Not a dry eye in the house

I know I had to get out my hanky just reading about it.

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon made history - again - at 5:07 p.m. Monday when they were declared “spouses for life.”

At that moment, standing next to each other in the mayor’s office in San Francisco City Hall in front of cheering friends and relatives, the couple of 55 years became the first same-sex newlyweds in San Francisco and among the first in California under a new right bestowed by the state Supreme Court.

In a now-famous speech from 1995, Hillary Clinton said “Women’s rights are human rights.” Verily, I say, gay rights are human rights, too, and few people alive have done more for both than Del and Phyllis.

I am so happy for these heroines that gay marriage has been legalized in their lifetimes.

Technorati Tags: gay marriage, human rights

Senator Hillary Butt

The title of this post is a nod to the only other “Hillary post” I’ve written: Senator Hillary Cleavage.

That post is my response to the bonehead at the Washington Post who wrote about the deep societal meaning behind Hillary’s tits. Today’s post is inspired by the no-longer-estimable Barbara Walters, who recently had to weigh in on the size and shape of Hillary’s ass.¹

It seems we just can’t resist reducing all women to T & A in this country, no matter what the circumstance.

When the gals at Jezebel called Baba Wabba on her snark, the boys at Comedy Central replied that their attitude just proves they are “vaginas.”

I think Jezebel’s response to that sums up what so many people still think about woman in general, if Hillary’s campaign is any indication:

What. The. Fuck. So, like, we’re just a bunch of talking, writing, typing, drinking, ass-kicking vaginas? We’re not even the sum of our parts, we just get to be one?

Pick one. Tits, ass, or vagina. No fair being all three.

And while I’m on the subject of rants and Hillary, I’d like to raise a toast to a post: For the Record, by Melissa McEwan at Shakesville. It expresses my sentiments exactly about the wholly depressing misogyny that characterized so much of the reaction to Hillary’s presidential bid.

[Aside: As usual, there are a fair amount of misogynist comments on McEwan’s post, but my fave is the guy who says he wants a female candidate who doesn’t “embarrass her sex.” Do people actually still think that way? People born after the Victorian era, I mean? Well, it’s a good thing male politicians are not held to that same standard - i.e., assumed to represent their entire “sex” every time they act or speak. If they were, George “Nu-cu-lar weapons” Bush would have brought a whole new level of humiliation to the men in this world.]

While I’m talking politics, here’s my for-the-record:

I like Hillary. I like Obama. I can’t decide between the two. I like some things about Hill and other things not so much. Ditto for Obama.

If I did ultimately choose Hillary, it would NOT be because she is a woman.

It is sexist to choose a man because he’s a man, and it’s sexist to choose a woman because she’s a woman. End. Of. Story. Duh.

Well, unless you’re talking about sexual partners, but then I really hope you have additional criteria for that as well.

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Barbara Walters, misogyny

1. Oh how the mighty have fallen. [↩]

Good blood: a poem on Mother’s Day

After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed

by Rita Dove

I’m in the milk and the milk’s in me… I’m Mickey!

My daughter spreads her legs
to find her vagina:
hairless, this mistaken
bit of nomenclature
is what a stranger cannot touch
without her yelling. She demands
to see mine and momentarily
we’re a lopsided star
among the spilled toys,
my prodigious scallops
exposed to her neat cameo.
And yet the same glazed
tunnel, layered sequences.
She is three; that makes this
innocent. We’re pink!
she shrieks, and bounds off.

Every month she wants
to know where it hurts
and what the wrinkled string means
between my legs. This is good blood
I say, but that’s wrong, too.
How to tell her that it’s what makes us–
black mother, cream child.
That we’re in the pink
and the pink’s in us.

The Female Gaze

This morning during my usual drink-coffee-read-feeds-become-human morning half hour, I spied with my little eye a post entitled “Can a feminist write romance novels?”

As a feminist and aspiring novelist, how could I resist that one?

In her post, writer Karen Kendal says that genre romances have a bad rap “because male fantasies are seen as legitimate in our society, while female fantasies are seen as ludicrous. Why?”

