In Which I Admit I Should Probably Not Be President

Today is the 12th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and everyone I know is talking and thinking about them.

I am generally considered a fairly calm, reasonable person in crisis.  Most who know me would say that I am very level-headed, and not inclined to make decisions in anger.

But twelve years ago today, I felt like this.  Fear set in later, but in the first few hours there was nothing but the bloodwrath.  I remember saying, at around this hour of the day, to one of the co-workers with whom I was on a field trip, "Someone did this to us.  I want the people who planned this dead.  I want to find them, and I want to bomb them until they are a sheet of glass in the desert, until they and everything they love are reduced to rubble.  I want to do it with my hands."

A few days passed, and my pain and temper cooled, and I was able to read the stories and marvel at who we became in that moment.  Everyone knows the stories of first responders running into danger and giving their lives to save others, and over a decade later I remain in awe of those who listened to final calls from their brothers on the line and still ran into the fire.  There are other stories, too, that have filtered out.  Two men lifting up a woman in a wheelchair to carry her down flights of stairs, so that she and the people trapped behind her made it out alive.  Total strangers stopping to lend an arm or a moment, supporting someone who'd faltered.  As I watched the news reports, I could see people in the background staggering to reach safety and other people running up to help them.  The passengers of Flight 93, who died in a field in Pennsylvania rather than sit passively and let themselves be used as weapons.  People opening their homes and businesses to the stranded and the frightened, huddling around televisions looking for sense, for meaning, for familiar faces among the survivors.  So many people, reaching for the small heroisms within their sphere of influence, affirming humanity and empathy in the face of terror.

I watched as the world reached out, and said, "Oh.  Oh, we are so sorry.  This is terrible, and we weep for your pain."  We set politics aside, we set old fights aside, and for one moment in time we embraced a shared and common humanity.

However, I cannot forget that if the gods had granted me the power of life and death twelve years ago today, I'd have rained down the fury of my own pain and anguish on anyone I felt was responsible, whether I had proof, whether I had justification.  In that moment, in my wounded rage, I would have gladly accepted whatever the cost to become a dark avatar of furious vengeance.  That is my lesson, that I must be profoundly grateful that the gods did NOT choose to endow me that day with the power of life and death, and that I must always be mindful of the emotions influencing my decisions.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a lot of decisions were made.  Sweeping restrictions of free speech and privacy were enacted, laws were passed trading privacy for the illusion of safety, and individual people targeted people in their own communities for retaliation.  A sidewalk bench through a coffeeshop window.  Hateful graffiti on a mosque wall.  Vicious threats against a Muslim community center.  Women in hijab were harassed while shopping or walking down the street, and dark-skinned men were greeted with suspicion and hostility.

My rage passed, and with it my desire for vengeance.  My fear passed, and with it my need to be protected.

I look around, twelve years on, and see that there are people in this country who still allow that rage and fear to divide us.  I see Islamophobic rhetoric, I see militant Christian propaganda, I see warmongering in the name of crushing the Other, and all I can think is that while I'm glad the gods did not give me the power to destroy everything I touched that day, to abandon every guiding principle I cherish in the name of blind obedience to my demons, I wish that perhaps they had not given that power to my fellow Americans, or that more powerful voices among us had been wise enough not to use it.

Resist vengeance, my loves.  Acknowledge your rage and let it pass through you without leaving its footprints in your heart.  If you are frightened, be frightened but never let fear make your decisions for you.  Take time, when emotions are high, to fully understand before you act.  We all carry the potential to be dark avatars of rage and destruction, and we carry the potential to be voices of calm and reasoned response to crisis.

In every moment, in times of crisis and times of respite, we are given choices that indulge one side or the other.  Small choices: "I will not snap nastily at the barista who has screwed up my latte for the fourth time in a row."  Large choices:  "I will not hit that person with my car."  The more power you have, the more capacity you have to make those choices:  "I will not drop nuclear weapons on every suspected al Qaeda stronghold in the world."

