The Jane Project 2.6

Tech Curiosities: Boounce, ReadyBoost, and Fonolo

2011-06-25T16:30:00.002-05:00

Admin.Jane

Three items have piqued my technical curiosity in the past week. One I am excited about sharing because I had good results with it, one that I plan to try, and one I think is likely not ready for consumer prime time . . .

Boounce:

I heard about this on the local public radio community spotlight of a local techical start-up. Billed by its producer as a low-footprint browser add-on that hyper-charges internet searching, Boounce (pronounced "bounce") returns searches from multitudes of standard and vertical search engines as well as niche websites concurrently. With search results organized by clickable icons (when in "Toolbar" mode), Bounce claims to dive deeper and vastly outperform standard search engines in the amount and quality of results -- Because any given single
search engine can only return results on their individual ~1% index of the internet. I have not yet experimented with this product, but it's free and interesting. I will be trying it soon.

ReadyBoost:

A friend of mine showed me this last weekend. A feature available in all versions of Windows 7, ReadyBoost enables flash memory to act as additional system RAM. How many of us have system boards that won't recognize as much RAM as our OS will? I tried ReadyBoost early this past week, and giving my netbootk an additional 2gb of RAM seems to have doubled its speed in less than 5 minutes. Extremely cool!

Fonolo:

This idea of this two-faced project amused me at first glance, but something about the write-up seemed press-release-y. I looked for more information and found that this software seems to primarily be aimed at call centers and/or customer service organizations to enable their customers in deep-dialing the ever-present over-complicated telephone network by visually representing the call routing map and allowing callers to click on exactly what is needed. The idea is to reduce hold time and improve customer satisfaction. While the Fonolo website makes clear that this software is primarily aimed at customer service organizations, Fonolo has also released free ITunes and IPhone apps for which the single review (ITunes) is poor. While the original PCWorld review I read really interested me, after further research, I just don't think this software is ready for consumer prime time.

I'd love to hear your opinions!

~Admin.Jane

Happy Fathers' Day!

2011-06-19T09:49:00.000-05:00

I wish I could see my father today.

Graphic courtesy of the AnimationLibrary.

~Riot.Jane

The Damage of Child Beauty Pageants

2011-06-14T05:00:00.001-05:00

Riot.Jane

This is the first time I've seen a non-hysterical critique of the phenomenon of child beauty pageants. Most of the time it seems like it's moon-bat crazy people throwing tantrums either for or against the concept.

In this blog post Mary Jo Rapini, LPC discusses whether it's the contestant or the parent that is actually benefiting from the pageant experience. She also suggests better ways to help children learn the lessons they need to be successful people than crawling the beauty pageant circuit.

Beauty Pageants For Toddlers; Who Are They For?

I'd love to see your comments about child beauty pageants and Mary Jo's suggestions.

~Riot.Jane

A Postcard from The Single (Mom) Life

2011-06-13T05:00:00.001-05:00

Megan DaGata

I am not having a good day; it has been trying to say the least. There is still not much to do at work, so its always quiet. Which is a problem for someone whose mind is always on...I am constantly left to my thoughts. It makes the days long.

The nights are so short though, and I don't get to think. I get home at 7 pm, and I try to get the kids in bed by 9. I am not happy. I only get to spend 2 hours a day with my boys. No sir I'm not happy! A mother's place is raising her kids, and I don't get to do that. Right now I am paying someone more than half my salary to raise them, and get frustrated when things aren't done the way that I would do them. I say something and it's like I haven't said a word, which only pisses me off more.

Last night was bad...I am talking horrible. My 5 year old forgot where his ears were and when I asked him if he wanted dinner he said he had eaten. Then after I eat, clean up, and give them baths he decides that now he is hugry...it was 9:30. Then he complained that his head itched, so I washed it with some head and shoulders because he has a little dandruff issue. He proceeded to kick, scream, bite, scratch and slap when I rinsed it out. He wouldn't lay back and let me pour water over his head to avoid his eyes so he stood as he chose and it ended up in his eyes because he opened them. I told him not to. As for the baby...the baby was crying when I picked him up and cried the whole evening. Off and on for two hours. Food, bottle, diaper change and a bath, I lay him down and all he wants to do is wail louder. I pick him up and take him into the living room and he wants to play with the forbidden items in the corner. 30 minutes of getting up every 2 minutes to remove him from that corner and I decide it is time to lay him back down. Finally he goes to sleep. I take the next hour filling out job applications for a job that will pay me more than I am paying the sitter to take care of the kids and then I go to bed.

All of this leads to a bad morning. This morning I left my breakfast, my lunch, and the formula - at home. I didn't know this until 8:02...guess where I was at 8:02...sitting at my desk looking for breakfast and getting a text message from the babysitter asking if I really left the formula. I won't repeat the explitives here, but there were quite a few. As my desk is roughly 40 miles from my house, I had to see if someone else was home who could take the sitter the formula. Thank God for miracles my uncle was still home! He took the sitter formula and all is well there.

That is not all on my 40 mile trek this morning I had a little break down. I cried for about 20 miles of it. I keep asking why things have to be so hard. Most of the parents of the world want to provide for their children, but to be the only parent providing for your children makes you want hate the person that chose the selfish path. We hate that they get to be free and have it easy and get to do whatever they feel like. It is not because we want to do that, it is just because you are the person handling all the problems that come up during the day, and wish for one moment a day you could be selfish...just a little because you deserve it. When I made more money my moment a day was a cup of coffee from Starbucks; on a particularly rough day maybe a cranberry orange scone. (I don't even get to do that right now.)

As the single parent, your the one fighting with the older kid to listen and the younger one to stay still so they don't trail the poo all over the bed from the diaper you're trying to change. The single parent gets slapped and scratched because all you want to rinse shampoo out of a 5 year old's hair.

I want to slap and scratch the partner in my journey who left us to handle the messy parts on our own. I want to scream at them horrible things because parenting is a two person job. Really adulthood is a two person job. There are going to be lots of people who disagree with me, but this is my arguement on why the first few millenia of human history had it right.

One parent should be responsible for the kids and the other for providing for the family.

This is what life was supposed to be, this is why it takes two people to have a kid. A single parent is not enough, we try to make it work, but most of us don't do a very good job at handling the stress of two against one, constantly pulling in separate directions and none of them are your own. I was unemployed for four months...maybe a little longer, and the one thing that I discovered during those four months is that if you are there for your kids, they are there for you. They listen and respond and hear you when you give them directions. They are the kids on TV who do as they are told. In the 3 and a half weeks since I returned to work the only thing my kid listens to is the babysitter. The five year old doesn't hear me anymore and he thinks that I don't want to be home with him. He is asking why I can't take care of them anymore and my heart breaks a little more each time he asks. I try to explain, but it's not enough for him. I hope some day he will understand.

~Megan DaGata

Facebook Friending and the Art of Profile Pics

2011-06-11T18:26:00.001-05:00

Just a thought here, fellow Facebookers . . .

That is all.

~Riot.Jane

Westboro Baptist "Church" vs. the KKK

2011-05-31T17:00:00.000-05:00

Riot.Jane

The Westboro scammers were up to their usual shenanigans yesterday, Memorial Day (US), at Arlington National Cemetery. The latest twist? The Knights of the Southern Cross (KKK) responded in kind.
Westboro is, for the most part, a multi-generational family affair, with 11 of the 13 people in the second generation being practicing attorneys in the law firm Phelps Chartered, LLC.

What amuses me about the lawyering-up of the second generation is the fact that the State of Kansas Supreme Court disbarred the clan leader Fred Phelps in 1979 because of his "has little regard for the ethics of his profession."

One of House Phelps' second generation told the press that her clan/church ekes out a living without taking money from anyone, but doesn't say how. I expect that the (unsubstantiated) claim of the clan's $200K/year income is the result of a lack of lawerly ethics.

Intentionally creating a reputation for provocation and ruckus, then promptly suing the pants off of any possible person, group, jurisdiction, or other government entity that responds to said reputation is their stock and trade.

I'm actually schadenfreudingly pleased to see two such hateful but US Supreme Court free-speech case winners face off against each other. (I have to say that if such a thing was going to happen, Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery was certainly the place and the time for it.) While the Westboro/KKK event was, in fact, a non-event, I can't wait until ANOTHER group's counterprotest BECOMES an issue for Westboro.

~Riot.Jane

In Honor of our Veterans (NSFW video)

2011-05-30T11:17:00.000-05:00

Full Metal Jacket meets Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer:

~Riot.Jane

QOTD: The Internet Breeds Entitlement

2011-05-26T05:00:00.003-05:00

Riot.Jane

Today's quotation:

The Web is truly customizable: You can listen to radios that play only your preferred tunes and read newspapers that cover only your favorite subjects. "We're used to having our tastes perfectly matched, whcih leads to entitlement," [Elias] Aboujaoude [author of Virtually You] says. If we don't experience novel things or sit through experiences we don't enjoy, we'll become a nation of spoiled, sheletered brats.

Bartz, Andrea. "The E-Ego." Psychology Today. Jun 2011: 25. Print

I've been saying this for years, but I've called it the "Info Bubble of Preference." In my mind, the information bubble that we surround ourselves with is like the SEP field, only powered by the neverending supply of human cognitive dissonance rather than a flashlight battery.

~Riot.Jane

Today in 1945: Arthur C. Clarke Invents the Communications Satellite

2011-05-25T17:00:00.001-05:00

Riot.Jane

If one particular man in history had died of polio as a child, you might not be reading this. In fact, I daresay that modern Western life would indeed be very different.

On this day in 1945, Arthur C. Clarke began privately circulating his academic paper The Space-Station: Its Radio Applications. (.pdf-page 34)

This privately-circulated paper and another published in Wireless World in October of the same year, Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations GiveWorld-Wide Radio Coverage? (.pdf-page 38), oth "discussed the special characteristics of geosynchronous orbit that would enable three satellites in that orbit to provide global communications." (.pdf-page 23.)

At a time when broadcast television was in its infancy, a physicist and sci-fi writer was envisioning global satellite communications!

"For these insights, Arthur C. Clarke is frequently called the 'Father of Satellite Communications,' and there have been ongoing efforts to officially designate the geosynchronous orbit as the 'Clarke Orbit.'" (.pdf page 23)

Logsdon, John M., editor, with Launius, Roger D., Onkst, David H., and Garber, Stephen J., Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume III: Using Space (NASA SP-4407, ??).

This man's creative leap 66 yearss ago reaffirm my conviction that we MUST find a way to stop stripping music, creative writing, art, and all other other integrative skills from our schools.

~Riot.Jane

Sexy Sundays | "The Morning After" the "First Time"

2011-05-22T05:00:00.001-05:00

Riot.Jane

A blog post by Mary Jo Rapini, LPC, caught my attention. How you feel about losing your virginity depends...are you a guy or girl? begins with a discussion about the gender differences in the after-effects of the first sexual encounter as determined by a recent academic study (Body image and first sexual intercourse in late adolescence) and winds up with with the author's own views on the same.

[From How you feel] The morning after can be difficult no matter if you are a guy or a girl, but it seems to be more difficult for girls than guys. A study from researchers at Pennsylvania State University reports male university students' body images improved after having sexual intercourse for the first time, while the opposite pattern was found with females. The study which was published in the Journal of Adolescents and reported on 100 students from the university between the ages of 17 and 19 years of age who had sex for the first time during their time at the university.

Rapini outlines the study's paramenters, including that each subject's personal satisfaction with his/her appearance was assessed four times during the three year study. According to Rapini, the statistics show that the self esteem of females rose steadily throughout the study term until the point at which they had sex for the first time, then it declined. Conversely, the self esteem of males fell throughout the study term until the point at which they had sex for the first time, then it increased.

[From Body image's abstract] These findings demonstrate that first intercourse can lead to changes in well-being, even if the transition takes places in late adolescence. In addition, they suggest that gendered cultural expectations regarding sexual behavior are associated with differing psychological outcomes for male and female adolescents.

While the reasoning behind this is crystal clear to me without reading further, I actually can't read further because I don't have ScienceDirect credentials. Rapini spreads the knowlege, though:

[From How you feel] The researchers had several theories about why girls felt so much worse about their looks after having sex and why guys felt better. It could be that after sex guys felt desired and accepted in regards to their masculinity and sexuality which is very important. Girls on the other hand may have felt worse because girls in general have more sensitivity with body image, and they feel more judged regarding their body after their first sexual experience. Girls may have felt confused about the reasons they had sex. They may have felt abandoned after sex. Girls may have also experienced more guilt due to society’s double standards. There is an underlying tone in the US that good girls don’t have sex.

Yeah, I'm thinking the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am-grab-your-hat-and-go behavior of many young men regarding sex has to do with the measured loss of self-esteem. Nothing bolsters that double-standard message as much as a guy who, after getting some, either (1) doesn't want to talk to you again or (2) doesn't want to talk to you again unless it involves "quality time," wink wink nudge nudge.

[From How you feel] I have researched and surveyed girls to co-author a book for girls and moms regarding healthy sex. We learned that girls who are taught about their changing bodies, their sexuality, and how to keep their body healthy delay sex until they are mature enough to make wise choices in regards to sexual relationships. I am concerned when I hear parents say, “Let the schools teach my children about healthy sex.” Do parents really believe the school is going to teach their child about their own intimate bodies better than a parent could? Do parents depend on the school to teach their daughter about her menstrual health, her changing breasts, and body? What about her values and morals? Both of these will affect her relationships and both should be discussed within the family.

I wholeheartedly agree with Rapini on this point, with one caveat. By all means, let the schools teach the science of procreation and puberty if you like, but if the schools aren't doing it, you'd better educate yourself and TEACH it yourself or your children won't know.

Well-rounded sexual education involves science and psychology both, and not only as these apply to your own child's gender but to the opposite gender as well. You wouldn't build a house without a solid frame because a solid frame is imperative to a sturdy and long-lasting house. In the same way, a well-rounded sexual education is imperative to a healthy and fulfilling emotional life.

~Riot.Jane

Reason #9 I Love My Bestie

2011-05-14T16:55:00.000-05:00

Riot.Jane

Conversation had this past Thursday afternoon whilst planning the lunch where she would meet my boyfriend for the first time . . .

ME: Okay, I have to ask you this because you're the only woman I could ever ask this of.
HER: Okkkkaaaaayyyyyyy.
ME: You have to not wear one of your plunging necklines.
HER: Ummmmmmm, what? Oh. Okay. Sure.
ME: Great, you're awesome, thanks!
HER: Ummmmmmm, why?
ME: My boyfriend's a total perv! And I want him staring at my chest, not yours.

HER: Laughter
ME: See, if he stares at yours, which he is going to do, then I'll just end up pissed at both of you for no go reason. I don't want to deal with that. So you have to do this.
HER: Okay, but you know I have no head for how much cleavage I'm showing. You'll have to double-check me. Laughter.
ME: You're the best! Laughter.

~Riot.Jane

A Crazy Woman in a Sporty Car

2011-05-11T17:00:00.000-05:00

Riot.Jane

I recently had an interesting experience with a stranger in a strip center parking lot. This strip center is probably 50 years old (no exaggeration), and the parking spaces are quite narrow. The parking stops are actually integrated into the concrete in a large zig-zag pattern, not just lengths of concrete bolted to the parking surface (and therefore movable). As a result, the parking spaces are really not reconfigurable.

I've visited this strip center often, as a friend works nearby and we've had lunch there on many occasions. As a result, I'm familiar with the narrow parking spots. I drive a small-model sedan, so the narrow spots hadn't presented a problem before the particular day I'm going to share with you.

On this particular day, my friend and I parked next to a dark-colored small-model sporty vehicle (I'm not a car-head, so I didn't notice much else about it). I opened my door gently so as not to smack the other car, and I exited my car. I shut the door and was walking towards the end of my car (what, 6 whole feet?), and the next thing I know a short woman is barreling out of the driver-side door of the sporty vehicle yelling something.

"Could you be a little nicer to my car? I felt that all the way inside!" I finally realized she was yelling as she ran around the back end of her car towards me.

"Ummmmmm, pardon me?" I asked as I stopped. She really was a little scary.

"My car! Did you have to hit it so HARD? You rocked my whole car!" She yelled as she pushed past me trying to get closer to her passenger-side door.

"Ummmmmmm, I wasn't aware I'd hit it," I said, probably sounding fairly stupid because I was confused. I really hadn't felt anything, noticed anything, and had actually noticed how close to her car I'd had to park before I opened the door.

She stopped and stared at me as if I had Cthulhu on my head. "You can't be serious! I felt it inside, it was so HARD! How much DAMAGE did you do to it?!" she yelled as she bent over to peer at her passenger-side door. I bent over to look at the door closely, too. I could NOT figure out what this woman was going on about.

She wiped the dust from her door with her hand. There was no mark. No dent. No nothing. I smiled and stood up, feeling satisfied. She stayed there a few seconds longer than I did, snorted, then stood up.

"Well, I DID feel it inside! You should be more careful! You hit it so HARD!" she yelled. At this point, she could not have been closer than 3 feet from me, and she was still yelling about non-existent damage to her car door.

"Well, I do apologize," I said as sincerely as I could because all I wanted was this obviously crazy woman to leave me alone. "I tried to open it without touching your car and was unaware I had. But, no damage done, have a good day!"

She snorted again, put her hands on her hips, and yelled, "You should be more careful! You've VERY lucky!"

I wonder if I rolled my eyes. I tried not to. I just walked towards the restaurant with my heretofore silent friend in tow.

I have to say that the very last thing I expected to see 45 minutes later when my friend and I left the restaurant was that same sporty car parked next to mine. Seriously, how stupid does someone have to be to completely bawl out a stranger for an obviously imagined slight to a car only to leave that car in the same place so that stranger could, I don't know, key it in revenge for being treated like crap for no reason?

Don't think I didn't carefully consider it, because I did. My better nature won out, though. There's no need to make an obviously unhappy person more so. We just left.

~Riot.Jane

Sexy Sundays | 50% Off @ Adam & Eve! (Updated)

2011-05-08T17:00:00.003-05:00

Riot.Jane

Use promotional code sexy28 for 50% off at Adam and Eve, plus receive free DVDs and a surprise mystery gift! (Seen on a television commercial.)

They're also offering $10 off if you sign up for their newsletter . . . I have no idea if these two discounts will stack. It's worth a shot, right?

Update: 05/09/11, 19:00 CST:

The e-mail list $10 off is not stackable with the above 50% off discount code. I just placed and order, and here's what the discount code gave me:

50% off one item
Free ground shipping
Free sex toy gift ($20 reported value)
Free adult video triple feature ($90 reported value)

Hell, I'm just glad for the 50% off of one item. :-)

~Riot.Jane

Another Bill to Restrict Reproductive Freedom: HR 3 (UPDATED)

2011-05-05T15:19:00.004-05:00

Riot.Jane

I just received the following e-mail, and the topic is news to me. This is surprising because I'm usually pretty current on matters of reproductive freedom . . . More on this topic to come.

This is not an advocation that anyone should contribute, it's just the method by which I learned of the existence of HR 3.

The link in the e-mail: http://www.dccc.org/page/m/1d63cab1/1b83fc72/4a3c2f65/4e0ce84b/2346893725/VEsE/ .

Click for larger version

UPDATE: 05/05/11, 19:25 CST

The Library of Congress-defined summary of HR 3 can be found here. In short, HR 3:

Forbids Federal funds paying for health plans that provide abortion coverage
Eliminates tax credits for out-of-pocket abortion expenses (such as itemizing on tax returns or reimbursement from personally-owned tax-free medical flexible spending accounts)
Prevents abortion service provision in Federal- and D.C.-owned healthcare facilities
Prevents Federal- and D.C.-employed healthcare providers from providing abortion services
Excepts the previous two bullet points in the cases of rape/incest or the risk of substantial harm occurring to the mother in the course of continuing the pregnancy
Gives Federal courts jurisdiction to prevent/redress violations of the abortion provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (such as accounting issues with insurance companies that provide abortion coverage participating in the health care exchange)
Designates the bureaucrat to receive/investigate/refer complaints regarding the previous bullet point: Director of the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services

Why #1, especially with the post-PPACA Executive Order clarifying and solidifying the act's adherence to the Hyde Amendment, needed to be re-legislated is beyond me. I guess codifying yet another law that says that "abortion is bad, m'kay" makes them feel like they accomplished something. >eye roll<

The elimination of abortion service provision in and by Federally-/DC-owned healthcare facilities and employees is striking. What are female military service personnel supposed to do? Let's force that birth while we're smugly talking about how we don't treat our women like tribal backwoods nations treat theirs. w00t! Many healthcare workers don't have insurance, per se' -- they receive care from the facility at which they work. What are these women supposed to do? Apparently, visiting the competition is the "approved" option for them.

The removal of the ability to pay for abortion services with personally-owned funds is insulting and infuriating. "We're going to tell you what to do with your medical funds." What's next, you don't like my contraceptive pills? You don't like my Depo-Provera? You don't like my IUD? You don't like my tubal ligation? You don't like my hysterectomy? You think I jest, but I do not.

The anti-abortion fervor that has been growing in this country in recent years is the product of internalized and externalized religious dogma and its cultural progeny programmed morality. There is no medical reason why this medical procedure should be made difficult to obtain, stigmatized, or be illegal (and make no mistake: illegalization is their goal, here folks).

When someone talks about abortion rights, they are talking about the right of any individual woman to have a medical procedure without religious zealots, moralistic holier-than-thou types, or elected representatives from on-high sticking their nose into her uterus. The person who talks about fetal rights is talking about the government regulating every woman's procreative life and medical decisions in a ham-fisted, one-size-fits-all response because we think what you think is wrong.

The same people that scream at the top of their lungs about government intrusion on individual liberty and wasting government money when it's any other topic are the first ones to hop up and down and cry for more government intrusion on individual liberty and wasting government money when this topic arises.

If I said that I didn't want my tax money to be spent on foreign wars, Viagra, fertility treatments, or welfare for people who have more than two children, I'd be laughed out of town. "Suck it up, that's the way this country works," I'd be told.

If I cloaked those sentiments in religious/moralistic costume, they'd receive more credence. That is something that I detest about this country, that the separation of church and state only seems to mean that you can't overtly say something is motivated by Jesus or the Bible. Leave out those two words, though, and you're free to pass laws that trample everyone's liberty based upon "morality." There's no harm in morality, right?

Morality is like a penis: It should be shared with those closest to you who want to share it but should never be forced upon anyone.

We women are not children. We are reasoning, thinking, functioning adults who are fully capable of making our medical (and other) decisions without your morality shoved down our throats. We have our own individual moralities, so we don't need or want yours. When it comes to our individual bodies, our individual moralities are the only ones that matter.

Abortion is a legal medical procedure, and it's high time we as a society started treating and respecting as one. I will never stop fighting this fight because as long as it isn't, the message is "We have more rights to your body than you do." That message scares the crap out of me.

My body is sacrosanct to me, and no one else has say over it. There is no middle ground here. I won't rest until that message disappears, and every little brick (like HR 3) that makes the message a little stronger makes me fight harder.

~Riot.Jane

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish: Osama bin Laden

2011-05-02T18:21:00.000-05:00

Riot.Jane

Everywhere I turned today, people were jubilant that Osama bin Laden is dead. Watching news footage of the spontaneous crowds that gathered at the White House and in Times Square last night made me queasy. It made me the same kind of queasy that the videos of Arabs chanting "Death to America" did when we saw that footage years ago.

I'm just not very good at processing that level of hatred.