Because, continues Ms. Kendal, in a patriarchal (i.e., every) society, the vast majority of media, from Nobel Prize winning books to the Victoria Secret catalog, caters to the male gaze. They portray women - and, significantly, men - the way men want to see them.

Enter the uppity romance novel, in which the male is the subject, portrayed by and for the female gaze.

Not surprisingly, men do not like being the subject if they can’t control the product.

Just as we’d rather not compare ourselves physically with models, most men don’t want to be scrutinized next to body builders or romance heroes. What if they come up short? So they point and laugh at the guy on the novel’s cover and sneer that he’s only a stupid fantasy.

And because the male eye has become the norm, women diss romances, too, without even reading any.

I must admit I’ve done my share of dissing romance novels. I always chalked it up to being a literary snob and thought no further. How could I have missed this? Bad feminist, no biscuit!

I’ve read a few romance novels here and there, and while in general they’re still not my cup of tea, I must say it is clear that “bodice-ripper” is an outdated stereotype. Most modern romance protagonists are at least as feminist (if not more so) than those in their “literary” counterparts.

As Ms. Kendal puts it:

[Modern heroines] don’t shriek – they act. They engage in power struggles with the hero and often win. Along the way they have some great sex, and I happen to think that’s a good thing, since historically women – busy being the objects of male fantasy – have put up with a lot of bad sex, too.

Amen, sister. Amen.

Technorati Tags: feminism, literature, romance, writing

Adopt A Family with Uppity this Christmas!

I emerge from NaNoWriMo and the inevitable few days of post-blitz exhaustion and what do I see?

That Christmas is only twenty days away. Jesus, how did that happen?¹

But you all know how much I love the holidays, so it’s all good. I’m being careful this year not to over-extend like I did last year …

…though I am still organizing my annual an Adopt-A-Family effort, courtesy of my employer and local charity Solid Ground.

This year it’s a family of five: Mom and her two girls (14 and 12) and two boys (7 and 1).

I’m buying their gifts this week - warm winter coats, shoes, and toys, plus a gift certificate from a grocery store for a holiday meal.

Righteous Ribs, come be a Secret Santa with me!

The easiest way to donate is to send the amount of your choice to me via Pay Pal - just click on the Coffee Cup in the sidebar on the right. ²

Every cent of every donation will go toward gifts for our Family!

Thank you so much and check back here at the Rib for updates, thank you’s, and pictures!

Photo: “Uppity Antlers” by Lachlan 2006

Technorati Tags: charity, Solid Ground

1. Ha ha ha. Or is it “Ho ho ho”? [↩]
2. You can also send me a check or cash if you like. Email me if you need my snail mail address. [↩]

“When Big Momma made the world, she didn’t mess around.”

I got the best birthday present this year: Big Momma Makes the World, by Phyllis Root, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury.

Then she looked at the light and she looked at the dark
and she looked at that little baby looking at the light and the dark, smiling and cooing,
and Big Momma said, “That’s good. That’s real good.”

Last night I read Big Momma aloud to Kevin as he made dinner, and in between the lines, I marveled that such a book - a creation myth starring a big momma with a baby on her hip who don’t mess around - hadn’t been published sooner.

Because in a way, the Christian creation story is why, at the tender age of twelve, I became a feminist.

It was my first Catholic Sunday service. I remember the priest up at the pulpit talking, then doing his communion routine. His outfit, his choreography, his attitude set him apart from the rest of us, the rabble in the pews.

I don’t remember the finer details of his sermon, just that it was something about how since God the Father went to all the trouble of creating the world, we should just shut up, give thanks, and do what we’re told. After the service, the priest stood smirking faintly in the doorway as the congregation filed past him.

I’d been to church before, but for some reason this time it seemed strange to me that grown adults would willingly gather to hear some guy they barely know lecture them about how to be “good.” Even stranger was how people treated this guy like he was better than they were, though as far as I could tell, he was just a man in a dress. Folks seemed sheepish around him, deferential, but I couldn’t figure out why.

So I did what I discovered later is quite frowned upon by the church: I went in search of information and found the priest had no clothes.

