Morality Cannot Be Defined By Any One Thing: Planned Parenthood vs. Karen Handel

Can we just talk about Karen Handel for a second? Ok, maybe a couple of seconds. She doesn't merit much more than that, but as a case-study in a particular way of thinking that I cannot for the life of me make heads or tails of, she's interesting.

And then we'll talk about how she's batshit insane.

But first, the earnest and wide-eyed questioning ingenue portion of today's blog.

Handel ran for governor of Georgia some years back, and her campaign website has been archived on the internet, because the internet never forgets anything, and so we can look at her statement about Planned Parenthood while she was running for governor. The salient portion of the statement reads as follows:

First, let me be clear, since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood. During my time as Chairman of Fulton County, there were federal and state pass-through grants that were awarded to Planned Parenthood for breast and cervical cancer screening, as well as a “Healthy Babies Initiative.” The grant was authorized, regulated, administered and distributed through the State of Georgia. Because of the criteria, regulations and parameters of the grant, Planned Parenthood was the only eligible vendor approved to meet the state criteria. Additionally, none of the services in any way involved abortions or abortion-related services. In fact, state and federal law prohibits the use of taxpayer funds for abortions or abortion related services and I strongly support those laws. Since grants like these are from the state I’ll eliminate them as your next Governor.

The sentence that smacked me upside the head and made me want to cry for the state of humanity is the last one: "Since grants like these are from the state I'll eliminate them as your next Governor."

What the what? Not, "Since grants like this are from the state, I'll amend the criteria so Planned Parenthood is not the only eligible vendor as your next Governor." Or even, "Since grants like this are from the state, I'll take the grant money and let the state itself administer cancer screenings and baby check-ups."

No. None of that reasonableness. As the next Governor, she would have eliminated the grants.

She's so pro-life that she's going to eliminate state spending on diagnosing life-threatening disease early! She's so pro-life she's going to make sure that poor babies don't see a doctor!

Look, Planned Parenthood is fun for a lot of people to use as a punching bag because they stubbornly refuse to stop providing comprehensive reproductive care services for women, usually women that have no other, or very limited other, access to healthcare. In plain English, Planned Parenthood refuses to remove abortion from the plethora of services it provides. Because of this, "pro-lifers" are quick to pile on, screeching at the top of their lungs that Planned Parenthood ought to be defunded by everyone and hounded out of business.

So, you don't like abortion. That's fair. I know some very lovely people who are staunchly against the practice, would never have one, would be horrified to know their daughter had one. I also know some not-so-lovely people who are staunchly against the practice.

The thing that, in my mind, separates lovely anti-abortion people from horrifyingly misogynistic control-freaks is something I call the Planned Parenthood barometer. It goes like this: I understand and respect your belief that life begins at conception and that you would never abort a fetus; do you understand and respect my belief (backed up by ACTUAL FACTS) that Planned Parenthood does way, way more than performing abortions, and can you recognize the good that they do and be happy that they do it and that they save lives? If the anti-abortion person I am speaking to can, in fact, recognize the good that Planned Parenthood does every day, then I term them a lovely anti-abortion person. Maybe they still have some discomfort, morally, with that, but you know what? Nothing is black-and-white. No moral decision will ever be simple. Being a good, moral person is to be uncomfortable for most of your life, because choices are hard, whether you're talking about an unintended pregnancy or killing a man that breaks into your house with the intent of harming you. If someone cannot understand that moral choices are fraught with gray and cannot recognize and acknowledge all the good (and I do mean, straight-up good) things that Planned Parenthood does, I mentally write them off as a horrifyingly misogynistic control freak and remind myself to never, ever trust them. With anything.

I'm not exaggerating even a little bit.

If your sense of being "pro-life" is so centered on a fetus that you are blind to the lives saved and made easier and the comfort given by poor people having access to breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer screenings, STD testing, and a general environment of non-judgmental knowledge, you're not very pro-life. You don't have to like abortion. You don't have to have one. But if you'd like to simply cease funding programs that do, in fact, save lives simply because they are being administered by an organization that does perform the perfectly legal abortion procedure, you cannot call yourself pro-life.