The greater your power, the greater your consequences.  Be glad, my friends, that my rage did not find its vengeance, and be hopeful that the echoes of those that did will fade in time.

I love you all.

In Which I Expect Better

I have one friend who, upon hearing any complaints or concerns I have about living as a woman in this world, or in any discussion of poor behaviour by a member of the male gender, invariably responds "What do you expect?  You're dealing with men."

The answer is "Better.  I expect better, and I get it more often than you seem to think I would."

I reject the cynicism inherent in the idea that I just can't expect more than the most basic, short-sighted, thoughtless actions from the men in my life, that the poor dears just can't be expected to stand up for equality with me, to treat me as an equal, to examine or challenge their own experience, unless I nag and berate and bully them, unless I dumb down and ease up the experience until it's easily palatable for them.

"They're just like that and you'll have to drag them kicking and screaming to make them better," is an outgrowth of "Boys will be boys," the harmful mentality that says little boys can't be chided or disciplined for acting out in ways that are detrimental, because that's just their natural masculine rambunctiousness and they don't *mean* any harm.  You can't *teach* them that teasing little girls or pulling their pigtails as an indicator of interest is a precursor to not respecting other boundaries or communicating clearly, because That's Just How They Are.  They can't overcome their basic boy natures to be self-aware, thoughtful, compassionate, or mindful.  They can't be taught consensus-based negotiations, or open communication, because those are just things girls are better at.  And you can't teach boys *or* girls that the other side is not the enemy, because, well, girls and boys are so different that they're just natural adversaries.

Yes, by all means, let's spend their childhoods lowering the bar when it comes to respectful, mindful interaction, so that when they're adults we can say, "What do we expect?  It's how they were raised."  Let's spend the first twenty years of their lives dividing boys and girls into armed camps, setting them against one another, teaching boys to be active and girls to be passive, teaching girls that they shouldn't fight for what they want and boys that they shouldn't accept compromise, and then shake our heads when adult men and women don't have the tools to work together effectively in ways that utilise a broad skill set balancing cooperation and competition.

I expect better, and oddly enough I get it an awful lot of the time.  I expect the men in my life to support women's equality, to embrace the idea that women deserve equal pay, accessible healthcare, educational opportunities, and the same respect men get.  I expect the men in my life not to say "Well, but she wore that skirt," or "It's not sexist; women just aren't as good at math," or "Of course women don't get paid equally, because employers have to account for the fact that they're going to take time off to have and raise babies.  Plus, women just can't be aggressive enough about demanding better compensation."  When we discuss relationships and the possibility of children, I expect the men who want to be part of my life to approach that discussion without assuming I'll be the one staying home to care for them.

How do I get better behaviour from the men in my life?  I challenge them, but I don't take responsibility for how they respond to that challenge.  I let them know what my expectations are, and the ones who aren't already living in a way that meets or exceeds my expectations for decent behaviour often respond by rising to meet expectations when they know what they are.

If I communicate a boundary, I expect a man to honor it.  If I explain something about my experience as a woman, I expect him to consider it.  If I talk about inequality, I expect him to look for ways he can challenge it.  If he doesn't, or won't, then he doesn't stay in my life very long.  I won't waste my time spending six months 'training' someone to respect a clearly-communicated boundary, because there are SO MANY men I've met who respond to "These are my expectations" with "Oh, thank you so much for telling me, so I don't have to guess and fumble around and worry about offending you by saying the wrong thing, and by the way THESE are MY expectations, clearly stated and openly communicated, and man, it's kind of awesome to start a friendship/relationship from this level of understanding."