Throughout the next several weeks of research, I discovered that part of the reason for the deferential treatment was because the priest had a weenie, and according to the Bible, those with weenies are better than those without. It’s God the Father, ya know, and there are lots of stories in his book that explain how women are second-class citizens because he created them that way, although their inherently “sinful” nature helps.

Ah well - a story’s just a story. Right?

Would that that were so. Because although there is not one tiny shred of evidence that the stories in the Bible were written by a divine, supernatural entity - rather than just some guys with parchment, Oedipal tendencies and too much time - at some point somebody told us they were true. And not just true, but God hisself’s actual “Word.”

And we bought it! I realized with amazement. Hook line and sinker.

But what really worked my tits was that it wasn’t just the men who bought it (and why wouldn’t they?) but the women as well. We even gave the thumbs-up to the Father-who-created-the-universe story - the ultimate attempt by men to deny their if not unimportant, essentially side-kick role in the creation of life.

I smacked my youthful forehead. What were we thinking? Something had to be done.

Thus from the womb of religious disillusionment was born that Uppity Rib: terrorizing the patriarchy since roughly 1980.

So now you see why, twenty-seven years later, I am so delighted by my birthday present. This generation of little girls doesn’t have to wait for some stultifying church service to annoy them into feminism. They can be led there gently and easily, from the comfort of their mothers’ arms. Growing up with Big Momma, their own goodness and power will seem as natural as the light and the dark.

And that’s good. That’s real good.

Technorati Tags: creationism, Christianity, mythology, gynophobia

because we take so much for granted every day

I love my country
By which I mean
I am indebted joyfully
To all the people throughout its history
Who have fought the government to make right
Where so many cunning sons and daughters
Our foremothers and forefathers
Came singing through slaughter
Came through hell and high water
So that we could stand here
And behold breathlessly the sight
How a raging river of tears
Is cutting a grand canyon of light.

Why can’t all decent men and women
Call themselves feminists?
Out of respect
For those who fought for this?

Ani DiFranco, “Grand Canyon”

Lady Six Sky

The first runner up in the “Best Ancient Royalty Names” contest, as reported by Archaeology Today magazine, totally rocks.

Besides having the best name ever, Lady Six Sky was also an uppity Guatemalan ass-kicker, barging fearlessly into the boys’ club of her society:

She arrived “here” in 682 as the daughter of King B’alaj Chan K’awiil of Dos Pilas. She was never invested as a Naranjo ruler, she assumed every other prerogative of kingship, portraying herself on monuments and performing key calendrical rituals. This even extended to military symbolism.

It is clear that she assumed the role of Queen regnant and effectively ruled, then perhaps co-ruled for a substantial period. She seems to have been the mother of king K’ak Tiliw Chan Chaak, but the sources never mention his father. She was the central figure, even after the formal enthronement of her son (at age five). She waged war in his name, and remained an important force to until her death at the age of 77. She lived (664-741).

I totally want to move to Belize, start a band called Lady Six Sky, and rock out until I can no longer stand on my crone two legs.

By the way, first place in the name contest went to her son, Smoking Squirrel. Kinda makes you wonder about the sort of folks who read Archaeology Today…

Calling all Ribs: save the date!

Next Saturday, I’ll be contributing to the Take Back The Blog blogswarm, hosted by Bruce at Crablaw,

…in support of the rights of women to participate fully in all aspects of our society, including specifically online in the world of blogging but indeed everywhere and at all times, day and night, without fear of harassment, intimidation, sexual harassment, online stalking and slander, predation or violence of any sort.

Bruce, you are a righteous rib, as is Renee in Ohio and her kick-ass TBTB logo.

However, dear Readers, you may be a little distracted at this point by the peculiar term “blogswarm.”

A “blogswarm” is when a bunch of people blog about the same crap ON PURPOSE! It is a premeditated thing, as opposed to the usual randomness that tends to rule the Internet. Order from chaos. Entropy. Call it whatever you want.

I want to call it an attempt to herd cats, but an ingenious one.

Now that we have context, I invite you to resume contemplating the delicious uppityness of a global blogorama entirely devoted to giving the big, feminist fuck-you to sexist online cowards everywhere.

