Top 16 Reasons That I’m Fat

16) Because I Thought I Was Fat, Even When I Wasn't

Once upon a time, I was an aerobics instructor. I exercised at least 3 hours per day because I was obsessed with my weight to a degree that was mentally unhealthy. I counted calories and burned every one. I was nearly solid muscle and convinced that I was fat, despite knowing that I was in better shape than most of the skinnier girls around me. This was me, size 8, after a series of injuries made me unable to exercise, 10 pounds heavier than I was when I was exercising 3 hours per day. At this time, I considered myself grotesquely fat, unbearably unattractive, unworthy of affection, a terrible person, and all of the other things that we insist that fat people are.

15) Because I Looked Fat, Even When I Wasn't

What you can't see in this picture is that my dress was designed to hide my tummy pooch and my date's hands are clasped on top of it to hide it further, at my request so I didn't look as fat in the pictures as I really was.  What you can see in this picture is my double chin, which every woman in my family has regardless of size, which my grandmother offered to pay to have removed because a skinny girl like me shouldn't have a double chin.

14) Because I Naturally Have Curves

What you can also see in this picture is that this dress doesn't exactly fit me in the chest. It hangs too low and my boobs push out over the top more than the dress is designed for. This isn't because the dress is designed badly; this is because every woman in my family has large boobs. I have the largest. Separately, each of my grandmothers made their own bras because stores did not sell bras in their cup size. I've been laughed out of a Victoria's Secret by staffers for asking for a 32DDD. Since age 15, I have been at least one size larger on top than on bottom. This dress doesn't fit me on top because it fit me on bottom. In order for a top-heavy woman to show that she isn't fat, she has to wear clothes that are tight everywhere; fabric that hangs off of the boobs make women appear to have a large belly even if they don't. This is another way that I looked fat when I wasn't fat; I had the option of busting out of clothes on top or wearing a slightly fitted tent.

13) Because My Self-Fat-Shaming Was Used Against Me

I used to date guys who were terrified that I would leave them. In order to keep me from leaving, they encouraged my self-fat-shaming despite my skinniness. If I was convinced that I was fat and ugly, they could keep me all to themselves; they could keep me inside, away from other people who were clearly disgusted that I was so fat. They encouraged fad dieting, starvation diets, and OTC pills as diet aids, but they also discouraged me from exercising, saying that I was so fat that if I exercised, I would injure myself again. None of these methods worked, of course; the most effective tool that I had was the one denied to me: exercise. Just to make this completely clear, this is a form of emotional abuse. This is a way to control women and retain us as possessions by making us insecure. This is done by insecure men who secretly believe that we will leave them because they do not deserve us. This is a method of keeping women in abusive relationships, cutting them off from friends and family who could help them escape. This is unacceptable behavior.

12) Because People Assume That Skinny or Fit Women Are Stupid or Incompetent

People had always told me that I was stupid, that I only pretended to be smart, that females are incapable of being smart, that beauty was the only way to be a successful woman, and that any success that I had in non-beauty areas was due to the unfair advantage that people gave me because of my beauty. I was told that everything that I earned had been given to me, because as a beautiful person, I did not have the intelligence, integrity, motivation, skills, or ability to have earned anything. Beauty privilege does exist, but denying that beautiful women can have value other than beauty is just as bad as assuming that the only value that women can have is beauty. There is no winning the beauty game. The only way to win is not to play.

11) Because Fewer People Assume Stupidity and Incompetence When Beauty Is Removed

This is a lesson that I learned at size 12. Suddenly, I wasn’t skinny and fit anymore. Suddenly, my negative self-image was slightly accurate. Suddenly, people stopped assuming that I am dumb or incompetent. Suddenly, any success that I had was success that I earned. Maybe I did all of the work back when I was skinny but the success that I had while not skinny was deemed the result of my hard work, even if it was the result of my beauty when I was skinny. I learned that by refusing to fit the beauty ideal, I would be taken more seriously at work and in society, even if I was deemed "undatable" by the people doing the judging. I finally started to feel valuable and that taught me that fat is beneficial. Again, there is no winning the beauty game.

