NS September 14th, 2009

I took up running a couple months ago and was doing really well with it up until two weeks ago. The first week I didn’t go at all was due to a combination of TNB’s illness (tonsilitis) and previously scheduled nights out. Last week’s inertia was mainly due to TNH’s work schedule and the sudden change in sunset. It seems like just yesterday it was light until 10pm; now it’s pitch black by eight.

As a woman who has had nighttime safety drilled into her head from a young age, I didn’t think twice about automatically assuming this meant I couldn’t go running past that hour. But today, as I ran in the park with TNC and felt my feet pounding the ground, a strong desire to get back on track overcame me. But when would I run? TNH usually doesn’t get home until close to 7.30. By the time I change into my running clothes and do a couple things relating to the kids’ bedtimes (7.30 is the absoloute worst time to try to get out of the house) it’s already nearing complete dark.

And as much as I know that my area of London is pretty safe and that, in theory, I should be okay for a half hour on suburban streets when there are still people out and about, a knife of apprehension still twists itself in my stomach. What should I wear, do, or take with me to prevent an attack? Which route would be the least dangerous and in the most well-lit and high-traffic areas? Should I not listen to my iPod so that I can be more aware of strange noises behind me? What should I do if I suspect someone is following me or shouts at me from a passing car? Am I crazy for even considering running at night?

This is what a woman’s thoughts turn to as summer turns to autumn and the night closes in nearer on both sides of wakefullness. These are the questions we ask ourselves  as we assess how safely we can access our communities now that the daylight hours are receding.

This is what we have to think about every single year, every single month, every single day. And it’s bloody exhausting.

I have to wonder if men, even feminist men, can ever really grasp what it’s like to constantly assess our actions and routes and words to prevent violent crime being perpetrated against us. It’s something that is hard not to be worn down by, and to become more cynical and bitter about. We may have the right to work and vote and do a lot of other things that used to be the exclusive privilege of men, but we still don’t have the privilege of walking freely and without fear of assault, or comment. Because it’s not just about the restrictions that nightfall bring, but the constant barrage of sexism and exertion of power over us, year round.

In the summer, we fear wearing a dress or a top that is too revealing, even if the weather is unbearably hot, lest we are catcalled and groped by leering passerby whose aggressions seem to rise in conjunction with the temperature.

In the winter, as the elements make car breakdowns and accidents more likely, we freeze in fear at the thought of accepting help from a stranger and would rather sit in our icy, broken cars while we wait hours for the orange flashing lights of the accredited and vetted roadside cavalry, doors locked and fingers on the panic button of our mobile phones.

In the spring, as everyone comes pouring back onto sidealk cafes and parks  and out of the stupor of hibernation, smiles and comments about the lovely weather between strangers have to be monitored and reined in for fear that exhanging passing pleasantries will give a man the ‘wrong impression’ and invite him to pester us for a date or a number or a smile.

As women, our seasons are not ones of calendars and turns of weather, but of shadow and light, cold and hot, open and enclosed spaces. As women, we are still denied the liberty of safe, free range motion without fear of bodily harm and social repurcussions.

So I can’t help but feel a bit like a caged hen, a battery chicken, as I look out my window at the autumnal city streets and then forlornly at the running shoes gathering dust at the front door.

Post-feminist world, indeed.

• Feminist Fury , Health and Fitness , I Bitch Therefore I Am , Londonista
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NS August 13th, 2009

As much as I welcome debate  and am passionate about the issues that mean a lot to me, and as often as I am willing to call people out on their shitty behaviour or words, sometimes it all gets to be too much. When I read such misogynist, hateful, spiteful crap, day in and day out, occassionally it gets to me.  For a moment, even for a day, I feel defeated. I think why the hell do I bother? Why do I do this to myself, get so worked up and invest so much time in arguing with people who are likely to never change their attitude? Why are they so filled with hate and ignorance and superiority? How do people get to be this way? What do they get out of it? Do they outnumber the good amongst us?

Usually, my response is anger and indignation but sometimes the vitriol directed at people just trying to go about their lives stops me in my tracks and just makes me feel hopeless instead. I mean, how do you respond to something as hateful and juvenile as this? And I already know the answer to that — you can’t. But by god it’s hard not to seethe with helplessness when a total stranger says such horrible things about something you cherish and fight relentlessly to protect and promote. Sometimes, it’s just too much.

