You heard it here first!

What's that, you say? Out of context? Pfff, context is for LOSERS.

And more craziness from America: a woman who contributes to CNN says that a vaginal ultrasound (which seems to be the only way to see the fetus at early stages of pregnancy) is the same as having sex.

Backstory: Virginia approved a bill requiring women to have an ultrasound before being allowed to have an abortion. Traditional ultrasounds not being able to find pea-sized fetii, it means ladies need the probe shoved inside their lady bits and wiggled around until they find the tiny, tiny pre-baby.

All I can wonder is has this woman had sex before? Like, actual enjoyable sex? Because I really don't think a medical procedure involving a cold bed, stirrups, a robe that shows your buttcheeks when you walk, and an impersonal stranger is anything remotely close to having sex when you actually want to have sex with someone you want to have sex with.

Maybe I'm crazy.

Now, sort of related to the previous post about America's new War on Contraception, I was reading a post about Rick Santorum (who, last I checked, was leading in the Republican race. I'm not going to lie, that terrifies me) defending one of his backers who said that "gals" used Bayers aspirin as a contraceptive by holding it between their knees?

Anyway, I was glancing through the comments (I know, how many posts do I make related to comments on things? Too many! People are so stupid and I can't help myself!), and someone replied to a comment about Santorum not wanting anyone to use contraception and therefore he'll never be leader of the free world (leader in what, exactly? National debt? Homicides? Child mortality from neglect and abuse?) with this:

You only care about contraception so that you can continue to use women as a plaything. It is stupid to have sex outside of marriage. Keeping your legs closed is the best contraception and it also keeps men from treating women like toys, that when they done using her, moves on to the next one to defile. If you care so much about contraception, get a vasectomy.

Whoa.

Okay, so I suppose this argument is for men. Because all men who have sex with women outside of marriage are defilers, defiling something pure and good, because women aren't real people, they are things to be treasured and placed on pedestals. (Note: treating individual women like treasures is okay, assuming she returns the admiration. Treating all women like art objects? Not so much.)

My goodness, I can't tell you how much I hate the idea that women are somehow "things." You worry about defiling art objects. Splattering paint across the Mona Lisa? That would be defiling something. Sleeping with a woman who's consenting? Not defiling! You aren't destroying a beautiful, inimitable thing. She's still the same person after. Same personality, same likes and dislikes, same intelligence, same abilities. Sex outside marriage doesn't slowly leech away everything that makes a woman a person. How ridiculous.

But that's the thought, the drive behind all those people, whether they'll admit it or even realize it consciously or not. The idea that women need to be coddled, protected from themselves - you do that with children. It's an implicit statement that women are "less than." Incapable of making their own decisions.

So what I wonder is what that commenter thinks about women who care about contraception. Why, exactly, do they want access to it, if the only reason for using it is so men can defile women? I can't find the article that said 98% of American women had used contraception at some point in their life. Does this mean that 98% of American women have been defiled?

Why is it that women can't defile men?

I really want to know what's happening the the States right now. Everywhere I look, there seems to be a new bill being introduced that makes it harder for women to access birth control and abortions.

The Oklahoma senate just passed an act that says life begins at conception. The "Personhood act."

I mean, restrictions on abortion are one thing. A bad thing, but a restriction isn't a ban. Defining a fertilised egg as being a person is just insane. Completely insane.

Jocasta complex?

The STFU Parents column on Mommyish linked me an article to an NY Times article entitled "Modern Love: The Tiny Hand that Robs the Cradle."

And holy hell is it incredibly creepy and awful. The basic premise is the mother is a teacher at the elementary her son attends, and one day she finds some graffiti in the girls' bathroom that says "I <3 Sarvis," Sarvis being the name of this woman's son. And then she turns into the kind of woman mothers-in-law horror stories are written about.

This is an adult woman, writing about an eight-year-old girl who has a crush on her son, remember. And she writes such gems (about a YOUNG GIRL) as:

• They all acted innocent in their double braids tied with impossibly pink ribbons.
• turning her 18-inch hips just so for the very first time, or taking a try at batting her lashes.
• helpless against this little vixen’s love for my boy.

Uhh, wow. But then, this is from a woman who writes such things about HER SON as:

• the brown ringlets he’d had since he was a baby still hung in heart-stopping whorls down his neck when he refused to brush his hair.
• She didn’t know Sarvis the way I knew Sarvis, no matter what the bathroom wall proclaimed.  
• because it expressed so forcefully a plain, unequivocal truth, I also wished to hijack Graffiti Girl’s intentions and keep the wall as a shrine. (In regards to keeping the graffitied wall.)

Okay, now, I totally understand loving your kids. But this woman writes about her son like most women write about their significant others. And the worst part was this, a quote she seemed to deeply identify with:

• It seems like sons, no matter how much you love them, just grow up and leave you to marry someone you hate.

Wow. Wow. Now, I have some friends who have mothers-in-law from hell, but this is by no means the majority. It's the minority. Most of those women get along very well with their mothers/daughters-in-law. My mom adores my brother's long-time girlfriend, for example, and would be rather horrified at the idea of being jealous of her sons' girlfriends. Absolutely horrified.