10) Because I Have More Important Things to Deal With Than My Weight

I have to stay employed in a male-dominated field in which I am routinely discriminated against. This discrimination would be worse if I fit the beauty ideal, because I would be assumed to have slept my way to the top, because the jobs that I am qualified for require intelligence and skill, things that people would deny that I have if I were skinny. Being taken seriously in my field is more significant to my life than being beautiful is. I have numerous health conditions that contribute to inability to eat a healthy diet and inability to exercise. I have two forms of asthma, only one of which is complicated by weight, neither of which is controlled. I am allergic to tons of foods and that makes eating a healthy diet extremely complicated. This also makes my diet boring at times, during which it's a chore to eat a single meal; this causes me to store extra calories on days that I eat more than one meal, since my body thinks I'm starving. I am allergic to my own sweat and to being hot. I have gigantic boobs, which makes low-impact exercise like yoga nearly impossible and makes most aerobic exercises painful. I am also prone to pulling my diaphragm, since I pulled it once and it's not a muscle that rests, so it has never fully healed. I also go through periods of poverty, during which food is scarce. If I have an extra 2 hours to spend in a day, I might spend it preparing a balanced meal or relaxing after a hard day or teaching myself a new skill or researching something or helping a friend or teaching someone a new skill or making a present for someone. I got shit to deal with and my weight is rarely my top priority.

9) Because It Is Ridiculous to Require That People Justify Their Lives

And it is completely fine that I prioritize my own issues and deal with them in the best way that is possible for me, under the circumstances that I am in. If I am afraid that a friend might harm herself and I talk to her for a while to make sure that she doesn't, that's no one else's business. If I had a really stressful day at work and I just want to curl up on the couch with my boyfriend and watch some TV, that's between me and him and ideally, my employer. If I don't exercise because I am having an allergy attack that is causing my asthma to flare up, gives me hives all over my body, and makes me feel exhausted, that’s between me and my doctors, not between me and my doctors and 1800 random strangers on the Internet.

 

8) Because I’m Familiar With the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Speaking of random strangers on the Internet, no, you do not know why I'm fat just because you looked at me, saw that I am fat, and have been told that "most fat people are fat because they are lazy or make bad choices." There are many reasons that people are fat, some of which I have just talked about. People like to tell me that there is no way that my health condition could contribute to my weight because "not every obese person in the US has a thyroid problem, the only health problem that causes weight gain." There are literally hundreds of conditions that contribute to weight gain, especially by making diet or exercise unmanageably difficult. I've discussed my case already. Other people have degenerative joint conditions or chronic pain or hormonal imbalances. Other people may be working 80-100 hours per week. Others may only be able to afford 70% lean hamburger with a side of fatback and government cheese. You don't know why someone is fat by looking at them. You literally know far less about why the target of your fat-shaming is fat than the target does.

I promise you that I am much better versed in what I should be eating than you are; chances are if you prepared a meal for me without my input, you would put me in the ER. I promise that the person working 80-100 hours per week knows that spending another 15 hours per week on food prep could help him lose weight. I guarantee you that that person buying 70% lean hamburger with a side of fatback would prefer their government cheese on 90% lean hamburger with slices of fresh tomato and a side of fresh vegetables. I assure you that the woman taking life-saving medication that has "weight gain" as a side-effect is aware that she's fat, thanks for reminding her. I am thoroughly convinced that the depressed person who is binge eating knows that binge-eating is bad; they are binge-eating because they feel bad about binge-eating. Skinny people might be skinny because depression is causing them to not eat at all, because they have cancer, because they have an eating disorder that is slowly killing them, or because through genetics they have a high metabolism that keeps them from gaining weight even if they try. You cannot tell by looking at someone what the cause of their weight is—fat or skinny. Insisting otherwise is proof that you do not know what you are talking about. That you are so certain of the cause in every case is proof that you don't even know what the causes are, unlike the people living those actual lives.

7) Because It Is Ridiculous to Require That People Justify Their Happiness

If any of those people that I just talked about has a moment of happiness while fat and you try to ruin that for them as "motivation" for them to lose weight, you're just mean. Life is hard and no one is required to tell you their medical history, financial situation, time-availability, or priorities to be entitled to have you stop being mean to them. You aren't entitled to randomly be mean to people because you dislike the way that they look and have them celebrate you for that. You aren't entitled to insist that they be unhappy if they don't live up to an ideal that a third party set for them in a vacuum, not knowing anything about their lives. People are entitled for you to treat them with respect until they have proved that they don't deserve it; when you assume that they don't deserve it because of their looks, you only prove that you do not deserve it. If they have a moment of happiness, let them have it! Happiness is healthy! Trying to ruin their happiness is trying to destroy their mental health.