So for once, my mouth is getting a rest (and my fingers, from typing) and instead my eyes and heavy heart will bear the brunt of my discontent. I wish I could always be stronger and better and just shrug every last comment off, but there’s always one that is the proverbial straw on this camel’s back and the only way to get out of the desert is to empty the wells and start again.

Tomorrow,  I’ll be back to fight. But tonight, I can’t take reading anymore ignorant drivel. So I’m going to turn the computer off now, walk up to my bed, snuggle my beautiful baby, and forget that such ugliness exists.

Wake me when all the assholes have gone, please.

• Activism , Human Oddities , I Bitch Therefore I Am , Lactivism , Miscellaneous Missives
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NS August 10th, 2009

I got this email from a family member yesterday, who was passing it on from a friend of a friend. As I sat there reading the forwarded message, which was written by an American woman who’d received health care while visiting Scotland last month, I found myself growing very angry and depressingly sad. This woman used her story to “prove” that socialized medicine doesn’t work, is inhumane and utterly inferior to the system in the USA. I almost couldn’t make it to the end of the email and had to stop myself from Replying All and letting loose with a detailed response. Instead, I’m posting it here.

This is what was contained in the email:

I, Karen Sparks, found myself in need of hospitalization and surgery while I was visiting Scotland in July 2009.  I had a critical health issue and had emergency surgery  within 7 hours of admittance to the UK National Health Care system at the Royal Aberdeen Infirmary for a septic knee.
My first stop was a dingy ward room to speak to a doctor to evaluate me.  There were people there waiting to get a bed in the hospital for treatment, but no beds were available to them until someone else left.  I had some tests done and then i was sent to my bed upstairs. I was fortunate to get one. It was a shock to me to be put in a ward room with 6 other women.  I had not saw that since I was a child.  I was being told I would soon have my surgery by a doctor who was not going to be my surgeon.  I never ever saw the person who operated on me.  I only saw doctors and interns who had been in a general meeting about the surgerys of that night. That is not any way to get any clear answers to your questions or fears.  You really don't know anything when you are there.
My husband was beside himself and followed the gurney to wait to talk to the surgeon.  As we got to the elevator the nurse told my husband he could not come down to surgery and there are no provisions for waiting during surgery. He could see me the next day at 2pm visiting hours! It was now 10:30PM. You do not get public relations in government health care systems.
Now he had to call home and tell my mother ,who was worried sick, he did not know a thing about how I made it through surgery and wouldn't until the next afternoon. He did hide out in the hospital during my surgery but did not know anything about how I did, all he saw was me going back to my ward. Actually you never see any doctors as a family member unless you get lucky and they come speak to them at visiting hours, but you have to ask.  It makes you feel totally at their mercy without much say in your own life or treatment.
I was assigned to a womens orthopedic ward with 6 beds, all full, three whose ages were 93, 87,and 85, all of which had broken hips.  Those elderly women laid in their beds NO LESS than five, yes I said 5 days, before they took them to surgery to fix those hips.  The doctors would come in most every day and tell them that they were not an emergency situation and maybe tomorrow we will have time.
I had an IV port in my arm from surgery and it was used to main line my antibiotics by syringes.  You took oral pain pills, no drip Iv's to sustain you. If you couldn't eat and drink on your own to sustain yourself you got weaker which I saw the elderly do. I don't know if my 93 year old roommate made it through her surgery. I never saw her again after they took her to "theater".
The pain of those aged women lying with badly broken bones, in  bed getting joustled about all week in the name of cleanliness was cruel and depressing.  I am sure they did not care to get a bath or clean sheets by the sounds of their protests and crys. They wanted medical help!  As sick as I was I knew I was the lucky one.
Remember we are are closer to the United Kingdom than any other country in the world by the way we live and have compassion. They are living with this horrible health system and we could be next if the powers in Washington force it  upon us.
I don't believe any of us are going to want a national socialized health care.  Everyone will suffer except those in control who set it up for the masses.Do you want your family member lying in a bed suffering for days because they aren't precieved as an emergency?  Yes it is expensive to have health insurance in the United States but we do have health care that far outweighs what I saw in the United Kingdom.
God bless and help us to keep our leading doctors, specialists  and  research doctors.  We will loose all of that with the new reform and the rest of the world depends on us to be leaders in health care and prevention.  They come here to our doctors and hospitals when they
can not get a life saving procedure in a timely fashion in their socialized country of health care.We are the United States of America and we need to start protecting our valuable human resourses, the citizens of The United States of America.  Wake up before it is too late America!