Maybe it's because I'm an unapologetic Liberal, so my heart is a bit leaky. Maybe it's because I can't process a level of hatred I've never felt. Maybe it's because I'm not capable of that level of hate, so anyone who is seems like they aren't the same type of animal I am. Maybe it's that revenge (or justice, call it what you like) doesn't give me the boner that it does other people.

A friend said to me last night after the President's statement, "Some people just deserve to die."

He was, of course, referring to the thousands of people who died in the World Trade Center terrorist attack. I happened to be unemployed at the time, at home watching CNN that morning. Most people weren't. Most people were at work, asleep, or away from the television when the news channels first began broadcasting live footage of first burning tower. People think they saw the second jet hit live, but most people are incorrect. Most people who found their way to a television set did so after the second jet hit the second tower. The news channels simply replayed the footage of the impact so many times that morning that most people mis-remember.

I don't mis-remember. I was watching the burning first tower in real time and saw the second jet approach in the background. I watched it descend and level off. I knew, before the announcers did, that it was going to hit the second tower. Color me aghast and traumatized as I watched that jet leave the frame and then re-enter it and crash into the second tower.

Because I was watching the drama unfold live from the beginning to hours after the towers collapsed, I saw unedited video footage as helicopters circled and and the press moved in too close for their own safety. In the minutes between the second airplane hitting the second tower and the first tower beginning to fall, I saw everything as it happened, before it could be edited and sanitized.

Those of us watching live, those of us who did see and hear the unsanitized version -- We saw close-ups of things and heard sounds that people who watched later rebroadcasts never saw. I choked on my own vomit when it dawned on me that those bundles of . . . something . . . were human beings jumping to their deaths to escape the unimaginable heat. I watched minutes and minutes of these sacks of . . . something . . . flying from the towers and landing with wet thuds, and the news people trying to figure out what they were. I was screaming, "They're people, God damn it, they're people!" The anger evaporated and I burst into tears when the announcer lost control and broke down as he realized the same thing. Apparently, no one told the helicopter pilots or cameramen to back off and give the dying their privacy, and we saw too much, too close.

I didn't lose anyone on 9/11. I didn't lose my job, or have health problems, or in any other way suffer a direct consequence from it in the way you think of when you hear "9/11 victims, responders, and their families." What happened to me was emotional. I was traumatized, and I was lucky.

The people who actually committed this act of unspeakable evil died within it. The man who masterminded it is someone we've hunted for a decade. Now he's dead. We've killed him and disposed of his body. As my friend said, "Some people just deserve to die." I don't disagree. With all of this said . . .

God help me, I can't bring myself to be joyous over the intentional death of another human being, even if it was Osama bin Laden.

Relieved? Yes. Grateful? Yes. Avenged? Yes. Hopeful? Yes. Joyous? No.

I'm not saying that what we did was wrong. I'm not saying that what we did was a crime. I'm not saying that we should have left him alive. I'm not saying that we made a mistake. I'm not defending him, his motivations, his actions, or his organization. Hell, after 9/11, what sane American could say those things?

I'm saying that the news of the death of Osama bin Laden was a somber moment for me, a moment of remembrance for those who died on and as a result of 9/11, a letting go of a breath I wasn't aware I'd been holding. What I can't understand is why my co-citizenry didn't receive the news the same way I did.

Maybe it was a celebration for them because they didn't see people falling from the sky like bombs in real-time for a rather long time. I suspect such a thing changes you. I know it changed me.

~Riot.Jane

Sexy Sundays | Pulling a Rabbit out of the Hat

2011-05-01T14:32:00.001-05:00

Riot.Jane

Keeping one's sex life interesting over the long term is sometimes difficult. Reading and hearing advice can help, but sometimes advice is of poor quality, poorly understood, or poorly implemented. This can lead to bad experiences and devastating consequences.

The most common advice I've seen over the years runs along the line of thought of Do something new, Surprise your partner, Step out of the same-old stuff, Introduce some variety, et cetera.

While there's nothing inherently wrong with such platitudes as these, the practical implementation of them as suggested is fraught with danger. Let's examine the potential complications with specific examples.

Third Partner Surprise

Let's say that you and your partner incorporate role play and/or dirty talk into your lovemaking. Now, let's say that sometimes certain topics come up in the heat of the moment. One of these might be the introduction of a third partner to your sex life. The idea is hot enough to at least one of you that simply talking a bit about the idea during the session improves your lovemaking overall. Over time, this particular practice becomes part of a sex life that becomes a little routine, and you decide to seek advice in spicing things up a bit.

Pretty straightforward, yes?

So, you come across the advice above . . . specifically, Surprise your partner. The gears of your mind turn. You've always enjoyed talking about a third person during your sessions, right? How about amping up the excitement by introducing an actual third? Right on! So, a third is acquired without a discussion with your partner. Then, at just the right moment, the third opens the closet door . . .

"Who the hell is that?! What the hell?! Now I'm not enough?!"

Your partner wigs out, you are astounded by the reaction, and the third person is now highly confused and running for the hills.

As a co-admin of mine said, "Say whatever you want to to get me off, but don't actually do it. That's insane."

Failed Beat-Down

Let's say that you and your partner incorporate spanking into your lovemaking. At the right time, it's and incredibly powerful way to throw one of you over the edge of "almost there" to absolute gut-wrenching orgasm. But again, over time, this particular practice becomes part of a sex life that becomes a little routine. Your partner decides to seek advice in spicing things up a bit.

In this case, your partner comes across the advice Introduce some variety. A few blue movies your partner has seen have included a riding crop. Hmmmmm, interesting. In short order, a riding crop is acquired and hidden under the bed. During the next encounter, your over-excited crop-hiding partner pulls out the riding crop much earlier than the spanking would usually occur, and you freeze and stare at it.

Seeing a riding crop in your partner's hand is a compete turn-off. That fast, that simple. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

"Uuuuuuummmmmmmmm, no." Then you get up, grab your clothes, and get dressed in the bathroom as your naked partner stands outside the bathroom door trying to explain and apologize. Insulted and embarrassed, you're not listening . The last thing you can imagine is being naked with this person again.

Talking and Incremental Change are Key

While well-intentioned, the above examples led to damaged intimacy, broken trust, and damage to the sex life that simply needed invigoration. Sad, really. Counterproductive at best, unrecoverable at worst.

Humans are at their most vulnerable physically and emotionally in the bedroom, and abrupt changes/surprises can cause shock, fear, and anger that the conscious mind has trouble reasoning through. Fight or flight can kick in, and when it's caused by the most trusted person in the world, that can cause a schism that isn't the easiest thing in the world to repair. Add the baggage that people carry from the past, and sometimes the damage is unrecoverable.

Generating incremental ideas and then discussing them with your partner outside of the bedroom is the way to avoid this pitfall. Doing this lets you gauge your partner's receptivity, let's your partner know that you're open to new things, and also lets your partner know what to possibly expect in the future.

After all, you wouldn't jump from the top of the mountain to the bottom, you'd climb. And if you were the guide, you'd talk your companion all the way down.

~Riot.Jane

Honoring the Females in Your Life with GEMS

2011-04-30T14:08:00.002-05:00

Admin.Jane

E-mail we received from the Girls Educational & Mentoring Service (GEMS):

Mother's Day is quickly approaching!

As an annual celebration of the women and girls in our lives, GEMS invites you to upload your favorite photos of you and your mother, daughters, or other amazing, influential women and girls in your life. Share your photos and stories with us as we honor women this holiday! We set up a special Shutterfly page so that supporters can easily upload your photos: http://gemsmothersday.shutterfly.com.

We will be making a supporter-generated music video with the inspiring song "This Is To Mother You," which features Martha B, Mary J. Blige, and Sinead O'Connor. The video will be released in time for Mother's Day! Check out the story behind the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV7dRs3KYU0&feature=player_embedded.

Supporters who participate in the photo contest will also have a chance to win a free, signed copy of Girls Like Us from GEMS executive director and founder Rachel Lloyd!

So, if you're thinking of a way to celebrate a woman in your life, send us your photos before May 5th!

~Admin.Jane

Very Old and Very Sexy…An Oxymoron?

2011-04-26T05:00:00.003-05:00

Hattie RetroAge

There was a time when I would have judged that combination to be not only absurd… but totally repulsive. That’s no longer the case.

What happened to turn that around?

Here goes…

When I was about five years old, my immigrant mother took me to the Steam Baths in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Just a mere pre-schooler, choking in the heat, I peered up with disgust at what I perceived to be “fat, old ladies”. Then and there I decided if that’s what being a lady looks like, I’ll never grow up.

Fast forward to when I did grow up and began to feel revolted at my own body.

I realized that there was no way I could avoid becoming a woman, but I could certainly be thin and beautiful if I worked at it.

And I sure as Hell worked at it!

What followed was a magnificent bonus to my childhood dream to become a stunning woman. With the passage of years I became sexier and sexier. Of course, like most of society believes, I bought in to idea that aging would make me lose my beauty and that I’d ever again be desirable and desired.

That didn’t happen!

When I was 73, still gorgeous and fit, I received a call from a casting agency asking me to come in to pose for shoot for a Dolce & Gabbana ad wearing a bathing suit. I tucked a skin tight gold suit into my bag, hurried downtown… and VOILA… I was chosen to model for the ad.

A few months later, I appeared in VOGUE, Harper’s Bazaar, W and Vanity Fair, sitting next to a 20 something hunk. Steven Kein, Madonna’s prime photographer had instructed the young model to hold my hand and look at me adoringly, which he did.

Enter the 74 year young Cougar!

From that point on I was touted as the Quintessential Cougar and starred in the Learning Channel’s series, “Strange Sex – Cougars and Cubs.” Since last summer, it’s been shown internationally about twice a month in countries from Russia to Peru!

These days, I get offers from young men all over the world proclaiming their desire for older women. But, what’s so thrilling for me about this is not that I’m getting international propositions. It’s that young men are finally revealing their formerly hidden and even ‘shameful’ desire for much older women. And what’s more, older women are finally getting the respect (and sex) that they desire… and deserve!

Very old and very sexy?

You bet!

~Hattie RetroAge

Generation -- The Repetition of Addiction

2011-04-26T05:00:00.001-05:00

Karin L. Burke

Generation: Because the act of writing about my alcoholism turns out to be the act of writing about my father’s alcoholism, and recovery from my addiction is actually a recovery from his.

They say that. That alcoholism is a family disease. Give or take genetic tendencies, we are who we are because we are what our parents gave us. It is common to hear a drunk, or maybe even a normal person, say they swore to never be like their father while shaking their head and looking off into the distance. That gaze, that middle distance, turns out to be important. It turns out to be the thing we have to look at.

The middle distance made up of memory, emotion, faded photographs and recollections of kitchen tables, bedroom smells, old cars that no longer exist. Yet there is a split of discontinuity: the medical fact that alcoholism is a family disease is not the same thing as realizing, one morning, that your alcoholism was fully formed when you were six, that you chose your career and slaved 30 years of your life away because of a percieved slight you got as a teen, or that you married four successive disappearing men because your father never seemed to be listening to you even if said father is still there, still present, never divorced or left or hurt you; just sitting in his armchair listening to the baseball game on the same radio he had when you were a kid while you’re, now, a grown woman and trying to figure out what’s wrong with you.

The fact of a generational disease is an easy thing to take, intellectually, while being less obvious in the here and now. Because we want to believe in ourselves. The reality of ourselves. We want to believe that we’ve made choices, that we are aware, that we knew reality all along. To admit you’re less yourself than you are a mimic of your parent, that you have never lived in reality so much as a puppet show, can pull your self-confidence and balance out from under you like a rug. And it can be difficult to see how a gene, say, or even a bunch of conversations from your childhood, have anything to do with the present moment of the really here, here and now.

But the practice of attention, honest attention, to what shows up in me and life everyday has not only leeched over into the infinate generations of my niece’s life and the life after hers, but floats backwards, too. This is not to say we should live in the past, nor to argue for determinism. It’s just to say that any real attention to the present proves to have the past fully in it.

"It’s never to late to have a happy childhood," said someone. It’s usually implied that one can parent oneself, can experience joy and childish wonder and love of life just as well now as they could as a kid. But what if it means something else? What if it means we have this childhood, this history, this truth, that has been one way our entire life, and suddenly change our relationship to it? "Forgiveness," said a friend, "Is letting go the hope of a different childhood." Accepting, he means, everything that has happened exactly in the way that it happened.

Psychologically speaking, we tend to repeat a thing until we have resolved it. Uncannily so. The same types of persons will appear and reappear in our lives, the same problems with money, authority, sex, friendship, over and over until we earnestly do the work of growing through it. Until, in our subconscious level of being, we have fully accepted a thing as finished, learned, done, or right. Get as mystical as you want. Some say we literally invite or manifest our circumstances to us out of the cosmic drudge. Some say we simply see the same patterns, projecting our reality onto a pretty loose framework.

The Fourth Step [AA] begins a wild process of resolution. This is that script, that maturity process of learning life’s lessons. This is where we learn how to deal.

We cannot really accept a thing unless we actually know what it is we’re accepting.

But knowing itself isn’t the thing. Insight, sure. Self knowing. But the actual resolution is a thing that takes place in real time, in real life, on real human bodies. We have to experience the thing. Live it. We can’t feel the relief of a pain until we feel the pain, and then feel the joy of something different until we actually do a different thing.

I’ve always known that my dad was an alcoholic, and that alcoholism is a family disease. But I had to learn the lesson myself.

A week past, there was a single day that went through a strange retrospective of the seasons before resolving itself to a thundery dawn. Like the scenes of life flashing before a dying person’s eyes. First, there was a kind of balmy, yellowy stillness. The cattails nodded, and the telephone wires swayed, and a clutch of finches danced in the brush without any of it seeming to interrupt that larger feeling of stillness and immobility. Pewter gray clouds banked in the south, and eventually, a thin wind came from that way, too.

The afternoon happened, and the bank of purply grey clouds pulled closer, filling the sky like a pouring stain. The wind upped. All the trees and all the trees branches began to wave a little hysterically. There was a howling, moany quality that came and went. Then, rain began.

The rain quickly changed to thin flakes of snow, then needled points of sleet. Enough white came down that the distance disappeared for an hour or two. The spring things, a turned over garden, a running gutter of meltwater, the pockmarked ice on the pond and a tricycle, were covered in ashy snow. The wind lifted it and threw it about in a parody of a blizzard.

But the clouds bunched together, like muscle, and went from looking sheen and slack to something powerful and prescient. Inside, lightening flickered. The wind, still south, was warm and then seemed warmer, and the snow turned wetter, then wet, and then was gone. When dawn finally broke, the purple cloud rumbled and then cracked. The early light widened everything open again, and the earth seemed thirsty, and the first spring rain began in earnest.

It’s always this way. That there should be a struggle, the tumult before the calm, that life should be freshly caputured by each new generation and not simply handed down like the baby’s old clothes.

My father told me about alcoholism. I knew. And fifty million generations of humanity have known the experience of god, and grief, and resentment. But that’s what it means, to say the human experience is the experiencing of god: that we have to do it our own self. We have to learn the hard way.

~Karin L. Burke

Wanting more honesty in the world, Karin named the blog that began from her personal letters Whiskey and Porn for Everyone. Karin writes from her own experience as a drunk, a barmaid who danced for tips, an abused woman, a journalist anthropologist, and social advocate of all stripes. She's shamelessly trying to raise money for yoga certification, and the income it'd allow, but would like you to visit the blog because you might find something you need there.

Having Coffee With The Lunatics In My Head

2011-04-25T05:00:00.026-05:00

Riot.Jane

Sometimes I wonder how many individual nutcases are loose in my head. Seriously, when I consider the things that I believe concurrently, many of them mutually-exclusive, I have to wonder when it was that I began renting out rooms in my mind and where all of that rent money is going. After all, it's not going up my nose or the pocketbooks of prostitutes, so I should have a really wicked savings account built up with the rent money from these freakin' lunatics . . .

Oh, and by the way you lamers, the rent is due!

Some of the things that I believe:

I believe in true love, love at first sight, and waiting on sex until marriage. I believe that true love requires dispositional compatibility, that opposites attract, and that there's nothing wrong with sex on the first date. I believe that life-long romantic relationships are both the most difficult and rewarding thing a person can have, and I believe that romantic relationships don't survive longer than twice the length of the crush-stage. I believe that chemistry is paramount, charisma is overrated, and that honesty is always the best policy, painful or not. I believe in social lies, charismatic leaders, and that interpersonal chemistry destroys the mind in a way that illicit drugs can't touch.

I believe in predestination, free-will, deital omniscience, deital disregard. I believe that the landscapes of our lives are littered with intended obtacles and lessons before we're born, and I believe that every single choice we make changes everything that is to come. I believe in a personal god that loves me and who pays attention to my trials and travails, and guides me to the destinations best for me. I believe in a watchmaker god that created and spun us off without a thought to fend for ourselves, and who long ago forgot that we even exist.

I believe that our gods birthed us, watch us, guide us, protect us, receive us when we die, and are worthy of our worship. I believe that our gods are nothing but personifications of our baser instincts and that we use them as lenses through which to filter out enough of the world around us to make what we see comprehensible. I also believe that we use our gods as explanations for what we cannot understand or abide. I believe that our gods are our own constructs and are therefore unworthy of our worship.

I believe that portents and omens are real, at least the ones we recognize. I believe that time is a river, that it branches into a new universe every time a decision is made, and that the branched channels are close to one another until they branch again into yet more universes. I believe that our glimpses of the supernatural are nothing but a thinning of the wall between our universe and another, and that portents and omens are indications of upcoming important branches in the stream of time. I believe that sometimes we can sense the impending branch, the birth of a new universe, in the same way that a woman can sense the impending birth of her child before her water breaks or her labour begins.

I also believe that time is a ray, a series of connected points that starts and never ends and never branches and that data doesn't pass farther than from one point to the next. I also believe that there is no such thing as time, that our perception of time is an artificial contruct of individual moments that our brains create to formulate a coherent picture, that every moment is unhinged from the next and only appears contiguous to us. I believe that there is only one universe, that we are in it, and that the things we think are metaphysically connected are simply the pattern recognition that once helped us recognize a snake in the grass but now simply distracts us from the tangible reality around us.

I believe that we are responsible to each other, to ideals higher than ourselves, and to the social safety net. I believe that we are only responsible to ourselves and the concepts that we individually treasure, and that personal responsibility trumps fortune. I believe in the light at the end of the tunnel, that the sky is falling, that the sun will come out in the morning, and that the light at the end of the tunnel is actually an oncoming train.

I believe in black hats, black helicopters, and tinfoil hats. I believe that a hacker is a tinkerer and a black hat is a criminal. I believe that modern government is sorely needed to protect the People from the corporational power that money and black hats bring, and that white hats are only white in comparison. I believe that modern government is over-reaching and impassive, and that its tendrils in our minds have taken us to the brink of a dystopian future in which we will be human commoditites instead of simply commoditized.

I believe that corportions have brought us individual wealth and national power, and I believe that corporations have enslaved us, that modern government springs from corporational pocket lint, and that we've passed the time the tinkerers can do anything but make a point. I believe that time is running out, that we have all of the time in the world, and that The Great American Experiment is timeless. I believe the my nation is in irrevocable freefall, and I believe that if we begin paying attention again, the People could once again regain control of the empire.

I believe that aliens crash-landed at Roswell, and I believe in men in black. I believe that the men in black are Jack Bauer and Fox Mulder combined, and I believe that they investigate things and perform functions that the People would panic and riot about if they were known. I also believe that the government can't keep a secret because it's an organization composed of actual people. I believe the government has used aliens at Roswell as a false cover for top-secret military research and experimentation ever since, that the men in black don't exist at all, that they are another bit of misdirection used to keep us occupied and not paying attention to The Man behind the curtain doing the researching and testing at Area 51.

I believe in ghoulies, ghosties, long-leggedy beasties, and other things that go bump in the night. I believe that there's nothing in the dark but the dark. I believe that our fears of the dark are remnants of our evolution that originally kept us safe but now cripple us in the night. I believe that without eyes that see well at night that I will never know the truth of this one way or the other.

I believe in messages from The Great Beyond, and I believe in the human soul. I believe in the afterlife, in reincarnation, and in being judged for your intentions more than for your your actions at the end of this life. I believe that consciousness is a side effect of the cellular physiology of our brains, that this life is not a rehersal, and that when we die everything we are is snuffed out like a candle flame. I believe that this life is all we get, so it's the one that matters, and damn the consequences.

I believe in the rewards of hard work, ethics, loyalty, and fair play. I believe that people with the slightest amount of power or authority will claim someone else's hard work for themselves, short-circuit external ethics, sacrifice your name on the altar of politics, and bugger fair play, all without a second thought, when doing so is to their advantange. I believe that the only opinion that matters is my own, that I'm the one who has to live within my own meatsack, and that it's my face I see in the mirror every morning.

I believe that everything we see and feel is a joke, a dream, a simulation in grand computer somewhere we can't comprehend. I believe that everything we know is an experiment in a petri dish and that we're destined to be bleached into oblivion. I believe that this is all actually very real, that it is what we think it is, and the possibilities of that are the greatest mystery of all to me.

~Riot.Jane

Sexy Sundays | The Ins & Outs of Anal Sex (Part 2) (NSFW)

2011-04-24T11:26:00.000-05:00

Riot.Jane

In our first Sexy Sundays post, The Ins & Outs of Anal Sex (Part 1) (NSFW), MellissaY and JohnY introduced us to the topic. There's so much more information that's important to the topic, that we've decided to post a follow-up. While there is a wealth of information available in many places under many larger topics (anatomy, physiology, psychology, sexual health, etc.), we thought that gathering much of it in a single place would be useful to others.

The vast majority of the below has been means-tested in our own personal lives. It's gathered from years of reading on various related topics, and referenced by the only book I've seen on the topic: The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women. More in-depth information on these topics (and some not even included here) are available in this book. It's a light read, but a good primer. Recommend.

Definitions

Anus: The end of the digestive tract, the puckered opening of your butt, the "butthole"
Anal canal: The area of the digestive tract immediately behind/prior to the anus, approximately 2" ong, everyone's shape is unique
Rectum: The area of the digestive tract immediately behind/prior to the anal canal, approximately 6" long, everyone's shape is unique
Anal sex: Manually stimulating the anus and/or rectum for physical pleasure
Anal sex - Rimming: Using the tongue to stimulate the anus externally, often used interchangeably with analingus
Anal sex - Analingus: Using the tongue to stimulate the anus externally and anal canal internally, analagous to cunnilingus, often used interchangeably with rimming
Anal sex - Fingering: Using a finger or fingers to stimulate the anus and rectum internally and externally, analagous to vaginal fingering
Penetration: Insertion of anything through the anus into the rectum
Lubricant (lube): Liquid applied to the anus, rectum, and other involved objects (digits, toys, penises, etc.) to make anal sex more pleasurable

Lubricants

The anus and rectum are not self-lubricating, so lube is required for successful anal sex. Many brands are available at drug stores, discount department stores, and grocery stores (usually in the family-planning aisle). All are available online and by mail order. There are three broad categories of lubricant and brand names of different types:

Water-based lubricants: THIN: Popular for vaginal sex, as they are the most similiar to nature vaginal secretions, similar in consistency to water. Can be used for anal sex: AstroGlide, Wet Light, K-Y Liquid (vagina-, anus-, and latex-condom safe).THICKER: These differ from the THIN in that they have a thicker consistency, similar to hair gel: K-Y Jelly, Embrace, Wet, ID (vagina-, anus-, and latex-condom safe)
Oil-based lubricants: These don't dry out (unlike water-based lubes) and are therefore appealing for long-session use: Crisco, baby oil, petroleum jelly, and baby oil gel (non-vagina and non-condom safe)
Silicone-based (thin) lubricants: These blend the benefits of water-based and oil-based lubricants in that they are usually thinner than oil-based lubricants, feel very wet, and don't dry out nearly as quickly as water-based lubes, and are easily refreshed with a bit of tap water: ID Millenium, Wet Platinum, and K-Y Sensual Silk

Notes on Lube Types: Some people don't like water-based lubes because most of them contain glycerine, which becomes sticky when it begins to dry out. Oil-based lubes are much more difficult to remove with soap and water than water- or silicone-based lubes. Water- and silicone-based lubes don't stain fabrics, oil-based lubes have been known to stain. Silicone-based lubes are absorbed (harmlessly) into the skin during use and are quickly reactivated with a bit of water . . . So don't be another person who jumped in the shower only to find their silicone lube reactivated as they bust their ass. Reactivated silicone lube is more slippery than fresh, and it's quite easy to hurt yourself very badly on wet surfaces.