And what have these expectations for decency and equality brought me?  Some frustration and some lost friendships, to be sure.  But...the last several men I've been involved with respected my competence and intellect and felt secure in their own.  The practice of communicated expectations and boundaries has meant that my relationships have a lot fewer miscommunications and hurt feelings.  Among my male friends are people who fight as hard or harder for my equality as I do, who speak up when they hear sexist comments or rape jokes, who are mindful of the complexities of gender.  I know many fathers of daughters they're raising to be curious and fierce and smart, and fathers of sons they're raising to be empathetic and cooperative, and in general the fathers I know are raising their children to carefully consider and challenge expected gender roles (as are the mothers, but this conversation is about the quality of men in my life).

The men in my life are my allies.  They have my back, and I have theirs.  They're fighting beside me, and I stand with them.  They genuinely care about women because those women are half the population, because they don't accept the status quo, because they can see that inequality hurts everyone, not just the disenfranchised.  Even the man who asks me "Hey, what do you expect?  They're men," believes in and works for women's equality, because exceeds what he seems to believe his gender's capable of.

It won't get better unless we expect better.  And regardless of how many times I'm told that men are dogs, men are pigs, men just can't be trusted or counted on, I'm going to continue to expect better, and I'm going to choose men to be in my life who honestly, genuinely, consistently meet those expectations.

In Which I Am Almost Certainly Geekier Than You, But Don't Have to Demonstrate That

Almost twenty years ago, my friend Flea invited me to play in her Chill game.  I'd never played a role-playing game before, but I'd watched my older sister play D&D through the early 80s with her friend, and it seemed like fun.  Flea told me I needed ten-sided dice to play; off I went to the newly-opened game store downtown.

I walked in, and the room fell silent.  Guarded stares hit me full-force.  Trying to ignore it, I headed for the dice display at the register.  Having learned at an early age that the best response to intimidation is to keep thinking, "I belong here, I belong here, I belong here," I started to pick through the big basket of ten-siders, looking for my dice.  The clerk, a regrettable collection of basement-dwelling stereotypes, asked my left breast, "Can I help you?"  To this day, I'm not sure why the *left* one seemed to be the one he expected most likely to answer.  I told him I just needed a couple of ten-sided dice.

"Oh," he said.  "OK.  What's your boyfriend play?"

I said, "These are for me.  I'll take these two."

He stared at me (Lefty) a second longer, and said, "What system?"  I answered, "Chill."  He looked up, at my actual face, a little perplexed, and said, "But they don't have healers..."  I paid for my dice without further comment and left.

A few months later, one of my close male friends (we were sibling-close) and I were out, and he wanted to stop in at the store and check something out.  I was hesitant, and finally explained my prior experience.  He didn't believe me.  So he went in first, and I went in a minute or two later, and walked towards the back of the  store.

I have no idea what the clerk said to my 'brother', but the next thing I heard was a sound of furious rage and, "That's my fucking SISTER, man.  What the everloving fuck is WRONG with you?"

Frantic backpedaling ensued, in which I note NO APOLOGY was ever offered to me, but profuse apologies were offered to my friend because "I never would have said anything to you if I knew you knew her."

Over the years I've had better experiences with game stores, and worse ones, but that one stands out.  So this week when this video (no really, go watch it, I'll wait) started to make the rounds, it came back to mind.

So many of those cards are things I could have written.  I've been assumed to be playing in my boyfriend's game because he needed a cleric countless times.  Men playing in their first campaign have condescendingly explained the difference between a ranger and a paladin.  I've had guy friends asked to play in campaigns, right in front of me, by people who mentioned they had a hard time finding players but didn't even consider that *I* might be a potential one.

When I tell people I LARPed (Live-Action Role-Playing) for several years, most of them think of the Vampire games of political intrigue and social climbing.  What I mean to say is "I camped for a weekend each month from March to November, in any weather.  I fought with padded sticks, I made up spells in rhyme on the fly, I ran and hid and tracked and stayed almost fully in character for forty-eight hours at a time."

