This weekend was productive and hectic as can be! Saturday morning there was the Komen Race for the Cure and then a bitch and C-Money headed off to the ‘burbs to visit with our brother. Saturday night a certain Play Husband’s birthday spectacular went down…a bitch fizzled out, but a great time was had by all along with several goblets of vodka and cran.
Sunday a bitch visited with my mentee. As most of you know, her older sister is pregnant and 14 years old. My mentee is 13 and freaking out at the change about to manifest in her life as a result. Sadly, this pregnancy is a solid teaching moment…but that offers little satisfaction since a bitch adores both young women and knows that a life of struggle just got more complicated for them.
Which brings me to some thoughts that have developed after reading some of the comments to my War post.
Ain’t we got fun?
This bitch is not one to be bleak just for the fun of it. My ass is actually rather optimistic. For real! But a bitch is not one to explore fantasy in the face of a real challenge. Explore reality and you will find the path to the positive change required, but you can not change what you do not fully understand. So, a bitch is a student of reality and an explorer of the paths made clear by understanding it.
In America, money creates a lot of options and choices. Lack of money limits both. As we debate whether to make the newly approved HPV vaccine available as part of the required protocol of vaccines for public school attendance we must factor in the element of poverty. Required equals mandatory Medicaid coverage, which means that the poor get a shot they otherwise could not afford.
If you are comfortable with that…with a vaccine developed to address a disease and the cancer it causes being denied your fellow Americans because they can’t afford it…well, then you are comfortable with that. A bitch isn’t being bleak…my ass just prefers to work with reality. Plus, this bitch has long felt that any cancer vaccine would test our national loyalties between profit and public health. Mayhap this is the quiz before the real test?
A bitch is a fan of the Jazz Age and there is a line from a song of that era that goes something like…the rich get rich and the poor get poorer.
It is 2006 and we are still working the same hustle of options and choices and the lack thereof.
And the rich get choices while the poor get…hmmm.
In the meantime…in between time…ain’t we got fun?
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6 comments:
ABB,
Reality...
I leave it to God to know what's really real and what's not really real. For me I've only got the reality of my street. I can't see other peoples reality; it's around the corner.
The other night I was having a conversation with a friend and we got on the subject of homosexuality. In my opinion, based on the opinion of my human sexual professor, a man is designed(sexually) to be with a women. My friend's reply was that either way the attraction and the love are very "real" between the same sex couples which I agree with one hundred percent.
What I'm getting at is that just because something doesn't make any sense, it does not mean that it isn't real.
A Christian from let's say Kansas does not think we should require a vaccine for young children. While you are going to bat for the poorer children, which is awesome, they're going to bat for their children. That is their reality, one can not force their reality on another human being. Just because their reality is based on religion it doesn't make it any less real to them.
One could say that the parent from Kansas is not being realistic, but that is relative to the former's reality.
Andrew,
Amazing that you should pick Kansas.
Reference Topeka, my brother, Brown v Board...and the need to push the folks out of their comfortably flawed reality into the reality of desegregation.
Its all fine and dandy unless some asshole's reality manifests itself as a boot on your neck...a denial of a service and or access to education...or the witholding of medicine.
Those folks in 1950's Kansas cloaked their flawed reality in religion too...in heritage and in...oh my Gawd...parent's rights.
Other comments from Andew's post are amazing in addition to the Kansas reference. Witness some crap about men's body are made for sex with women or somesuch.
Direct your keen gaze on the misogynist language that focuses on men and men's bodies. The language that places man at canter and woman on the periphery.
My reality is that the patriarchy has, as ABB so eloquently puts it, its boot on my fucking neck. And finding ways to deny poor women basic healthcare is one of the most cherished pastimes of the patriarchy. Along with hating lesbians and gay men, that is.
Maybe I'm being "too bleak" as well, ABB.
SuperB
Thanks SuperB...a bitch didn't have the strength.
And how little things change, ABB. A long time ago, long before Roe v. Wade, abortion was legal. Then all the Irish-Catholic immigrints were having so many children as the wealthy Protestants who had been here for a few generations had access to medical care that allowed them to limit their families, as well as access to abortion if it was needed. Can't have that! The poor people will take over! And thus birth control and abortion were made illegal. Now that they're both legal again, we make sure they're as difficult to get as possible for poor women, even though allowing them to control their bodies is one of the keys to getting out of poverty.
Whenever we take a step forward as a nation, there is always someone wanting to take us two steps back, and that someone usually doesn't like poor people, dark people, female people, or my faggoty ass.
Anytime, ABB, anytime. You know your regular readers always got your back.
Although, one could argue that my point would have been stronger had I written "center" like I meant instead of "canter" but whatever. I think the meaning was clear enough.
SuperB
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