Never Too Much Lube: The first mistake that anal-play beginners make is using too little lube. People who don't usually use lube (or use only a small amount) for vaginal sex consistently underestimate the amount of lube needed for anal sex. Whatver amount you think you need, multiply that by about six. Wasting a bit in the learning stages is far less traumatic than not using enough. Anal sex with too little (or, horror of horrors, NO) lube is incredibly painful. The anus, the area around the anus, the item/s to be inserted, and and the beginning of the anal canal should be VERY slippery before you even THINK of sticking anything in there. Trust us here -- There's no such thing as too much lube.

Sex Toys ("Marital Aids")

All sex toys should be smooth, somewhat flexible, clean when used, cleanable (made of inert, non-porous materials), retrievable after insertion, realistic in size/shape/proportion to their intended purpose, and sanitizable (boiling, chemical disinfectants, or soap-and-water washing). These guidelines are especially important when discussing toys for the butt.

Buttplugs: A toy made for the butt! They are made of various materials and they come in a wide range of sizes, but they all have an overall similar shape. They have a narrow end that flares to a wider section that abruptly shrinks to a small section capped off by a very wide base. Imagine a miniature Christmas tree. The narrow end enters the anus, the plug is inserted until the wide section is completely in the rectum, and then the anus closes around the narrow section. The very wide base remains outside of the anus as both a guard against "losing" the plug inside of the rectum and as a handle to remove the plug. Picture.
Anal Beads: Another toy made for the butt! This is a string of spaced beads made in a variety of sizes of various materials. The idea behind anal beads is that the strand is inserted into the rectum and then removed, one bead at a time, in a pleasurable way. Picture.
Dildoes: Suitable for vaginal/anal use, these are also made in various sizes of a variety of materials. These are penis stand-ins, and are made in various shapes, some with a defined head and veins, some smooth and only as penis-like as a wooden dowel, and many variations in between. Picture.
Vibrators, hand-held: Suitable for vaginal/anal use, these differ from dildoes in that they have batteries (or plug into a wall outlet) and vibrate. The intensity and wave-form of the vibrations are usually variable with a switch or dial. Picture.
Vibrators, attached/butterfly: These vibrators are not dildo-shaped. They are designed to strap on (or in some other way attach) on to the body, usually the clitoris. They usually have batteries. They can be used in the anal area but should not be inserted into the rectum because they are not designed for that. Picture.

Note on Toys: NEVER use toys with multiple partners or across multiple sessions without sanitizing/disinfecting them in between sessions and partners. This can be accomplished with disinfecting soaps (least preferable but easiest), soaps made for cleaning toys, boiling, or cold-disinfection preparations (best option but pricier).

Barriers & Hygiene

Not allowing any toy or body part that has been in your rectum or anyone else's in your vagina is very important. This can cause Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID). Only items that have been washed with (at the very least) disinfecting soap and water between uses is safe. Alternately, latex/silicone gloves, finger cots, or condoms can be used as a barrier to cover toys and body parts so that the barrier can be removed once the activity is completed.

Do not use latex (toys/condoms/gloves/finger cots) with oil-based lubricants, only with water- or silicone-based because oil-based lubricants break down the latex and cause microscopic holes, at which point the item is useless for hygiene or bacteria-transfer prevention.

Also note that because oil-based lubes can be surprisingly difficult to remove with soap and water, they are not a good choice when planning sessions that will involve having to wash items or body parts between activities. If you can't get the item or body part clean with soap and water quickly, just say no or wrap it in a condom before applying the lubricant.

Sexually-Transmitted Diseases

In addition to unsafe sexual activities causing PID, which is not a sexually-transmitted infection (STI), actual STIs can be transmitted via anal sex. These include anal warts, hepatitis, trichomoniasis, herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and HIV/AIDS. One can contract an STI without vaginal intercourse or contact! As a result, safer sex practices are just as important with anal sex as with vaginal or oral sex.

Getting Started

The tissues of the anus and rectum are very fragile and are therefore easy to tear, break, and abrade. Fingernails should be short, smooth, and clean with hangnails trimmed. Toys and the anus should be clean. Copious amounts of lubricant should be on-hand. The bowels should be empty. If you prefer, you can self-enema, but don't do this any sooner than two hours before anal activity. During an enema, the tissues of the rectum absorb some of the enema water, leaving them engorged and even more fragile than usual. Within a couple of hours, the water will be absorbed further into your body and the rectal tissues will resume their normal characteristics. Also, relaxation is VERY important -- The day you're stressed out about being able to pay the rent or the week of the big presentation at work is not the time to begin anally adventuring.

If you're interested in exploring anal play but afraid/insecure/unsure, anal masturbation is one way to ease into the concept without embarrassment with a partner. Relaxing and exploring yourself in a secure environment will do wonders for yoru confidence level in trying something new with a partner. Use lubricant, and touch your anus, massage it, tickle it, push on it gently. Pay attention to how it feels, not what you're doing. Continue. Eventually insert the tip of a finger if you've become excited or liked other things you've done. You don't have to do everything the first time: you can work on these things, work up to these things, over several sessions if needed. The Western world's cultural baggage about anal anything is extreme, and that's something you might have to work through slowly. If it is, that's okay. You're by far not the only one. Once you're familiar with anal masturbation and have found a few techniques you like, you can introduce this to your partner with a bit of confidence.

Anal mastubation is particularly important if you've had a bad anal sex experience in the past. Too many people's first experience with it was when a partner unceremouniously jammed a dry finger into their anal canal or when a particularly pushy person who had no idea what he was doing pressured her into jam-the-penis-in anal sex because she was on her period. Not only does this simply hurt like hell, but it makes you feel like there's something wrong with you or wrong with anal sex. Neither could be further from the truth, but good luck convincing your body's memory or your subconscious mind of that. If you had a bad experience with anal sex in the past, try to make a conscious effort to forgive yourself, forgive that partner, and to recognize that there is nothing wrong with anal play. This may take some effort, and several masturbation sessions, but the possible payoff is well worth the effort.

If you and your partner haven't explored anal play together, it's imperative that you have at least one serious conversation about it in a non-sexual situation before you try. This avoids surprised or negative responses that damage emotional intimacy. Discuss what you'd like to do, what you don't want to do, how much you do or don't know about it, how much your partner does or doesn't know about it, etc. Be specific, and be direct. Yes, this might be the most difficult conversation of your life, but it's well worth the effort.

If such frank sexual discussion is outside of your (or your partner's) normal character, consider disccussing it in stages. Bring up the topic in general. Then bring up the topic again while expressing a bit of interest. Then bring up the topic and your interest agian, and slip in a general idea of what you might like to try (fingering, rimming, etc.). In this way you can either slowly overcome your shyness or guage your partner's response at each step, or both, and move through the stages in a way that is comfortable for you both.

After you've gathered your ideas of what you might like (either through masturbation, fantasy, porn watching, etc.) and have had at least one serious conversation with your partner in a non-sexual setting, it's time to introduce anal play into your relationship.

With a partner, beginning anal play can and probably should be part of foreplay, especially if you or your partner aren't experienced in the area. This can consist of touching, teasing, playing, vibrating, massaging, rimming, and other forms of outercourse. Don't think you have to move from anything to anything. It might be enough to just touch the first time. Many people find anal play and anal sex an intensely emotional thing, and too much of any good thing too soon in the bedroom can leave negative associations, ruining long-term prospects.

Building Up

After everyone's excited and wanting to "get down to business," the time for insertion (of a finger, a toy, a penis) will arrive. Thoughts to bear in mind . . .

Initial penetration:

Penetrator: Talk to and listen to your partner. Tell your partner what you're going to do or ask them what they want you to do (whichever is the norm in your sexual relationship). Give them time to respond or wait for acknowledgement (again, whichever applies to the two of you).
Penetrator: Allow your partner to take the lead -- Your partner is the one that is on the receiving end of a good, mediocre, or bad experience. Let them drive the action, and you'll both be much more likely to have a good time.
Receptor: Tell your partner what you want. Tell your partner what feels good, what doesn't feel good, what is progressing too quickly and what is progressing too slowly.
Receptor: Take the lead -- You're the one on the receiving end, and if your partner is considerate, your partner will allow you to learn as you go. No one can read your mind and tell how you want to be fucked in the ass, so don't leave it to your partner to try to figure it out. This is a recipe for disaster.
Both Partners: Start slow and work up to things, especially while you're still learning what you like and what you don't. Talk during the action. This is imperative.
Both Partners: If anything that originally felt good begins to feel bad . . . Think: Lube.

Later penetration:

Just because you've explored a little and learned a few things about yourself and your partner, don't over-estimate tolerances and go hog-wild on that butt. Even those experienced in anal sex don't just go right to penis-in-the-rectum action.

Each session should start slowly and work up. How slowly to start and how quickly to work up will be unique to each couple. You'll have to learn it. Err on the side of slow, and you're both more likely to enjoy yourselves.

Withdrawal:

Removing anything from the anus/rectum should be done slowly and gently. You were smart enough to not just jam it in there originally, so don't just yank it out!

Orgasm

Some women require clitoral stimulation to orgasm via vagainal and anal stimulation, some do not. Some require clitoral stimulation with just one form of vaginal/anal sex and not the other. There's a ring of muscles and nerves around the anus and vagina (including the clitoris) in the shape of a figure-8. This is called the PC Muscle Group. This muscle are important for a range of reasons, and is imperative to the female orgasm and is the reason why some women can orgasm from just anal or just vaginal stimulation. While the clitoris is indeed the most nerve-rich area in the PC Muscle Group, some women find, after experimentation, that their anus is just as sensitive.

Pain

Anal sex, when properly done, should not hurt. If it does, you're doing something wrong! The two culprits for this are usually (1) not enough lube and (2) progressing insertion faster than appropriate. Your anus and rectum need a bit of time to adjust and stretch, and this amount of time varies from person to person.

If something hurts right off the bat, too-fast a progression is likely the culprit. Slow down and back off to an earlier point. If something that was feeling good is now beginning to hurt, too-little lube is likely the cause. Pause, and reapply copious amounts.

Outcome

What happens if, after all of this effort and work, you figure out that you just aren't going to fall in love with anal play? That's both possible and acceptable. Everyone has their own tastes and appetites as well as things they don't appreciate. We think it's worth the effor to actually find out if you like it properly done, though, instead of simply guessing, judging from a previous bad experience, or going with societal baggage. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

~Riot.Jane

Ad Vocabulary Re-Enforcing Gender Stereotypes

2011-04-23T05:00:00.000-05:00

Riot.Jane

Crystal Smith, author of The Achilles Effect, blogs about the the impact of kids’ popular culture on young boys becuase she has been regularly disappointed by the film and television offerings available to her two young sons.

She has analyzed the incidences of words used in advertising toys for boys and girls during after-school cartoon blocks. She discussed this a bit in her book, but now she has tranfsormed the collated data into wordclouds.

While admitting that this is not an exhaustive study, she finds the graphical representation quite interesting and a place to begin a discussion. I agree.

Click for larger versions:

Word incidences in boy-toy ads

Word incidences girl-toy ads

Seriously? Wow.

See her post for more information on her data collection methodology and her response to the two largest points of criticism she's received regarding the experiment.

The question in my mind is -- Is this vivid display of word usage a cause of gender-stereotype programming or is it simply the result of it?

Who Can Become an Addict?

2011-04-22T05:00:00.000-05:00

Riot.Jane

In Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good, brain scientist and neuroscience professor at Johns Hopkins University David J. Linden, PhD, describes the physiological processes of how the human brain reacts to different types of pleasure. He's found that the effects of both our vices and our virtues are virtually indistinguishable within the brain.

In an interview with Salon, he briefly discusses the biological causes vs. societal reactions to addiction. A particularly striking paragraph (emphasis mine):

In spite of the oft-stated idea that "addiction is a disease" we don't treat it as such. We lock folks up for simple possession and usually fail to offer them medical treatment. The biological basis of pleasure tells us that we must be compassionate towards addicts. Given the right situation, genes, stress, life experiences, anyone -- and I do mean anyone -- can become an addict. We humans are very invested in the idea that we have absolute free will in all things, and it's very threatening to us to imagine that there are these strong subconscious forces [biology/physiology] compelling our behavior, but there are. This is scary in a deep and profound way.

I find it refreshing to see a thoroughly educated person, one whose life goal is to further human understanding of our physical selves, to slam the way our society reacts to addicts, draw attention to the fact that addiction can happen to anyone, and to point out the reason society reacts so negatively to addicts is that we have to blame the victim in order to feel more secure ourselves.

Too many people are unaware or unwilling to understand the truth of addiction, so we treat them as criminals. Our entire society suffers as a result.

~Riot.Jane

Riot.Jane Guest Blogs for "The Business Coach for Moms"

2011-04-21T17:00:00.008-05:00

Riot.Jane

Lady T contacted me and asked me to write about workplace dress for her audience. This is a thorny topic with a wide variety of perspectives. I thought about the issues again and realized that I hadn't changed my mind since this past August when I blogged about the topic. She's posted my thoughts, Owning vs. Emphasizing Your Femininity, on her blog today.

Lady T coaches and empowers women to change the world through entrepreneurship. She provides motivational workshops, spiritual retreats and one on one coaching that helps moms grow purposeful, flourishing home businesses. You can click here to learn more about this mompreneur expert and click here to to read my thoughts on one facet of existing as a woman in the workplace.

~Riot.Jane

Words for the Co-Dependent Set

2011-04-20T05:00:00.003-05:00

Megan DaGata

What did I do? What can I do? How can I help? What else do you need? Where am I? Ahhh . . . The life of the co-dependent soul. Yes, you are an angel from heaven and an addicts dream.

WAKE the F--- UP!

I don't know how else to put this. I am not going to sugar-coat it for you . . . And I don't think I can. If you are in a relationship that you feel you are doing 90% of the work, then you need to check out your priorities. Ask yourself a few questions for a change . . . How am I? Do I like myself? Do I have enough self respect to leave? Do I make myself happy being in this relationship?

I am a person like anyone with my own set of experiences, goals, and plans . . . And man, did they get messed up when I forgot to think about myself. When you forget yourself and concern your world with the life of another, you get lost. You lose direction. You find a way to hide when you are right there in the middle of the action. You become a door mat, in other words you cease to be you.

As I walk through my day, and I see someone in the shoes I have worn, I want to grab them and shake them. I want to rattle them to their very core and get them to step up to life! Although they are spending their life trying to make someone else happy, their needs are not being met. Emotionally they depend on the other person's happiness to complete them.

NO ONE ELSE CARES IF YOU'RE HAPPY OR NOT!

The world is neither fair or forgiving. God is fair and God is forgiving. The world is harsh, cruel, a little sadistic, and will kick you in the pants, but it won't fill your heart with joy.

This is just a little note to all my co-dependent sisters (and brothers) out there. Find you! Be You! If your mate, mother, father, brother or sister doesn't like you very much for it now, one day they will love you for it. One day they will understand. One day your heart will have only joy, and no sorrow. No agony of defeat. One day you will whisper . . . Peace be still . . . and you will feel filled . . .

~Megan DaGata

Understanding Human Warfare

2011-04-19T05:00:00.003-05:00

Riot.Jane

I am currently reading American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Twice already I've laughed out loud, and twice I've been made to really think about the nature of Man. This was one of the latter:

There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe that they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.
-- Neil Gaiman, American Gods

This reminds me yet again of the dangers of dogma and the contradictions of deity. The good that Man will do in the name of something larger than himself is eclipsed only by the evil he will do in the same name.

~Riot.Jane

"The Breast Milk Baby" Controversy

2011-04-18T05:00:00.017-05:00

Admin.Jane

If you haven't heard, a new doll (i.e. toy for girls) will be introduced to the US market this spring. Called "The Breast Milk Baby," it was introduced in Europe in 2009 by Spanish toy company Berjuan Toys under the name "Bebe Gloton" (transliterates to Baby Glutton). The Bebe Gloton version already available at Amazon.

Americans are, to say the least, conflicted about the existence of this doll, much less its marketing to little girls and parents. Quite a bit of vitriol has been spouted about it, and I really couldn't understand the the spazz-fest that seemed to surround any mention of it. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground in opinion regarding this doll . . . People seem to either love it ecstatically or hate it violently.

Before we go much further, here are some video clips for your your reference (these are the sane ones):

First, the promotional/instructional video from Berjuan Toys:

Next, a news clip from "Good Morning America":

Third, a talk television clip from "The View," recorded in 2009 when the doll was introduced in Europe:

For some reason, I can't embed two different ABC News videos on the same page, so here's a link to "The View" clip. Apologies.

I have to admit that when I first heard of this doll, I liked the idea. The health and bonding benefits of breastfeeding are dramatic and proven. When I saw the promotional video from Berjuan Toys, I felt a bit ill and was suddenly not nearly as impressed with the idea as I had been. Why the change? I wasn't sure. How could a doll that promotes something so productive and important as breastfeeding bother me? How did I swing from the "Yes" side I would have expected to the "No" side that surprised me? Why is it that when I once saw a little girl pretending to breastfeed a "normal" doll I thought, "How cute!", but this doll somehow freaks me out a little? I had to find out why.

An infant breastfeeding . . .
This image doesn't bother me,
so why does the doll?

Because I was at a loss within my own mind, I began asking other people and had Admin.Jane put the question up on the "Current Research" page. I was hoping that by hearing from others, I could nail down why a (child-free) breastfeeding proponent such as myself could be so turned off by this toy.

Since I don't have any children, I solicited input from the parents of female children. I felt it appropriate to give people who actually have a child for whom this doll is intended my attention. Luckily, I was right. While most of their opinions were strong and clear, they didn't seem as rabid as other things I'd heard and seen. I now suspect much of the intensity of the controversy originates in people who don't have children themselves.

What I found is that, generally, mothers seem to be more in favor of this doll than fathers. This opinion from one mother is representative of the the responses from most of the mothers:

I completely love the breastfeeding baby for little girls. I am a 54 yr old mother w/ 2 girls that are 23 and 35. When I was getting ready to have my 2nd child my step son was about 10 and when he found out I was going to breastfeed he asked, “Isn’t that illegal?” That’s when I realized just how little breastfeeding is known in our culture and unfortunately people feel more comfortable letting their little girls feed w/a bottle both in private and public. I must admit that I encountered a lot of ridicule when I breastfed my 2nd child in the hospital and the nurses were not supportive at all. They kept telling me that my baby was going to get spoiled etc etc. So I had to fight to keep him w/ me in my room in order to feed him when he was hungry and to keep them from trying to throw a bottle in his mouth. If I were not a really assertive mother I would have faltered. I think that until we normalize breastfeeding as being the standard we will find that most people will be shocked and have discomfort in the presence of the process which is sad. That is why I so strongly support this new doll in a step forward in making that a reality!

These opinions from two mother are representative of the conflict that some parents feel:

I am the mother of two daughters, ages 7 and 3. I have mixed thoughts about the doll. I don't want to push the idea too soon about having babies. I can also see where it would be a good promoter for breastfeeding as opposed to bottle feeding. When I was 4 years old I pretended to breast feed my doll while my mom breast fed my baby sister, no harm done.

I am "Meh" about this toy. I approve of the toy in general. I think it does wonderful things about teaching that breast is best and that bottles are not necessary. However. I disapprove because I don't care to spend 80-90 bucks on a toy that moves its mouth when my daughter can just pretend to breast feed with any other doll. I don't like the dolls that provide imagination for a child. Children will copy whatever mother does anyway. My kid, she goes to work. My daughter is 3 almost 4 and I am a 40 year old female. BTW, my mother is a lactation consultant and I FIRMLY believe that breast is best!! Affordable healthcare starts with breastfeeding.

These opinions from two fathers are representative of negative responses I've received from fathers:

I disapprove of the doll because it is absolutely age-inappropriate. This doll is for mothers-to-be not for children ages 3-10 or whatever. I am all for this doll's use for newly-about-to-be mothers so they can orient themselves or achieve a comfort level in breastfeeding prior to them having their baby. But this doll is not for little girls because it introduces a concept that is too mature for young girls. My daughter is about 9 months old.

I don't feel it is appropriate to program little girls to believe this is how they should be when they become mothers themselves. I have a 5yr old and 18 yr old.

What I found interesting was that the most intense negative reactions came from the fathers. One yelled, "Hell no!" when I told him about it, another said, "I can see perverts buying this thing." The most common response, by far, from the fathers was that this toy is inappropriate for the age group to whom it's targeted. With only one exception, none of the fathers I spoke with had anything at all good to say. The one father who did have something positive to say about it was fairly strong in his approval, but his intensity was based on the need to breastfeed in general, not on this toy itself. "There is nothing wrong with breastfeeding!" he insisted, daring me to argue with him about it. So many people seem to reduce this to pro- vs. anti-breastfeeding in general, not about a toy that replicates it.

I find the gender lines on this topic striking, and that made me really pay attention to myself while I was trying to figure out why I changed from approval to disapproval (and a bit of disgust) after watching the promotional/instructional video. Trying to reconcile the academic and the emotional can be tricky, and this was no exception.

I'll spare you the blow-by-blow of my own mental gymnastics, but I didn't really understand the root of my own discomfort until I saw a clip of the (edited) instructional/promotional video on television. That video didn't bother me. Then it hit me: This particular doll disturbs me because of the graphic sucking mouth and sucking sounds!

I've been around breastfeeding babies, and they don't sound or look like that! Whatever soft sounds the feeding baby makes, only the mother is close enough to hear, and the baby's mouth and lips aren't visible in the way the doll's are. Look at the picture above: the lips are wholly in contact with the breast, and the baby is more drinking with a gentle suction than sucking like some monster from the deep! That doll reminds me subconsciously of some nightmare monster that would eat me alive, so it's doubly disturbing to me to see a young girl cradling it to her chest.

Sometimes it's the little things that matter. So, if you're a breastfeeding proponent, you might not want to buy this creepy doll for your girl. The same lessons could be taught by just throwing away toy milk bottles and encouraging your girl to play at breastfeeding, just as the mother above suggests.

~Riot.Jane

Sexy Sundays | The Ins & Outs of Anal Sex (Part 1) (NSFW)

2011-04-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

MellissaY

We're introducing a new feature -- Sexy Sundays! In this feature (which we hope to post every week) we will discuss topics related to everyone's favorite activity. We're always looking for ideas and contributions, so get those e-mails to us!