PERIOD. FULL STOP. You cannot do it.

Apparently, Karen Handel is one of these people.

What I learned last week, as the Komen debacle unfolded, is that contrary to what I had begun to believe about American humanity, she's the minority. People who are so incapable of recognizing nuance and the gradations that are attendent in any moral decision-making process are a minority.

You may not like abortion. You may think it's a bad thing, and a bad choice to make, and you might choose not to have one should you ever find yourself in an unfortunate position. But you don't get to condemn millions upon millions of poor women to death by breast cancer, or cervical cancer, or to lives of pain and suffering because of constant pregnancy due to lack of contraceptive access or STDs, and call it the moral, good, pro-life choice. And I learned last week that far, far more people than I thought would be able to make that distinction, DO, in fact, make that distinction.

World, you did me proud. I love all of you right now.

Then I read Handel's resignation letter this morning. The woman is batshit insane. She thinks if she says the same untrue things often enough, people will start to believe her. She thinks this even after last week very demonstrably proved that her extreme and frightening ideology and narrow focus is not shared by the majority of the people that Komen tries to help, or is supported by. Isn't the definition of insanity "doing the same thing and expecting different results?"

I thought so. The woman is nuts.

Your First Time Is Never Any Good

This is a thing we tell teenagers, or young adults, about their first sexual experience. Maybe it's just girls we tell this to? I don't know.

It's totally true, though. Your first time is never any good. Mine sure wasn't. My first few times weren't very good. Possibly my first few hundred? It took a few years for me to get the hang of sex, and then I'm pretty sure it just happened on accident anyway. Now, I find myself at the ripe old age of 27, actively working at my sex life for the first time ever.

It's weird. The working at it is weird, I mean. I am not naturally a "worker." My natural state is much closer to "dilettantism." I am very good at doing nothing. I don't actually like to work at anything. That's probably why I flunked out of college (twice) and now have a mindless administrative job. So working at sex is something of an unnatural state of affairs for me, as my character is so unsuited to work in general, and that goes double for working at things that are supposed to be pleasurable.

I have been having better sex in the last year, though. So even I must concede that there must be something to this work thing.

A few months back, when I was riding high on some confidence-binge of unknown origins, I submitted a short story to a bonafide literary publication.

SCARY.

Almost immediately after hitting the "send" button, I wanted to take it back and be all like, "Oh, hai, can you just delete that? Don't bother reading it. Kthnx."

I didn't do that, of course, because that would have been stupid. Also, even though I knew I was setting myself up for rejection, I sort of wanted to see what happened. Expecting anything other than rejection on your first submission attempt is pretty much ego-suicide, and I know this. Much better, and much more deserving, writers than I have been rejected hundreds upon thousands of times.

But still, some part of me wondered if maybe I hadn't just stumbled into a good story, the way I accidentally stumbled into good sex.

I didn't. The expected (albeit VERY TARDY) rejection letter arrived in my inbox this afternoon.

And now I find myself in the distasteful position of having to work at something else. If I'm going to publish anything, clearly I have to clean up my act, write more, dedicate time to it, read about writing, all that nonsense that all those silly "get-published-quick" websites tell you to do.

How common. (I'm really a snob at heart. I don't pretend anything else, ok, so don't get all up in my business about it.)

Still, if your first try is never any good, and working at sex has made my sex better, maybe I'd better stoop to being common. Clearly I am not extraordinary, anyway, as the rejection letter in my inbox keeps yelling at me.

The Depths of Toddler Despair

My three-and-a-half-year-old is deep in the pit of an existential crisis. I know that sounds adorable and precocious and like a good opportunity for personal growth for a Mama that purports to be mindful, and it is all those things. It is.