Are you skinny or fit? Is fitness your priority for yourself, a priority that you are upholding in your own life because you value it? Wonderful! You are the one who gets to decide what your priorities are, so I’ll make you a deal: stop telling me that my number 1 priority is my weight and I will continue to not tell you that your weight obsession is unhealthy, that you clearly have self-esteem issues that require mental health services, and that if you had your priorities straight, you wouldn’t care so much about your weight. Any of those things may or may not be true of you. I'm not making those assumptions about you now; why should you be making the opposite ones about me?

6) Because I Will Never Apologize for Loving Myself

I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. And gosh darn it, people like me. If you don't like me, that's fine, but I highly recommend that if you dislike me, you do so for a valid reason. My size isn't a personality trait, no matter how many times you claim that it is. I am ethical. I have sympathy for the people around me. I try to understand people before I judge them. I try to be nice to people. Some people think I’m funny. When I appreciate people, I make sure that they know it. I'm honest, sometimes to a fault. I can be a bit boneheaded sometimes, but I realize that and take criticism well. But the things that I value in other people are things that I value in myself. If I love smart, silly, ethical, honest, kind people and I fit that description, why am I not allowed to love myself? I love myself and you can’t stop me; trying to will only prove that you are not the kind of person that I find valuable.

5) Because I Should Not Have to Apologize for People Loving Me

Likewise, if someone values smart, silly, ethical, honest, kind people and I fit that description, they are allowed to love me. Their love for me is not up to you. You are not required to love me. People who love me are not required to justify that to you and if you wish they loved you instead? Well, try being a better person instead of focusing on my weight and maybe they'll learn to love you too.

 

4) Because No, You Are Not "Just Worried About My Health"

If you were, you would ask me if there was anything that you could do to help me. You would offer to include me in your healthy meals. You would discover how hard it is for me to eat a healthy balanced diet if you invited me over for dinner; ask me over for dinner. You would tell me that you are going out for a walk and you would love some company if I have the energy. The fact is that yes, there are many things that the people around me can do to help me out with my health. Telling me that I am a bad person if I'm not skinny or fit is on the list of things that make my health worse.

3) Because No, You Aren't Just as Worried About Men's Health

Men have to be twice my size before people start insulting them as fat. Men aren't deemed stupid or incompetent because they are skinny or fit. Men tend to be judged for their accomplishments, based on the merits of those accomplishments while women are being judged on our looks. Fat-shaming is a way to keep women in line, to make us so concerned with random strangers' opinions of our looks that we don't compete with those strangers in the marketplace. Or if we do compete with them in the marketplace, we can immediately be devalued for our looks regardless of what those looks are. Is a woman beautiful? She is dumb, is incompetent, and slept her way to the top. Is a man handsome? Investors will like him! Is a woman fat? She's probably lazy and won't put in the necessary hours. Is a man fat? Aren't they all? That's just a sign that he is so entrenched in his work that he doesn't have time for fitness.

2) Because I Belong to Me

I answer to me. I am the subject-matter expert on my life. I am the arbiter of my own values. When it comes to me, I am the decider. I have my priorities and I have them for a reason, for my reasons, for reasons that matter to me, the person who knows the most about my life. Denying me that autonomy is attempting to own me. Good luck with that. Better than you have tried and failed.

1) Because People Still Insist That This a Valid Issue

And it's not. It's a way to keep people, especially women, from being healthy and successful. It's a distraction from the significant issues around us. It's a way to keep us in the dark and under control.

I refuse to be controlled and I refuse to live in the dark.

The Unintended Consequences of Dating Another Programmer

I have been a professional computer programmer since 1998. In 2001, I moved to Silicon Valley, then wrote part of a book on the language that I use. In 2003, I took over the local user group for my language, which is now the equivalent to a meetup (which did not exist when the group started). I have lectured for that group repeatedly and there has never been any question that I attend that group because I am a programmer of that language. I started a second user group in a related language, where again, my credentials as a programmer were already known and thus wouldn't be questioned. That a woman is a programmer is apparently not the default assumption when a women goes to meetups for programming languages.