This, the first Sexy Sundays post, is an overview of anal sex written by a couple who want to share their experiences with same. The next Sexy Sundays post will address the nuts-and-bolts and techniques of the topic with lots of information for beginners!

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Anal sex. There, I said it.

For some it's a taboo subject that ranges from gross to terrifying but if done correctly anal can be an exciting and extremely pleasurable activity for both partners. Like many women, I had a partner who was interested in giving “backdoor loving” a shot but I was hesitant to say the least. I was worried about pain and damage that could be caused and let's not even discuss those horrifying images of “trunk butt” or the “gape”. (Come on, you've seen them too.)

After many years of discussions and false starts I decided to finally consent to trying anal in earnest. Rather than jump in feet first, I did some research. It turns out that the best way to embark on this particular sexual journey is, in a word, slowly.

Per the advice of books and other sources my partner and I dug up on the web, we started slowly by inserting only a very well-lubed finger tip at first. After getting used that sensation, we worked up to a finger. I have to have clitoral stimulation during any anal activity, and I would suggest to any woman that they do the same, at least at first. It helps you to relax and once you get used to the feeling of having something in your (hmm, we'll use a clinical term for this classy article) rectum, the sensation of a clitoral stimulation is amazing.

After lots of lube and practice, we worked our way up to our goal. My partner went very slowly and was conscientious enough to ask me how I was feeling during the process and that, in turn, relaxed me enough to keep going. The key to successful and pleasurable anal is a patient and understanding partner. Period. You cannot rush this! It takes some time, but the payoff is well worth it. The orgasm I experience during anal sex is unlike any other. It's a deep, intense release that leaves me shaking and my legs like jelly every time. My guy and I have added an awesome addition to our sexual repertoire with anal sex and I would highly suggest you Janes do too.

I am by no means an expert in anal, but if you are interested in trying out anal penetration, here are few things to keep in mind:

Good anal starts with a good shower. Let you partner wash your backside so you can get used to the idea of someone being back there (no insertion just yet, please).
Use a lot of good lube (We prefer AstroGlide for it's slippery, long-lasting, and non-sticky qualities).
Go slow, starting with only a finger tip. Rushing in can cause pain and trauma that can end your anal aspirations before they begin. Unlike vaginal penetration, there should be no blood the first time, and if you take your time there won't be any. Later, if you notice any blood in your stool stop. Wait a few days before trying again.
There will be some pressure with insertion. Until you get used to this pressure, you might think you have to go to the restroom to have a bowel movement.
Have a partner who listens to you and knows YOUR cues. Only attempt this with a trusted person. Anal is intense and you need someone who will appreciate your needs to go slow or maybe even stop.
At first, it might help if you add some other form of stimulation, be it clitoral, breast, or anything else that you enjoy. Once you get going, it's easy to get caught up and stop. While that's a GOOD thing, for the initial insertion go round I find that a self-given or partner-given hand job does wonders.
Don't be afraid to use your voice. Tell your partner how you're feeling! If it's too fast, too slow, too much or not enough, communication is key.
Like all things related to sex, the position you choose also plays a factor in comfort. For the first few times we found that the forward-facing mount to be easier as the penetration was not as deep as the rear mount.

Men can also benefit from the joys of receiving anal sex. Anal insertion stimulates their prostate and gives them earthshaking orgasms. Like we did when beginning the process with me, we began by only inserting a finger tip and went from there.

I realize that there is a real stigma attached to men enjoying anything in their anus, but I assure you that his deriving pleasure from it doesn't indicate he's gay. Having sex with other men indicates that he's bisexual or gay. The long and short of it is that giving and receiving anal can be an awesome experience that broadens your horizons and breaks down barriers if you allow it to.

~MellissaY and JohnY

Unintentionally Insulting? "Guide to Dating Fat Women"

2011-04-16T05:00:00.003-05:00

Riot.Jane

I stumbled across Guide to Dating Fat Women, a piece at MadeMan. MadeMan is a website that bills itself as a service "giving guys the info they need to live life well . . . smart advice on everything from beating a speeding ticket to scoring a hot model."

I think the fact that it was written by a woman might have given me some hope for the quality of its content. Regardless of why, upon first glance I expected something weighty and insightful, maybe even a bit witty. What I found was anything but . . .

Scanning the section heads should've clued me. "Buy her dinner" - "Never call her fat" - "Bake her something"? Really? These alone should have been a warning. But of course, the headline grabbed my attention and in I went, without bothering the scan those section heads. By the time I was finished reading, I wished I had.

The piece seems to originate in productive advice, but it manages to deliver that advice in an overtly insulting manner. Not only does everything the writer mentions apply to a hell of a lot more people than just fat women, but I truly think the writer was not intending to be insulting at all. I really think she was trying to be helpful. The fact that even with this effort she is as insulting as she is points to our pervasive cultural anti-fat bias and the power of the subconscious mind to perpetuate it.

I really don't think I'm being hyper-sensitive here. You read it, and tell me what you think.

~Riot.Jane

Maintaining a Sex Life While Co-Sleeping

2011-04-15T05:00:00.003-05:00

Bess Bedell

Bess Bedell has agreed to share her experiences maintaining a sex life while co-sleeping (children sleeping in the same bed as the parent/s). She's shared her experience and offers advice to fellow parents interested in the topic.

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Being a parent is hard. Being a parent and having a gratifying sexual life can sometimes feel impossible. And when you throw a baby in the middle of the bed, smack center between you and your spouse - sex can become a rare commodity. The number one concern of many parents is: If they co-sleep with their baby, how will they ever have sex? As a co-sleeping mom who has had 1-2 children in the bed with her every night for the past 2 ½ years, I can help you with that question.

1) Get out of your bedroom!
The bedroom may be nice and cozy and be more familiar territory lately for intimacy but there is an entire home at your disposal. After the kids are in bed (including in your bed), take it out into the rest of the house. The floor, the couch, the shower, the counter, the table.... there are all kinds of options right around you. Get out of the bed and explore.

2) Find the time-
No, it’s not like the days when you were dating and everything was spontaneous and exciting. Our days are now filled with crying and diapers, housework, and helping kids with homework. Fitting in time with your significant other can sometimes feel impossible. It isn't, though. Where there is a will, there is a way and you can make a way if you work for it! Often, that time will be at night after everyone else is in bed and, though you may be tired and ready to snooze yourself, it is worth it to reach for that last bit of energy you have and make some time for your honey! If you can find the time for facebook, shopping, reading, pedicures or anything else you do for enjoyment, you can find time for sex.

3) Change things up-The downside of planned sex is... planned sex. But make it different. Buy a new sexy outfit or toy or lay down a blanket and light candles. Do something that will make your sweetie say, “Wow!”. The look on their face and the change of pace will make it feel like new, exciting (unplanned) sex - like it used to!

So, co-sleepers out there: Don’t despair. Your sex life is not a thing of the past. As a matter of fact, it may just become more exciting than ever before!

~Bess Bedell
http://www.mommakesmilk.com/

Even Nurses Get Duped By Doctors

2011-04-14T05:30:00.005-05:00

Laura Giesman, NP

Laura Giesman is a nurse practioner that has shared her personal experience with a ENT whose treatment style leaves something to be desired. We're quite pleased that she's sharing this with us, and we look forward to seeing more of her work. More information about Laura, her practice, and her website can be found at the end of her post.

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Well, all my readers know I'm a nurse practitioner. But we get sick too and need to go to practitioners and doctors! So I'm going to share a personal story with you this time...because what happened to me happens everyday to someone out there. And it's wrong.

I had to go to an Ear Nose Throat specialist (ENT) to evaluate my nose and throat because I have very bad sleep apnea. I'm sitting in the waiting room and a guy in a suit comes in with Starbucks coffees for all the staff. The staff behind the front desk are all ga-ga over this guy. "Gee, who is the popular guy?" I wonder.

So I'm called back to the doctors office and I explain my sleep disorder to him. He asks me about allergies and I tell him, no, my sleep problem is the same every season, it's not allergies. But he then insists on giving me a prescription for Nasonex. I tell him that's not what I need, but he insists. So I take it and I fill the prescription...which by the way...I had to pay A LOT for because there is no generic for Nasonex! But I had faith in that ENT doctor.

He also told me and I quote..."Your life is spinning out of control, you sit on the couch every night eating, you need to lose weight and you won't snore!" He actually said that to me! I told him I'm a size six and I run on the treadmill 3-5 times a week....I told him I snored even when I was a skinny high school kid. But he didn't listen to me. So I left feeling very bad about myself and with a Nasonex prescription I didn't think I needed.

I used the Nasonex as instructed...and it did absolutely nothing for me. So I went for my follow up visit with this same ENT and that same guy in the suit was there giving everyone food. The staff really loved this guy!! So when I got into the doctor's office, I asked him..."Is that guy in the suit the Nasonex pharmaceutical rep?!?" And the doctor said yes!

It all made sense now...he pushed the Nasonex on me because he has some sort of relationship with the Nasonex guy! How sordid! Well of course I confronted the doctor and he did not appreciate that. He brought up my weight again and told me I was overweight and not doing enough to help myself! What!?!? He was so defensive about the Nasonex guy he ended up saying, "I don't pick medications just because of that, and yes he bought us all lunch today too and that has no influence over what I prescribe." Really???

I paid this guy good money to treat me like this. I was duped. So to all my trusted peeps out there...you know yourself best, if your doctor or nurse practitioner doesn't listen to you...find a new clinician! And to you Dr. P. the ENT...you have no bedside manner and you are influenced by pharmaceutical reps and you don't listen to your patients...in other words...you suck.
~Laura Giesman, NP

Laura Giesman, NP, is the founder and owner of Eleventh Hour, LLC. She is a licensed, board certified, mental health psychiatric nurse practitioner with over 15 years of progressive and responsible experience. In addition to her free online advice and commentary services, Laura has a private psychiatric medication management practice in Woodbridge, CT.

As a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner with a unique social awareness, Laura combines expert personal and mental health advice with analysis of social events and politics. Open your mind to a new dimension of thought: http://www.eleventhhourllc.com/.

PC Air Adds Kathoey to Cabin Crews

2011-04-12T18:02:00.001-05:00

Riot.Jane

I've been fascinated for years by the societal phenomenon of the kathoey (or ladyboy) of Thailand. The kathoey are men who live as women within their own society.

The kathoey generally pass very well (as snapshots show) partially due to the diminutive size of many Thai males, partially due to inexpensive sexual-reassignment surgery, and partially because of sheer determination.

Generally kathoey are more highly visible within their own society and find it easier to obtain and retain employment than their Western counterparts. While usually treated well within their society, many individual Thai accept the kathoey grudgingly or don't accept them at all. With that in mind, it's interesting to see that new Thai airline PC Air has recruited four kathoey to serve as cabin crew.

The progressiveness of this decision makes me all warm and fuzzy, but the make-up application training class does not. With 13 visible (or partially-visible) students in the picture of the class, it's not just the kathoey who are being instructed.

Even in Thai culture, femininity is tied to painting one's face.

~Riot.Jane

Introducing "Current Research!" Page!

2011-04-12T13:44:00.000-05:00

Hello, Janes & Joes!

We often try to gather data, input, and opinions from others while writing posts. In an effort to reach more people than just our e-mail contact list, we've introduced a new page to TJP.

On "Current Research!", you'll find information on what we're currently seeking for posts-in-development. When a new post idea is being developed, we'll place information on what we're seeking on that page, and when a post is completed or an idea scrapped, we'll remove that info from the page. We'll probably also post on the main page when we are looking for something on the "Current Research!" page, just as a head's up to you, Dear Reader.

We're currently seeking input on a post about the breast-feeding doll, so check out the "Current Research!" page and participate if you can!

~Admin.Jane

An Atheist at Prayer

2011-04-10T12:40:00.000-05:00

Karin L. Burke

I am not mature enough to be a Christian. I don’t have the moral flexibility necessary to embrace a thing so dangerous. Nor do I have the capacity to align myself to some other creed; there is attraction to other myths, and other stories, but ultimately similar difficulties come up. All this difficulty between language and practice, love and violence, power and corruption. No matter how attracted I am, I remain with a sense of being inauthentic, a kind of cultural predator. Someone suggested – since it does seem to be a monastic, embodied and mindful life I’m trying to find – that I become a Buddhist. “Acknowledge the fact that you are” a Buddhist said. But I am too aware of culture to think I could do such a thing without coming dangerously close to racism.

Of course, I’m over-thinking and too-serious. Qualities that feed my alcoholism like corn does pig shit. But I’ve got to stand by these things, I think, because they are my core, and either they’re true and I live by them or they’re not and life is meaningless. These things are holy to me: seeking truth and honesty. Dedication to love. Commitment to non-violence and relationship. Honor of the human spirit. Responsibility, kindness, and grace.

Unfortunately, around puberty I had it explained, in so many ways, that these things are not true, just metaphor, that people are evil, and that justice doesn’t exist. Reason enough to be a self-destructive drunk.

I wrote mystical garbage, called it poetry, and for a long time tried to make that enough. To believe that people don’t need a god to be good, that people themselves are good, that beauty is real as much as pain is. Secretly, even to myself, I continued to be hopelessly devoted to god, to love, to passionate humans. To be pulled. To see myself as nothing, as worthless, unless somehow a conduit for love.

Pain trumped me. Without a relationship to the truths in my life, I got better and better at self-destructive habits, loss of confidence, a creeping self-loathing. I sensed that there was something deeply wrong with me. I grew more and more alone as I realized whenever I hit on conversations that matter, people seemed to be talking about god (or god’s absence). God is the reason for suffering, and for love. God defines right and wrong. God is the reason for starving children and war, and everything is ultimately okay because God loves me, even if I don’t know it. I’ve had hundreds of people pray for me in my lifetime. Poor, wayward girl. As if such prayers were for my soul at all, and not their own sense of right. They, at least, got the benefit of feeling themselves compassionate and good Christian folk.

Beliefs matter. As much as I would like to think they are private, harmless things, that a person can pray to an old shoe as it suits them, the argument immediately fails when it comes to being human. Beliefs are not harmless. They shape our world, and mold our actions. Some beliefs unite us in relationship or common weal, while others divide us and incite violence, ultimately diminishing our humanity. Religious beliefs in particular are potent, not so much for what they say of god, but for what they do to us, and cause us to do to other people. Christianity in particular has a manipulative way of claiming love while engendering the opposite.

I believe in love, and grace, and soul. I don’t know what that soul is, and I’m not very good at love. But they remain the best shot I’ve got. In particular, if I’m going to be sober, it’s those things I need to learn and hang on to. I can imagine all sorts of things as possible. It seems most likely to me that there is neither heaven nor hell, that God has no very human characteristics, and that Jesus was a man who died. But I’ve a great talent for being wrong, and I am perfectly willing to accept the Christian rote as true. Say god is the father of Jesus, that Jesus died for our sins, He somehow rose again and walked, and this equation ‘saves’ us.

If that is true, I will spend eternity in hell before I align myself with a group I see as, well, immoral.

Arrogant as hell, yes. But I say what I say out of love, and justice, and belief: the bible is a tough thing, and a wrong thing if you use it as a standard for human relationships. And while many Christians would grant me leeway, saying the text is just text, there still remain the fundamental tenets of faith: love because Jesus loved, ultimately god is right and human affairs are the way they should be, charity and forgiveness and personal relationship with god, sin, salvation, gospel, are all exclusive and ultimately selfish.

If love is love, we do it because the other is intrinsically beloved, not because ‘it’s the right thing to do’ or because Jesus taught us to. I don’t believe in sin, and I fail to understand what Jesus ‘saved’ us from. We still suffer and die. And as much allegory and brimstone or prize giving as stories of afterlife can have, they fail to sound at all meaningful to me. Either “god” loves, and such a thing as hell would be impossible, or he is indifferent (highly likely), and talk of heaven is as weird as talk of hell. Christian charity and forgiveness usually seem more concerned with the Christian forgiving or giving (and Christians don’t give that much…less than 2% by recent tally, most of that going back into their own hymn books) than with change or the Other. Christianity has been implicated in the most heinous events of human history, from the Inquisition to the Crusades to slavery and the American Holocaust to the rise of Nazi power in Germany. It continues to be a major player in national and international conflict. If I really wanted to piss people off, I’d talk about how mainstream Christianity created the world in which 9-11 could happen, politicians are shot in parking lots, and our demographics are painfully inhumane. Christianity does a lot of navel gazing, very little palpable good except in it’s black sheep, and has caused more than a little private suffering.

Those things are wrong, and it seems wrong to not say so. So I’ll burn in hell.

I’ve wanted to walk away from Alcoholics Anonymous. They say there is no relationship between AA and monotheism, but that isn’t strictly true. You have to have a very agile vocabulary to not hear Jesus speaking in tongues. You can do it, but you end up doing a lot of translating. And you end up hanging around a lot of people who assume you are a Christian, or will be once you ‘come to’.

But I go. I don’t go there out of faith, or love, or for kicks. I go because I’m afraid I’ll die without it.

I go because I need to find the meaning of my life. I go because the people there are my teachers, I do love them, and I need to find a right way to hear them.

My spiritual path, if I have to call it that, is immediate, person real, and earthbound. It begins with the daily mess of my life. This is a demanding, terrifying, humiliating, and enlightening thing. It begins in acknowledging the responsibility for the difficulty with AA to be my problem, not theirs. Something I will have to reconcile. Breaking relationship does not right relationship. I have to reconcile my love of language with the difficulty of the Bible. I have to reconcile my fear and loneliness not somewhere else, but here. With my family, my community, and with these other alcoholics. I have to come to terms with service, grace, guilt, shame, love. Ultimately, I will have to come to terms with my sense of unworthiness, the grace I feel like passing light, aging, unmotherhood, and prayer.

I have to find the things that I love, and then I have to live.

I love prayer, and I do it even when I try to stop. My hands pray as I cook and I drive and I dance. My heart prays when I see the face of a loved one. My words pray, in spite of me. Sex is sacred. Daughterhood is sacred. Hunger, and action, and dog. Depression is a religious crisis. The words that I use, the actions that I take, the harm I do are things I need to understand as spiritual endeavor.

Anyone who tells you you can ‘take what you want and leave the rest’ is lying; you take the whole. Anyone who tells you it is easy is also lying. It’s a struggle with the most intimate things of your life. And anyone who tells you to borrow their own higher power is perhaps generous, but not much help. They have their relationship to god. You have to get your own. You have to, at some point, say yes.

~Karin L Burke

The Wrong Lessons to Teach Your Child 101

2011-04-05T17:00:00.003-05:00

Some Michiganders and Ohioans are on the front lines of living lessons we shouldn’t be teaching our children, namely that physical violence is the proper response to not getting your own way.

Within the last month, a mother-daughter team attacked a discount department store greeter in Ohio, and a mother-father team attacked a school crossing guard in Michigan. Both attacks occurred with children of the attackers present, and both attacks occurred in public places with witnesses present.

The mother-daughter team was angry that the discount department store’s Customer Service desk employees did not offer the service they expected when they tried to reload a gift card and purchase a money order. As a result of this dissatisfaction, when the store’s greeter, 71, asked them to see the receipt for their purchase, the women became violent. They screamed obscenities and racial slurs at him, the mother, 49, threatened to punch him in the face, and grabbed and choked him.

The daughter, 21, ran back to the Customer Service desk, screamed more obscenities at an employee there, and threatened that her boyfriend would kill the greeter when he found out. The daughter also loudly threatened to blow up the store. The women left the store. Police found them in the parking lot. The mother was charged with assault, the daughter with aggravated menacing and inducing panic. The pregnant daughter’s two children were present.

So much for applying the aphorism of “Don’t do in public what you wouldn’t want your mother to know about.”

The mother-father team attacked a crossing guard after he split up the parties in a childhood fistfight. The two children had been involved in a fight at school the previous day. When the parents of one of the boys did not receive the satisfaction they desired from school officials regarding the incident, they encouraged their son to “protect himself.”

When the parents dropped their child off a bus stop next day, he walked up to the 7-year-old he’d had the fight with the previous day and punched him. The crossing guard, 73, pulled the parent’s 7-year-old child off of the other child, and the parents quickly became involved. After a few words between the two, the father, 26, punched the crossing guard in the face, breaking one of his teeth. The father’s girlfriend (the child’s mother), 29, simultaneously attacked the crossing guard from behind as the father punched again.

Local police have arrested the mother but have not yet found the father.

So much for applying the aphorism of “Respect your elders.”

By example, these people are teaching their children that elder abuse and violent revenge are acceptable methods of grievance redress. They are also teaching their children that attacking someone who says something you don’t like is the way to handle a disagreement. In the coming months and years, these same adults will be filling their children’s heads with statements and perspectives about how the attacks were justified. As a result, the children will view the legal repercussions of their parent’s actions as harassment and unwarranted punishment.

The lessons we learn early are the lessons we learn most deeply. Here are three children (and more if these parents continue procreating) who are halfway down the path of learning the wrong lesson: That elder abuse and violence are acceptable, and that punishment is unjustified.

We’re already seeing the generational transmission of these lessons in the mother-daughter team.

Continue keeping it classy, Ohio and Michigan.

~Riot.Jane

Victim-Blaming Part 2: The Reasons We Do It

2011-04-05T05:00:00.002-05:00

In Victim-Blaming Part 1: Texas Gang Rape of a Child, we discussed the facts around the case of a gang-raped 11-year-old girl in Cleveland, TX. We touched upon the victim-blaming of the 11-year-old victim that is occurring in the press and among the local populace, and we reminded readers of the case of Samantha Kelly, who died by suicide Nov. 8, 2010 after being terrorized by her town and schoolmates. The Kelly case is pertinent to this discussion of victim-blame because that assault, victim-blame, and suicide occurred between the Cleveland girl's first and final assaults.

The Kelly and Cleveland cases are recent examples of pervasive sexual assault victim-blaming in our society. I understand why males so easily climb aboard the victim-blaming bandwagon. No male wants to believe that an error in judgment on his part could result in a sexual encounter with life-long repercussions. That’s a very scary prospect, as it should be. If it’s always others (i.e. Those Guys) who do sick things to the obviously undefended, then their actions are indefensible and justly-punished. If it’s the insane, egregious, and unimaginable acts of the mentally ill that are “sexual assaults,” then Joe Sixpack’s activities are unimpeachable, leaving him safe and without worry.

This safety, though, is dangerous: It allows Joe Sixpack to not consider his own motivations, question his own actions, monitor his own intentions, and reflect upon his own kink. As a result . . . Date rape, statutory rape, spousal rape, and other forms of coercion, intimidation, and sexual victimization easily occur, perpetrated by otherwise normal men, because Joe Sixpack is so tightly wrapped in his Those Guys safety blanket that he‘s blind to his own actions.

While females jumping onto the victim-blaming bandwagon is not a new phenomenon, it is strikingly vicious here. How much more of a blameless victim could one have than an 11 -year-old girl? The source of female victim-blaming really isn’t that far removed from that of male victim-blaming.

Consider this -- Real-life press coverage of sexual assault cases and the opinions of The People repeatedly tell us that it’s a specific type of person who is sexually assaulted. It’s not your sister, your best friend, or the sales clerk, it’s That Kind of Girl. Since it’s That Kind of Girl who is sexually assaulted, then sexual assault victims deserve to be sexually assaulted because, of course, they could have chosen to not be That Kind of Girl.

The corollary to this is that if you choose to not be That Kind of Girl, you won’t be sexually assaulted. (Good luck on figuring out what That Kind of Girl actually is in the eyes of a potential victimizer.)