But, no jokes, no funny business, it's also hell. A three-and-a-half-year-old existential crisis involves some pretty horrendous temper tantrums. You can't really blame her, really: it's got to be awful to be in the grips of angsty ennui when you don't even know the words "angst" and "ennui." As nebulous and imprecise as they are, they at least provide some sort of structure for your feelings.

It's been a really tough week for us, these past seven days or so. She's been moody, operating on a hair-trigger that sends her from smiling and delightful to anger ball monster in a matter of seconds. There have been lots of thrown toys, lots of screams, lots of "NO!" regardless of what is being offered.

After her angry outbursts, she always starts to cry and then tries to burrow into me. If I ask her to stop crying, she'll look up at me with tear-stained cheeks and whimper, "But I'm really sad, Mama. I'm really sad."

It's heartbreaking.

But for seven days, I have been unable to get her to tell me what it is, exactly, that she's sad about. She's either ignored the question completely when its been asked, or mumbled some throwaway answer along the lines of  "I don't know."

Yeah, yeah, I know: she's my kid. She's MY daughter. This behavior makes perfect sense when you think about it that way, right?

Last night, after the fourth straight dinner-table meltdown, I took her upstairs to calm down. Time-outs weren't working, obviously, so I sat with her, instead - the two of us cuddled up in the rocker in her room.

And she said to me again, "I'm sad, Mama. I'm just really sad."

"What are you sad about?" I asked, again, with no hope or expectation of a response.

She lifted her chin, and the lamplight glinted on her wet, mottled cheeks. "I don't know who I am, Mama!" she wailed confessionally. "What's my fourth name?"

I was taken aback. What did she mean, fourth name? What was this about not knowing who she is?

"You're Genevieve Anne Findley. You're my snugglebug, and you are my best girl, and you are clever and strong and big and beautiful," I said to her. "Mama gave you three names. Genevieve, for St. Genevieve; Anne for Anne Shirley; and Findley, just like Mama."

She wasn't sobbing anymore, but there were still tears making tracks down her face, and her grip on my shirt was compulsively tight.

"But what about my fourth name, Mama? I should have four names," she choked out.

"Well, you think about what you want your fourth name to be. You think about all the names you know, and all the names you've heard, and when you find the perfect fourth name, you let me know, and we'll add it, ok?" This is me trying to be supportive in my absolute bafflement.

She snuggled deeper into my chest and stared at the wall. I stroked her hair. We sat and rocked, gently, back and forth, back and forth.

After what felt like an eternity, she straightened up and looked me dead in the eye.

"Bookwriter," she said. "My fourth name is Bookwriter."

"Absolutely," I replied. "Genevieve Anne Bookwriter Findley."

She squeezed out a tiny smile, and back we went to the dinner table, where she still didn't eat anything, but at least she didn't howl the whole time.

My three-and-a-half-year-old, who can't write her own name yet, wants to be a bookwriter. And is deep in the pit of an existential crisis. Perhaps some stereotypes exist for good reason. And perhaps all writers really are crazy, right from the very beginning. It would sure explain a lot about me.

"Girl Land:" This Is What Sexual Trauma Looks Like

Author's note: As you'll see in the comments, I was mistaken about the publicly acknowledged magnitude of whatever happened to Caitlin Flanagan as a teenager. I still think that the essence of her admonitions and fears seem to spring from a place of trauma, but do please take my analysis with several grains of salt.

Some masochistic, curious-as-a-cat-with-only-one-life-left part of me really wants to read Caitlin Flanagan's Girl Land. Now, I'm sort of broke (well, when am I not sort of broke?) so I don't really think I can shell out $30 for a hardcover I will probably want to burn after reading, so I probably won't read it, at least not until it hits paperback.

I feel like most of the coverage I've read about this book ignores a very crucial piece of information. The book has been excoriated as reactionary, and dangerously nostalgic. Flanagan herself has been called a "cranky, (prematurely) old  church lady." There's an entertaining hour with her and Irin Carmon, resident feminist of Salon, on NPR's "On Point" that's been the fodder for quite a few blogs in recent days. In particular, the bit where Flanagan goes after Carmon for not having had a boyfriend in high school is almost laughable in its ridiculousness.

