Choice And Enforcement

Most of my life, I want to spend in my home. I want to wear dresses and aprons and prepare food and clean. I want, most of all to mother. I want to feel my children in my arms, to love them and hold them and watch them grow. I want to be pretty, dressed up and I want to sparkle. I want a wedding where I get a beautiful dress and there are flowers about and all eyes are on how beautiful I am for a moment. I want to settle down and live my life without the sort of job that requires I leave my house. I want to leave the work up to Halley.

But I don't think all women should have to do that. Being born with a vagina doesn't mean you're required to want those things. You can want a childless life with a fulfilling job, and wear only pants and never so much as touch a stove and that's okay. I like that feminism is about choice. Even though I want to stay at home and raise children, I want to have the option to get a job and get paid the same amount as any man, and more importantly, I don't want what choices I am making consciously to be forced upon every other person with female reproductive organs.

Sorry if this post seems bizarre and obvious, but it seems like women who happen to choose a life that would be okay according to gender stereotypes rarely go out of their way to dispel the myth that they agree with them.

Natural and Unnatural Childbirth

The tone of every conversation in society is acceptance. We want to accept people who make different choices than we would personally, and, on the whole, that is a wonderful thing. It's good when discussing religion, good when discussing gender roles and sexual orientation, and good when discussing all manner of small personal choices, like how to dress, what job to do, and what to do in your free time. But it's not so good when we discuss birth.

You see, I want to dispel the myth that supporting natural childbirth is about suffering. My support of natural childbirth is not because the women who experienced it suffered for their children, and, in fact, I really wish all women could experience completely painless labor. Most natural childbirth advocates do. The want for natural childbirth stems from the desire for the health and comfort of the baby. Many unnatural birth supporters seem to believe that birth is some sort of contest for women, and I've heard it compared to something with a scoring system with points awarded based on how natural it was or how bad it hurt.  This is not true.

I support natural birth because I believe that a baby has the right to come into this world in the most comfortable, healthy way possible. I don't support it because I think women should suffer for their children.

I'm back!

I'm terribly sorry about the lag in posting. I've made it to college and it kind of consumed my whole life for a bit. Being here, I feel like I've barely had time to breathe because there is so much to do. So many things I'm responsible for and so many fun things to do in addition. Well, this is just a quick post to say hello and I'm going back to blogging on a semi-regular basis now.

I Just Had My Heart Melted

I was pissed off. I was royally, red in the face angry, and ready to tear someone down because I haven't gotten my psychology text book yet. I orderecd it Thursday on overnight shipping and it is scheduled to be here Monday for some inexplicable reason.

 So, I called the bookstore from my college and said in an angry voice "Hi. I'm calling about an order I placed on overnight that's not even going to be here until I get there". Then some guy who sounded not much older than me said "oh!" kind of surprised "I'm sorry." and asked nicely for the details. I told him and he said "well, I'm not supposed to deal with the online orders, but I'll see how I can help you out." he seemed genuinely saddened by the fact that I had a problem and all the wind was immediately removed from my angry sails.  He proceeeded to help by asking a manager for special permission for me to pick up a different copy of the book on monday and return my own whenever it should get here. The manager agreed and I tried to change the shipping on the order for the books, but that didn't work because of a stupid UPS issue.

 So I called the bookstore again, and they told me that it would probably be easier to place another order for instore pickup, but said he would assure that any issues were worked out with UPS if I'd rather have him do that.  In short, I called in a rage and then people were concerned for another person's welfare, and I hung up warmed from the inside about the nature of human beings. It's simple tiny things like this that make all the difference

Preemptive Strike

Halley is away at college for a few days before I get there, and, as always, separation makes me a little nervous. But it's been a whole lot easier this specific time around because xe's been reassuring me by giving a blatant statement of how xe loves me regardless of where we are or what we're doing. And it's working. I feel really relaxed, and, if I can tell you a secret, I think I'm not even going to need it anymore after I just did it. My irrational fear of losing halley is evaporating. I'm not so scared clingy, which was taking a toll on our relationship. And now it's gone! All I had to do was indulge my desire to be reassured and it disappeared.