The That Kind of Girl fallacy is very important to acknowledge, because it’s the result of the fact that believing that anyone could be sexually assaulted is much too frightening a proposition for most of us to fully accept. Continuing to believe the fairy tale that a sexual assault victim deserves it because she is That Kind of Girl wraps the believer in a cocoon of safety similar to that of Joe Sixpack’s Those Guys safety blanket.

Females also, to an extent, buy in to the Those Guys concept. We find it difficult to believe that our brother, boyfriend, date, co-worker, or friend, someone we know, could sexually assault someone. Because, if they could sexually assault someone, then they could sexually assault us. The female brain almost grinds to a halt on this thought, and it will do anything possible to avoid it. As a result, someone we know could never sexually assault someone. It's just more material for the That Kind of Girl safety cocoon.

The That Kind of Girl and Those Guys lines of thought are subtle, insidious, and cancerous. They are also subliminally ingrained to some extent in every Jane Sixpack’s brain. This conceptual combination lying dormant in the female mind until provoked is actually more dangerous than the That Kind of Girl concept being an easy fall-back for Joe Sixpack when his Those Guys safety blanket is pulled away.

Both the Those Guys and That Kind of Girl concepts are fallacies. Worse than simply being false operating assumptions, they keep all of us (males and females alike) blind to our own motivations, spouting nonsense, doing stupid things in our own lives, re-victimizing victims, and generally walking around with our heads up our asses concerning sexual assault. These concepts allow Jane Sixpack to continue participating in the culture of sexual abuse in which too much of our country is invested when she should be trying to open Joe Sixpack’s eyes about the fallacy of Those Guys.

Females will never make males understand their own individual culpability in our culture of abuse if we’re participating in it. It’s not a wonder that so many males truly believe we’re two-faced on the matter, selectively making groundless accusations as revenge tactics for other wrongs, when we don’t unite and refuse to denigrate sexual abuse of every type, on every occasion, when the accusations are legitimate and provable.

In this we are not united and reliable, and as a result we send mixed messages due to our own cognitive dissonance. Our vacillation is more obvious to them than it is to us. How could they believe anything else, especially the younger ones?

For those who disagree, before you go moonbat nuts in the Comments, understand that I am not saying we females bear partial responsibility for our own sexual assaults -- Far from it. What I’m saying is that we bear partial responsibility for the culture of abuse in which we all live, the overall culture and cancerous concepts that allow victimizers to justify their actions, bystanders to overlook them, and The People to forgive them. We bear partial responsibility because we are not a united front against these concepts. While we’ve gained remarkable ground in the last 50 years, we have a long way to go. We can’t stop now.

It's high time to bury Those Guys and That Kind of Girl six feet under -- Where they belong.

Say it loudly, and say it proudly -- Jane and Joe alike -- We will not stand for sexual victimization in any form. Live it as well as saying it. If we all do it, and we teach our children the same, we will make more progress on eradicating the victim-blaming cancer in our society.

~Riot.Jane

Further Reading on the Psychology of Victim-Blame:

Victim-Blaming Part 1: Texas Gang-Rape of a Child

2011-04-04T17:00:00.009-05:00

In Cleveland, Texas, 19 suspects have been charged in the sexual assault of an 11-year-old child. While heartbreaking, this is not earth-shattering news. All too often, we hear of things like this and shake our heads, and maybe some of us say a prayer for the victim.

The details of this particular case are particularly noteworthy.

This child was assaulted repeatedly over the course of six weeks in late 2010 by different individuals/groups at different times in different locations. The perpetrators ranged in age from 14 to 27. Cell-phone-recorded video and photographs were widely disseminated to non-participants.

The victim and her family have become such a target of local public vitriol and threats that Child Protective Services has removed her from her home/family/town. One of the assault incidents could only be defined as “gang-rape for an audience.”

A local black civil rights activist has accused the Ku Klux Klan of running the investigation of the Hispanic victim and a passel of black perpetrators. The accusation has all but blown the lid of the powder keg of this small Texas city of 7,000 - 9,000 (reports vary). The majority of black residents still live in a portion of Cleveland referred to alternately as “The ‘Hood” and “The Quarters.”

(No, the case has not been tried. Yes, all Defendants are innocent-until-proven-guilty. I won’t use the word “alleged” or anything like it during this accounting, though, because that word indicates the possibility the crime did not occur. Since there is video/photographic proof that sexual acts between a child and adults did occur, and because I won’t be naming suspects, I don’t feel the need to use “alleged“ anything. If you disagree, Comment.)

While court documents indicate three separate dates of assault (Sept. 15, Oct. 25, and Nov. 28), the majority of the news coverage (and therefore available information) has to do with the third date . . . And for good reason (i.e. gag order).

(All statements of fact in the following paragraphs, including the two lists, are taken from news accounts and are credited to affidavits, indictments, and other court documents. The list is generated from the text of the gag order itself. Sources are located a the end of this post.)

The Nov. 28 assault began when a 19-year-old male convinced the girl to take a drive with him and two other males.

(For those of you who weren’t raised in a small town and might not understand the appeal, “riding around” is often a form of social entertainment for small groups of teenagers in towns where there isn‘t much else to do.)

The three males took the girl to the private residence of a relative of a fourth male. This fourth male ordered her to remove her clothing. If she did not, they threatened her with not driving her home and with having other girls beat her up.

Soon enough, all four of the males were having sex with the girl in the bedroom and bathroom. While in that bathroom, the girl overheard one of the perpetrators use a phone to invite others to the scene. When she left the bathroom, four more males she did not recognize were present.

Shortly thereafter, everyone fled when the relative of the fourth male returned to the home. The girl’s undergarments were left behind in the private residence. The group arrived at a nearby abandoned trailer home that stands next to a Baptist church, and the attack continued. As at least some of the perpetrators had sex with the girl, other males present took pictures and recorded videos with their cell phones. (How long the attack continued, and how many of those present actually had sex with the girl is not available in press accounts.)

Those cell phone pictures and videos were widely distributed among students and non-students in short order. On Dec. 1, a friend of the victim alerted school authorities to their existence. The Cleveland ISD Police Chief investigated the case, determined that a rape had occurred off of school property, and referred the matter to the Cleveland Police on Dec. 3. Cleveland PD investigated and arrested its 19th suspect on March 23.

On March 15, a District Court judge signed a gag order regarding the sexual assault/s of the girl. The order specifically prevents:

All involved attorneys from making public statements that could taint the jury pool. (This is standard attorney ethicality, but the judge specifically included it in the order.)
All involved attorneys, their staffs/agents/representatives/employees, the Defendant/s, and all involved law enforcement officials and investigators from publicly discussing the case or disseminating documents, photographs, data, information, or any other materials pertaining to the case.
The Defendant/s and all involved law enforcement officers and investigators from publishing, disclosing, or otherwise disseminating by any means whatsoever, the residential address or location of either the victim or any relative by blood or marriage.
Any witness from publicly discussing or disseminating information pertaining to the case.
“Witness” is defined as experts consulted in case-building or called by the Defense or the State for either pretrial or trial testimony, law enforcement officers involved in investigating the case, people who either will testify or have already testified in pretrial or adjudicative proceedings in this case, and all parties/caseworkers/parents/siblings/relatives by blood or marriage/foster parents in this case.

This gag order effectively prevents all information regarding the case from being made public until trial. The curious thing about the gag order is that any professional who could be consulted or called as a witness and any private individual who could be called as a witness is prevented from discussing this case, even in the hypothetical. I hope that cameras are allowed in the courtroom, and I hope those professionals are allowed to publicly discuss the case after trial.

The only details of the Sept. 15 and Oct. 25 assaults that were made public before the gag order was issued is that at least two perpetrators were involved in each assault. Until the trial occurs, we likely won’t find out anything else about these two assaults. I do think it’s safe to say that, with one of the Defense attorneys saying that “as many as 28 or more” indictments could occur, more than two perpetrators were likely involved in each of the earlier attacks.

While seedy information on the attackers is available, much more has been made of the opinions of outsiders about the victim and her family in press accounts. More weight seems to have been given to salacious quotes about the girl , such as:

“. . . .this girl was seen wandering at all hours with no supervision and pretending to be much older,” -- A Cleveland resident.
“This was not a case of a child who was enslaved or taken advantage of,” -- A male Defense attorney.
“. . . She was dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground.” -- Neighbors of the abandoned trailer, as paraphrased by the New York Times.
“Where was her mother? . . . How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?” -- A female neighbor.
“Maturity or not, I’m pretty sure she knew what she was doing,” -- A female Cleveland cashier.
“. . . Where were the parents?” -- A Cleveland youth worker who noticed a change in the girl’s disposition in October 2010.
“If this girl did not live in that neighborhood, at 11 years of age, how was that child in that community experiencing sex with so many African-American men? Where was her mother? Where was her father?” -- A male black civil-rights activist.
“They had seen the girl, dressed provocatively and in makeup, hanging out near the area [of the assault] both before and after Nov. 28,” -- Cleveland residents, as paraphrased by the Associated Press.
“She lied about her age. Them boys didn't rape her. She wanted this to happen . . . If she hadn’t put herself in that predicament, this would never have happened,” -- A female Houston resident who grew up in Cleveland.
“The first house you need to stop at is her mama and daddy’s house,” -- The same male black civil-rights activist.

Oh, but yes -- Blame the parents (where were they?), blame the victim (if she hadn’t put herself there, she wanted it, she‘s lying, she was physically developed), blame the times (all kids try to look and act older than they are), blame anything and anyone, everything and everyone, except the males who had sex with an 11-year-old girl.

“These guys knew she was in middle school. You could tell that whenever you talked to her,” her mother told a local newspaper.

Not so much seems to have been made in press accounts of the salacious information available on the attackers such as:

One is convicted drug dealer and possessor.
One 19 -year-old has been declared the father of five children within the past year and has a pending manslaughter charge.
One is accused of participating in a home-invasion robbery in which the homeowner was shot, and the next day of participating in an armed robbery of a grocery store.
One writes verses as an aspiring rap music star.
One 17 -year-old has a newborn baby with a 15 -year-old girl.
One 21 -year-old (older brother to the perpetrator immediately above) already had another sexual assault of a child charge pending against him as well as a robbery charge for stealing his own sister’s car at gunpoint.
Two 19 -year-old cousins are two of only 4 Defendants charged with “continuous” sexual assault of the girl on multiple occasions.
One was attending Cleveland ISD’s dropout recovery program, but has no prior criminal record.
A 26 -year-old prior mental health employee has no prior criminal record.
A 21 -year-old prior correctional employee has no prior criminal record.
An 18 -year-old and a juvenile star player who were starters on the Cleveland High School basketball team have no prior criminal records.

The victim and her family began receiving threatening telephone calls after the investigation became public, and the local police were concerned that they were originating from people seeking revenge. Sometime in February 2011, Child Protective Services quietly removed the girl from her home, school, and family, and placed her in a foster family in another school district for her own protection. The victim has very limited access to her own family.

So, while a black civil-right activist stirs the pot, the child victim is in hiding, and a gag order prevents any actual useful information from surfacing, the town and the press are busying themselves playing “Pin the Tail on the Victim” in the same way that a mob of males played “Hide the Sausage” inside an 11 -year-old girl. Conveniently, they all seem to forget the fact that an 11-year-old girl cannot give consent to any form of sexual activity. Period.

“The police think we may be in danger. Because if they can’t get my 11-year-old, they might take out their revenge on us,” her mother told a local newspaper. “They keep calling and asking for her. They don’t believe me when I say that she’s not here and cuss us out. They’re trying to find her, this is the time when she needs us the most,“ she said.

The (male) black civil rights activist tried to make something of the facthat the 11 -year-old victim didn’t report the rape to authorities herself, asking why she didn’t and implying that she is hiding something by not having done so.

Amanda Marcotte has the answer for that particular question, an answer that I couldn’t phrase any better:

Girls suffer from harassment, violence and rape all the time, but they rarely tell. And the reason is that while girls may not know much about sex or men or the world, they pick up on what this alleged victim is suffering now. They instinctively know that to tell is to invite judgment, to have people ask not, “What kind of man would assault a child?” but “What did she do to invite this abuse?”

Consider the case of Samantha Kelly, a 14 -year-old girl who went public with a rape allegation against an 18 -year-old classmate. After schoolmates and townspeople terrorized her for the allegation, she committed suicide Nov. 8, 2010 in her home. This case received enough national attention that we blogged about it on Nov. 17, 2010. According to court records in the Cleveland case, Kelly’s suicide and the resulting media coverage of the case occurred between the first and second assaults of the Cleveland victim.

There’s no way to know if the Cleveland victim or her family heard about the Kelly case. There’s no way to know if the Cleveland victim even told her family about the assaults before an interview with the Cleveland ISD Police Chief prompted by a classmate‘s alerting a teacher about the existence of the explicit video of the Nov. 28 assault. One thing there is to know, though, as Amanda Marcotte again phrases very well:

. . . Young men who would do such a thing live in the same world we all do. They notice that it’s the victim and not the rapists who are assailed by the community and the media when a rape is reported. They notice that people blame the victim for what she was wearing or who she had sex with before. They notice that it’s the victim who has to move away, not the alleged perpetrators.

Anyone who took all this in should be forgiven for assuming that when a rape occurs, the crime was being raped, not being a rapist. And we shouldn’t be surprised when some would-be rapists take all these social signals shifting blame from rapists to victims, and decide that if they raped they probably will get away with it. All too often, they do.

After a chat with an attorney, I’ve learned that the bystanders cannot be charged as accessories to the assaults, but I sure hope to Hell the ones who were photographing and recording videos are charged with manufacturing and distributing child pornography. That seems like a slam-dunk once the Prosecutor’s office finishes their investigation.

I’d also like to hope that during the trial we find out that one, just one, of those males made an attempt to speak out, stop the assaults, call for help, leave the scene, something. I’d like to think that with the possible list of 28+ suspects that just one of them had a second thought about what was happening right in front of him.

Don’t talk to me about, “You know how young men are, nothing to be done about it.” Raging hormones are not an excuse to have sex with a child, regardless of whether or not she’s physically developed.

This isn’t a case of social pressure, emotional extortion, or “if you loved me” manipulation common among teenaged boys dating girls close to their own age. This is a pack of rabid dogs who knew damned good and well that they were having sex with a young girl, and who were likely sexually excited by that fact and also by the fact that they were displaying that power over her to others, in real-time. Because males are notoriously exhibitionistic when it comes to sex, the bystanders were probably as instrumental in the attacks continuing as the perpetrators themselves.

While these males are stupid (it‘s okay if she doesn‘t say no), ignorant (having sex with the under-aged = jail), predatory (she can‘t stop me), characterless (they’re doing it, so will I), sociopathic (I can take what I want), or some combination of all of these, it’s their actions, not the root causes of those actions, for which they deserve jail time.

Jail time while labeled as a child sexual abuser is particularly hard time, and I hope the Prosecutor doesn’t drop a single ball in the juggling act required to charge and prosecute every single one of them to the fullest extent of the law.

Tomorrow's Post: Victim-Blaming Part 2: The Reasons We Do It

~Riot.Jane

Further Reading on the Cleveland Case:

Broadband Research = Free Wireless Router!

2011-04-01T05:00:00.001-06:00

Techies wanting to play a part in research that will provide US consumers with accurate broadband statistics (and maybe receive a free wireless router in the process!) should consider joining the Test My ISP project.

The Federal Communications Commision (FCC) and SamKnows are joining forces to test, measure, and provide reliable US home broadband connection statistics by placing 10,000 routers in homes across the country. They're actually distributing 10,000 free Netgear WNR3500L wireless-N routers pre-loaded with testing firmware to participants.

Current Testing:

Multi-threaded HTTP download speed test
Multi-threaded HTTP based upload speed test
Availability of the connection
Jitter
Latency (both ICMP and UDP)
Packet loss (both ICMP and UDP)
DNS query resolution time
DNS query failure rate
Web page loading time
Web page loading failure rate
Video streaming performance

Participation Requirements (partial):

You have a fixed line broadband Internet connection to your residence.
You use a standalone device to connect to your broadband service - i.e not a USB ADSL modem.
You have a stable broadband connection (i.e. it doesn't disconnect frequently). Note that this is just referring to the connection - not the speed.
You are not a heavy downloader. Our tests can only run when your line below a certain traffic threshold, therefore we would not be able to run any tests if your line is in constant use.

Router Installation Rquirements (partial):

If you have a cable/DSL modem and an existing separate router we will ask you to replace it with the Netgear WNR3500L.
If you cannot replace your existing router (due to it being an integrated DSL/cable modem and router, for example), then we will ask you to install the Netgear WNR3500L behind your existing router and reconnect all of your devices to the Netgear WNR3500L (both wired and wireless).
A&T U-Verse customers will be asked to connect the Netgear WNR3500L to their U-Verse gateway and do nothing further.

The FCC's program website includes the sign-up form, more information on requirements, and privacy details.

The SamKnows program website, includes details on the research program's recruitment, testing, and sampling methodologies.

~Admin.Jane

Alcoholic Insanity (Different than you probably think)

2011-03-31T05:00:00.002-06:00

Karin L. Burke

Karin L. Burke is a woman at large, full-time unemployed, writing a book, and sleeping on other people’s couches. She started writing a blog that deals with domestic violence, alcoholism and recovery, and yoga as healing when a friend said she needed to publish her letters.

"You have to give this away," the friend said, "This is what you needed to hear when you were getting sober. This is what you needed when you were trying to leave that abusive *****. This is what I've needed, at so many points in my life. You have to give this away. It isn't yours to keep."

(More of Karen's bio at the end of post, after the jump.)

We are flattered that she has chosed to share some of her experience with the special insanity of alchoholism with us.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The only thing there is to say," said another recovering drunk, "Is that alcoholic insanity is the mistaken belief that ‘this time it will be different’; it doesn’t have anything to do with ‘insanity’ in the way most people would use the word. It’s just that one simple thing: we keep drinking, thinking this time we’ll stay in control."

The word ‘insanity’ as used by Bill Wilson was supposed to mimic Einstein’s definition, or doing the same thing expecting different results.

There is another definition, though, that I remember from when I was a teenager. I suppose the saying is still around, but it struck me strongly then. "An insane person does not know they are insane; a sane person knows when they’re illogical."

This seems much more my kind of insanity. I never really believed ‘this time it’d be different’. I knew how I drank. Of course I drank after saying ‘only this much’ or ‘no more’ or ‘I think I’ll quit’. But that was only the behavior. The insanity itself was a thing I lived with, sober. And I did not know how sick I was. I didn’t realize I could be any different. I didn’t know how far gone I was. I had some vague idea that I was going to fix it, somehow. Someday.

My alcoholism was, of course, about how much and how often I drank. It was, of course, that strange phenomena of losing control, but somehow thinking I’d have control in the future. I had endless excuses: I was angry, that’s why I lost control. I have depression. I was going through a divorce. I had a terrible day. Also: screw it, fuck it, goddamn it all to hell and Line ‘em up, Jack. Line ‘em up again.

But that was the behavior, not the sickness. The fever, not the infection. I was sick in the way I spent money, had friends, thought of myself, had sex, thought of the past and the future. I was sick in the way I ate, in the letters I wrote, in the way I paid or didn’t pay my bills. I was sick in self-hating, sick in isolating, sick in keeping secrets. The career choices I made were sick. My family relationships were sick. I was so sick I pathologically avoided doctors, could not study, chronically underestimated myself.

To say I was ‘insane’ because I kept drinking is true. But there is some other truth that goes deeper.

I could write a book on the things I do not remember. It would be profound. And disturbing.

This is what I remember: I get tired of apologizing to my friends, and even more tired of the odd conversations we have about ‘their concern’. I roll through friends like the cheap calendars banks and pharmacies give out every January. I become a mysterious woman. I disappear.

I wake up with skinned palms and a split lip. I know I start the night in one place and end up in another. I realize – without ever thinking it through or coming to a definitive decision – that I need to be careful. Not “I need to slow down” or “I need to stop”, but “I need to be careful”. I have “safe drinking” and “social drinking” as separate personae. Social drinking occurs with friends, in social settings. “Safe drinking” is what I do at ‘my bar’. The bartenders know me. They know where I live. They even know how I break in when I lose my keys. They allow me to pass out in the back room, laying across the cases of beer, and will take me home in a cab at the end of their night. I have eight such bars. I do not want to always do this in the same place.

“Social drinking” becomes more and more strained. I know – again in that way where I have not given conscious thought, but have moved on instinct – that if I have a few drinks, I am liable to end up un-prettily drunk. I begin to lie. My stomach hurts. No, you know I’m not really wanting a drink right now. No, hard liquor upsets my stomach. Prior to these situations, I will have a six pack. Immediately upon leaving, I go to one of ‘my bars’.

I break up with a man because he leaves a toothbrush in my apartment.

I move to New Orleans. It is November, and I live in Minneapolis. I drive a shitty Plymouth without heat. The man I love, who has told me that he loves me, does not want me to go. “Winter is coming. My car has no heat. I need to move somewhere it’s warm”. And I drove, almost fell, down the continent, diving into New Orleans.

I stop drinking imported beer. Budweiser, I convince myself, tastes right. Available anywhere, cheaper by the dozen.

My lunch date cancels. I shrug, and start the evening early.

I stop paying bills and for the most part stop paying attention to how much money I have. It doesn’t matter. Bills are a thing I pay when the phone is disconnected or the electric company sends the envelope with the red stripe across the front.

I sometimes get my groceries at a local food-shelf. I don’t tell this to anyone. But I have enough money to drink.

Serious drinkers are smart. They have to be.

Every morning, I have to search for my cell ‘phone and my keys. Sometimes I find them in the refrigerator. Sometimes I don’t find them anywhere.

Occasionally, I get a phone call from a person I do not know. Sometimes, they express concern. They say ‘you know, you should be careful’.

I sleep with a married man for five years. I find his sock under my bed. I stare at it awhile, but don’t touch it. I wonder why I am lonely. Eventually, we stop. We both know it to be unhealthy. I start sleeping with another married man. This one lives in Uruguay.

I work as a barmaid. People sometimes ask why I do it, and I say the money is good. This feels like a lie. It’s true. But it feels like a lie because it isn’t the real reason. I work in the kind of bar where you are encouraged to drink during your shift. It’s expected. It’s protocol. The bathrooms always smell like crack cocaine. I find co-workers passed out. There is always a lingering smell of stale beer and vomit. It’s the kind of bar where you crawl up there and dance, maneuver your way on the 12-inch, sweaty wood of the bar. I wear a cowboy hat and a bikini top. Every third drink a customer buys, I buy him a shot. And do one with him. Someone wonders if I work there because I need the excitement, the adrenalin. I hate the excitement. I work there because I need a place that will let me drink the way I want to drink.

It’s not like I drink every night. But sometimes, I can’t sleep, and I go to the bar at three a.m.

I have words in my head that will not go away. I am laying in bed in my underwear. I find a Sharpie marker. I start to write the words on my legs. From the bottoms of my feet to my crotch. Slut. Worthless. Bitch. Crazy. Ugly. I cover my legs with the scribbles. I feel better afterward. Three days later, the markings are still there, though faded. Sharpies are strong stuff. It occurs to me that I perfectly stayed within the lines of what no one could happen to see. Nothing on an arm, where a sleeve might pull up. Nothing that anyone will ever know.

The cop kicks me and wakes me in the subway station at 14th Street. He keeps asking me what drugs I’ve taken and doesn’t believe me when I say it’s only alcohol. They take me to St. Vincent’s. I detox for four days. On my way home, again in the 14th Street subway station, I run into a friend. He asks me how I am, what’s new, what’s going on. I’m fine, I say, and smile.