I've talked to other female programmers in the area, who have told me that when they go to meetups with male friends, people assume that they are the girlfriend who got dragged along to the meeting, but are not actually programmers. This is one of the reasons that they prefer the women's programming meetups, where this assumption is not made*. Until they told me about this, it had not even occurred to me that when I went to programming meetups with my meetup buddy that other attendees might assume that I showed up as a bored girlfriend who doesn’t even program.

I almost always go to programming meetups with my meetup buddy, who is a guy, and we've gone to meetups together for well over 6 years. I do know that during conversations with strangers at these meetups, people have reacted with surprise when I made a comment that denoted some programming expertise. I very occasionally got surprising questions that I didn't understand, like "is this your boyfriend?"  I just didn't occur to me why people would be surprised that I was at a programming user group as an experienced programmer. Having had this pointed out by other women, I look back at some things that confused me that now make sense.

But now I am dating my meetup buddy. This morning, while I was getting dressed, he told me about two meetups that he has scheduled for this week, both for programming languages that I'm interested in. I went to meetup to sign up but then I realized… if I show up to a meetup where people don't know us and there is PDA, are they going to assume that I am unqualified to be there? In one case, the group leader is someone who knows me and would correct anyone who expressed that notion around him. But I don't know anyone else signed up for the other meetup and I'm concerned that people will think that because I am with my boyfriend, that I am not a programmer.

Whether it's reasonable or not, I feel like I have to change the way that I act towards my boyfriend at programming events in order to be taken seriously as a programmer. Feeling like I have to do that is pretty messed up but that doesn't change that it's the situation that I'm in and the situation that I have to deal with.

How messed up is that?

*There are guys who go to the women's programming meetups to pick up chicks or to teach us programming cause we totes need manly help with that, leading to as assumption that these are the reasons that all male attendees have attended. This can drive allies away even if they understand why people behave oddly when men show up. That said, this assumption is made about men only when they attend programming groups specifically designated as women's groups. Bad assumptions are made about women when they attend gender-neutral groups, on the assumption that women aren't programmers or if they are, they aren’t "serious enough programmers: to go to meetups about programming languages.

Hackers & Hookers Party: Sexism in Tech or Piggybacking on It?

"Hacker Hideout," a "member-based community center in San Francisco for thinkers and builders; tech lovers and business moguls; students and teachers alike" running in "stealth mode" that's so stealth that no one seems to have heard of it before, is throwing a Halloween party that they have named "Hackers & Hookers!" The party amenities include diverse entertainment features such as: "Beer. Dance Floor. Shot Bar. Food Truck. Girls." Which food truck? We may never know.

As expected, someone not of their target market saw the event and went "OMFG Sexist much?" Media coverage followed. A non-apology followed that. Then the "group's" Facebook page was taken offline. A site containing photos of the space "expired." But you know what stayed up? The event listing!

There's a lot of drama at the hackerspaces in SF and I suspected that perhaps this event was being thrown by one of the people who was recently a sexual harassment problem at one of the local spaces. I decided to investigate. It turned out to be much different than I expected. There are several articles about the event, with varying research backing them up. They missed something.

This is where things got really suspicious. Buzzfeed did a reverse image search and found an AirBNB listing for the building, which is advertised as an "Awesome Hideout" named "SF Hideout." It's posted by a guy named James. It's a 2-bedroom hackerspace/ coworking facility with no wifi. Exciting! Why "SF Hideout" and not "Hacker Hideout?" Oh, I'll get there. First let's talk about James.

What the Buzzfeed author didn’t realize to do is to run a whois on Hacker Hideout's domain. It is registered to one James Blocho of the organization "Bloc Group." He has an address in Novato but a phone number with a NYC area code. (This is all public information. He didn't bother to obfuscate his contact info, which most computer savvy people would do prior to doing something controversial, but I'm generous so I redacted some. Basically, right now, we can call what looks like his cell number. Great hacker skillz, dudebro.)