And for two years, I did it in a motherfucking corset (technically a bodice, but the difference is insignificant for practical purposes: I was laced into a restrictive cleavage-enhancing garment, in which I performed armed melee combat, occasionally in the rain).

I've played in game systems I can't remember the names of.  I've got a folder of old characters going back to the first one, whose information I laboriously copied out onto a blank piece of typing paper because we didn't have enough printed character sheets to go around.  Whenever a new friend asks me to list off the games I've played, usually at least one is unfamiliar (most likely Alternity or Earthdawn, but sometimes Nobilis).

When I was about nine, my father handed me The Hobbit to shut me up on a rainy summer afternoon.  I devoured it, and though the Lord of the Rings trilogy was a bit more daunting, I eventually worked through it over a year or so and was delighted, some time later, to receive The Silmarillion from him for a birthday.

I've read the books, I've seen the shows, I've played the games and fought the battles.  I saw Star Wars in the theatre (admittedly, I was four and my memory of it's a bit hazy) when it was still called that and no one referred to it as "Episode IV."

My mother gave me my first microscope at age eight, and not one of those shitty Fisher-Price ones, either:  a Tasco.  She regretted it a little later when I was growing bread mold under the fridge to make my own slides, but she never told me science wasn't for girls.  My favorite part of science class was the dissections, because you got to TAKE THE THING APART, but that didn't stop me from looking sadly at my Biology II teacher over the open abdomen of a domesticated feline and saying, "He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." (he laughed)

But what's most remarkable about the last several paragraphs is how often I've been demanded to produce the information in them to be 'allowed' in geek circles.  How often I've had to justify or defend my right to love the things I love, to do the things I do.  How many men I've dated (and their friends) have assumed that the reason I prefer geeky men is something other than "We have things in common and similar interests."  How often that recitation of my 'cred' earns me an "Oh, so you're a real geek girl then."

I admit to a certain frustration with people who have begun to emulate my culture without embracing it.  To an annoyance with people who adopt 'geek culture' trappings as an ironic statement, who say things like "LOL look at me studying on a Friday night, I'm such a nerd LOL."  To a whole HOST of issues with The Big Bang Theory's ostentatious mockery disguised as homage.  But nobody died and made me Chooser of the Geeks.  I am not some nerdy Valkyrie, riding my celestial direwolf across the land to select those worthy to play Settlers of Valhalla at my never-ending Doctor Who marathon (though I suddenly have a really GREAT idea for cosplay).

And neither are you.

We're all real geek girls, whether we meet your test or not.  And while things are getting *better*, I still don't feel wholly accepted or entirely safe in my community.  I still walk into a gaming store for the first time, each time, expecting that silence, expecting to need to be somebody's "SISTER, man," to be treated respectfully.  My boyfriend wants me to go to Star Trek events with him, and while a large part of why I'm apprehensive is that for an extrovert, walking into a large room of strangers and risking social rejection is daunting, the underlying problem there is not the large room of strangers.

It's that I can't shake, until I'm there, the expectation that I'll have to 'earn it'.  That I'll have to prove my right to be there, and that at some point someone will say something to me that will force me to decide whether to slap him, excoriate him, or simply walk away.  And while I'm tired of accepting that as the way that it is, and tired of having to prove myself, and tired of living out that status quo...I'm also tired of fighting that fight, a little.

So, probably next year I'll go to a con or a gathering with him, and I won't defend my right to be there.  I won't give anyone the satisfaction of making me demonstrate my cred, or earn his respect.  This blog is the last place, I hope, where I will ever lay out my pat and detailed explanation as to why I deserve to be elevated from 'fake geek girl' to 'real geek girl'.  I'm brave enough to look someone in the eye when he challenges my right to be there and say, "Because fuck you, that's why."

But I'm not quite brave enough to do it without a group of friends at my back, because the world hasn't changed yet.

We still have to change it.

In Which I Consider That I May Be An Adult Now

As I begin this post, I am thirty-nine minutes into my fortieth birthday.