Two weeks later, the same nurse is working when I arrive back at St. Vincent’s. Ain’t you done yet honey, she says. I look at her and shake my head No.

The third time, about a two months later, she is the one who shakes her head No.

I believe, somewhere in that unarticulated-arguments part of my brain, that I am ok because I don’t do drugs. I did drugs as a kid, got in too much trouble, and I kicked. Somehow, this argument does not take into account the nights I end up snorting coke in the bathroom. If it’s there, hey. Nor does it take into account the times I’ve realized I’ve just smoked crack. Nor does this seem to take into any kind of consideration the apparent breezy lack of control I have once I’m going. It’s not heroin, I think, it’s okay. I never really ask myself what will happen the day heroin does happen to be there. Hey.

I sometimes fantasize about drinking myself to death. Once or twice, I sort of intend to do this. But I go too slowly. I pass out sitting on the kitchen floor, my knees drawn up, the bottle with half a swig left in it. Laying on its side.

I spend an awful lot of time wondering what it is that’s wrong with me.

I’m raped at work. I don’t tell anyone. The next day, I go back. It was my boss. We never mention that night again.

I don’t know how sick I am. I know how I drink. I know that most of my life occurs as things I can never mention, never bring up as small talk or flirtation script. I know I drink too much, but I am so sick I don’t think that’s the problem. I think it’s something to do with my heart. I think there is something wrong with me. Alcohol brings me to the root of despair, but I don’t see that. I don’t know I’m crazy. In my version, I topple to the root of despair, and alcohol is the one thing that saves me.

~Karin L. Burke

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If You Would Only Like Me

2011-03-30T05:00:00.001-06:00

I don't read much mainstream fiction, but on the advice of a close friend, I'm currently reading Boy's Life by Robert McCammon. Here's a single paragraph from it . . .

I had been in the presence of Chile Willow only a short time, but what is time when a heart speaks? My heart was speaking to Chile Willow in that moment, as she bathed my cuts and gave me a smile. My heart was saying If you were my girlfriend I would give you a hundred lightning bugs in a green glass jar, so you could always see your way. I would give you a meadow full of wildflowers, where no two blossoms would ever be alike. I would give you my bicycle, with its golden eye to protect you. I would write a story for you, and make you a princess who lived in a white marble castle. If you would only like me, I would give you magic. If you would only like me.

The innocence of youth combined with the first stirrings of love . . . This paragraph takes my breath away!

~Riot.Jane

Unveiling The Jane Project 2.6

2011-03-29T17:00:00.010-06:00

Hello, Constant Reader!

We're proud to unveil the latest generation of The Jane Project. After the last six months of hacking up our template to obtain desired functionality, the post-truncation (i.e. the "Continue >>" links) function was inoperable and our many-layered tinkerings had simply killed the blog's load-time. The logo was ugly, and the template was difficult to read for any length of time.

Since Blogger finally released its own widgets that provide the functionality intended by our hacks, we gleefully ditched those hacks in favor of Blogger's tools. Now we have a modern, easily-read template that we only had to customize with Blogger's integrated tools. All the functionality works without hack-ups, and the blog loads so much faster !

Do tell us what you think and what you'd like to see!

~Admin.Jane

“Love is an Attacker in the Dark”

2011-03-28T11:14:00.002-06:00

One of my work spouses (in this sense I am polygamous) recently made this statement to me openly, in front of other co-workers. He simply walked up to us and said that, without apparent provocation “love is like an attacker in the dark”.

“Tell me more,” I said.

He went on to tell me that, when you’re walking down a dark alley, trying to get from here to there, just going along your merry way . . . BAM! Around the corner it swoops . . . An attacker in the dark . . . A blur of motion and limbs and shock that overtakes you before you can blink, before you can register the occurrence . . . Knocking you down and taking control of you.

“Are you seriously equating romantic love with a high-speed mugging?” I asked.

“Actually, sometimes it’s low-speed. Those are actually worse, because they sneak up on you, and you don’t even realize it happened until afterwards. When it’s high-speed, it’s a surprise. When its low-speed, it’s mysterious,” he answered.

His point, after further clarification . . .

Just as you can neither plan nor be in control of being mugged, you cannot control the state of mind or physical factors that cause you to fall in love. These shall forever remain random, perplexing, surprising, incredible, convicting, unyielding, and exhausting and above all . . .

The never-ending mystery of “Why?”

~Riot.Jane & ronin0470

Response Posted for 15-Year-Old "Anonymous"

2011-03-24T18:25:00.002-06:00

To the 15-year-old female who asked a question in the comments section of How to Wash Your Vulva - For Real! on 3/21/2011 . . .

Please note that we've addressed your question in a follow-up comment on that post-page. Your question was very important, and we are not only flattered that you asked us, but also rather concerned that you might not have anyone else of whom you can ask these things. We are humbled to answer your question to the best of our ability, and we are also overwhelmed with gratitude to have the opportunity to address it to a greater depth than you might have otherwise had access.

Since you asked your question via anonymous comment (rather than by private e-mail, address on the left navigation bar), we can't be sure you'll see our response on the post-page itself, so we're posting here on the main page to alert you that there's something waiting for you if you happen to check the front page and not the post-page.

Thank you for contributing by asking your question, Anonymous Jane! Please know that simply by asking your question, you've allowed any other female in your situation know that they are not alone.

Please do let us know how this works out for you . . . We will think of you always with a bit of worry in our hearts.

~Admin.Jane

Ode to Rubenesque Women

2011-02-22T09:16:00.001-06:00

Het Pelsken
Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Thin is in? I disagree. I've always been an admirer of full-figured women. Thanks to the baroque artist Sir Peter Paul Rubens (example works), we now have the term "Rubenesque" to describe the type of amply-endowed women he painted. Over time, “Rubenesque” has evolved into modern terms such as full-figured or BBW (Big Beautiful Women). History or terminology lessons aside, my admiration (which borders on adoration) of Rubenesque women makes me feel like I am squarely in the minority, thanks to modern advertising. And what stuns me is how people are swayed by models (who look they actually only eat one full meal a week) because of that simple phrase "Thin is in".

Sine Cerere 1
Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Though I am a male who will be age 50 in 2011, my admiration of full-figured women goes back as long as I can remember. An ample bosom or a full-figured curvaceous body has always set my heart racing far more than any beautiful, thin woman could. Deep down, a Rubenesque woman exudes a warmth and comfort that a firm, athletic (or fit) woman could never offer. Soft, supple hips versus sharp angular ones. A body that is full and inviting compared to a body that is hard and unyielding. Even the term "Rubenesque" sounds softer than the term "Anorexia".

Venus at a Mirror
Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Sine Cerere 2
Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Separate from physical appearance, a main attraction to a woman for me is her attitude and outlook towards other people and life in general. I've noticed over the years that Rubenesque women are more friendly and open than most thin women (i.e. today's "hotties"). I’ve found that thin and incredibly image-conscious women are more concerned with themselves and how others view them than with being quality people. This strikes me as incredibly shallow. Full-figured women are more open and friendly because they know who they are. I tend to gravitate towards friendlier people, and I have found Rubenesque women to friendlier and easier to talk with than the modern hottie.

The Three Graces
Sir Peter Paul Rubens

I'm sure that I could look at statistics and easily point out that the image that modern models portray would probably only represent about 10-15% of the women in the world. Yet due to the media's fixation on glamour and celebrities, this has become the "ideal". If you aren't part of that, you are excluded and can only dream and hope to become that. Well, personally speaking, I'd pick any Rubenesque woman with a sparkling personality, intelligence, and friendly demeanor over some sick figure with a vapid personality and the intelligence of the piece of lettuce that she ate for dinner.

I consider myself lucky to have a full-figured woman in my life that I consider a true friend (she knows who she is and why I do adore her). Her intelligence, outgoing personality, and incredibly curvaceous body makes her worth over 20 supermodels to me.

Thin is NOT in . . . Rubenesque is best! Hey, Robert Frost or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may roll over in their graves at my doggerel, but maybe they didn't have any Rubenesque beauties in their life?

~Jinky

Balancing Sexuality with Spirit

2011-02-19T09:29:00.002-06:00

This topic can really be a confronting one. Generally spirituality exists in an entirely different realm from sexuality. In fact, they are often regarded as diametrically opposed to each other.

While writing my memoir, which is now titled Sex and the Single Senior: A Cougar’s Search for Love, I spent quite a bit of time pondering the best title for my autobiography. I wanted the title to communicate what my journey was all about, and also to reveal that I had struck a balance between two contrasting aspects of my life.

Hattie

The first title I came up with was ‘The Saint/Slut Syndrome”. That pretty much said it for me. The saint part was to have referred to my integrity — no cheating, no lies, and the second part, the slut, well, that requires no explanation!

Thinking it over, it seemed not to be such a good idea, as calling it a syndrome seemed to require scientific assessment of a psychological pattern to which I was giving a new name. So I dropped that one …reluctantly, may I add. It would have been fun to be the originator of a unique term for a new phenomenon…something like the “zipless fuck” that was introduced by Erica Jong in the 60’s.

So, regrettably, the Saint/Slut Syndrome term never made it to Webster’s…or the cover of my memoir.

Then I came up with the simple, sweet title, “Dancing Through Time.” But when I thought about it I had to admit that it was no big deal that Brooklyn-born Hattie loved to dance…even though she studied with Martha Graham. So, that one was nixed too. But this time with no regrets… it was too weak.

Enter Dolce & Gabbana!

Two years ago I was called to model for a Dolce &aabbana ad featuring Claudia Schiffer. The casting director was seeking a very sexy older beauty to appear as a Cougar wearing a skin tight gold bathing suit. And the sexy older beauty he chose was me!

Suddenly the word Cougar started appearing everywhere. That did it! I used the word in my book title, and suddenly I was featured all over the media as the Consummate Cougar.

So, you may ask, “What does this have to do with balancing sexuality with spirituality?”

Good question.

Becoming a public figure (literally) gave me the chance to speak about vital human issues like fidelity, integrity, true passion expressed with respect and love…and most importantly, honoring oneself through Time.

So this Cougar finally got heard. And my message now gets out there loud and clear:

Love and honor yourself and others, be grateful for the gift of life and practice safe sex with partner(s) whom you can cherish and empower. And at 74, I’m thrilled to tell you to NEVER GIVE UP ON EXPRESSING YOURSELF SEXUALLY.

For me, Love and Sex are the most divine gifts God could ever have bestowed on the Human Race.

I hope you agree!

~Hattie

http://www.holisticallyhattie.com/

My Hands

2010-12-27T06:49:00.011-06:00

when i look my Praying Hands i see
i see The G-d that has bent my knee
i see The Way, The Truth and The Light
when I use my Praying Hands

when i look at my Praising Hands i see
i see the miracle of being me
i see The Way, The Truth, and The Light
when i use my Praising Hands

when i look at my Helping Hands I see
i see the Christ that has died for me
i see The Way, The Truth and The Light
when i use my Helping Hands

when i look at my Working Hands I see
i see G-d’s way of sustaining me
i see The Way, The Truth and The Light
when i use my Working Hands

when i look at my Tired Hands I see
i see G-d’s child that lives in me
i see The Way, The Truth, The Light
When i use my Tired Hands

when i look at my Praising Hands
i see the miracle of being me
i see The Way, The Truth, and The Light
when i use my Praising Hands

when i look at my Praying Hands I see
i see The God that has bent my knee
i see The Way, The Truth and The Light
when i use my Praying Hands

~Barbara Rhyne-Tucker

What Happens When Your Sexual Abusers are Other Children?

2010-12-05T15:18:00.001-06:00

Being the only third grader in the school with a C-cup bra was traumatic. The trauma began slowly. Eventually it broke me.

The violence began when I first began to wear a bra at the age of 9, and it ended then with verbal teasing. As my cup size grew by leaps and bounds, the violence escalated in direct proportion.

The other students progressed from occasional gentle bra snapping (1" away) to constant painful bra snapping (as many inches as possible). Much like a towel snapped at your butt in a locker room, successive pops are geometrically more painful. I'd be in tears from the pain at least once each school day.

I hid the marks from my parents. Yes, those little bastards bruised me and broke blood vessels.

The cat-calls and stares and ostracism were far outweighed by the gropes that came next. In order to "prove" that I was stuffing, the insistent fingers probed, poked, prodded, pushed, and squeezed. In the lunch line. In the locker room. In the classroom when the teacher's back was turned. Everywhere. All the time. I was always on guard and always scared. Eventually even this poking and prodding and pushing and squeezing escalated in intensity. Eventually they fingers and hands made it inside my bra. Eventually, they began ganging up on me instead of one-on-one attacks. Eventually, they began trying to strip me bare.

I began to start taking my bra off on the way to school, hiding it in my bag and putting it on again before my parents came home from work. I did this in the desperate hope that it would "prove" that I wasn't doing anything wrong, that this "proof" would banish the monsters.

Freely-flapping C-cups didn't stop the constant attacks. My mind broke -- I started punching people in the face for lack of anything better to just make them stop. Letter after letter went home about MY bullying and non-bra-wearing. Because I couldn't verbalize WHY I was doing what I was doing, ass beating after ass beating followed. That's what happened then -- Note from school? Ass beating.

(My parents had learned long before that that I was waaaay too hard-headed for any other form of punishment to "take." I consider my childhood discipline heavy-handed, not abusive, and I don't intend to imply otherwise here.)

I still hid the bruises from my parents because anything bad that happens to you when you're a child is your own fault.

Their violence continued to escalate in both severity and intensity. My responses did, too. I was a caged, abused animal that eventually went feral.

The final note home from the school was about my lifting my shirt and bra-lessly flashing the classroom. It was my final attempt to just make them stop. Funny how even in the early '80s no one in the school or my parents stopped to say to themselves, "This is not normal behavior even from an early-puberty child. What is provoking this?"

I hope and pray that we as a culture are more abuse-conscious now.

The only thing that stopped the abuse was moving to a new school. Our living situation was always tied to my father's job. He changed jobs, and we moved. For some reason I've never understood, the schoolhouse mob violence never began again.

Even though the abuse stopped, it marked me forever. My broken mind never really recovered. A G-cup in my adulthood, I hate my breasts with a passion and wish I could have them removed. My breasts are a traitor to me. My entire body is a traitor to me -- My best weapon and my own Achilles heal in one package that I can't exchange.

And there's a small, dark piece of me that is still feral.

~Riot.Jane

I Was "The Other Woman"

2010-12-01T19:35:00.001-06:00

For almost two years, I was "The Other Woman." The man was divine in my eyes. The wife was a crazy person, and theirs was a loveless marriage. He stayed married to her because, where he came from, divorced fathers weren't fathers, and come hell or high water, he was going to be a good father. Even if that meant staying in a marriage where neither person had a single word to say to one another outside of "Excuse me" or "Did you pay the electricity bill?"

We began as friends, and I didn't even know he was married until after I was hooked -- He didn't wear a ring, and spoke only of his children (i.e. not his wife, ever), so I assumed that there simply wasn't a wife. It wasn't until a third party told me that he was married that the concept crossed my mind. I didn't believe it, but I asked him anyway.

The look of surprise on his face told me in that instant that he assumed I knew. By that time it was too late . . . Even after the hours of talking that followed, in which he told me the details of his loveless marriage, I couldn't walk away knowing that he wanted me to stay.

In hindsight, I don't think he'd ever fallen in love before he fell in love with me. A confident and self-sufficient person, he didn't understand what loneliness was until he was separated from me while on a trip. Our affair was inflammatory, and our conviction epic.

Eventually I convinced him to consider divorcing her, that in our state the one with the money gets the children. Period. That raising two children in a home of silent marriage was no way to father his children, that happy divorced parents were healthier for them than miserable married ones. That divorcing her and taking custody of them was the way to be a good father.

I poked at him about it until he obtained legal advice and was told that I was correct, that he could take custody if he had enough money. His father bankrolled the lawyer, and he received custody. I now had a single father of two on my hands, but I was okay with that. The children were lovely, and I was devoted to him.

Fast forward through cohabitation, splitting up homes and the relationship, getting back together, his moving a thousand miles away because of work, the resulting break-up, the resulting reconciliation, and five years of a cross-country relationship . . . To an exhausted Riot.Jane. At the nine-year mark, with no marriage proposal in sight, I left him. This time for good.

That was ~3.5 years ago. We e-mail, IM, and telephone chat occasionally. We still like and care about each other.

What did I learn? Ahhhhhhh, but that will be the topic of another post.

~Riot.Jane

Critiquing "Feminist" Marketing (Part 3)

2010-11-30T05:00:00.016-06:00

In the previous posts Critiquing "Feminist" Marketing (Part 1) and Critiquing "Feminist" Marketing (Part 2), we discussed changes in and repercussions of mass media's co-opt of the "feminist" message, and we examined the overt versus subliminal concepts inherent in each. Now we move into the realm of why these subliminal messages find fertile ground within our minds.

Our eyes are our windows to the world. They're what helps our unconscious determine what is real and what is not. They show us our tribe, connect us to the people we love, respect, and hate, and they help us find our place within that social order. Now that we've moved beyond 100-person villages -- Who is our tribe, and how do we know them?

We now have virtual tribes composed of real, physical humans and the virtual people that mass media brings within our personal sphere. We see the same newscasters every morning and every night, we see and hear the same television and radio hosts over and over, and we are bombarded by model hawkers constantly. At a certain point, our brains begin to subliminally incorporate these people into our tribe.

One hundred years ago, when being born, living, and dying within a 25-mile radius was common . . . We might encounter that 1-in-200 impossibly-beautiful person once a generation. Now we all live in virtual tribes composed of impossibly-beautiful and ultimately successful people, and each of us is at the bottom of our tribal food chain. (Interested in this concept? Start with neotribalism.)

What happens when our eyes feed this data into our subconscious, when our brains are trying to sort out our place in our false tribe, and our brains finds us lacking?

The Dove "Onslaught" ad answers this question:

Everyone wants to be attractive, and everyone wants to look at attractive people. The problem with that is that what we now consider attractive is skewed so far that towards less than 1% ideal that now "average" is "ugly" and "stunning" is now the mediocre norm. We judge ourselves, and each other, against impossible yardsticks and then treat ourselves and each other like garbage because of failure to measure up. Of course, the beauty industry capitalizes on this situation and only succeeds in making the situation worse.

All we can do is make a concerted, conscious effort to break away. We need to reclaim our actual tribes of family, friends, and co-workers, give the beauty industry a collective middle finger, and try to find comfort within our own skin.

We can start by stand proudly and saying loudly: I will not participate.

~Riot.Jane

Critiquing "Feminist" Marketing (Part 2)

2010-11-29T05:00:00.015-06:00

In the previous post Critiquing "Feminist" Marketing (Part 1), we compared the messages between a current Verizon ad and a Nike ad from the mid-'90s. While the overt messages inherent in ads that speak to women have changed over the years, so have the subliminal ones. Recent years have brought us more modern interpretations of the female experience, including its lice-ridden underbelly.

In the mid '00s, Dove began the "Campaign for Real Beauty". Early in the campaign, the FCC banned this "Pro-Age" ad because it apparently didn't conform to FCC regulations:

Holey rusted door, Batgirl! We have Victoria's Secret models parading their perfect bodies on stage, we have scantily-clad cheerleaders gyrating at every profession sporting event, and we have teen pop stars wiggling their advocation of adult sexuality to preteens, but Christ forbid that normal, older, fig-leafed women be visible on television. Ever.

Never mind that these older women are more "covered" than said models, cheerleaders, or pop-stars, and never mind that these older women are not parading, gyrating, or wiggling. Just know that a woman over the age of 25 who shows more than 8 square inches of exposed non-face, non-hand skin is so patently offensive to the US public that complaints provoked the FCC to use the grey areas in their guidelines to ban said ad.

What wasn't banned was the "Evolution" ad, and it's actually my favorite:

Even without the digital trickery, I'd look like a supermodel, too, if I had a team of hair and make-up professionals at my side every morning! While digesting this ad, considering it's wider implications, I held my breath waiting to see what was next.

Supplementing the "Evolution" ad, consider another mid-'00s video in which a digital artist transforms a normal-looking woman into a glamorous goddess thanks to the wonders of Photoshop (sorry for the pop-up ad on the video, just click the [x]):

I am particularly fond of the instant weight-loss and skin perfection. The hair extensions are a nice touch as well. Doubleplusgood on the removal of the spectacles. Compare the two pictures, and you could be forgiven for thinking that these women are sisters instead of the same person. Of particular angst to me is that the creator/poster of this video had so many requests for same that she posted links to tutorials showing aspiring digital artists how to accomplish these same tricks and pointed out where the eyelash brush can be downloaded. Instead of outrage, worship? Kill me.

In the next post we move further into why and how the cultural programming of impossible beauty standards works and the effects of same.

~Riot.Jane

Critiquing "Feminist" Marketing (Part 1)

2010-11-28T11:57:00.000-06:00

The messages inherent in the ads that speak to women have changed over the years. While we do still have plenty of housewifely cleaning product ads, recent years have seen more modern interpretations of the female experience. Some have been spectacular, but others could use some help.

Let's start with Verizon's current "Rule the Air" ad:

What bothers me about this ad is the overall impression that Verizon is trying to ride the Third-Wave Feminist train to Shangri-La. Every young female in this ad is picture-perfect, and all but one has long dark hair. These girls all look the same, and they're from/in wealthy environments with the world at their feet. Platitudes abound, and the weight of thousands of years of Western culture is absent. The only two females of color are the ones who speak about "prejudice" and whether or not she is "white," and that bothers me.

Classism is ignored for sexism, and in this world simply having an above-average IQ and a Verizon cell will allow you to shirk the bonds of femininity. As an anthropologist friend of mine said, "The air is free as long as you can pay for it." Verizon's motto here, "Rule the Air", is, more accurately in my mind, "Rule, my ass."

Compare the Verizon ad above to this classic Nike advertisement from the mid-'90s:

This ad has quite a bit to say, and it effectively says it. Girls are important, and girls sports are important -- just as important as boys and boys sports. At a time when challenges to, and increased enforcement of, Title IX (regarding unsubstantial or nonexistent female sports programs) were both vying for the soul of the nation, this ad was instrumental in changing public sentiment. Even if you didn't buy these shoes, the message stayed with you and helped change our culture. While a friend of mine has argued that Nike has since lost whatever soul it once had, this video was, in its time, a paragon of social conscience.

In the next post we move from substantive social commentary in media marketing to the programming of impossible beauty ideals.

~Riot.Jane

Respecting the Memory of "Us"

2010-11-25T19:09:00.000-06:00

When I was younger, the nights were worse than the days. When I tried to quiet my roiling brain, thoughts of the missing man I loved would poke their snouts into the swirling river of thought commanding my brain. Every bit of hard-fought calm met an equal measure of pain.

Long into the night, I would lie on my side in my bed, knees pulled to my chest, arms wrapped around my knees, unable to breathe except in gasps, tears sliding down my face occasionally, sometimes so late into the night that I would have to call into work sick the next day.

Now it's the mornings that kill me. Not even coherent yet, the presence of his absence rings in my mind afresh. Another small death, another tolling of the bells. The throbbing of the bells, the sobbing of the bells in unhappy Runic rhyme. The rolling of the bells, the tolling of the bells keeping shrieking time for my broken heart.

I can't help but know throughought my being that I need not ask for whom these bells toll . . . They toll in respect for our memory.