Things that make me thing that dudebro isn't quite tech savvy? GoDaddy as his registrar and a Hotmail account. Nice.

Now we have two leads: James Blocho of Novato and the Bloc Group. I did a search for James Blocho and found some listings like "Founder of non-existent startup" (paraphrased) on an angel site. Whatever. Apparently, he has a "review" in a court in Marin in November. I hope justice prevails! And I found a LinkedIn profile, which coincidentally has the same profile picture as the AirBNB listing! But resized really badly!

How tech savvy is James? Take a look at the third floor kitchen! (Screenshot from AirBNB listing.) This is the point where I started to wonder if maybe the registration info for Hacker Hideout was recently changed to list James Blocho just to ruin his life but then I looked at the AirBNB reviews, which discussed James and predate this controversy. Sorry, James.

I looked up the Bloc Group and there were several different companies in various parts of the world. One stood out though: The Bloc Group NYC. For one thing, it's in NYC, just like James's phone number. For another thing, it's a nightclub promotion group in multiple cities. Coincidence? I can't tell; I got no google results mentioning both James Blocho and the Bloc Group NYC. It's a weak link. WEAK!

Now let's go back to the problematic non-apology: "We would like to start by saying it was not our intention to offend or upset anyone, but it can be hard to please the whole world and the different cultures, values and beliefs that exists."

Classic non-apology. We can't please every culture, value, and belief, and we decided that the set of women and the set of men who dislike sexism who live in the actual city in which we do business don't really count. Our target audience is brogrammers and brogrammers only.

Official "OMG make the woman do it so we don’t look so terrible" spokeslady Alexandra Hunter says (to HuffPo) "[We] were not trying to be 'brogrammers.'" That would require at least a few technical skills. You're trying to cater to brogrammers. Totally different. I get you, woman. I truly do.

The non-apology continues (bad grammar is not mine, omg):

...It seems that some disgruntled residents who decided to take advantage of the office space provided, and asked to leave, and others posting who failed to disclosed they are competitors with their own work spaces around SF, are hoping to blow the event and its intentions out of proportion.

The posts made and deleted from such people mentioned above or their friends, so no we are no going leave up biased and false statements about our intentions or about our company. 

We respect the views and concerns that have been put forth by the community and have taken down the event for review of content as we appreciate constructive feedback from our REAL members. 

Regardless of whether the people in question "asked to leave" or "were asked to leave," they basically just included the entire incestuous tech community in SF in their set of people who can't be trusted to not blow this out of proportion.

 

Now let’s go back to the interview with the token spokeslady: "the company's employees are split fairly evenly male and female, she said."

From what I can tell, we have a "company" that has a work-live space in a bad part of SF that they are running as a combo workspace/boarding house that they call a hackerspace, for which we can track down exactly 3 people involved, including 1 woman. Well, I don't know if William (the guy who lets people in) isn't an employee or if they managed to grab a second woman, maybe as a room monitor or something, but sorry, Token Female, I'm not buying it. Apparently, the event was arranged without their permission by guests or wait, not, because they stand by the event now. People only know about it because super-spy infiltrators from their competitors snuck in and snitched! But we don't really know what their business model is, which is why their competitors could be anywhere.

You know, technically speaking, I do help run a competing workspace-- for women so we don’t have to put up with bullshit like this. I'm sure that my actual motivation is to advertise how much better my space is even though it's not open to the public yet and OMFG CAN YOU PEOPLE NOT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR BEHAVIOR? Ahem.

They say at the end of their non-apology that they were going to reevaluate the event based on the constructive feedback of their "real" members, who have never received any other mention and don't seem to exist, which resulted in a "we don't give a shit if it's sexist" verdict. OK dudebro and dudebro-enablerette.

Overall assessment: we have a guy who owns a building, probably purchased as an investment, who is now trying to get a return on that investment in any way possible. He is offering the building out in every trendy way he can. Now he is throwing a party with a food truck that he doesn't even name, with all you can drink beer and quite possibly paid female entertainment. There may or may not be a link to a "entertainment" company in NYC that looks a bit sketchy as well. Why is AirBNB listed as "SF Hideout" and the party is at "Hacker Hideout" at the same address? Rebranding. He is grasping at straws trying to make this building turn a profit. It's highly questionable if there are any actual companies involved. Alexandra Hunter, I hope you get some paychecks but as a woman in tech in SF, I should warn you, if even one paycheck is delayed, bail and call the Labor Board. James Blocho is "always up to something."

tl:dr: This isn’t sexism in tech because that would require that this be a legitimate tech company, which doesn't not seem to be the case.

