scATX: Speaker's Corner in the ATX

Last night, the contestants on American Idol had to pick a song that was #1 on the Billboard charts sometime after the year 2000.

Phillip Phillips, who is a good ol’ white country boy from southwestern Georgia with a scratchy voice and strange shoulder moves, chose Usher’s “U Got It Bad”:

Here is what Entertainment Weekly said in their recap of this performance:

The supporting band members in their all-black outfits — especially Blonde Sax Player with the Bangs — were a major part of last night’s show, especially in their accompaniment of Phillip Phillips. His manipulation of Usher’s “U Got It Bad” was very exciting for Idol, calling to mind Kris Allen’s acoustic interpretation of “Heartless” or even that Andrew Garcia kid’s Hollywood Week rearrangement of “Straight Up.” (I still love that!) Big, big moment for Phillip, and it was well-timed because he did appear to be losing steam last week. He really came alive in this performance, wrenching his face into that terrifying grimace on “my money or my carrrrrrrrrrs,” gazing around admiringly at different band members, and wiggling his left leg from his perch on a stool. First standing O of the night from the judges!

The fact that EW listed these two other guys’ performances as being similar to Phillip’s is telling, I think.

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[Cross-posted from my reproductive rights blog: Keep Your Boehner Out of My Uterus.]

[UPDATE: As Beth pointed out, the graphic is grammatically incorrect. It should be "whoever." I am too lazy right now to change the graphic. Perhaps in the future...]

I created this image based on a tweet I wrote this morning after a long twitter rant. I got myself all riled up over a prochoice advocate saying, “No woman wants an abortion.”

It’s simply NOT TRUE that no person wants an abortion. As Scott Madin wrote to me, if anything it’s that “no one wants to need an abortion.” Beth Hicks added, “Just like no one wants to need heart surgery, but it’s a necessary medical procedure.”

Antichoicers are uncomfortable with fact that some people get abortions and are relieved and happy the procedure exists? Don’t care.

Antichoicers are uncomfortable acknowledging that more people than just cis women need access to reproductive health care? Don’t care.

Antichoicers don’t want to acknowledge prevalence of abortion or fact that they most likely DO know someone who’s had one? Don’t care.

Antichoicers want to make this about zygotes and fetuses and not living, breathing people? Don’t care.

I’m not here to bow down to what makes antichoicers comfortable. I’m not going to ask for less bc we *may* then get it. Nope.

Prochoicers need to drop qualifiers on abortion except for “safe”, “legal”, “accessible”, “subsidized” and “affordable”.

Safe, legal, accessible, affordable, subsidized abortion on demand for whoever needs or wants it for whatever reason.

Safe, legal, accessible, affordable, subsidized HEALTH CARE on demand for whoever needs or wants it for whatever reason.

ABORTION IS HEALTHCARE.

About 5 months ago, I wrote about my hatred of qualifiers (at that time responding to the groan-inducing phrase, “I wouldn’t get an abortion but…”). As I said then:

You’re either for choice or you’re not.

I’m for choice. Full stop.

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And before you come at me with, “BUT I WANNA SAY NEGATIVE QUALIFIERS ABOUT ABORTION”:

I’m not qualifying people’s actual real-life choices when it comes to their reproductive health. I’m saying that when we talk about choice, we have to drop the qualifiers.

I truly believe that qualifiers only serve to benefit anti-choice ideas. When someone feels the need to add “but I’d never get one,” they are only doing so in order to position themselves within a specific moralistic hierarchy with themselves above people who do actually get abortions (you do it, actually, when you say “women who do not have my values”). Whether one admits it, that is the work that phrase is doing.

What I’m saying is you can feel like “I’m pro-choice but I’d never get an abortion” (though, I have to say, you never really know because you simply cannot plan for all contingencies in life) but in the political fight for reproductive rights, actually voicing the “but I’d never get an abortion” doesn’t do any good. What good could it possibly ever do except to somehow make the person who is saying the phrase feel better about themself?

I would NEVER tell anyone what choice to make ever. Never. Never. Never.

Brought to you by The Chronicle of Higher Ed.

I see what this post wants to do and that it is in reaction to a now-common narrative about the woes of graduate school in this day and age. The woes are coming from a real place, one of tighter budgets, more students, and less jobs.