~Riot.Jane

(apologies to John Donne and Edgar Allen Poe)

How to Date a Women’s Studies Major: Just Don’t

2010-11-20T06:59:00.000-06:00

Brittany Hunt @ The Miscellany News has posted a hilarious piece, How to Date a Women’s Studies Major: Just Don’t, about the pitfalls of dating radfems. While I don't necessarily agree with with everything in the piece, the serious points she makes about stereotypes and the men who are afraid of (or are intimidated by) radfems bear consideration by those of us who consider themselves feminist. Make no mistake: Hunt is talking about radfems in her piece, not your garden variety (and much more common!) feminist.

While Hunt's piece does bear reading, I'd like to seriously address her bullet points here in my own feminist voice:

Remember: She's a Lesbian Until Proven Otherwise

How do I describe how infuriating it is to have people hate me due to a figment their own imagination? Seriously, people -- If you're going to dislike me, do it because I'm boisterous, loud, outspoken, aggressive, obstreperous, direct, brutally honest, suck with interpersonal politics, have a potty mouth, demand equal treatment, or any one of a number of other characteristics I actually posses in abundance.

If you're so full of hatred and self-loathing that you can't see past your own insecurities and guess as to what gender sex partner I prefer, then redeem yourself a bit by waiting until you actually experience something about me before hating me, okay?

But if She Isn't, She's a Total Slut

Your expectations of when or if I'm going to have sex with you has very little to do with my politics or your financial worth. My sexual activity has much more to do with my hormonal cycle, how charming you are, and whether or not I'm emotionally involved with someone else. The slightest whiff of expectation from you transforms my vulva into the Antarctic -- Dry to the touch, cold, and most uninviting. Whether or not I love the cock in general has little to do with whether or not I'm going to love your cock.

Speaking of male sexual expectations regarding feminists . . . No, we're not all on The Pill. No, we don't all love having abortions. No, we're not all superfreaks in the sack. No, we're not all VD-free. No, we're not all into rampant promiscuity. Some of us can't use hormonal birth control, some of us are intensely anti-abortion, some of us only like Missionary-only sex, some of us are just as irresponsible as some of you are when it comes to safe sex, and some of us are actually fairly chaste.

Deal with it, and stop assuming things that are going to get you slapped, sued for child support, or a venereal disease while you stand there whining, "But she was a feminist!"

Don't Hold the Door for Her

I can't tell you how many times I have an exchange like this with a male stranger:

Man: Holds door open and allows me to pass through ahead of him

Me: Why thank you, kind sir. I appreciate that!

Man: Relieved look.

Man: I'm really glad! I never know when I'm going to get yelled at for that!

I never cease to be amazed that holding a door is considered by anyone to be anything except common courtesy. I hold doors for people all the time . . . The elderly, the young, the infirm, people carrying things, etc. Sometimes I hold it open behind me, sometimes I hold it open in front of me to let them pass. All of it depends upon my mood, the situation, and my level of observance.

Holding a door is no different that "Excuse me," or "Please pass the salt," so . . .

Men: Keep holding doors when you want to do so! Most people appreciate it.

Women: Get over yourselves! You are not advancing the cause by yelling at strangers in public for extending common courtesy.

Talk About Your Emotions

Yes, talk about your emotions but don't go overboard. I am a proud human, and a feminist, and as a result I'm generally not going to be a whiny or over-emotional type. There's a huge difference between bitching about an encounter at the office that pissed you off, explaining why it pissed you off while you're trying to work through it and whining like an impotent victim and moping for a week.

If you're more emotional than I am, if you're more "sensitive" that I am, I'm not going to be impressed. Everyone has moments of weakness and struggle, but if it's overboard and if it's a pattern, I'm probably going to toss you like an old pair of shoes.

Check it -- I am a strong person, and I keep strong people around me because I don't have time or patience for anything else.

Congrats! You've Made it to Your One-Year Anniversary -- Things NOT to Buy Her as a Gift

Unless you're replacing items I already own that are broken, that I've run out of, or it's a gift card from a store you already know I love to shop, beauty products and kitchen products are right out. If you haven't figured out by the 1-year mark what I like and/or what I need, and you're not creative enough to come up with something on your own, then you really ought to re-evaluate your own observational skills while you're e-mailing my best friend to ask her advice.

Hints for the BEST Anniversary Gifts:

If I read, books are a hit if you've taken 10 minutes to look at my bookcase or paid any attention whatsoever to what I talk about. Take your ass to a locally-owned bookstore and talk to a clerk if you're at a loss.

If I'm a science nerd, science museum trips are a winner because it's an experience with you

Receiving flowers at the office is a total win because I get lots of attention from my co-workers. This gives me a chance to bask in the limelight and talk you up with everyone else being jealous! Whatever happens, don't have them delivered on the last day of my workweek -- Send them early if you have to, because wilted Monday flowers are simply sad.

Stay away from topics you don't know -or- consult with a knowledgeable person early. The book item I already talked about? Do this with fashion accessories or technical gadgets or anything else that you're not into but I am. If you don't, you'll look incompetent at best and uncaring at worst. This is why men and women squabble after gift-giving: The appearance of not putting enough thought or effort into the gift that it makes some kind of sense.

Be sure that any object you choose (if you choose an object) is fully, 100% returnable/refundable. At least if you mess up, the two of you can make an afternoon of exchanging/refunding it for a more suitable item. This afternoon can be, if planned properly, a second anniversary celebration. If you pay attention, you can turn a fail into a win!

I hope that my effort to supplement Hunt's humorous piece with serious points has been educational. I invite our Janes and Joes to comment about dating feminists and radfems.

~Riot.Jane

Girl Dies by Suicide After Rape-Allegation-Related Terror

2010-11-17T21:36:00.046-06:00

A fourteen-year-old Michigan girl died by suicide November 8 after schoolmates bullied her due to a rape allegation involving her and an 18-year-old schoolmate.

The only things that are truly clear at this point are:

Samantha Kelly, 14, had sex with Joseph Tarnopolski, 18, at his home on September 26.
June Justice, Kelly's mother, filed a criminal complaint with the local police department.
Local police interviewed both Kelly and Tarnopolski.
Kelly's statements changed over time - at one point she said she was a willing participant, at another she said she was coerced.
The police arrested Tarnopolski for third-degree criminal sexual conduct (regardless of Kelly's mindset, she was too young to legally consent), then released him on bail.
Tarnopolski then Tweeted to his classmates that "All girls are, are liars and backstabbers! I hate you all. Way to ruin my life. Seriously, now this will be on my record for life!"
Neighbors and students divided themselves along pro-Kelly and pro-Tarnopolski lines and the latter faction terrorized Kelly.
Justice and Kelly approached the media to protest/publicise Kelly's maltreatment by schoolmates and neighbors. During this interview, Kelly's face was obscured but Justice's was not.
Kelly's maltreatment intensified.
Kelly scrawled a note on her bedroom wall, the date of the of the sexual event, then hung herself in her family's mobile home on November 8.

Tarnopolski says that he and Kelly planned the consensual sexual encounter together and that nothing like coercion was involved. The state of Michigan's age of consent is 16. Kelly's mother insists her daughter was "forcibly made to have sex with an 18 year old." The Wayne County Prosecutor's office has dropped the case against Tarnopolski because their only witness, Kelly, is dead, and they have no other evidence.

Tarnopolski says he feels "a little bit" bad about Kelly's suicide but that her parents are responsible, not him. Justice says that she encouraged her daughter to speak to the police about the incident to prevent emotional suffering caused by bottling up a rape.

Tarnopolski says that he's not the one who disregarded a confidentiality agreement he and Kelly were going to sign that would kept the event quiet, protecting them both. I can't find a reference to Justice acknowleding a confidentiality agreemnet was arranged.

Justice does say she and her daughter approached the media because Kelly was being terrorized by neighbors and classmates and they couldn't get help anywhere else. Tarnopolski said he was unaware of any maltreatment until after the news broadcast, but that even afterwards neither he nor his friends terrorized Kelly.

Justice's reaction to the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office dropping the case against Tarnopolski, from a local news broadcast:

Another report from a local news outlet, this one includes a brief interview with Tarnopolski:

A local news outlet's longer interview with Tarnopolski and his attorney:

Even though I've had a first-hand taste of the battle Kelly was fighting (topic for another post) . . . After reading the articles linked at the end of this post and after watching the videos above -- especially the interview with Tarnopolski and his attorney -- I was almost, almost, just this close to giving Tarnopolski the benefit of the doubt, extremely poor judgement and suicide girl notwithstanding.

Then I found out that another, similar, criminal complaint involving another underaged girl was filed against Tarnopolski two days after Justice and Kelly were interviewed by a local news station about the harrassment.

Think about that for a minute: Two days after a victim publizes the unimaginable level of harrassment that would soon drive her to suicide, another underaged girl comes forward to say something to the effect of "I, too, was raped by Joseph Tarnopolski"?

Local police have referred the second case to the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office which isn't releasing any information except they're processing it. Tarnopolski has since withdrawn from school due to threatening e-mails that have left his family afraid to leave their home.

To think I was ready to give this speaking filth the benefit of the doubt! This piece of gangrenous humanity is only 18, and it's already clear that he's a victimizer, a predator.

Here's where I'm reduced to a lesser person than I aspire to be most days, but so be it . . . I am glad that his tormentors have caused him to leave school. I am fucking overjoyed that his family is afraid to leave their home. Honestly, I hope that, after he is imprisoned, they have to move a thousand miles away and change their family name to escape what he's done. Justice has a dead daughter, so the Tarnopolski's would still be better off.

I desperately hope the other girl can find the strength within herself to stand proud, and to say it loud, that "I, too, was raped by Joseph Tarnopolski!"

A memorial to Kelly, created by a friend:

Additional sources used as background for this post:

~Riot.Jane

A Joe’s Take on Treating Child Sexual Abusers

2010-11-12T05:00:00.000-06:00

I was a boy, and I was sexually abused in my family from the age of 11 or 12 to nearly 20. As a result, I might have a different perspective on how we should deal with abusers.

Zero tolerance, as expressed in most law, is an attempt by well-meaning legislators to capture that rarity which is the full-on pedophile. In that sense I say go for it and get those people into some kind of treatment.

The problem arises in that as disgusting as kiddy porn is, it's an after-the-fact response, sometimes years or decades after. By then it's far too late to help the child in question.

Then, of course, there's nations like Thailand who nod and wink as organized child abuse is traded on to increase tourist traffic. I don't buy for an instant that authorities in Thailand don't know who is running and controlling this appalling business or are completely unable to do anything about it. Mind you, it does draw true pedophiles as well as those who have fantasies. (And no, I don't understand what might cause those fantasies but as long as they aren't acted on I see no need to hunt those people down.)

The problem, as I said, with kiddie porn is that a response to it is after-the-fact rather than preventative.

As I said in my previous post, most abusers were abused themselves as children and come from within the circle of trusted adults and then, most often, from parents. To attack this head-on means exploding the myth of the nuclear family as some sort of perfect construction for the making and raising of children. In the United States and, to a lesser degree in Canada and Europe, this is well-ingrained and very well-defended.

Of course, there are professions that DO attract pedophiles and those who are in danger of repeating what happened to them. In no particular order they tend to be caring professions such as medicine, teaching, the clergy, therapists, police, coaching and, well, I'll let the reader complete the list. Any profession or trade that brings the pedophile in to near-constant contact with children where they can establish a trusted and trusting relationship with the child and its parents.

Each profession closes ranks around offenders, or has a history of that. The most obvious, for now, being the Roman Catholic Church. They're far from the only ones, though.

And each of these professions is surrounded by a mythology all their own, created by Hollywood or by themselves as wonderful, caring people who genuinely want to help their young charges and in the vast majority of cases they are. But amongst the angels there are devils.

So it means attacking the unattackable symbols of our society/civilization and I don't know of a single politician willing to take that one on.

Sending someone with a few pictures of child porn on their hard drive to jail for 10 years is akin to sending someone to the same jail for 10 years because they have an ounce or two of pot in their possession. In the former you aren't, in all likelihood, busting a true pedophile just as much as in the latter you haven't busted a dealer.

What abusers like my father needed and still need, and this is potential and actual abusers of both genders, is caring, non-judgmental treatment for exactly the reason I stated. They are very likely to be victims of abuse themselves and know no other way of expressing great affection. Jail isn't the place for that.

The true pedophile, on the other hand, really ought to be locked away in the same place we put psychopaths and sociopaths because they're another chip off of that self same block.

And then, we ourselves, need to look on those at the lower ends of society's rungs as what they most often are the outer grown up shell of shattered children who never, ever chose the life they now lead.

~TtfnJohn

A Joe’s Child Sexual Abuse Story

2010-11-11T17:32:00.000-06:00

Children cannot protect themselves from sexual abuse, and civil liability won’t heal them. How do I know?
I was a boy, and I was sexually abused in my family from the age of 11 or 12 to nearly 20. As this began, in-family, in the 1960s, who was I supposed to tell even in the faint hope I'd be believed? There was no faint hope of belief in those days.

“Stranger abuse” is rare in the extreme for most of those of us who survived childhood sexual abuse, and to us it’s actually an interesting word for the occurrence. It's nearly always a known and trusted (even loved) adult rather than a total stranger, so right then and there the option, to the child, of screaming, yelling, and making a scene is pretty much erased.

Dammit, we love and trust this person! Get it? And the first approach is always in an empty house/apartment so even if that thought was to occur to a child what the hell is the point of trying?

The first response is, after the shock of it all, that we've done something awfully wrong and bad to find ourselves in this situation. Not true, of course, but this is a child’s mind we're dealing with, as I was, so this adult must be punishing us for something we've done.

After that, not too surprisingly comes the overwhelming shame.

As the abuse is repeated, we become convinced that our value, little as it is, is defined by the sex act and little else. The hell we live in makes any other assumption all but impossible.

Some people believe that children are capable of protecting themselves from undesired sexual activity with adults. I'm not at all surprised when I see/hear this because that's the excuse used to excuse this abuse and almost always has been. The thing that saddens me is that people actually seem to believe it. I'd hoped and prayed we, as a culture, were beyond that.

People who believe that children can protect themselves from sexual abuse need to understand how broken we are from that first encounter until we are, should we be lucky and incredibly fortunate, able to come to terms with what happened, with the reality that we did nothing to bring this on and cause it, and that we are people with value for things other than the sex act.

I said understand because others will never know the life we lead after this has happened or the self-blaming, self-accusing, self-loathing world we find ourselves in.

Most of us don't survive long as adults, which may please some as both male and female victims are the vast majority of prostitutes out there. And no, I don't mean high priced call girl types, but street types. The ones you drive by and scowl at and write nasty letters about. If we're men we're often the street hooker's customers.

We're a significant portion of alcoholics and addicts out there self-medicating just to feel "normal". Of course, we have no idea what normal is but we reach for it anyway.

Some of us grow up to be fairly functional in society¸ at least from the outside. We don't behave well and we can't form stable relationships, but we function. Some of us are very successful if you measure success by money and possessions.

Should we form a bond, we then find ourselves back in a family situation again, swearing to God that we won't pass on what happened to us. Until . . . until . . . The day we do. Because we were taught the only way to express the deepest of love is in the sex act and nothing else by the parent or trusted adult that started us down this road taught us anything else.

Not that all of you will believe this, nor do I much care if you do. I'm relating first-hand experience as a victim and survivor just by the miracle of living as long as I have.

I'm 57 and research indicates that most of us die, by our own hands or the hands of others, by our late 20s or early 30s.

I'm incredibly fortunate. I started to deal with this around people that, even though they didn't understand, walked through it with me and didn't judge me. Even in the 1980s when it was felt that this sort of thing NEVER happened to boys.

I know better now, though it hasn't been easy. Recovering from alcoholism and then met face to face with this again. The 12 steps were invaluable as were members of the program. Two women were invaluable to me, the associate priest at my church and the priest in training there.

Two others have been almost as invaluable. One, the first real bond as an equal and well beyond merely the sexual aspect of a relationship taught me that breaking up isn't the end of the world or a reason to go into mourning but a reason to celebrate that relationship and the time we had together. The other is my partner who forbids me from taking myself too seriously and helps me see the value and joy found in a simple snuggle.

The therapeutic "community" has, for the most part, been more an impediment than it has been a help. There are a number of reasons for that but while they've been largely kind and supportive they've also been largely useless to me. For the most part they still are.

If I knew someone had picture of me taken during the abuse and wouldn't get rid of it, I'm not sure if I'd be angry or sad but for a small period of time I'd feel victimized all over again. If I won a lawsuit about said picture? I also know, deep in my being, that if someone had showered me in money I'd be dead by now. Probably from over drinking or a drug overdose. It really is that simple. I wasn't ready for it. I'm not sure I really am now.

It's not that I want to forget it happened, it's that last thing I want to forget. It's formed such a major part of my life, for better and for worse that it's in my cells. A part of my being.

That's why I question the nascent movement to provide civil liability for these sorts of things. It strikes me that some feel that money is sufficient recompense for a life destroyed and may inhibit a life rebuilt. Sadly, that is far too often the result of one of us suddenly having a boxcar full of cash.

I may sound emotional at times, but I know no other way of dealing with this than emotionally. Humans are emotional creatures not logical ones. Pretending to be logical and rational at all times almost killed me. Justice can and ought to have an emotional edge to it as long as it doesn't degenerate in to revenge.

Next time anyone passes a hooker on the street remember that is someone's daughter or son. They no more chose that life that I chose my alcoholism or chose what happened to me. They just weren't lucky enough to find a way to be functional in life as I've been.

My abuser?

My father. Who was abused by his favorite uncle, who was abused by his father, who was abused by his mother and so it goes deep into the family tree. As does alcoholism.

And I don't hate any of them any longer any more that I hate alcohol, though I fear it.

As far as I'm able to, I've forgiven my now deceased father. Maybe he's finally found the peace he never knew in life.

That doesn't change the damage he did to me, it doesn't excuse it, but it somewhat explains it.

Over-legalizing such things accomplishes nothing but turning us back into helpless pawns in someone else's game yet again.

There's no amount of money in the world that can give one of us our childhood back again.

All we can do is build on the shattered remains, and claim our birthright of a healthy and happy adult life where we can love and accept ourselves for who and what we are as whole persons, flaws, warts and all.

There isn't a court judgment in the world that can give that to us.

I wish that people stopped pretending there is.

~TtfnJohn

Requesting Feedback on Logo Ideas

2010-11-10T05:00:00.006-06:00

Greetings this fine day, dear Janes and Joes!

We've been playing with logos and branding ideas for quite a while, but actual designers are outside of our budget. We have come up with the below on our own and are asking you for feedback.

Does either of these logos say "Jane" to you? Do you like them? Why or why not? Please be as specific as you can. We'd like to incorporate your feedback because, after all, this blog is for you, dear reader.

Yes, there's a bit of a green orb thing going on here. We have our reasons for that. Please, comment away!

~Admin.Jane

You're Good for Me

2010-11-09T11:54:00.001-06:00

Quarter past 9am and working hard when I receive a text from my girlfriend Angela —“I miss u bad.” I respond, “Me too, blue eyes.”

Later, I find myself looking at pictures of her on my Blackberry. As I scroll from one picture to another, with the earphones in my ears playing our song “You’re Good For Me,” I feel it! There it goes again!! A tingle here, a tingle there, and soon it becomes a repeated pattern occurring from my heart to my soul.

Each picture I scrolled, I smiled, and with every smile I felt her inside me… After I finished looking at all the pictures, I text her:

Each day that goes by, my love for you grows
heavier and intoxicating…when I see your picture,
it makes me want to be with you more and when I hear
your voice it tickles my heart. Oh my love, you’re good for me.

Song Lyrics: “Good For Me”

To be with you is easy
I know you’re good for me
This feeling inside me
Oh it sends me sky high

To feel for you is easy
Oh baby…
I know you’re good for me
This feeling inside me
Oh it sends me sky high

You’re good for me, my baby
So good for me, my love
You’re good for me, my baby
So good for me, oh love

~Anonymous

A Dream About a Co-Worker

2010-11-08T13:04:00.000-06:00

I had a wonderful dream about a co-worker this morning! (No, not a sex dream, you wily things!) The reason the dream was wonderful is because normally, if I dream about co-workers, I dream about beating them up or seeing other bad things happen to them.

Yes, I work things out in my dreams. Sue me.

This morning's dream was different . . . Not only was something bad not happening to the co-worker in question, but he was actually helping me out of a bad situation!

In my dream, I'm a paramedic with a partner. The partner is neither my real-life co-worker or anyone else I recognize. My partner and I are walking through the woods in winter with icicles hanging from tree limbs and snow on the ground, trying to find a lost child. There are others searching, too -- I can hear their voices in the distance. The situation is dire -- The child is presumed injured, and he's been missing for 12 hours.

Hurry. He'll freeze. Hurry. He'll die.

My partner and I move further apart. The voices in the distance become faint. I an quickly covering ground, my eyes sweeping back and forth across the ground. Seeking. Searching.

Hurry. He'll freeze. Hurry. He'll die.

Eventually, I realize I'm alone. I can't hear the others anymore. I stop moving. I look up. Clouds now obscure what little sunlight there was when we began, and a mist has begun to fall. Both conspire to eradicate all shadow and reduce visibility to maybe 25 yards. I've been looking at the ground so long that I've lost track of where I am. All I can see are trees, rocks, scrub. The wind increases, I stumble over nothing, and I realize that I tumbled out of the ambulance without my coat.

I'm cold. Too cold. Waaaaaay too cold.

I stop, close my eyes, and take stock of my physical condition. Violent shivering slowing as I focus on it. Exposed skin beginning to tingle. Arms and legs stiff. I manage to jam the back of my hand into my neck hard enough and long enough to warm up both pieces of skin without blocking blood flow to my brain, then I take my carotid pulse with the back of my hand. Slow. Irregular.

The adrenaline kept me from realizing.

I call out to my partner, to anyone. No response. I call louder. No response. I reach for my radio. I find the holster empty. Left behind? Lost? Doesn't matter. I am out of sight of everyone else, and I am out of sight of where we began. I could be miles from anything or anyone. My shivering has stopped completely.

Hypothermia.

I scan the area for . . . What? What the hell was I just looking for? Possible sources of shelter, that's it. I try to say "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs" out loud. I can't recognize what comes out of my own mouth. Maybe better after a nap.

Can't think. Can't speak. Exhaustion. Trouble.

I scan the area again, and this time I notice a copse of trees that I hadn't noticed before. I trudge towards them. Walking has never been so difficult. Breathing is difficult. I'm weaving and stumbling, all but throwing myself forward. I don't even really feel so cold anymore.

Trees. Maybe shelter. Trees. Out of options. Trees.

Fifty feet from the trees, I notice some boulders inside. Twenty five feet from the trees I realize there's at least two feet of ground coverings -- pine needs, leaves, etc.

Between rocks. Break wind. Cover leaves. Maybe warm enough.

Ten feet from the trees, I stumble, fall, can't get up. Prone, on my stomach, too stiff to stand, looking at the trees.

Oh, well. Nap time.

As I close my eyes, someone steps from the trees and moves towards me. An unknown time later, someone is dragging me. I open my eyes and see my real-life co-worker! Even in my degraded mental state, I know he's not supposed to be here . . . That he's from a different . . . Place? Life? Universe?

It's okay, I've got you now. You're going to be okay.

Drag. Drag. Smack! My head hits a rock. I don't think he noticed. Drag. Drag. Drag. I try to help by pushing on the ground with my feet, but I doubt this is helpful. My eyes close again. Drag. Drag.