Basically, the condensed version of Flanagan's ideas and thesis (if you can call it a thesis?) is that adolescent girls today are being rushed out of their girlhoods by the Internet and pornography, and parents need to protect their girls from these pernicious and worldly influences so that they don't end up having a lot of sex with men who treat them badly. There's also a lot of discussion of "princess" ideals and tropes, which Flanagan adores. There's a lot of discussion out there that Flanagan's argument amounts to: (1) men only want sex; (2) women only want to be treated like princesses; (3) sex is dirty; (4) women have to use dirty sex to get men to treat them like princesses. There's an awful lot wrong with all of that, as I'm sure most of you will recognize. It leaves out any variation among female wants. It paints a pernicious and dangerous picture of men. It precludes the idea that men and women can ever be friends. It relies on gender stereotypes that are damaging to both men and women. And it straight-up calls sex something dirty.

All pretty reactionary, throwback, damaging ideas.

But in pretty much every piece I've read about this book, the incredibly salient fact of Flanagan's rape when she was a teenager is mentioned, and then glossed over in the analysis of her ideas.

So let me be the one to say it, I guess.

This is what sexual trama looks like.

Being forced out of one's girlhood by a violent act would leave someone with a pretty negative view of sex, don't you think? And in the culture of victim-blaming and rape-apology we live in, it's not hard to see how someone would fail to heal from that. It's not at all difficult to see how all that blame could be internalized into self-loathing.

OF COURSE Flanagan wants to protect girls; she wishes, I am certain, that someone had protected her. That her recipe for protection involves giving girls no tools for dealing with men and the world and the whirlpool of emotions that is sex is no surprise. She doesn't want to deal with any of those things.

Rape is a serious and incredibly damaging act. With every word I read about this woman, and with every harsh word I read about her prescriptions, I wince a little bit inside. When Carmon admonished Flanagan on "On Point" not to make this about her, or herself, I wanted to grab my radio and shake it. This book would seem to be about Flanagan, and her intensely personal wounds that have never healed. Please, please: make this conversation about her, because that's what it needs to be. Flanagan may be a social critic, but when her criticism and prescription come from such a place as I imagine they do, it must be understood that she's not talking about the world as it is, but the world as she understands it. And while it's always true that we each of us see the world through the prism of our experiences and unique perceptions, it's also likely true that Flanagan's perspective is far more skewed than most people's.

Stop piling on this poor woman. Yes, this may be exactly the thing that misogynists and zealots and morality legislators will hold up when they try to push agendas that curtail women's freedoms. And certainly Flanagan bears responsibility for her words. But still: I can't help but be overwhelmed with compassion every time I read anything about her.

Rape is trauma. And it should surprise no one that in a culture where Ben Roethlisberger makes millions in the NFL and Dominique Strauss-Kahn goes free and women are constantly told how to dress and act so that they will not be raped that Flanagan has a nostalgic longing for a time before she ever had to think about sex or worry about danger, and that she wants to keep girls in that safe space forever.

With A Little Help

I have amazing friends. I don't think I've ever taken time to publicly give thanks to all of my amazing, awesome, funny, beautiful, kind-hearted, clever, creative friends.

So let's do that, shall we?

I love my friends. I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet and know truly wonderful people. I have been granted the grace of surrounding myself with good, interesting, artistic people. My friends are amazing and do amazing things. My friends write stories and prose poetry. My friends take pictures. My friends are artists and illustrators. My friends write about music and dream of opening patisseries. My friends are nuclear technicians and labor organizers. My friends design clothes. My friends run for office when they just can't stand how terribly awry things are going. My friends get quoted in articles about developing social networks for social activists. My friends defend children charged with crimes, and write books about history. My friends are encyclopedic pop-culture cranks.

I have great friends.

But beyond all the amazing things my friends DO, my friends are all amazing people.