Karen T Sparks
Bartlesville Oklahoma

Well, Karen, let me tell  you something: you are a propaganda pusher. You are ignorant, arrogant beyond belief and your “concern” for the “citizens of the United States of America” is a facade. What you *really* care about is covering your own ass. You, as a fully insured person with enough material wealth to be traveling abroad, don’t want things to change FOR YOU. You don’t give a rat’s ass about the 40 million Americans without any health insurance, or the millions more who are underinsured. You speak only to those fortunate enough to have jobs or pensions with good health benefits attached; those middle class and educated enough to have access to the state-of-the-art facilities your pampered ass is used to being in. You consider health care a business and you are a customer whose needs and demands must be met and satisfied at all times. And as long as that happens, you’re happy.

How DARE you take your one isolated experience of socialised health care  and use it to make direct comparisons and predictions for what health care reform would mean for America? How DARE you tell me, an American citizen who went uninsured for several years because I couldn’t afford it and now, as a UK resident with instant and unlimited access to health care based on my status as a HUMAN BEING instead of as PAYING CUSTOMER, that I’m the one missing out? How DARE you tell the people who arent insured, or who don’t have adequate insurance, that they don’t matter, so long as you get your clean, private room and your husband gets his own personal PR agent to hold his hand while he waits for news of your progress?

You say you were confused, your questions unanswered. Do you think that perhaps it had more to do with the fact that you were already in an unfamiliar environment, in an unfamiliar system in a foreign country, than with the system itself? That perhaps because of that, you were too scared and unsure of yourselves to ask the proper questions? That perhaps you were too arrogant to bother asking them at all, too shocked that someone wasn’t spoon feeding it to you through an IV drip so you didn’t have to do any work at all? Because that’s what you want, right? To lie back and let the doctors do their work on your behalf, sure that they have your best interests at heart since you’re a goddamn American citizen and therefore the best, most worthy patient in the world?

Karen T. Sparks, socialised medicine isn’t sick…you are. And I’ll tell you why.

I have two children and don’t work outside the home. I take care of them while my husband works to pay our mortgage and bills. We are very fortunate to be able to do this, and we know it. Many people need two incomes to even make their basic payments. We are blessed, and lucky. My husband likes his job but if he didn’t, he would be free to go out and look for another where he’d be happier. He can change jobs without endangering his family’s ability to access health care. He could even lose his job and we’d be okay. If worse came to worst and we had to sell our house and move in with family, at least we’d know that our health wasn’t compromised or that we’d be bankrupted in the process of making sure it wasn’t. We wouldn’t have to sit up at night with a sick and feverish child, agonising over whether to see how it goes a little longer or rush her into the hospital, thinking about what it’s going to cost us instead of focusing on getting our daughter well again.

When I went into the hospital to have my first baby, I didn’t have to fill out a bunch of insurance forms while I was in labour or sign a consent form allowing the doctors to perform a zillion procedures and interventions so that they could guarantee a perfect outcome and reduce the chance that I’d sue them. Because that’s what Americans do, right? If something goes wrong, they sue. If their hospital “experience” wasnt’ what they feel they paid for, they get a lawyer and they sue the shit out of the doctor, the nurse, the hospital, the janitor…whoever they can cut down with their merciless need to blame someone for all of life’s ills. You pride yourselves on your work ethic and bootstraps mentality, don’t you? You think you’re the greatest nation in the world and that you can do anything if you set your minds to it or are paying top dollar for it. You, and others like you, have gotten so above yourselves and stuck your heads so far up our own self-congratulatory asses that you have no time for things like Nature, or Death or Human Fallibility. You want only Service, Results and Accountability. Having a health care system based on ability to pay has turned you into clients, not patients, and your health care practitioners into business owners concerned only with the bottom line.

When I had my second child, I had a choice in where and how I gave birth. I wasn’t treated as a pod carrying a precious “pre-born person” who had more rights than me. Since I was healthy and having a baby is a natural process, I was given the option to give birth at home. I had two midwives in attendance and no drugs. No IV drip, no scalpel, no monitors or wires strapped to me, no paperwork to fill out. I birthed a baby and they were there in case anything went wrong. It didn’t.