And as someone who has slugged through graduate school for a decade now (A DECADE!), I can easily speak to the highs of graduate school. Even in the shittiest, worst moments of this journey, I have not regretted going to graduate school. As the author of the Chronicle piece makes clear, there is no other intellectual space that I cherish more than the academic one (though, I must admit, Twitter rivals it for me these days). I feed off that charged mental space where people work together to better understand the world we live in by dissecting the past from which we have emerged (FYI: I’m a historian).

But even if there are golden moments in graduate school and, yes, we should acknowledge them, it does not cancel out much of what is terrible about the experience.

So, the normal caveat when talking about graduate school: it’s cushy. And I recognize that. You do get to set your deadlines (which is not as wonderful as it sounds), you do get to set your own schedule much of the time, you are engaging intellectually in areas you care about, you do interact with an amazing community of individuals, and you do get to pursue something you are passionate about (if you are in graduate school right now and you are reading this and you are not passionate about whatever it is you are studying, you must be in hell).

But let’s also be honest about graduate school. Many people (not including myself due to my husband’s income) live below the poverty level. They often don’t know if they will have a job next semester. And if they don’t, it’s not clear how to get health insurance. You cannot afford COBRA on the money you get in fellowship. Not if you want to eat, too. Health centers on university campuses are good for colds, not chronic problems.

Yes, we get to teach. But inside ever-increasing exploitative systems. Those of us lucky enough to teach our own courses are not called “Instructors” but rather “Assistant Instructors,” though we assist nobody. The latter title makes it legally easier for a university to pay you less. As Courtney pointed out to me, grad students are almost never allowed to unionize or fight collectively together for a better work environment. Since it is something that will go onto your CV and (supposedly) propel you forward in the job market, it is a luxury they bestow to you, not a grinding job. And grading, as I have said often, is basically its own ring of hell. As I have come to find out this semester, lecturing ain’t no piece of cake either. Neither is juggling your students and their problems. It’s time consuming and exhausting.

Look, there are plenty of people who have written about this. I have written about this in my worst, most depressed moments while in graduate school (I once compared it to drowning).

I know more people who struggle with depression and suicide inside of academia than out. I know more people who turn to pills and alcohol inside academia than out. If you want a rec to a great therapist, go to any academic department and ask around. I guarantee that almost everyone there will have a therapist to recommend.

[side note: As universities cut back on services, one thing that is being hit hard are mental health services on campus. It is harder and harder and harder to get an appointment and becoming more and more expensive, even on campus.]

Grad school CAN be fun. Some of my happiest times in the last decade are from graduate school. Nearly all the people I hold dear in my life outside of my family I have met through graduate school (though that is changing, too, because I have lots of friends that I’ve met on the parenting circuit and on Twitter – no joke). But certainly some of my lowest moments in the last decade also come from graduate school.

I get what the Chronicle is doing here in this article. But those reasons (“grad school is art school”) don’t exist in a rainbows- and marshmallows-happy land divorced from the ongoing pressure, constant fear of humiliation, and never-ending self-deprecation of the self-medicating and often-depressing world that is academia. The ivory tower casts long, heavy shadows.

[If you end up getting one, send me a picture of you drinking out of it and I'll post it here. My email: scatx [atttt] scatx [dotttt] com.]

A very good friend of mine, Laura Birek, works for NBC.com building websites for NBC shows. One of the shows she works on and a personal favorite for both of us is Parks and Recreation. Back in December she sent me a picture of a gift that one of her co-workers and friends, Jen McCreary, made for her:

I nearly died with love. This is a Gertrude Beer Stein, which is from an episode of Parks earlier this season titled “Pawnee Rangers.” Leslie Knope, the lead character played by Amy Poehler, created a Girl Scouts-like group of young girls of which she was the troop leader. At one point in the show, while she is discussing what the girls are doing, they go around the room and the girls show off their skills. One amazing child holds up the “Gertrude Stein” she had created (this is the most feminist show on TV):

As soon as my friend sent me a picture of her Gertrude Beer Stein, I wanted one. She put me in touch with McCreary and I learned how to make one myself. And I did:

I also made it my Twitter avatar. And for months now, at least once a week, someone comments on how fucking cool my Twitter avatar is (it really is) and multiple people have asked me how they can get one for themselves.

