On “Family Values”:

Proof that the Pro-Marriage lobby just makes shit up

Really? Single parent households cost us 112 billion dollars? Good thing they made me aware of this on tax day!

Seriously, this is bullshit. My favorite part is when the Institute for American Values, the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, Families Northwest of Redmond, Washington, and the Georgia Family Council use an estimate of lost tax revenue as one of their estimates. There aren’t missing people who aren’t paying taxes. In fact, considering that married couples get tax breaks, we are probably making more money on people not getting married. Stupid.

How much do we pay for abstinence only sex-ed? $206 million according to the ACLU. Maybe we would have less out of wedlock children if we changed that. The real issue here isn’t if the pregnancy comes with a marriage; the issue is if the pregnncy is planned or not. How much money do we lose a year to poor families who really couldn;t afofrd another child but got pregnant and had one anyway? Unplanned pregnancies are much more likely to end up in a situation where welfare has to become involved. Marriage doesn;t fix that.

How does the government think that it is going to be able to support marriages? That’s asinine. Texas spends $15 million on marriage education. Now there is some tax money I wish my mom could get back.

The fact is that the wole framing of this article is unfiar. Single parents cost us $112 billion? That’s called the social saftey net and it’s been an integral part of every developed country since the turn of the last century. We need to take care of kids regardless of whether or not we think their parents made a bad decision. Furthermore, in there areticles there’s always some sort of assumption that children from these families will inevitably end up on the dole. Stupid

On Why People Should be Grateful for Those Who Came Before:

Listen to This

So, I was wasting time in statistics listening to Soul Position and this song really struck me. He talks about the difficulties the black community is having in adjusting to their new status in society. Particularly the strange fact that older people who were deeply involved in the civil rights movement are juxtaposed with young kids trying to be thugs.

It occurs to me that this is a similar phenomenon to what is occuring in the female sphere. I know that the civil rights struggles are very different for race and gender. It’s a strange fact that both groups are coming mainstream at about the same time, and in the area of assimilation they have similar challenges.

As far as the gender struggle goes, it is amazing to me that 1950’s housewives, women executives who are pressed against the glass ceiling, and Paris Hilton are all in the same group. The same group I belong to.

What is so frustrating is that women of my generation have forgotten that we couldn’t have the lives we enjoy now without the people who fought for it AND WHO ARE STILL ALIVE! No wonder the feminist organizations are worried about their futures; young people think the fight is over.

Clearly it isn’t. The game has changed. Along with changing rights and roles for women came changes in family, corporate America, and homosexual politics. We don;t have the counter culture that African Americans have developed, simply because we can’t really withdraw from society. The only people who can are lesbians, to a certain extent. For the most part, women need men, and men need women

Enough time hasn’t elaplsed for us to take our rights for granted. Despite the sucess of Hillary Clinton, the wage gap has increased. Women have a much higher risk of contracting AIDS. Poverty is quickly becoming feminized. Definitions of homosexuals are almost always exercises in defining masculinity and its corrolary. I’m sick of it.

Don’t wear your skirts so short. Don’t let yourself become a sexualized thing and lose your humanity. It’s not liberating to reduce yourself to tits and ass. Don’t define yourself by the man in your life. Don’t rely on a free ride. Someone will love you for who you actually are.

God it’s just so frustrating.

On Homophobic Douche Bags:

So yesterday I’m crossing Grand River just minding my own business, and some douche rolls down his window and starts yelling things at me about my appearance and calling me a lesbian. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me in East Lansing

It’s not that people thinking I’m a homosexual offend me; what offends me is that people would feel so threatened by the way I look that they feel the need to yell at me on the street in broad daylight.

I like my hair short. It’s a hell of a lot easier to take care of. I like that I don’t have to look at the scale every day or week or whatever to see if I’ve been good or bad. I don’t feel the need to dress up like I’m hooking after school. So what? How is that so offensive?

The truth of the matter is that these people aren’t afraid that I’m a lesbian. If it were really the homosexuality part that freaked them out they would only react in the presence of homosexual acts.

No, this is a problem with challenging traditional gender roles. Lesbians are jus the prime example of women rejecting the world men gave them. That’s how feminists are always associated with lesbians.

They didn’t like that my hair was short and that I wasn’t wearing makeup because women are supposed to like makeup and long hair. And I don’t. So clearly I’m a dyke.

People called me a lesbian back in the third grade. THIRD GRADE. I never could figure out why exactly they thought I was gay. Now I know: I wasn’t raised by gender typical parents like they were, so I didn’t know how to play the gender game. I never stood a chance. We were working with different paradigms.

Clearly I still don’t get it. But I’m not too worried about it.