Here, can you crawl? I can't push you. In there,  can you crawl under there?.

I open my eyes again and see a pile of leaves . . . so large compared to me on the ground, but not even as tall as his chest. I flop and flail, trying to make my arms and legs move, trying to burrow into the pile of leaves. With his pushing and my flailing, I eventually make it into the piles of leaves. The leaves are apparently covering two large rocks, and he pushes me in between them. He burrows inside the pile of leaves with me. I realise that behind me a something thick and fabricky -- A blanket? A coat? A piece of fluffy cloud? He pulls it around me, pulls me to his chest.

It's okay, you''ll be okay, they're already looking for us.

Slowly I realize that we are cheek-to-cheek, that he is wearing a heavy winter coat, and that it is unzipped. The fronts of our bodies are firmly in contact from head to feet. He's pulled the other blanket/coat around me and has pulled its edges around us over the top of his own, creating a cocoon around us.  I realize that the steady drumbeat that I had thought was my own blood in my ears is actually his whispered voice.

It's okay, we'll be okay. It's okay, we'll be okay. It's okay, we'll be okay.

Time passes. My brain begins to start working again. Eventually we hear my partner calling my name. I crawl out from under the leaves. I'm still clutching the fabricky thing. My partner is there when I finish crawling out of the pile, oddly looking past me towards my co-worker with an unfriendly look. Oh, my God, the kid!

How about the kid? Did they find him?

Well yeah, but what the hell happened to you? And who's jacket is that?

I smile and look towards my real-life co-worker, but he's nowhere to be seen. I realize that my partner was looking at me oddly, not at my real-life co-worker. I'm standing there, clutching a winter coat I don't recognize, having just crawled from a leaf pile I didn't construct, and wondering who or what just saved my life.

The dream ends here.

And I was real-life grateful this morning to see my real-life co-worker when I got to the office!

~Riot.Jane

LOVE What You DO!

2010-11-07T19:20:00.000-06:00

Our newest Jane, Jeannette Marshall, is a business optioneer with sales expertise accumulated over 20 years. She's a consistent top-performer and award winner willing to share the professional opinions and ideas she's accumulated from actual success. Today she's sharing her strategy for creating her own blog and using it to increase her own knowledge while burnishing her brand and becoming a proven authority in her field . . .

--------------------------------------

One element I always look for when I look at the gazillion of sales blogs or websites is testimonials or background on the blogger. Basically, asking the question: "What does this person have that I can learn from?" Granted, there are those like Anthony Robbins who we really don't question that any longer because his claim to fame is selling himself. Likewise, there are very successful real estate tycoons, but none measure up to Donald Trump, who really excels at selling himself. Yet, it never ceases to amaze me that so many master Bloggers don't back up their authority on the subject by quantifying their results. That is where my point to my Blog starts. I am open to examination. Why? Simply because I have proven success yet am constantly stretching my learning and qualifications. If I don't expose my ideas and look for challenges to those ideals, then I have failed myself. I have stopped learning from others.

Jeannette Marshall
a/k/a OptioneerJM

There are several critical elements to sales success. So here I am to apply some of those critical elements to my Blog. First of all, I had to establish an objective. Okay, fair enough. My first Blog did exactly that, even if I've narrowed it further to keep me on track. It really started out with genuine positive feedback from comments on sales philosphy on Linked In. Thus, the objective emerged: share ideas, tips and advice.

Next, define goals. After taking and exceling at the Google Analytics Basic "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) and "Search Engine Marketing" (SEM) right around the time I started the Blog, I realized that I wouldn't be able to be an authority on sales, without understanding all the key elements impacting sales today. The most relevant is Social Media. It is changing traditional sales methodology at lightning speed. To assume that all the same techniques that I applied a year ago, five years ago or more, are applicable today without incorporating Social Media into the equation is naive on my part. Therefore, I realized that the GOAL I needed to set was to learn: "How social media impacts sales by using my own Blog as a conduit to gain that insight".

Thirdly, research competitors or learn from the experts. If you are with an organization or product/service just starting out just like I am with my Blog it can be quite intimidating to tackle those giants already established before you. However, I took the time to look at them, research a bit and learn from those already successful (one of my guiding principles). I've used this tactic so many times. In my case, I interpreted that many blogs promote sales techniques yet underline you should hire them or buy something, usually a book or course. If you look objectively and absorb the most successful traits that you can relate to, you can emulate them in your outlook to turn that Goliath obstacle into an advantage.

Next differentiation. Many giants are so caught up by their size or their own "press" that they fail at self-examination. A starter has the advantage after they microscope their competitors and analyse them they can uncover a nugget from where they might find an area where they differentiate themselves. Differentiation gets easier after you go through the steps of setting objective, goals, followed by research. I applied the links among objective, goals and research to decide to "Share what I know without an ulterior motive (i.e. seek speaking engagements, sell a course or book)". There was my differentiation that I believed would set me apart from many sales bloggers.

Finally, and not the least important - measurement. You cannot tell how you're doing without some sort of measurement stick. In real sales situations, you are measured by increased sales, new customers, improved profitability, expanded sales base, etc. In the world of social media it is how many Twitter followers you have, even better, quality is measured by reTweets. With blogging, it is by followers, yes, but more when you can check stats to see if you have traction by views or click through rates. Don't forget to click not to count your own page views! I like to monitor whether I am providing value - I interpret from comments, feedback or sharing. I post my results so others can watch my progress and because I KNOW there will be progress, I am not afraid to share. Next, after I have established myself for a year, I will measure how I stack up against other sales Bloggers.

Geez, I almost forgot the most important of all. Not only does it take what I learn from the blogging pros by having a catchy title, it also communicates what I also learn from the icons of business -- LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

~Jeannette Marshall
a/k/a OptioneerJM
optioneerjm.blogspot.com

The Google Suggest Crystal Ball - US vs. Germany Edition

2010-11-06T05:00:00.003-06:00

We previously briefly discussed the Google Suggest choices to complete "why do women" :

http://www.google.com/ (United States Google)

What many people don't know is that Google has various landing pages and returns different results depending upon the origin country of the Internet connection used to query it. So, by default, my machine loads http://www.google.com/ because I am in the United States.

In the UK, for example, the address is www.google.co.uk, for Japan: www.google.co.jp, for Indonesia: http://www.google.co.id/, and for Germany: www.google.de, etc. You can type these in or find them by, ahem, Googling the word Google and the country in question (such as Google Indonesia).

I find interesting the comparison between the Google Suggest choices, when returned by Google US and Google Germany, for the same phrase "why do women":

US Google users seem to have a negative view of the female character in general (lying, nagging, and two references to cheating as well as a shot at abused women) while concurrently focusing on their physical attractiveness (facial hair, thongs, and baldness).

German Google users seem to have different and less judgmental cultural views of women than US Google users, with only one reference to cheating in common with the US but also an observation of a gender difference regarding fashion and the observation of openly-displayed female homosexuality being more common than male homosexuality (something I've seen referenced in other places with regards to Western culture).

I've never lived in Germany, travelled there, or know anyone from there, so all I can do is wonder if this is really an accurate representation of the overall German culture or simply that of German Google users. Just because Google is ubiquitous here in the US, and US Google users are representative of the wider culture, are these things the same way in Germany? And what types of German people are online? Is it almost everyone not in abject poverty, as it is here? These are things I don't know, so I can't guess if German Google Suggest is at all representative of overall German culture.

I hope the reader Stuttgartgirl who commented on the Sex Boxen post reads this and can offer input on German vs. US cultural attitudes towards women.

Hell, I hope anyone with input shares it! :-)

~Riot.Jane

Working a Job I Hate for Health Insurance

2010-11-05T19:16:00.000-06:00

I'm at the same job I was in 10 years ago. The job has no path for advancement, either professionally or monetarily. I'm a walking knowledge base for everyone who comes into contact with me. I've been there so long that I sometimes can't immediately answer "How do we do this?" because "how we do this" has changed so many times over the years that I can't be sure if what I'm remembering is the current "how we do this."

I can't tell you the last time I learned something new. God, how I wish I could change employment.

Why can't I jump? Health insurance -- It's the ball attached to the chain clamped to my leg that will eventually drown me in the clear, calm depths of professional obsolescence.

Here's the situation: My health insurance premium is approximately 30% of my net payroll. I only pay 25% of that premium, but on the open market even crappy-coverage policies have about the same premium as the fairly good group-coverage policy through my employer. Why is it so expensive? I'm a child-bearing age female, and insurers won't rider maternity coverage on an individual policy. As a result, adult females pay a shit-ton more than adult males for their insurance coverage.

Private insurers won't rider maternity because they don't want to deal with arguments/arbitration/lawsuits about whether or not any given other condition is the result of pregnancy. An example is high blood pressure. Imagine that I become pregnant, and my blood pressure rises (which commonly happens in pregnancy). The insurance company then refuses to cover visits or medication for my high blood pressure because it's "pregnancy-related." I say it's my freaking circulatory system with a problem, not my fetus or womb, so they need to cover it. The next thing you know, the lawyers are called in.

<snark> (Maybe that's how the health insurance industry keeps seeing double-digit returns for the last God knows how many years . . . Not paying lawyers to argue with their customers?) </snark>

So, individual health insurance policies on the open market are absolutely unaffordable for any woman whom I would say "works for a living." Not the first time in my life I wish I'd been born a man, let me tell you!

Add this individual-policy health insurance situation to the fact that the only industry within which I've worked in 15 years has been completely outsourced or offshored within the last 10 years, and the issue becomes clear.

I, as a never-married woman of the means delivered only by her paycheck, have to stay in a job that has been beneath me for the last 5 years because I have to maintain health insurance. No one else is going to do it for me.

I can't go without health insurance because, if something happens, public health services won't be available until I am literally destitute. My state is so strict on the "literally destitute" concept that I watched my mother become ill and die at the age of 52 as the direct result of not being able to pay for health care while working her minimum-wage, no-insurance job.

Because my mother didn't have $1K+ liquid from her minimum-wage paycheck (and, sadly, neither did I) to pay for tests to determine exactly what was wrong with her, she and her doctor treated what they guessed was wrong with her. Every month or so, she scrabbled together another $100+ for another 5- or 10-minute conversation and another prescription to treat the next guess. Within a year of the start of this cycle, she was dead.

Whatever I have to do, the same will not happen to me. I will not die because I couldn't afford health care. Disregard what the Republicans say -- "Just go to the emergency room!" -- People in this country die every day because they can't afford health care. I know, because I watched it happen to my own mother.

And I learned . . .

Keep health insurance or die painfully with those closest to you in more pain than you are.

So, every day I go to a job that I should leave. For more reasons than I can outline right now without falling into insensibility, the job is a bad fit for me dispositionally and outdated for me professionally. I did everything right -- I've worked hard, been dependable, made the most intelligent decisions possible, always supported my co-workers and supervisors, learned as much as I can about the business and the customer, and have never been fired from a job in my life. In general, I'm a stellar employee capable of great production and requiring little oversight.

And now I'm bloody fucking stuck.

Much of the problem with my professional advancement is because I work in a predominantly male industry, but the reason I haven't been able to jump ship as often as I should have to keep my payroll and advancement in line with my male peers is because of the health insurance issue. Yes, the non-insurance job in my industry pay more, but they're irregular (read: temporary) and don't pay enough more that I can lose 30% of my net on a crappy (read: doesn't cover much) individual health insurance policy.

While I've spent my entire life aspiring to be (and mostly succeeding in showing) that I'm the better employee of most of the people (not just the men) around me . . . I've been stopped dead in my professional tracks by two different types of sexism -- one systemic and based upon finances (health insurance), the other subtle and based upon gender differences (my industry).

The only thing that keeps me from bouncing off the walls with the injustice of health insurance premium inequity (no, men can't bear the pups but men have to help make them!) is the knowledge that even if my Fairy Godmother came down to Earth and suddenly made this right, I'd still be stuck not being able to change jobs because so very few of the ones in my industry even offer health insurance, regardless of the cost.

Every time I think about this, I make no headway on a plan or a solution. I end up at the same point every time, and I don't know whether to get drunk and bomb random health insurance offices or shoot myself in the head to relieve the frustration of the trapped. After all, prisoners do commit suicide to be free.

And here I am again. I had thought that writing about this, defining it, naming the monster, would help me clarify the situation, bring a solution into crystalline focus. And once again, I end up feeling like a prisoner, trapped within the cage of what I so desperately worked to obtain (a job with insurance!), the thing that I so desperately need to maintain. The health insurance that gives me the tiniest bit of security also prevents me from evolving, progressing, changing, living.

Health insurance. A pox on all of your houses!!

~Riot.Jane

What Magazine is This Supposed to be Again?!

2010-11-02T13:00:00.001-06:00

Okay, enough is enough. I've simply had it with inappropriately-included, Photoshopped-to-better-than-life female models on magazine covers, most specifically when the magazines in question have nothing to do with making women appear more attactive. (Yes, beauty magazines suck, too, but that's a separate topic for another day.)

I imagine that a neighbor standing near me as I pulled this lovely bit of tripe from my mailbox probably received burns from the steam that shot from my ears:

I hid the words so that the full effect of the graphic was evident, then I asked approximately 15 people I ran into during an average workday what type of magazine this is. The by far most common answers were women's beauty and young men's (e.g. Maxim, Stuff) magazines. The next most common was was sports/fitness.

Do I need to specifically tell you, dear reader, that I don't subscribe to beauty, young men's, or sprots/fitness magazines? Well, I don't.

For comparison, this is the cover of the above-magazine's closest competitor for the same month (November 2010). Again, I blocked the words to bring the graphic forefront:

Look at these two covers. If I paid you money for your honesty, would you ever in one million years have said that these two magazines were competitors?

I thought not.

Now, let's look at these covers side-by-side with just the words applying to the main cover story of each showing:

Compare these two covers one more time and consider: If I gave you a lifetime subscription to the one of your choice for your honesty, would you ever in one million years have said these two magazines were competitors?

I thought not.

May I just say that sex shouldn't be used to sell everything? That there really are some things (like baby clothes) that are just inappropriately hawked when sex comes into play?

Seriously, Editors: What are you, 13?

The first magazine has been doing this for the last several years. At first, the change was minor and could have been considered more "modern." Then it ramped up in both frequency and audacity. After the leathered-up dominatrix with a whip (!) cover, I really blew my stack. I wrote an angry letter, and many other readers did, too. I was filled with sister-love when I read their outraged comments. I felt vindicated and justified and not, as I feared, a bit too prudish for the 21st Century.

Then the magazine e-mailed me an invitation to participate in an online focus group for an upcoming cover . . . Finally! I could do something about this misplaced appeal-to-the-masses garbage! I was so excited and mission-oriented as I clicked the link . . .

Yeah, all of the covers they provided for us to choose from were already inappropriately sexed-up. There wasn't a realistic or even non-laughable picture to be had, so I chose the least offensive one. Of course, that one didn't make it to my mailbox. I guess that's what focus groups are all about -- the least common denominator.

This last cover is my last straw. I hereby refuse to renew my subscription to this magazine, and I'm pissed off at this point that I renewed for two full years last time. I've actually enjoyed its competitor more over the years, anyway. It's brainier and not trying to break into the god-awful beauty magazine industry.

You've been patient, so here are the actual, complete, unedited magazine covers. Read 'em and weep, dear Janes and Joes.

The first was my needy best friend years ago who grew into a shallow tramp. The other is my best friend now, the uncomplicated one who I could spend endless afternoons with drinking coffee and using my brain.

Goodbye, Psychology Today. Hello, Scientific American Mind.

~Riot.Jane

My Favorite Books: "Anthem"

2010-10-26T05:00:00.006-05:00

In the continuing series of Riot.Jane's favorite books . . . In no particular order, this is the fourth:

Anthem by Ayn Rand

First published in 1937, Anthem is a dystopian novella set in an unspecified future Dark Age during which technological advance is strictly controlled (when allowed) and the concept of the individual has disappeared, with even personalized forenames and the word "I" having left the common language.

A common theme of Rand's prodigious work is a clear opinion of societal values. She strongly prefers the individualistic (i.e. capitalistic) values of achievement and ambition while just as strongly disdaining the community (i.e. socialistic) values of loyalty and equality. I tend to disagree with her on these priorities because I believe that equality is is morally superior to ambition, and I believe that a strong social fabric enables achievement. I dislike much of her work because of my disagreement with most of her core philosophy.

In Anthem, though, Rand has wrapped her concepts in a good enough post-apocalyptic story that I can lay aside my disagreement with her foundational concepts and enjoy it. That's why it's one of my Five Faves.

The book opens with the male protagonist Equality 7-2521 and moves forward into his daily life and that of his co-workers International 4-8818 and Union 5-3992. The story progresses through the male protagonist hiding from his own society to engage in forbidden intellectual activities, then spotting the female protagonist Liberty 5-3000, and falling in love with her after several meetings. Eventually the male protagonist escapes his society and, after meeting up with the female protagonist on the outside, they learn the forbidden truth that has been eliminated from their Dark Age society.

Overall, Anthem a good read for those of us with the tendency towards post-apocalyptic dystopian culture exploration.

~Riot.Jane

InfoGraphic: Evolution of the Lady Action Hero

2010-10-25T15:32:00.000-05:00

Stumbled upon while wandering the wilds of the WWW . . .

[Source: Evolution of the Lady Action Hero]

While I will be forever torn between Ripley and Trinity as my favorite, I'd like to find out about your favorites and discuss who was skipped.

~Riot.Jane

Using Google Suggest as a Cultural Crystal Ball

2010-10-19T05:00:00.003-05:00

I sometimes use Google Suggest as entertainment. This find was not so entertaining.

Since it's not just one single hermit in a cabin in the woods in Wisconsin using Google, more people than I'd like to consider are infected all the way to their bones with negative stereotypes about women. Even women themselves.

The next time someone tries to posit that "women have it easy nowadays," point them towards this and ask them again how easy it is we have it.

~Riot.Jane

A Letter to an Old Friend

2010-10-17T11:50:00.000-05:00

Writing this is difficult for me . . . Please forgive me if my style is not up to its usual standard. I am having difficulty catching hold of the pieces of plastic lawn furniture blowing around within the squall line crossing my mental landscape, the pieces of a mostly-forgotten past that have taken flight during the storm. The storm that was unintentionally birthed by an e-mail from an old friend.

How, oh how, do I respond?

The longer I wait, the more severe the storm becomes. The longer I wait, the higher the bar over which I must jump. The longer I wait, the better the response much be, as she's wondering WTF. The longer I wait, the more dishonor I do her, a dishonor she in no way deserves.

How, oh how, can I respond when all I can do is shelter in place?

We spent our high school years in neighboring fishing villages turned white-trash meccas on an oceanic bay in the American South. Kindred spirits in adolescent angst, we partnered against the world to the best of our immature ability. We were a duo too intelligent for our own good, far more maladjusted than we could understand, and creatively self-destructive in our desperate search for the cosmopolitan we knew must lay outside our redneck environs.

So many years later, I now know what fueled our different but compatible brands of insanity, but at the time we propped each other up in sisterly affirmation that everyone else was the problem. She was the first woman with whom I fell in love, and finding out that I was the same for her would not surprise me.

She went away to college and broke my heart. My road trips there and hers home only strung out the heartache. Even though I was in the bridal party, I don't remember if she married before or after graduation. I just know that the last time I saw her was at my mother's wake 13 years ago. I knew at the wake that I was leaving my youth behind. That was another heartbreak - Saying goodbye to my mother and to my dear friend at the same time.

She has since divorced and "come out", I've been diagnosed with a handful of sleep disorders. So many things explained, a world of wisdom opened to me.

I tell you these things so that she can see us both in these words. So that there is no possible mistake . . . So that she knows to whom I'm really speaking.

So long ago that I can't remember when, I made contact with a mutual friend of ours. "What the hell ever happened to you, anyway?" she innocently asked, "We all thought you were going to be the next Great American Writer."

The plain speech that made me love her so when we were young was now an innocently-shot arrow through my sense of self. I've not been able to bring myself to speak to her again . . . And this is a large part of why I can't speak to the one I need to now.

There are reasons I haven't achieved the success we thought I would. I could describe them, but they taste like excuses that my pride forbids me to offer. I feel like a failure because I didn't turn into the person that I envisioned, and the most difficult part of this is offering that knowledge to a person whose opinion matters, dear God, more than it should all these years later.

I think her judgment still matters so much because we dreamed those dreams together, because she was so much a part of why I aspired to who I aspired to be. Failing just myself is bad, but realizing that I haven't lived up to the expectations one who was so much a part of me opens a new dimension of horror and shame.

Her letter recently arrived. I waited as long as I could, then wrote a few noncommittal words in return. And then nothing. For weeks. She deserves better.

All I can offer is this post in way of explanation, in way of apology. Forgive me.

~Riot.Jane

The Jane Project 2.6

Tech Curiosities: Boounce, ReadyBoost, and Fonolo

Happy Fathers' Day!

The Damage of Child Beauty Pageants

A Postcard from The Single (Mom) Life

Facebook Friending and the Art of Profile Pics

Westboro Baptist "Church" vs. the KKK

In Honor of our Veterans (NSFW video)

QOTD: The Internet Breeds Entitlement

Today in 1945: Arthur C. Clarke Invents the Communications Satellite

Sexy Sundays | "The Morning After" the "First Time"

Reason #9 I Love My Bestie

A Crazy Woman in a Sporty Car

Sexy Sundays | 50% Off @ Adam & Eve! (Updated)

Another Bill to Restrict Reproductive Freedom: HR 3 (UPDATED)

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish: Osama bin Laden

Sexy Sundays | Pulling a Rabbit out of the Hat

Honoring the Females in Your Life with GEMS

Very Old and Very Sexy…An Oxymoron?

Generation -- The Repetition of Addiction

Having Coffee With The Lunatics In My Head

Sexy Sundays | The Ins & Outs of Anal Sex (Part 2) (NSFW)

Ad Vocabulary Re-Enforcing Gender Stereotypes

Who Can Become an Addict?

Riot.Jane Guest Blogs for "The Business Coach for Moms"

Words for the Co-Dependent Set

Understanding Human Warfare

"The Breast Milk Baby" Controversy

Sexy Sundays | The Ins & Outs of Anal Sex (Part 1) (NSFW)

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An Atheist at Prayer

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Broadband Research = Free Wireless Router!

Alcoholic Insanity (Different than you probably think)

If You Would Only Like Me

Unveiling The Jane Project 2.6

“Love is an Attacker in the Dark”

Response Posted for 15-Year-Old "Anonymous"

Ode to Rubenesque Women

Balancing Sexuality with Spirit

My Hands

What Happens When Your Sexual Abusers are Other Children?

*I* Was "The Other Woman"

Critiquing "Feminist" Marketing (Part 3)

Critiquing "Feminist" Marketing (Part 2)

Critiquing "Feminist" Marketing (Part 1)

Respecting the Memory of "Us"

How to Date a Women’s Studies Major: Just Don’t

Girl Dies by Suicide After Rape-Allegation-Related Terror

A Joe’s Take on Treating Child Sexual Abusers

A Joe’s Child Sexual Abuse Story

Requesting Feedback on Logo Ideas

You're Good for Me

A Dream About a Co-Worker

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The Google Suggest Crystal Ball - US vs. Germany Edition

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My Favorite Books: "Anthem"

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Using Google Suggest as a Cultural Crystal Ball

A Letter to an Old Friend

I Was "The Other Woman"

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