Thank you..

Thank you conservative, christian, moral republican/tea party politicians.. Thank you.

No, you aren't at the wrong blog.. you haven't been transported to a fox news site! While this is a heart-felt thank you to the right wing propaganda machine, I doubt that I will be invited Michelle Bachman's holiday bash to publicly exhort the virtues of this party. Now, if I may continue..

Thank you. With every deed, you force women, gays, african-americans, and the latin communities to despise you.

When you allow and encourage your party members to compare women to livestock, when your female members (elected seat holders at that) state that women are too emotional and fragile to vote, when you prance about on every network sniping about how a collection of cells has more value than the real live human being those cells live in.. you force people to hold you accountable for your obvious disdain of the female sex.

When you claim a book calls for the hatred and outright persecution of an LGBT person, when you demand your followers support a business that funds hate groups, when you call homosexuality a disability and compare it to murder in terms of morality, when your 3 ex wives stand with you while you proclaim the sanctity of "one man-one woman" marriage, when you turn your own children away because they love someone of the same sex, when you refuse to believe that gay rights should be the same as your rights (the SAME, not special), you force a nation to deny your lies and shine a light on your hatred.

When you attempt to harass a minority into not voting, when you call an entire race of people lazy, when your members publicly and repeatedly claim that "slavery was not so bad" and imply that maybe we should go back to that era, when you hold the race of your fellow humans in higher regard than their acts or accomplishments, when the members of your party that are of a non white race continue to fight for the destruction of their own color hoping that maybe you won't notice they aren't white, you force America to rip the white sheets from your head and speak your name for all to hear.  

When you sit in your million dollar house counting your billions of dollars and claim that you got there all by yourself, when you want to remove programs that feed people, when you cry out that people should just work harder or have better jobs and that will solve their problems, when you scream how the poor are useless and how dare they think they deserve food or housing or work, when you claim life is sacred but not on your dime, when you regard a struggling single mother as a criminal or child abuser, you force us to fight back and bring you down.

You are not better than us, you got where you are on the backs of us. Your hatred and bigotry and misogyny and elitism has brought you to your knees. Those you despise are standing over your party, sword in hand, ready to deal the death blow.

Thank you.. for giving America the passion and fire we so needed to remove you and your ilk from our view, soon we can be what we should have always been.. strong and proud and UNITED!

A bright future..

Today marks a new beginning for our country. We stood up, we shouted from the rooftops, we refused to be bullied. The American people declared in no uncertain terms, we will not be lied to, we will not be overlooked, we will not be treated as anything other than equal in the eyes of our government. You can not write off women, or minorities, or the poor and expect to become the leader of those people. The American people re-discovered our voice, and it feels great.

Why did Romney lose? Why did Akin and Murdoch and Walsh lose? They lost because they made us angry, they made us afraid, they made us the target of their hatred and morality, and we had no choice but to stand up and tell them NO.

We all have our sides, our own reasons for voting the way we do, and this election has been extremely polarizing. Now it is time to re-connect with those we have turned away from, it is time to remember that we all have the same rights, that we are all Americans and deserve the respect others demand of us. The message is clear: you are not more important than your neighbor because you are christian, or white, or rich, or straight, or male. You are equal.

I support our President, I believe he has the best interests of the people in mind, I believe that President Obama can and will create a country that we can be proud of again.

It is ALWAYS real..

With the recent and horrifying comments made by a certain senator and seconded by the GOP vice-president nominee, it is time for me to speak out. The subject is painful, the memories graphic, but the words are more important than the fear.

The summer before I started the ninth grade, I was held at knife point and raped. I was a virgin. I did not report the rape, the rapist said he knew where I lived and he would come get me when I was alone. I did not see his face, but I will never forget his voice. Calling me a slut and a whore, asking me if I liked it, telling me I deserved it. Slicing off chunks of my hair when I refused to say I liked it, smashing my face into a concrete wall when I wouldn't say I deserved it, raping me anally when I tried to scream and bit the hand he had over my mouth. I fought, and I lost. He laughed during the rape, finding my terror funny.

 I did not tell my mom, I claimed I was tired of my hair and chopped it off, said I fell on the rickety steps and scraped up my face. I spent a lot of time alone at that point, 16-18 hours a day there was no one but me at home.. so I didn't tell, not anyone.