Which is not to say we're all perfect. No one's perfect, not even my wild, amazing, eclectic bunch of friends. But we're all good. Basically. We all want good things, for each other and ourselves and everyone else in the world, too. We all want a better world. And because my friends are so amazing and creative, they are all making that better world in their own amazing, beautiful, perfect ways.

But beyond all the amazing things my friends do, and the amazing people they all are, the thing that I am most grateful for today is that my friends are my friends. They are people that I can drink with on a schoolnight. I can have involved conversations about totem vegetables with my friends. They will try headcheese with me. They will give me tips on turning my life into a Wes Anderson movie (that are actually very helpful). They will watch The Young Ones with me, warm on a couch and content to just gape at the screen and ask, "What the fuck is going on."

My friends are good friends. They listen and laugh and sigh and make every day so much better than any day has any right to be. Except that every day, for everyone, should have such good friends in it. My friends gift me with giggles and thoughts and ideas and inspirations and hugs every day. I have the best friends. Everyone should have friends like this.

Here's to my amazing, wonderful, beautiful friends. And yours, too!

"The Artist"

Winter is my season for movies. It always has been. I enjoy a good summer blockbuster (What up, Inception? The Dark Knight? Love you guys.) but really, winter is my season for movies. Winter is the season of gems like Blue Valentine, like Tamara Drewe, like Biutiful, like jeux d'enfants, like Let the Right One In, like The Science of Sleep.

(I just realized that only two of those movies are in English and only one of them is American. I promise: I'm not actually a foreign-cinema snob, ok? Those are just the best of the best of the last ten years.)

This winter is shaping up to be no exception. Melancholia? LOVED it. Two separate social commentaries, elegantly spliced together into a single film, dealing with the reality of depression and the need to understand and accept life's impermanence. The message is strong and strongly delivered, the script is fantastic, the cinematography is lush and sparse by turns, and I cannot express to you how nice it is to see Kirsten Dunst actually *acting* again. Not to mention Charlotte Gainsbourg.

But I think the darling of winter 2011/2012 is easily The Artist. The trailer makes it look like a simple love story, and there is a love story buried in it, but it is so much else, and so much first, before it is a love story. The Artist is an allegory, an extended metaphor for Hollywood dealing with the internet. It is an admonition to adapt or die, but to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And it is an artfully drawn portrait of the sort of terror and absolute despair an artist feels when they feel as if they have no voice in a brave new world, or even a tired old one.

The Artist is (with two notable, and powerful, exceptions) a silent movie, shot in black and white. It establishes immediately that whatever hokiness we may see in old silent pictures of the 1930s, it is possible to effectively tell a story and engage emotionally with your audience in the medium. The story is of a star of the silent era that is hesitant to jump on the "talking picture" bandwagon, and who is ultimately nearly forced out of show business entirely. He is "saved" by a young starlet, in love with him, who helps him build a bridge between the world of his silent pictures and the talking pictures that she is such a hit in.

The allegory is clear, at least to me: pre-Internet era production types and distribution models are the silent pictures of our era; the Internet is as a big a change as sound in movies, and requires as big an adjustment to everyone involved in the business. That The Artist is distributed by the Weinstein Company, bastion of current Hollywood that it is, at first struck me as highly ironic. Hollywood understands the need to adapt, and to change, but it is making a movie about coming to terms with the need to adapt and change under the old system.

However, upon reflection, I'm not sure that it's ironic so much as it is self-preservation. The strong undercurrent of the "adapt or die" message is to be careful not to do away with the good things about old models when you do change. It is possible to effectively tell a story silently in black and white; we didn't need sound or color to do that. The young starlet in The Artist consistently recognizes the value and emotional resonance of the aging silent star's work. She cries for him, and his ideas and his vision. She understands that her medium is the future, but she doesn't want to lose the artistry of his medium. The Weinstein Company distributing this film is a broadside against irrelevancy, and it's a good one.