The role of a parent isn't to be the most important person in your children's lives forever and ever. It's to raise them to be normal, functioning members of society with as little emotional fucking-up as possible. This includes allowing them to have normal relationships with people without expecting those people to be their substitute parents, or having those people be terrified that their mother-in-law from hell is going to poison her son against them.

It's to not be terrified that them loving someone else will make them love you less.

I suppose that these sorts of people are the ones who have kids solely because they think it will give them someone who will love them unconditionally. Basically, people who are a little emotionally fucked-up already. On the actual Mommyish column one commenter wrote:

 Ugh, I actually have a friend who has brainwashed her 5-year-old. She said, “Honey, what does Mommy say about girlfriends?” to which he replies, “You’re the only woman I’ll ever love and nobody will ever be good enough for me.”
I feel SO bad for this kid :-/

Jesus fucking Christ. You say you love this child, and yet you want him to never have a functioning relationship with anyone other than yourself. You selfish bitch. Raising a child isn't about you. You want to be adored? Get a goddamn puppy. You have a real, living person, who will grow up and want to have sex with women (or men!), and maybe even have kids (don't you want grandkids?), but the likelihood of someone being raised with the "no one is good enough for me but my mom" mentality isn't going to have much luck getting beyond those initial stages, because no one wants to be compared to their SO's mother. Ever.

"My mother does it this way." YEAH WELL GO FUCKING LIVE WITH YOUR MOM THEN, is the kind of reaction they're going to get.

God, so creepy. So incredibly creepy. He's your son, not your boyfriend. It's cute when they have little kid crushes. Cute, and awkward, and it's not like it's going to lead to anything because some little girl carves an anonymous "love letter" in a bathroom stall...

And the loveliest of them all was the unicorn

I was reading a post about an article that said the e-readers were great because people could put books they'd otherwise be embarrassed to be seen reading on them. Books like sci fi or romance. The author of the piece refers to genre fiction as "dross."

Which is like... incredibly offensive to anyone who reads or writes genre. I want to know who decided that only "literature" has any sort of merit. Why are pretentious writing, death, and sadness considered the mark of a worthy novel? Thinking about every fantasy, romance, mystery, sci fi, horror novel I've ever read in my life, the common theme of all of those is: happy ending.

Happy ending doesn't necessarily mean "happy ever after," of course. Often it's just "happy for now." Not everyone always lives to the end. But the Bad Guy was caught or defeated. The Ring was destroyed and Middle Earth can start rebuilding.

Oh, wait, I forgot - in spite of being a fantasy novel to the core, Tolkien is literature because... a lot of book critics like it? It's old?

It seems like with book snobs there is this arbitrary line they have drawn in the sand. On one side, books they think make them look smart and well-read. On the other side... GENRE. Yuck. Oh, you mean this novelist classifies herself as a romance novelist? But her books are BETTER than romance, so she's not just a romance writer! (Oh, yes, I've seen that. Hilarious.)

It's such a load of bullshit. I'm not embarrassed by anything I read, because what I read are good books. They have storylines I enjoy. They have protagonists I want to succeed. They show, and don't tell. They don't think using stilted, wordy paragraphs dripping with ennui make a novel more worthy of praise than a damn good story.

I admit, however, I'm not embarrassed by a lot of things. Buying typically "embarrassing" products at the grocery or the drug store doesn't faze me. I can maintain eye contact while the clerk is ringing up my condoms and birth control pills. Hey, I'm being responsible. Why should I be embarrassed? Because some people are prudes? Nah.

Don't worry, guys, I got my cake!

So why don't I flaunt my romance novel reading ways if I think those books are so great? Well, as the post said, look at the covers!

Ignore the towel on the floor...

And that is tame compared to most of them, which feature wind machines and mantitty. Without ever having read the books in question, people will judge you based on the covers alone. Even after years of being told to never judge a book by its cover, people still do.

Not only do they judge the book, they judge the person reading it. Oh, only lonely housewives and virgin spinsters read romance. Also, people who read romance are too stupid to separate reality from fiction, and as such they've obviously formed unrealistic expectations from real life.

Which is absolutely true, which is why I was devastated when I realised that I could never catch my own unicorn EVER AGAIN after losing my virginity. It totally wasn't worth it. Unicorns are magical! I comfort myself by practising spells.

My goodness, I am so bad about updating lately. Considering I've usually updated once a day since I created this blog (and sometimes more than once a day - hence 500 posts!), this is pretty unusual.

I mean, in my defence, everyone I follow has also been really bad at updating. Even worse than I am. So there!

Anyway, the Gloss apparently likes to hate-read XOJane. Considering how one writer on XOJane thinks Plan B is the best form of birth control (re: the only one she uses) and another one went around spreading herpes because her doctor was terrible and kept ruining the samples, I can't blame them. (Some of the writers are actually good, though.)

Anyway, basically XOJane was thinking that a picture of yourself first thing upon waking up without make-up was kind of a brave thing. I have all of one picture, relatively old, of me being brave like that!

No, I'm not naked.

SO BRAVE.

And also, because I was bored today (finished my homework, no work...), so I went and made myself not-brave.

My hair looks really dark, eh? Weird.

Anyway, this was just a result of being bored and seeing if I could apply make-up like a normal adult.