Here is how:

1) download the picture (McCreary, who created original Stein, told me that this is “just something done for fun (as opposed to profit).” The image of Gertrude was “swiped from the web. I’m assuming because I altered it, it doesn’t infringe on any kind of copyright; but I don’t know, so you know…another reason why it should be a just for fun thing. Also, it’s not like I came up with the idea – that was clearly Parks and Rec! And all its amazing, hilarious genius.” If you own this image and want me to take it down, please let me know and I will kill this post ASAP.):

2) Go to Zazzle.com and select the Gray/Blue mug.

3) Put picture on mug. Pay close to $30 and ship that sucker to you.

4) Get mug. Wash it out. Fill it with beer or root beer or, in Cougar Town style, wine. And enjoy.

DRINK LIKE A FEMINIST!

Why John Derbyshire’s racist screed is bullshit. Shall we?

While one could do this with the entire piece post, I’ll just stick to #10:

(10) Thus, while always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals, on the many occasions where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences, use statistical common sense:

(10a) Avoid concentrations of whites not all known to you personally.

(10b) Stay out of heavily white neighborhoods.

(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park or summer camp at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with whites on that date.

(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of whites.

(10e) If you are at somewhere and the number of whites suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.

(10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality run by white politicians.

(10g) Before voting for a white politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would anyone else.

(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to anyone in apparent distress.

(10i) If accosted by a strange white in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.

If you think for one second that you are going to find MORE instances of black-on-white crime to push the racist message that white people should fear black people, Mr. Derbyshire, you obviously know little about history, demographics, and reality (and one’s ability to google such facts).

Shame on you, sir. Shame on you.

This is a link to my first ever post at Global Comment.

Thank you, Emily Manuel, for giving me this space and this opportunity and for saving me from having to write a title for this post.

This at the bottom but in case you don’t make it all the way there, the point of this post is…

I am asking today, if you have just $5 that you can spare, please consider donating to Lilith Fund. I am participating in their annual bowl-a-thon fundraising effort and would appreciate your donation. But I don’t really care if you donate through me, someone else, directly through the website, whatever. Please donate if you can.

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The local abortion fund here in Austin is called the Lilith Fund. They help fund abortions for low-income people who cannot afford the entire cost of an abortion (which normally runs from $430 and up).

Last year, they gave out the most money ever: $78,000. And yet they were only able to help 25% of the people who called. They had to tell 75% of the people who called in crisis, looking for help, that they couldn’t help them because there simply wasn’t enough money.

And this all comes on the heels of MAJOR funding cuts by the state of Texas to reproductive health care.

Generally in Texas and here in Travis County specifically, back in summer 2011:

With one action, the Texas Legislature sought to forbid Central Health from funding elective abortions for about 1,000 low-income women in Travis County. With another, it cut an estimated $2 million in family planning money to prevent unwanted pregnancies for thousands more Travis women.

Although health officials said they feared far more drastic cuts in health and human services, that part of the budget still sustained the biggest losses in the state’s $172 billion two-year budget that kicks in Sept. 1 — $11.3 billion of the $15 billion in reduced spending.

In addition to a nearly two-thirds decline in money for family planning services over the biennium — mainly for birth control pills and annual exams that include cancer screenings, but not abortions — organizations in Travis County said they will have much less state money to aid mentally ill adults, fragile people trying to live at home and new doctors seeking training in primary care, a field facing shortages nationwide.

The Legislature also left dangling until 2013 a $4.8 billion shortfall expected in Medicaid costs, so future payment cuts are feared.

Targeting Planned Parenthood, the Republican supermajority in the Texas House reduced family planning money. Although that money cannot be used for elective abortions, and family planning services are offered not only by Planned Parenthood but also by providers including Central Health’s clinics and People’s Community Clinic, the Legislature ultimately cut the funding by about $70 million, affecting an estimated 284,000 low-income Texas women. The Legislative Budget Board reported that the reduction could lead to 20,500 additional births.

More from SGB at Hay Ladies!:

The MAP helps provide health care for families who fall below 200% of the Federal Poverty Index Guidelines. Specifically this program has provided reproductive health care to many women, including coverage for well woman exams, pap smears, birth control, and abortion for Austinites and Travis County residents. It fills the gap between folks who qualify for federal Medicaid and folks who cannot afford the cost of private health insurance.