I got one-to-one care and they even came back every couple day for the next few weeks to check on me and the baby so I didn’t have to get myself together and take a newborn baby into a doctor’s office full of sick people. Not once was I asked how I was paying or for proof that I had a right to receive their care. I was treated as a person, not a “customer.” Me and my baby were the bottom line, not what procedures and length of stay my insurance would cover.

Don’t get me wrong, the national health service here is not perfect. There are longer waiting times for non-life-threatening procedures and cleanliness and understaffing can be a problem. These problems are transparent because they are government run and therefore constantly in the public eye, up for scrutiny, as they should be. Though an imperfect system, the NHS is always striving to improve. The American system is not perfect either, though. There are mistakes and long waits and dirty hospitals and not enough staff to go around and aged women are left in pain on gurneys and alone on hospital beds. You just don’t know about it because you don’t have to frequent the facilities where these problems are more prevalent. You don’t see this because you have insurance, and good coverage at that. You are blind to the inadequate care that millions and millions of Americans receive (or don’t receive at all) because they aren’t  valued top-paying customers. You are in the VIP room of health care;  you are so blind to your privilege that you don’t know any other room even exists.

You may have noticed that I keep using the pronoun ‘they’ when talking about Americans, and that I must not identify as one. Well, I was born and raised in America. I will always be American. I love my country. But I hate the mentalities of many of its citizens and how it is run. This resistance to change is a resistance to criticise yourselves. And a society that cannot criticise itself and work to change for the better — to evolve and grow as a nation — is not a healthy one, nor one that I want to be a part of. Callous disregard for such as basic human right as the right to health care is not something I want to be a part of anymore. As much as I miss my family and the land of my childhood, and as many good qualities as America has, I can never go back. I can never go back because it is not the country I thought it was. It is so sick that it doesn’t even KNOW it’s sick and refuses to take any medicine. All the pleading and cajoling in the world won’t make that bitter pill go down, as sad as that is. So like any sane person who can’t take anymore, I proclaim to wash my hands of it. Let them get sick and die in their millions then! I won’t be witness to it anymore. I’m finished.

Except, I can’t turn away. My family and my friends still live there, and my children are American citizens, too. One day we’d like to move back and allow them to experience that part of their heritage — MY heritage — but I refuse to take them to a place that doesn’t value their health as a right, but a privilege. It would be like taking a step backwards in time after having seen the future. I won’t make them feel like second-class citizens if they are not fortunate enough to have good jobs with good insurance, or force them to stay in jobs they hate so they can go to the doctor when they need to. I’d rather never see my homeland again then expose them to a system that disregards its most vulnerable citizens in such a callous way. I’d want them to know the beauty and the aching kindnesses that I know are somewhere underneath all the layers of fear and hate, but I don’t think Iv’e got the strength, or enough shovels, to dig them out.

So, Karen T. Sparks, I will take my socialised health care over the American system any day of the week. I am saddened and angered that people such as yourself , who I’m sure are caring and kind, can be taken in by the propaganda and be blind to the changes that are needed. It takes courage and humanity to move from a hierarchical system to a more equitable one and I guess in that department, America is sorely lacking. The land of the free and the home of the brave, indeed. You’re so shackled by the IDEA of freedom that you don’t even know what it is anymore. Those of us living under socialised health care don’t need or want your pity. It is us who pity you.

God bless America? God save America.

• Activism , Britishisms , Expat Life , Health and Fitness , Human Oddities , I Bitch Therefore I Am , In The News , Miscellaneous Missives , Public Service Announcements
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NS August 6th, 2009

Dear Nameless, Soulless, Tesco PR Executive,

As a Tesco customer who regularly uses your online shopping service, I was very disappointed to recently discover that you have begun handing out the Daily Mail with every order delivered to a customer’s home. I’m assuming you have some kind of partnership with them as I noticed that there are ‘spend and save’ vouchers for your store in some editions of said newspaper as well.

That you have chosen to align your business with such a racist, homophobic, xenophobic and misogynist publication as the Daily Mail speaks volumes about your ethics or, at the very least, your company’s willingness to trample its ethics for the sake of PR tactics. Either way, I find it distasteful and disgraceful. The kind of vitriol and fear-mongering spewed forth by this rag on a daily basis is something that British businesses such as Tesco should be actively discouraging, not supporting by running promotions in its hate-riddled pages.