Venting: Catch-22 Tech Issues

I buy my domain names from a local company that I've worked with since 2000 that gives me a decent deal and doesn't try to upsell me all the time. The only problem is that some functions have to be done manually by support and support isn't always on duty for things like "add this CNAME to my domain registration" or "obfuscate my email address." This has only been a problem recently. I can change DNS servers myself.

 I signed up for Google Apps to move petticoatdespot.com/.net/.org to blogspot. Step 1 was to get email set up. I sent my registrar the info that Google said to put in and they put it in, less than 10 minute turnaround. Seriously, Ian, Dude, you are my favorite domain registrar tech support person partly because you always seem to be the person who handles my requests and partly because you work for my only registrar. And you get shit done when you're actually at work. Maybe Ian is the only person who works there? Ian said that when I got to the next step that it would give me some other info to enter, so just respond with that when I get there and he'll add that too. Ian is helpful like that. It took about 6 hours for that to propagate to Google and in the meantime, I couldn't proceed to the next step, but "don't worry," Google says, when it propagates, I can go to the next step.

(Pictured is actually a guy named Louis, but this is how I imagine Ian: young; nerdy; not burnt out yet; not quite sure how to smile for a camera; in a black shirt with dark, chipped fingernail polish. I would totally date Dream Ian if I didn't already have an awesome, cute nerd guy of my own, who is asleep in bed with a toothache while I am out here venting like a wanker trying to not type too loudly. I can't tell though what kind of music Louis likes. He looks kind of like a prog rocker and I prefer Dream Ian to be a goth. Dream Ian wears guyliner.)

Well, it propagated but when I went to the next step, I got a mystery error. "An error occurred. If you keep getting this error, try again later." Thanks. I tried the next day. No luck. I decided to restart the browser and go back to the same page. Congratulations! You are set up! Oh, I guess Ian was wrong? Maybe? Don't let me down now, Ian!

A few days later, I set up Blogger for Petticoat Despot and tried to use the domain. The instructions said that I should add the domain and then I will get an error that will give me the information to add to the registration that I have to have done by hand at my registrar. I didn't get an error.

That's right, the instructions told me that I would get an error, then I didn't get an error, and that in itself was an error. I love computers, really, I do. Anyway, I thought that maybe the thing that I did for email had already done what the error message was going to tell me to do, so I tried the domain. DNS error, so no, that's not it. I figured that maybe what I did for email setup was interfering with blogger domain routing setup, so I sent a test email. DNS error. Darn, if that Ian guy wasn't right all along.

I got busy with other stuff. I could get along without the domain working and I couldn't figure out how to get back to that process that I was supposed to have gone through for email, so I put it off. I also couldn't figure out a way to get the info that was supposed to be in the error so I could send that to Ian either.
Now my 30 free trial of Google Apps is about to end, but no biggie. I have $5 to throw at Google to keep my blog up. I go to billing setup. I go through to the final submit button and then... ERROR!

That's it. That's all the information that the error gave me. I filled out the forms from scratch three times, same error. Then I noticed something else on the page:

Oh, finally! A link to take me back to that step that Ian said I was going to have to do! Which I now can't do because my teensy local domain registrar's employees are asleep like reasonable people. And apparently, I have to complete that step to be allowed to enter billing information so that my blog won't be disrupted.

Seriously, Google? Seriously?

The Shutdown Was Not Two-Sided and It Was Planned.

Let’s go back and talk a bit of history.

Once upon a time, the Democrats and Republicans got together and wrote a healthcare bill based on Republican ideas, because that was better than no bill at all. The Republican leaders brought the bill to their colleagues, who objected because it was a compromise and as a compromise, didn't give them 100% of their way. They said “go back and force them to compromise some more!” and they sent their leaders back with the “argument” that the previous compromise wasn't a compromise, that the Democrats had refused to negotiate.