Keeping the secret became as bad as the rape itself. Even after we moved to Colorado, I was afraid to tell. It was like the rapist would know, and he would come find me. Every time I didn't tell, he won again. I turned sex into my own weapon, my power. I slept around.. a LOT, with everyone except the guys I dated. I got into a car at a 7-11 with a perfect stranger, went to Denver with this guy, had sex with him and then left. I gave a different guy a blow-job in his car to get a ride back to the Springs. If it had a penis, I was gonna fuck it. I lost friends because I slept with their boyfriends, I had women looking for me because I had sex with their husbands. The only guys that were safe, were the ones that wanted to be my boyfriend. I got hooked on drugs. I allowed the rapist to destroy me every single day.

I finally told. My junior year of high school. A girl who had been my best friend was going to court because she had been molested, and my mom said how lucky I was that nothing like that had happened to me. I started screaming that it had happened to me. After all those years, all those guys, all the lies and hate came pouring out. I was mad at my mom too, because somehow she was supposed to have known. That was the moment I started to heal.

I am still afraid of a certain kind of man. A voice, or a smell will send me into a panic. I know it isn't rational, and I can usually play it off, but for just a second, I remember.

Now, for the part I have never told anyone, the hardest part of it all. After the rape, I didn't get my period at the usual time. I became convinced that I had the rapists baby inside me. I started having nightmares of a demon with no face ripping out of my body, my heart in his hand, and eating it while I died. Nightmares of the rapist finding out I was pregnant and stealing me, making me grow his baby and stabbing me to get it out. Horrific and detailed, every single night.. then even when I was awake. It was all I could think about. I contemplated suicide, afraid that the spawn inside me would know if I told anyone about it, and would force me to continue carrying it until it could kill me. I decided on a day. I decided on a method. I wrote my letters, said my goodbyes. I got my period.

I know, without a doubt, that if my period had not started that day.. I would be dead. The thought of having that evil demon inside me was more than I could begin to handle. The belief that a rapist could take my virginity, my pride, my safety, and leave something growing in my body, the body he abused and defiled, was  enough to push me into almost killing myself. I felt nothing but loathing for what I thought was inside me, disgust and hate and sheer unadulterated repugnance for this horrifying thing.

I was lucky, I wasn't pregnant. So many women and girls are not so fortunate. To hear the senator say that a woman's body can just shut down during a rape is beyond grotesque. To know that there are people out there that want to force a victim of rape to carry and give birth to the product of that rape is so terrifying it can not be fathomed. These women, these girls, will find themselves in the same place I was. Contemplating their own death in order to stop the birth of a hated thing.

 Is that really what you are willing to do?

To those of you that are pro-fetus, until you step up and carry that fetus to term instead of the woman who doesn't want it, shut up. It is not your story to write, not your right to edit the ending. No woman should ever be forced to give birth to something she does not want, not ever. The life of one is not worth the life of the other. Never. You haven't had an abortion, good for you, you can stand before god with a pure soul. You don't get to make anyone else do what you want. Deal with it please.

And the victim becomes the criminal..

There is a meme raging through the fb world that so clearly defines how fucked up we have become, I had to share it. Not because of the pro-gun stance it makes, although that is the purpose of the meme, but because you watch the de-evolution of a human being in one short post. Pro-gun folks are eating this story up, passing it on with comments of "Hell yea" and "Way to go", all I saw was.. well.. we will get to that in a minute. For the purpose of this blog, and for you to see this meme as I saw it, I am going to chop it up first. At the end of the post, I will publish the meme in it's entirety.. and you decide just what is so awesome about it's message.

Ok.. great job soldier boy! He effectively used his concealed gun in the exact manner for which it was intended. He is a hero (at least to himself and his girlfriend). If the post had stopped there, I would have congratulated this man and been ok with him carrying a weapon. However.. this guy didn't stop at pointing a gun at the mugger, oh no, that was just the beginning.

  

Not a horrible idea I suppose, except our hero seems to have forgotten the knife mugger man had, or he just decided to let the would-be criminal keep it. Now, throw the things away, or take them to the police and it's over right? Wrong! Watch as a self proclaimed soldier, supposed defender of freedom, protector of civilians everywhere.. becomes a criminal in his own right.