If you have a blog, I also encourage you to join me in this most excellent blog-in. It just takes an email to Bruce, some bandwidth, and a little bit of your own personal uppity.

See you then!

Technorati Tags: blogswarm, Crablaw, Take Back The Blog, sexual harassment, sexism, feminism

You’re My Alternative Bridegroom

Today my workaday partner in crime, Lachlan, and I went to a book reading. We got there early, sat in the front row and chatted up the author while we waited for everyone else to show up.

We talked about all-night raves in the woods where people pooped in buckets. We asked ourselves sticky questions, such as “Do I want fingers in my pie?” We pondered thoughtfully the tenacity of sexist gender roles, the fluidity of outmoded traditions, and the subjectivity of tacky cake decorations.

In case you haven’t guessed yet, we went to a reading of Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides, by Ariel Meadow Stallings.

I guess I should back up a little.

If you have read my Uppity Me page, you know I’ve stated quite bluntly that I don’t think much of the institution of marriage. But like Oprah, I don’t mean that in a bad way. Some of my best friends are married.

It’s just that I think many people get married for goofy reasons. Oh, they rhapsodize about celebrating their love and commitment, but give them a few beers and it’s clear that it’s really about security, babies, familial or societal expectation, keeping up with the Joneses, or even just the desire to be King and/or Queen For A Day.

And until gay folk can marry, the benefits of legal union are also highly prejudiced.

So getting married has never been high on my priority list, even as a youngun dreaming of my future… even as a twenty-something, Always A Bridesmaid in countless weddings and Designated Shoulder for the tearful divorces… even when I fell ass-over-tea-kettle in love and moved to Kevinsylvania for ever and ever and ever.

I only seriously considered marriage when Kevin, as an Air Force reservist, was called to active duty shortly after 9/11. Granted, he was going to Thailand, not Clusterfuckistan. But still, he was supporting Marines that were doing anti-terrorist missions - not exactly saving kitties from treetops. It was heart-stopping to think that if something happened to him in Thailand, I would be denied access to him because we are not legally married. I don’t think so.

But this occurred to me after Kevin had already gone (Hello Stupid Syndrome, it’s common in times of war, you can google it for more info). Once he came back, I told him if he’s ever called up again, his ass and mine are at the courthouse within 24 hours. Or if we have more time, the Church of Elvis in Vegas.

Threats of bodily harm on foreign soil aside, Kevin and I have been happily living in sin for many years. As Joni Mitchell said, we don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall keeping us tight and true, no.

Occasionally, Kevin or I will say “You know, we should really get married. We need a new set of plates” or “It’s been ten years and my mother has never met your dad. Or your brother. Or anyone related to you. Yesterday she accused you of being a member of the Witness Protection Program. We need a wedding reception.”

Cut to Uppity, front row center at Indy Bride Live, with my lesbian friend as my date. Natch.

It was an awesome reading, Ariel being a warm, engaging, funny speaker and a PNW homey to boot. I got a free copy of the book, which is part DIY wedding planning tips and part memior. It promises to be a fab read. I mean, with chapters like “I Am Woman, Hear Me Order Monogrammed Napkins: Is ‘Feminist Wedding Planner’ An Oxymoron?” — how could it suck?

I was bummed not to win the raffle for the (truly inspired) “Fuck Taffeta” t-shirt, but the free copy of the book made up for it.

One slightly distressing event marred the otherwise happy hour: While standing in line to get my book signed, I found myself next to the gal who had announced during the post-reading Q & A that she was “never getting married, ever” and then of course ten minutes later won the raffle for the t-shirt.

“Well,” she proclaimed to all of us, “if I ever DO get married, I’m not wearing a white dress. I’m wearing jeans!” She giggled like this was the most subversive, rebellious thing imaginable.

I smiled. “Well, Gloria Steinem got married in jeans.”

She looked at me and said, “I have no idea who that is.”

“She’s the reason you get to wear jeans, sweetheart.”

I’ll tell her that as soon I as I finish removing the stake from my heart.

Technorati Tags: indy weddings, DIY, marriage, gay marriage, feminism