Throughout the years, women in Austin and Travis County have relied on this program to obtain a safe and legal abortion for a $25 co-pay. Travis County and Austin recognize that low-income women needed this service to be accessible, and have made it so for a number of years.

This legislative session, Rick Perry, and the Republicans sought to end that avenue of access for Austin women. A bill was passed and signed into law (as a rider to the State Budget) which prevents Travis County MAP from receiving state funds if they continue to fund abortion services. Austin and Travis County have the only health care program that provides health care coverage for abortion in the state. Clearly, the Republicans put a target on the backs of low-income Austin women.

The Lilith Fund, which covers Texas, south from Waco and including Austin, saw a HUGE increase in people from the Austin area needing assistance with abortion after MAP was no longer able to provide subsidies for abortion care.

Additionally, things like TRAP laws, which demand strict, unnecessary regulations on abortion clinics ramp up the cost of abortions.

Then, of course, most famously, Governor Rick Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott recently created a rule that said that the Medicaid-funded Women’s Health Program, which provides reproductive health to low-income people in the state of Texas, would no longer provide money to Planned Parenthood through the WHP. The Obama administration, which had already dealt with this conservative go-around when Indiana tried it, said no. If the federal government is giving federal dollars to fund the state Medicaid program, the state cannot deny that provider the money if a patient wants to go there. Texas said: FINE. We will simply turn down the MILLIONS of federal medicaid dollars in preventative and regular reproductive health care (which does NOT in any way include abortion), effectively defunding the WHP. As the Austin Chronicle puts it:

In 2010, according to HHSC, the Women’s Health Program enrolled more than 183,000 Texas women; 106,711 actually received services that year. In 2011, the number of women who received services increased to 115,226 (the total number enrolled last year has not yet been compiled). But the current conflict between state and federal law has put health care for these women in jeopardy. If the WHP dies, following other severe budget cuts, more than 300,000 low-income and uninsured Texas women will be left without access to basic health care this year.

Lilith Fund is going to see and feel the implications of this. The people who search out Lilith Fund for help funding the abortions they need will increase.

So, I am asking today, if you have just $5 that you can spare, please consider donating to Lilith Fund. I am participating in their annual bowl-a-thon fundraising effort and would appreciate your donation. But I don’t really care if you donate through me, someone else, directly through the website, whatever. Please donate if you can.

While $5 may not seem like a lot to you, to a person in crisis trying desperately to get the abortion they need, it can be everything.

Update #3 (from Wed, 2/22): Aaaaannnnndddddd…

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I haven’t been diagnosed with depression. But I have, off and on throughout my life, had darker periods.

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My 3yo is going through a phase. He is defiant, quick to anger, often exasperated and exasperating. This has been a struggle for my partner and I for a few months now. I wrote one of my best friends about this recently and today she wrote me an email that took my breath away and touched my heart. I’m not going to share all of it but I want to share one part where she discusses the silver lining of my son’s defiance:

I have to say, if I could (every once in a while) tell my authority figures to fuck off (by my behavior or whatever) and was so secure, knowing they would continue to love me and take care of me…. Well I might spend whole days telling them to fuck off.

Both she and I grew up in families that were built on conditional love. How much of it is perceived to be conditional versus actually being conditional, at least in my case, is hard to know – I was always too terrified of it being conditional to test it (and when I did test it, I retreated quickly back to the safe path).

These words my friend wrote me, this idea of my own child existing in a familial space where he doesn’t feel the love and comfort we show him/tell him as a condition of correct behavior is just…breathtaking.

Sometimes I literally do not know what I would do without my friends. My partner and I talk often about our decision to only have one child and what that will mean when our child is grown and we are gone. What will he do for family then?

When my friends send me emails like my friend did today, I am reminded that as we grow older, our friends are the families we choose for ourselves. And if my partner and I do this parenting thing at all correctly, hopefully our son will not have a problem finding his own family of friends to care for him, love him, hold his hand, hug him, comfort him, right him when he is on the wrong path, give him advice, and see him through life the way my friends do for me.

I happen to have a sister whom I adore and, despite whatever flaws exist in my family, I love them thoroughly and with my entire heart.

But today I want to celebrate the amazing thing that is a good, true, chosen, loving friend.