I thought about doing a massive party, or even a smaller party, some gathering of friends playing games or roller skating or sharing food, but that didn't happen.  Maybe it was a failure of planning, maybe the fact that most of the activities I considered are better when it's not brutally hot, maybe it's that my life is so full of gatherings of friends and family, celebrations of joy, that I don't need a dedicated party to mark another year on the planet.

My birthday has been a fortnight-long affair.  My father and stepmother came up to take me to dinner, birthday wishes have been showered upon me at community gatherings and dinners with friends.  I have a loving boyfriend who's used my birthday as a perfectly reasonable excuse for presents and cake and random hugs and messages, and not one but two special birthday dinners.  A regular gathering of my tribe will share my actual birthday.

Today, my best friend chose to spend one day of her first real adult vacation at Fiesta Texas riding roller coasters, and she invited me to go with her.  So, in celebration of my fortieth, I screamed and laughed and stood in lines and collected sunburn.  It was glorious.  I love to be an adult.  She and I, we have some things about adulthood figured out that I think maybe some adults never get.

When I was a little girl, I thought 'adults' were these magical figures who had it figured out.  I listened carefully to them, sure they were dispensing secret and brilliant wisdom and True Answers.  I've since learned that adults don't have it all figured out, that we're grasping and muddling just as much as we ever did.  We've got some pieces of it, and others have some pieces of it, and all together we've got some right answers and some wrong ones and no way to know which is which.

But today, in line for one of the rides, a mother turned to me and said, "If you're riding alone, will you take my little girl with you?  I don't really want to go on this ride."  I said I would, and suddenly found myself entrusted with an eight-year-old named Josie.  She said, "I'm not scared."  I said, "Me either."  She said, "Mom thinks I should be."  I said, "People say you should be scared a lot, and it's OK not to be."  She nodded wisely, and said, "I know."  We had a great ride, and I returned her to her waiting mother (people give me their children a lot; I have one of those faces, I think).

A little later, my friend and I got caught up in the conversation of a couple of preteen girls, who were talking about the rides and the people and math and everything else.  We joked and chatted with them, agreeing that the man trying to text on the ride thought he must be important.  As we walked out, we talked about how "Those girls are probably going to grow up to be us.  I'm comfortable with that."

There's a fun part to being an adult, the part where I get to decide when it's Roller Coaster Day and when to eat cookies for breakfast.  There's the part where I have a control over my life and destiny I never had as a child.  For a long time, I thought that I was 'paying' for my breakfast cookies and my mental health days by being a responsible citizen the rest of the days, by paying bills and being on time to work.

But...that's not how I pay for my indulgences.  The real price of adult freedoms comes when a pair of perfectly trusting eyes looks up at me, unafraid, and I have the chance to nourish her courage.  When two joyful children on the cusp of adolescence test the waters and engage with 'adults' on a more equal footing, I have the choice to shove them back down into childhood or to relate to them as peers.

At forty, there's an argument to be made that I am now entitled to greater respect, that I've got a greater level of experience and understanding, that I should probably embrace my 'grownup' identity and settle into some stability.  But I'm going to keep eating cookies for breakfast and ice cream when I want it, and I'm going to consider roller coasters or skydiving or base jumping or hiking alone a perfectly reasonable pursuit for 'a woman of my age'.  I'm going to laugh and love and choose all the things that bring me joy.

In part, I do this because I a choosing joy and love as the life I want.  But in part, I am doing it because I *am* the adult, and I *do* want them to learn the things I have figured out.  And the things my forty years have taught me, children, are (in part) these things:

When you have the chance to meet someone's eyes, do it.  When you have the chance to laugh, take it. Sometimes you have to work hard and sometimes you can play, and there is a value and a beauty and a necessity for each in the healthy life.  Friends are the people who love you whether you are weak or strong, and trust you when you know where they are weak.  You can have cookies for breakfast, but if you have them every day you'll stop thinking they're special.  People who love you will try to understand you, but they won't always succeed; forgive them the failure and forgive yourself your own.  It's all right to admit you're afraid, but you never have to be afraid just because someone else expects you to be.  You have the right to be happy, and the responsibility to get that way.