The muggee becomes the mugger. He steals this man's credit card, and uses it for his own gain. He also turns four other people into accessories to the crime by allowing them use of a stolen credit card. The new mugger also implicates a homeless person by giving him money from the stolen wallet. So now, the victim of this crime is the original mugger (who, by the way, only attempted to mug the soldier) And, it gets even worse!

The man then vandalizes a vehicle of someone not involved in the original crime at all. Regardless of his assumption that the car might belong to a criminal, he has no way of knowing, and therefor creates a victim out of an innocent citizen. To top it off, this man is still not finished with his crime spree.

Next, he impersonates the new victim. He uses this man's identity to perpetrate acts of treason and terrorism. Our original victim has now committed no less than 3 felonies, all to punish a guy who TRIED to mug him. His reasoning for all of this:   

To paraphrase: You TRIED to do something bad to me. I pulled out a gun so you didn't get to commit a crime. I then robbed you at gunpoint, used the credit card I stole from you to buy things for me and other people, destroyed a car that belonged to an innocent citizen, and used your identity to make threats against the President of the United States. Maybe you won't rot in prison for the crimes I did commit in your name, and maybe the car doesn't belong to other criminals that will hunt you down and possibly kill you, but if either of those does happen.. that's ok. You are a scumbag and I am just an honest person trying to live in these mean streets.

Here is the whole meme:

 Does this man's idea of punishment fit the crime? Not even a little bit. Remember when you were little and stole a piece of candy from the store? Now imagine that, instead of your mom making you take it back and apologizing to the store owner, she instead went into the store with a gun and robbed it, then called the cops with a bomb threat, and pushed down that big bully in your class, all while pretending to be you. That makes sense doesn't it? 

This is the justice being forced upon us by gun-toting, christian, right wing teapublicans.. this is not any sane human's idea of right and wrong!

It is time to hear our voice..

I am an opinionated woman. I have no qualms about letting my views be known, and I do not apologize for those views. Every single opinion I have is one that has been hard won, forged in life experiences and tempered (or ignited) by what my heart says is right. I do not regurgitate political drama, nor do I simply follow the party line, I listen, I research, I make a decision on the truth of things. I am not a democratic whore, and I am not a christian hate monger.. I am a human being attempting to remain human in a climate that threatens to rip the humanity from us all.

That being said: Do not think that you know me. Do not think that what is good for you, what is good for your family, is good for me or mine. I do not teach my girls to be ashamed of their feminine selves, I do not require them to be subservient , or believe themselves less than anyone because they have a vagina. I do not teach them to think that anyone's god hates them because of the way they think, or the way they live their own lives. My girls know love, and acceptance, and have the right to make their own way in the world someday. I do not berate them for a differing view, and can think of absolutely nothing they could do to make me disown them, or throw them into the streets. Neither of my girls shows any signs of being anything other than strong, beautiful, independent girls.. well on their way to becoming strong, beautiful, independent women.

We will not stand and be called names. You will not call us slut, you will not call us stupid, you will not call us cunts or whores or evil. We do not have to agree with your christian, patriarchal, narrow, hateful views of the world and those who inhabit it. We do not have to believe what you do, how you do, or in what you do. Hate based on a book is still hate, and you have no right to force your hate on the nation or the people of that nation.

I used to believe that we all wanted the same things, deep down. A home, enough food, some nice things and a bit of pocket money left after the bills were paid. Good schools for our kids, a safe place for them to play, and adults around them to nurture and protect them. It seems I was wrong. What I see today, is that many of us want something completely different. So many people want power, fame, a platform to stand on and tell us how to live, what to think, and to point fingers at those who do not fall in line. Independent thought has become a dirty word, education is frowned upon, and our children are taught violence and hate at their dinner tables. They are taught that anyone different, anyone they do not see at services on Sunday, is something to be turned upon, stoned, destroyed.. because your preacher says so. Do not hide behind a few difficult to interpret lines in a book, not while you ignore so many others. Your desire to pick and choose those passages that fit your version of how things should be, that alone shows how so much unlike the man whose words you claim to follow. Your god, the bastardization of him that so many choose to believe, is a false god.