So the Democrats said “fine. We’ll give you a few more items from your list even though you are moving the goalposts and going back on your word.” And the Republican leaders went back to the flock and the flock said “Oh hey, that worked. Let’s keep doing it!”

And so, once again, they claimed that the Democrats refused to compromise as cover for them moving the goal posts and going back on their word. The Democrats saw the writing on the wall and said “nope! You’ll just keep doing that.”

And so after months of negotiations and 6 months to read the vast majority of the bill, the bill went to a vote. The Republicans claimed that they hadn't had time to read the bill because it just came out, even though what had just come out were changes that they requested to a bill they had 6 months to read. And then they started lying about death panels and other things that quite literally are more of a problem under private health care than under public health care. The bill became a law anyway.

And then they decided that what really needed to happen is that equality in health care that had been in place since early in GW Bush’s term had to be rolled back because “religious freedom” is the freedom to force others to conform to your religion, but only if you are of the “correct” sect of the “correct” religion.
Then the LAW went before the US Supreme Court, where it was upheld as Constitutional. So back to Congress we went, to one side insisting that the subject be brought up again and again, each time blaming the other side for “refusing to compromise” by quite literally IGNORING THEIR ATTEMPT TO OVERRIDE PREVIOUS NEGOTIATIONS.

And so we came to an impasse, one that was designed on purpose years ago. You see, the Republicans want the government to be dysfunctional so that they can get their way on regulations and low taxes for the rich and fewer ways for rights to be protected under the law, something that won’t hurt them because they know that they are the ones whose rights are NEVER in question. They were elected through gerrymandering on a premise that the government should be shut down and now they have done that.

But they are doing it by throwing yet another temper tantrum and yet again pointing to the other side and claiming that it is the other side’s fault. Once again, they have tried to move the goalposts and called that “refusal to compromise.” Once again, they tried to eliminate rights of women to equality in health care as a scapegoat for their own bad behavior. The Republicans got their way and are blaming the Democrats for their own actions.

Anyone who says that this shutdown is two sided is arguing that one side should be allowed to go back on its word, force one side to compromise an infinite number of times so that the end compromise is not a compromise at all, blame the other side for disallowing infinite compromise, continue to move the goal posts while failing to take responsibility for that, and in the process, try to subjugate women.

Anyone who says that this shutdown is two sided is full of shit and needs to stop because we’re not morons.

Birth Control is not the Problem

I would just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that “birth control pills” is the name of the class of drug that includes all female hormone pills, regardless of the reason that they are prescribed, reasons that range from acne treatment to life-saving menstrual stabilization to menopause symptom relief to relief from the pain of endometriosis and migraines to prevention of bodily harm from ovarian cysts— in addition to the use implied by the name.

Anyone who wishes to deny health coverage of the most commonly prescribed medication for women on the grounds that a third party’s religion is opposed to controlling birth is pretending that the health problems that are treated with this class of drug simply do not exist or more accurately, that these health problems simply do not matter.

As someone whose life was literally saved by birth control pills after being refused treatment for a life-threatening condition by an anti-birth-control activist on the grounds that he would not examine my measurable symptoms because I am a “lying slut” who should be reported to my father as such, I’m honestly fed up with the deliberate lies about women and our health issues that are used to justify attacking us and our access to health care.

Your freedom of religion does not give you the right to deny health care for someone else’s medical condition, nor does it circumvent the right to medical privacy of other people. Some of the drugs in question do not prevent pregnancy. Some of them are not given to women capable of becoming pregnant. All of them are different drugs with different side-effects and actions, and with vastly different pricing. That $9 prescription at Walmart that you keep talking about is one of hundreds of medications in question, most used to treat symptoms that that drug is not.

And no one is trying to deny men access to vasectomies or to the entire class of male hormone pills on the grounds that the religion of third parties is opposed to controlling pregnancy.

So if you believe that denying women access to health care that is not denied to men is reasonable grounds to threaten the ability of hundreds of thousands of people to pay rent, of thousands of business to be paid, and for our government to stop working, you are wrong. And if you believe that I should have died for lack of health care while insured because your religion is opposed to a different use of the drug that saved me— just like my gynecologist was— you are an asshole and you should be ashamed of yourself.

This is not and has never been about controlling the ability to get pregnant; this is and has always been about discrimination.