Most of all, you are loved and beautiful and you have infinite capacity for joy and suffering, and EVERY SINGLE DAY is a series of choices you make to create your own destiny.

I love you all.

In Which I Am Not Triumphant So Much As Resolved

Something amazing happened yesterday.  Texas Democrats stood up and fought like hell to prevent the passage of SB5, which would have brutally restricted abortion access, imposed an arbitrary and unrealistic 20-week limit, and closed the clinics that currently provide essential women's health services to tens of thousands of women, especially the clinics that serve poor and mostly-nonwhite parts of the state.  Just under a dozen Senators stood up for the women of Texas, backed by THOUSANDS of citizens who turned out to stand with them.  And in the end, despite cheating, despite a complete assault upon parliamentary procedure, despite lies and despicable tactics on the other side, despite the literal (and possibly illegal) alteration of the legislative record, that plucky little band of Democrats prevailed.  Just before 3 in the morning, word came down that we had prevailed, that the vote had not happened in time, that the Democratic filibuster had succeeded in running out the clock.

There are a lot of names to remember from last night.  Senators Wendy Davis (who kept her feet and her head when all was chaos), Kirk Watson (who wielded procedure and verbiage with fabulous aplomb), Leticia van de Putte (who stood her own ground, in her grief, with a grace and courage that stunned me), Royce West (who ran Senator Duncan around after his own tail on whether you could appeal a ruling that is not a ruling once the presiding officer has ruled...or not ruled?), Rodney Ellis (who asked, "Is it fair to say the rules have become very flexible in this body?" at just the right moment), and Juan 'Chuy' Hinojosa (who had the foresight to print out the evidence that proves GOP tampering with the record).  Even Senator Eddie Lucio, who supported the bill based on his personal beliefs -- but refused to vote with Republicans to suspend the rules of the Senate and accelerate the process, out of respect and compassion for his friend, Senator van de Putte, so that she could attend her father's funeral and return in time to vote.

Soon, they will all need our support because you can bet they'll be targets in the next election.

There are other names to remember, too.

Lt. Governor David Dewhurst and Senator Robert Duncan, who between them completely mocked and gutted any pretense at parliamentary order or rules.

Senators Donna Campbell (who insisted that the legislation already existing to restrict abortion was not germane to a discussion of restricting it further), and Craig Estes (whose irrelevant, insulting, and bullying questions I lost count of), and all those who supported not only the bill, but the unethical tactics used to try to force it through.  I can respect those who voted 'yes' on SB5 for reasons of conscience, on which we disagree, but not those who participated in devious, underhanded, and dishonest tactics to push it through without scrutiny or debate.

Governor Rick Perry, who has already called another special session to force through legislation that he KNOWS does not reflect the will of his constituents, a special session that will cost the taxpayers of Texas money they must find somewhere: schools, state parks, highway maintenance, environmental monitoring...

*They* will also be targets in the next election.  Remember them, find out who is standing against them, and support every one of their opponents.  Not one of them ever deserves to hold an office with more responsibility or power than 'Second Assistant Deputy Inspector of Dog Park Fecal Collection Bags' ever again.  Let's remember how we feel today, and keep it in the coming weeks to fight through the special session, and then in the months beyond as we work to get these people OUT of office.