This is not what our country was built upon. We came to America for the rights of freedom.. freedom to speak our minds, freedom to worship how we wanted- who we wanted, freedom to learn and work and live and prosper. We were never a country built on christian values, no matter how loudly you claim otherwise.  Those rights belong to each of us, every woman, man, and child born to this country. You have no more right to happiness than I do, and your happiness does not supersede mine because you have more stuff than I do. None of us have the right to seek out the demoralization  and destruction of another human being because our god says that we can. This is a country, not your heaven.

Live your life however you want. Allow others that same right. There will be things you do not condone, things you cannot abide, your only rightful recourse is to not do those things- you do not have the ability to rip the rights away from others because you do not agree.

We will not be quiet. We will not lie down and allow our rights to be taken from us. We will not continue to be called names, to be vilified, to look up at you from the floor. It is time to hear our voice, yours has gone mute.

A house of Gold..

In a recent opinion editorial, a gentleman suggested that we only do good works because of an ingrained belief in a christian god. He states that if we remove the christian undertones of charity, then we would become a people with no concept of charity. This man goes on to claim that atheists and those with different religious beliefs have never been able to give him an answer as to why they are charitable, he says the only replies he has received are "Because it's a good idea", or "Because it's the right thing to do." Naturally,being a christian man, he interprets these remarks to mean "Because the Bible tells me to." Well, I call bullshit.

Some of the most uncharitable people I know are christians! They sit in their churches and believe that because they are in the pew on Sunday, they are doing God's will. Then there are the christians that do charitable works in order to increase their property value in Heaven, their only goal is to get that house of gold up there in Jesus' neighborhood. Before you start screaming that I don't know you, or that I am lumping you all together, let me say this.. it has been my personal experience that most christians are far less willing to lend a hand if no one can see them do it. They will come out in force if a television crew is watching, or if it gives them the chance to wear their "I'm a christian" t-shirt, or if everyone else is doing it, but left to their own devices, christians are more apt to sit and judge than help their fellow man.

My reply to Mr.op-ed is simple. We do good works because we see a need for them, we see our neighbors and strangers down and out and want to help them, we go quietly into the world and lend a hand to our fellow humans. Not because we want someone to notice, not because we want a place in heaven, we do it simply because it is our obligation as inhabitants of this earth to do all we can to do make this a better place than we found it.

Think about that the next time you see someone in need.. not "what will I get out of it?" but "How can I help you."
     

Let's get political..

We are defined by our political views. Nothing that we are is a definitive as which party we support, and nothing is as trivial. Why is it necessary to abuse and debase another human being because they are not a cookie cutter of yourself? When did it become an obligation to force an entire country to be just like you?

 We are a nation of people who have certain rights, ALL of us, yet the only thing certain factions of our elected leaders want to do is strip those rights from us. Each American is BORN (not concepted) with these rights, yet they seem to be viewed as a gift. Our rights are not a trinket to be handed out to only our favorite few. They are our birthright, our guarantee, our promise from the citizens that created this country that every one of us is equal and just in our nation. We had to fight to claim the rights for the slaves we created, we had to fight to allow rights for our women, every step of the way we have had to wrest the power from rich old white men who believe they are the ONLY ones who should have any rights at all.

I will stand and fight those determined to revoke the rights of women, GLBT,african-americans, and non-christians alike. If you were born on this soil, you have THE SAME RIGHTS as any other human in this country. One of those rights is the right to say NO.. you will not take away that which I am entitled to, because I AM entitled to it. Being a wealthy white married christian male does not give your rights MORE value than mine (as a poor white single-parent woman) What it does do is make you accountable to ME, as my elected official, and give me the further right to demand you get your head out of your ass and stop thinking for me. We as Americans actually are capable of thinking for ourselves, if you would shut up and let us.

I will make this as simple as possible: IF you were BORN in America, you have the EXACT same rights as ANYONE else BORN in this country. No more, no less. STOP giving politicians the ability to TAKE YOUR RIGHTS away from you, Stand up and DEMAND what is YOURS!

I am a WOMAN.. I have the RIGHT to my BODY, my CHOICES, and my LIFE. You will NOT force your ideals on ME!