The secondary message of The Artist is the existential angst and terror of an artist, any artist, when they begin to feel as if they have nothing to say. The silent film star refuses to move into "talkies" at least in part because he doesn't think that people want to hear his voice. He's never told a story that way; he's never expressed himself that way. He doesn't think he can. The Artist is also the personal story of one artist facing the need to adapt or die, to find new ways to express what is inside, to be continually searching for new avenues to explore.

We, as individuals, as artists, as creators, must also adapt or die. And that is a scary prospect. We must constantly push forward, push boundaries, find new things to say and new and nuanced ways to say them. And when we, as individuals, as artists, as creators, feel stymied in that quest, the dark depths to which we fall are frightening.

This is a movie I need to own; this is a movie I need to be able to watch once a year or twice a year or maybe just whenever I feel like it. Adapt or die. Change is not the end. There is always a new way to bring your internal reality to the exterior world. Because that's what artists do, isn't it?

I Don't Blink In Dreams

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if you hadn’t absconded.

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if you reappeared, magic, poof, a solid reality instead of the ephemeral set of memories I live with every day.

I dreamt about you. Recently. Not last night, not the night before that. Last week, maybe. I don’t remember, precisely. My memory was never good when it came to you. You were always about the moment. I was always in the moment with you, and time and detail ceased to matter. Who needs linear abstraction when there is so much else to pay attention to, so much that is real to feel? Who knows how long a second can be? I know that it can be an eternity. The second between the inhale and the exhale can be eternity. Who needs to remember the paintings in the Tate when I can say that every busker in London played “Wonderwall” whenever we walked by?

We looked at the paintings anyway. We sat through a lecture in the National Gallery. And when the dry woman with the dead-leaf voice was done telling us things we already knew about Adam and Eve and Eve in art and the place of the feminine in Christian-sponsored art, we escaped from the auditorium like children let out for recess and we skipped down the hallway giggling like mad things and we played hide-and-seek among the soldiers of the Terracotta Army until a burly, black-jacketed docent asked us to leave in politely threatening tones.

We knew the secret to removing ourselves from the ordered world, you and I.

But I dreamt you, recently. I dreamt you to my door and into my bedroom. We stood face to face, and I put the tips of my fingers on the sharp protrusion of your cheekbone. My right hand, your left cheek. Just so. Just the way we stood when you picked me up at Heathrow, that time you were late and I called and called and there was no answer and I worried and thought about taking a cab but didn’t know where to take it.

Remember?

You finally appeared. You were apologetic, profusely, abundantly apologetic.The tumble of words from your lips was torrential, neverending. I put my finger tips on your cheek. I didn’t trust myself to touch your lips; I didn’t trust you to have my skin against them. So I touched your cheekbone, instead.

You stopped talking.

We walked to your car together. You started talking again. We drove through the City center on the way to Rose Cottage; it was Sunday, it was late, there was no congestion charge. You played tour guide. I sat sideways, my back against the car door, my knees pulled up and my toes poking at the gear shifter. You put your hand on my ankle in between gears. You circled it completely in your hand, and I felt every callous and every training cut.

In my dream, you went to open up my skull, like you used to do, to swing it back on those ivory hinges you installed yourself, but I had changed the lock. Your key didn’t fit.

You laughed at me.

“Don’t you remember, love? I’m a thief. I’m a doorman. You can’t keep me out,” you said. Cocky cockney.

And you pulled out your kit, your picks and your wires, and you picked that bone lock on my forehead, right between my eyes. I watched you the whole time. I don’t blink, in dreams. I didn’t want to keep you out, you know. I changed the lock so that you’d have to touch me, take your time. I changed the lock to slow you down.

But then you’d done it, and my skull swung back on those ivory hinges you installed yourself, and your calloused fingers were in my brain, buried deep, all the way to the palm. I could feel the weight of your heavy hand on my frontal lobe, affecting my judgment.

The tips of your nails tickled my temporal lobe, and I remembered: living with you was like living in a dream. There was eternity in the space between inhaling and exhaling. I never blinked.

I have you in my dreams. I don’t need you in front of me anymore.