In Which I Do Not Care Why You Made That Choice, Just That You Were Free To Make It

I'm going to tell you something I generally only discuss with people I'm considering as potential long-term committed sexual partners:

I do not believe it would be ethically or morally right for me to terminate a healthy pregnancy, so I won't do it.  If I become pregnant, and the fetus and I are physically able to survive and thrive, I will carry the baby to term and raise it.  The level of the father's involvement will be at a minimum fiscal, and based on our relationship at the time.  I won't sleep with anyone who can't accept that reality.  I have great respect for the two or three partners over the years who've said "Yeah, I am really not ready to be a father in any way shape or form and I am not willing to take that risk," and either limited involvement with me to non-risk behaviours or ended the relationship entirely.  That takes a lot of self-awareness and integrity.

Why won't I terminate a healthy pregnancy?  Because I'm physically, emotionally, and financially able to take care of a child.  Because I'm educated about birth control and pregnancy.  Because I have access to reasonably effective, reliable birth control.  Because I live in a city where I have access to emergency contraception in the event of rape, and good prenatal care in the event of accidental pregnancy.  Because, to me, an unplanned pregnancy would be inconvenient and perhaps a little awkward to explain to my conservative employers, but it would not require me to give up an education or a career or other opportunities.

There are personal reasons and spiritual reasons and all manner of other reasons, but what really matters?  Two things:

1.  That I have the right and legal protection to make whatever my choice might be, with the guidance of a trusted physician, and receive safe, legal, reasonably priced healthcare.

2.  That I understand that no part of my personal reasoning for whether or not I would choose to terminate a pregnancy has any bearing whatsoever on the decisions another woman might make.

In Texas right now, laws are being passed to deny women the right to terminate a pregnancy after 20 weeks.  Many proponents of these laws say "Well, isn't five months enough time to decide?"

You know what?  Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't.  Maybe a woman's just found out she and her husband are carriers for a potentially devastating disease.  Maybe she's escaping an abusive relationship and knows her ex will use a custody fight to keep stalking her if she has the baby.  Maybe she's got erratic periods and she didn't find out she was pregnant until her fifth month, and she's been taking medicines that cause birth defects the whole time.

And maybe, just maybe, nothing in that last paragraph matters because a woman seeking an abortion at any time, for any reason, does not need to justify it to me or to anyone else.  Maybe there should only have to BE two people in that room when the choice is made, and one of them should be the patient and the other should be the doctor.  Maybe we should trust women to know their lives, and their needs, and their capabilities, far better than any other person would know them, and make their decisions accordingly.  Maybe we should assume that a woman considering an abortion has already talked to her partner, her mother, her spiritual advisor, her therapist, or anyone else whose input she feels is important to the decision, and does not need a governmental mandate to do so.

A lot of people say "If you don't have a uterus, you don't have a right to an opinion on abortion."  I disagree absolutely.  We all, every one of us, have the right to that opinion, and the right to speak it freely, and I think that as long as we can do so respectfully, we have an obligation to speak our minds freely.  I believe that a clear and open discussion of the moral and ethical issues surrounding sexuality, pregnancy, abortion, and parenthood is long overdue in this country because we'll never stop using shame and fear to control sexuality until we can have those conversations openly and without judgment.

What we don't have?  The right to turn opinion into law.  The right to assume there is a common religious morality that should direct legislation.  We don't have the right to assume our choices are a universal ideal and judge or shame those who don't fit it.  We don't have the right to claim a moral high ground we do not actually hold, and deny essential healthcare funding (and access) in a perversion of 'Christian values'.  We don't have the right to establish rules regarding when others should have 'made up their minds' or whether someone's reasons are 'good enough'.

There are dozens of reasons a woman might end a pregnancy, and dozens of reasons she might not.  I refuse to split hairs, to even engage in the act of finding 'defensible abortions' that justify why a woman might have a 'reasonable' explanation for it.  I say, absolutely, that it does not matter to me that another woman might choose differently than I might.  It matters to me that both of us are given equal respect and freedom to make those choices, and equal care and opportunity to carry out our choices in the way that is healthiest for all concerned.

In Which I Admit Lust

I was going to write a light philosophical musing about the range of Beltane practices in the pagan community, from the visceral and orgiastic to the fully academic, but instead I find myself focused on something else.