As a woman and an (perfectly legal and legitimate) immigrant, I am insulted that you think I would want such rubbish in my home. Just yesterday, along with my produce and tinned goods, I learned from its front page that the Daily Mail thinks teaching children about domestic violence is “silly” and a “waste.” The fact that 1 in 4 British women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime means that stories such as these, while perhaps merely sensationalist and annoying to some, are indeed very harmful as they contribute to a culture that places little value on the experiences and rights of those who were not lucky enough to be born male, white, straight and middle class in an English-speaking Western society.

Please can you clarify what the relationship is between Tesco and the Daily Mail and explain why you feel it appropriate to inundate your customers with irresponsible and utterly biased “journalism?”

Sincerely,

Noble Savage

• Britishisms , I Bitch Therefore I Am , Miscellaneous Missives
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NS July 31st, 2009

In reading this post at J. Lucy Muses about how she reacted when her toddler son ran away from her in the public library, I saw myself. Been there, done that, I thought. Hell, still doing it, on a regular basis. I’ve been that irate and embarrassed mother who couldn’t “control” her child, getting sneers of disapproval from onlookers.

I’ve also been that shithead onlooker, though. There was a period of a few years, before I had kids (obviously), where I was one of those people who thought “Ugh, how rude! I cannot BELIEVE that this person is letting their filthy brat run around screaming. What a monster! Kids should not be allowed in here, they should be at a playground or at home or in school and that’s it. Good day and good riddance!”

When I waited tables I dreaded getting families with small children because I knew that they’d make a huge mess, the parents would expect me to fawn over their offspring, they wouldn’t drink (racking up a big bar bill is important for good tips) and would probably leave me a bunch of coins and some french fries as a tip. I wasn’t rude to them or anything, I always provided service with a smile (Jesus, I hated that job) but if one of them stepped one toe out of line…that was it, I was finished. I had no patience for kids, especially ones I thought were being “bad.”

If I could go back in a time machine and kick the everliving shit out of myself for being such an ignorant, insensitive, uncaring, arrogant JERK, I would use the brass knuckles on myself until I looked like Shane MacGowan after a night on the tiles. I would apologise to all the mothers whom I shot dirty looks at, all the fathers I rolled my eyes at when they beamed with pride at some inane thing their brat-beast had just said or done, all of the under-the-breath muttered comments when a child so much as talked in a coffee shop. I would take a good, hard look at myself and realise that the reason I was so het up about kids is because I felt conflicted about them. I rejected the idea of modern, stifling, hovering, advertised, groomed and perfected parenting with every fibre of my being. I knew that if I became like THEM, those pod parents, I would shrivel up and die and be a mere shell of my former self.

Yet, I knew I wanted them. This made my angry. I didn’t want to become a pod person, with a pod beast!

I had no idea there was any other way to parent. I didn’t know I could still go out and have a good time, that I could still drink some wine while pregnant and breastfeeding, that I wouldn’t lose the ability to speak in sentences without using baby talk, that I didn’t have to start calling my partner ‘Daddy’ even when the kids weren’t around.

I didn’t know that I didn’t have to be a complete douchebag to be a parent. I also didn’t realise just how hard it is. “Controlling” a child is a completely laughable and utterly stupid expression. I should no more assume I can control my child than I can control my husband, or him me. Children are people, fully fledged human beings with feelings, thoughts and impulses and they are LEARNING. They are learning and exploring and testing and growing and we should be there just to make sure they don’t kill themselves or someone else in the process. When’s the last time mass chaos, murder and mayhem erupted from an incidence of running in a library for three minutes? Where is the erosion of society’s moral fabric in something so demonic as singing loudly in a grocery store? Isn’t it silly, all these expecations and pressure we place not only on parents to control but on children, to be controllable?

So, Former Self, get off your high-horse, you impetuous, stupid, arrogant girl. And next time you see a kid running in public, his mother charging around behind trying to “control” the situation while you stare and tut, give yourself a punch in the face and then get up off your imperious ass and go give her a hand. At the very least, stick a leg out so the kid trips and she can catch him.

Hey, it takes a village, right?

• Funny Ha-Ha , I Bitch Therefore I Am , Miscellaneous Missives , Parenting 101
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