be making a comment about how anyone who wants to cosplay should and that promoting just the sexual spin is undermining the point of cosplay.

Until she and the rest of the cosplay competitors used that old excuse of caring about overweight people's feelings as a reason they shouldn't cosplay as certain characters.

Had the group at dinner been discussing competing in cosplay competitions their weight comment would have made perfect sense.  In the competitions you are judged on the quality of the costume and the quality of your acting like the character.  If you being an existing character it makes perfect sense that you want your body type to match as closely as possible the character.  But they didn't say they were only talking about the competitions, they made a blanket statement about who should and how they should cosplay.

Some reviews online of this episode and the previous one have pointed out that Becky Young, another competitor, said that she picks characters that fit her body type and are attempting to make the dinner conversation and her state equivalent.  They are not the same and this is why.

Becky's comment was about her choices as a cosplay competitor, someone who does contests for money and to promote her career.  She was not making a comment about how other people, especially non-contest cosplayers, should be dressed.  One comment is personal, the other comments are presented as a group acceptance of some universal standard for anyone who wants to cosplay in public.

Note that the sexy isn't the point idea is also presented as Yaya's vision not an ideal embraced by the group of competitors on the show.

Yes, people can be cruel but telling others how to dress because you don't want their feelings hurt is really just empowering that cruelty to continue. It is really just promoting the stereotypes about geek culture and not confronting them.

But then again is this show about confronting stereotypes and promoting cosplay for a wider audience?  Given that so many of our competitors are trying to make careers out of this not just as cosplayers but as prop and costume makers I'd think they'd want to maximize their potential buyers circle.  You don't do that by saying who can and can't pretend to be a particular character for fun. You do that by making a wide range of sizes or opening up the custom made aspect but you also do that by speaking up for every geek's right to embody their favorite characters without cruelty.

Episode three seemed to happen in a vacuum with only a few of our previous competitors showing up for Megacon.  The episode fell back on the relationship between competitors and their supportive lovers and friends or in this case the potential break up of the Jessica and Holly team who have been friends for even longer than they've been business partners.  I suppose this relationship stuff is interesting but given that we don't know how the cast was chosen for this series I'm not as invested in them as individuals as I am in their approach to cosplay as potential career versus fun hobby, buying into the stereotypes of fandom versus expanding the audience and customers of cosplay.  On the up side I wasn't turn off or inflamed by this episode so I'll watch again and see if the bugaboo of sexism and sizism rears up again.

Speak Up for Your Own Good

This week I saw several threads on Facebook that made me think about something that I've studied as a historian and as a gender studies scholar for many years now: speaking out when stereotypes and biases play out in public.

Perhaps you’ve heard the saying “speak truth to power” (created by American Quakers in 1955 actually) that urges folks to speak up with the idea that you’ll change the world through your words.  Or maybe you’ve been told that you need to “preach unto the world” (drawn from the Bible, Mark 16:15) what you know to save said world or the souls in it.

Both of these reasons for speaking out are built around the idea that doing so will help others.  Sometimes the help is small — you are helping one immediate person by speaking out and taking a public stand.  Sometimes the help is great — your words are a strike in the “cultural war” or for civil rights or for truth and this will change the world.  All sounds very familiar, huh?

Let’s get back to the FB threads that inspired me.  In these threads various “friends” of mine expressed horror or shock at behavior they witnessed and then spoke out or tried to take action.  It was about 50/50 whether or not they got any positive results but in almost every case the author of the thread also expressed that she/he was sick and tired of these situations arising.  At one point in the thread either the author or a commenter on the status update mentioned that they simply had stopped speaking out or were thinking about it.  They weren't quite apathetic but it felt to me like they might well be on their way.

That made me sad but not because they were abandoning the above two reasons I mentioned for why we might speak out but because it felt to me like the individual who wanted to or had given up was potentially doing harm to her/himself by increasing the possibility that they might develop apathy, a condition that can leak into other aspects of your life.

The problem with the two incentives to speak out are that they make the motive external to the person taking action and they raise the expectation that through words they can change another person or the world around them.  It is not wrong to have these goals but if they are your only reason for speaking out you are going to get sick and tired of doing so after a relatively short time.

Why?  We can’t make any other person change. Heck, even parents who raise a kid from day one often are left amazed at how a child turns out.  Each of us, while a product of our environment (nurture) and our biology (nature) is unique; no two people experience the world in the exact same way.  Now expand this reality to a small group of individuals, then a neighborhood, then a city, then a region, then a nation, then the world.  Each step becomes more complicated and takes longer to effect change.

Don’t get me wrong, change does happen, one need be only a casual scholar of history to see the changes that have happened.  Human rights, inequalities, political and economic power, changes in these areas have expanded and contracted and expanded again over the course of human history.

Deep changes though take time, a lot more time than it seems that most modern people are willing to embrace.  Think of how long it took to get women the right to vote in elections in most countries or how long it took for anti-slavery movements to affect the law and enforcement of it.  Stereotypes, biases, and prejudices are even more entrenched than the laws.  Here is just one study about how we all know stereotypes.

I live in a country where folks express deep disappointment after only half a term of any president because we are raised to want things to change NOW.  That is not how change happens even on a legal level and certainly not with stereotypes that might be a product of centuries of not millennia.  When you have changing the world or another person as your only or main motive for speaking out when what you see or hear conflicts with your sense of morals or ethics, you are setting yourself up for failure and increasing the likelihood of burnt out and giving up on speaking out at all except perhaps to an audience that all ready agrees with you.

That, too, is very tempting.  If you only speak out among those who agree, you don’t have to worry about not feeling like you are accomplishing something or fear that you might have someone speak out against what you are saying.  The problem with this is that then you really are not speaking out so much as bonding with a group you are all ready part of.

I want to suggest that we try changing our motivation for speaking out in public against actions and words we believe are offensive and belittling to other human beings.  Speak out for yourself.  Not when someone offends you personally, though I think we all need to have enough power to do that, but speak out when you hear or see something to remind yourself of your morals and ethics.  Remember those stereotypes are in your head, you know them, the good and the bad, and 99% false and the slightly true, they are all there and they can impact your decisions.  By speaking out you remind yourself that there are other ways for human beings to behave and that human beings have worth as humans.

Speak out for your own well-being, speak out to support your own morals and ethics, speak out to fight the stereotypes lurking in the background, speak out to fight off apathy, and then speak out just in case you might just move the world one tiny step closer to empowering all of humanity.  I hope this made sense to you all.

See you next Friday and go have a piece of good chocolate this weekend!