Desire.

For years, I buried passion in compassion, earthing it down and keeping it tightly reined.  My sexuality was something deeply private, even its *existence* shared only with the few partners who managed to make it through the intellectual and emotional obstacle course to my bed, and even then I didn't always admit the most powerful truth: it's not the act of sex that pleases me, but the exchange of desire.  Inexperienced and fumbling, lacking the right vocabulary or even a complete understanding of my own feelings, I could never fully explain that it mattered far less how a man touched me than it did whether or not his hands shook with pure need as he did it.  Being wanted wholly, utterly, helplessly has always been my greatest aphrodisiac.

The face I showed the world was one of service, kindness, duty, compassion, hiding my more feral impulses beneath a calm, smooth, helpful smile.  I was considered, by many who knew me, as prudish, repressed, even frigid.  Some of this came from my own acceptance of the idea that lust was something only thin, pretty, socially normalized girls got.  As a fat girl who's been more than once described as 'sort of plain', I assumed that my chances to be truly desired would be few and far between.  The events surrounding my marriage, which don't bear going into here, only served to reinforce that assumption, to add yet another layer of "so much is clearly wrong with you that your lust could only ever be a burden to its targets, gratified as an act of pity or mercy."

For years, I believed that anyone in whom I felt a sexual interest would be embarrassed by the knowledge, and if he were sufficiently generous of spirit, he could bring himself to accept and perhaps even indulge my desire without showing his revulsion.  I cannot begin to count how many men I watched, hopeless, fiercely hiding any evidence of my interest to spare them.  Even when I could manage to admit it, I was circumspect to the point of nonchalance, and probably gave the impression of lukewarm interest instead of the burning passion I felt.  Very few men saw through it, and I wish now I'd made it easier on them to love me.  (I'm sad to say that some of you, reading this, have probably missed out on a certain amount of what I imagine would have been pretty incredible sex, as a result of my fear.  Sorry about that.)

Each year, Beltane came and went, and I buried myself in academic musings about personal creativity and intellectual fertility, shying away from the true celebration of desire, of lust, of the sheer blissful sharing of intimacy as a sacred act.  I said, "This is not really one of my holidays."  I feigned disinterest in the romps and celebrations of my friends, while secretly wishing I could join their headlong burning.  I so tightly bound and constrained my own expressions of desire that they only rarely woke reciprocal desire in others, and when they did I found myself thrown off balance and inclined to deny them entirely.

Just before I moved to Texas, that began to change.  I began to work with fire magic, and I learned that you can't actually hold a flame suppressed indefinitely.  It must be given freedom to burn, to shine, to glow as it will.  Before I was able to move into safely holding and working with fire in any meaningful capacity, I had to address my own desires -- not just sexual -- and acknowledge them as valid and worthy.  I had to learn to make "I want" statements without feeling I was a penitent asking for a favor.  I had to stand, open to the gods and myself, and admit that desire is a sacred prayer, a ritual of will, an expression of being alive.  This led me to the practice of sacred sexuality, to the idea that all acts of intimacy can be joyful rituals of shared love and lust.

This Beltane, I choose to formally honor my desire, to acknowledge that I am grateful for passion's presence in my life.  I honor the gods with my spirit, and with my heart, and with my body.  I begin from a willingness to accept my own wants and needs as valid parts of my experience in this life, and I embrace my nature as a sexual being.  I will not be embarrassed by or ashamed of my own lust, and I will not hide from what I desire.  I will offer to share my passion as I will, and on my own terms, with no constraint beyond my respect for the boundaries of others.  And when the opportunity for shared and passionate joy comes into my life, I will not suppress it, will not temper that passion with the fear that I am giving too much, delving too deeply, flying too close to the sun.  This Beltane, I join that headlong burning, that spinning arc of sunward longing, that visceral and joyous celebration.

I want.