Music Monday: Get Out of Your Mind and Heads Will Roll

This past week has been all DANCE all the time. Regular rehearsal Monday, extra YCO rehearsal Tuesday, L did volunteer work at school on Wednesday, Thursday was performance at the local Halloween event at the rec center, Friday was no school, but my dancer did outreach with YCO and performed at two inner city schools and a retirement community. Saturday was the show.

The girls brought down the house! So amazing. My music this week is two songs I loved, that were featured in the show. The Middle School dance company did a high energy and amazing dance to  Otta Your Mind! Loved it!

There is another version of this song by Li Jon and LMFAO, but this version by
Alex and Twitch is PG-13 and much closer to the song the girls danced to.

The other dance was "Left at the Alter" aka Brides of Frankenstein...

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs-- Heads Will Roll

I have always liked this song. The girls did a great job with it.

Halloween is a time I think we all confront and think about scary things. This year it is even more confrontational. Living in Ohio is tough... being a battle ground state, has meant my phone ringing off the hook. (The down side of being an independent voter.) I would like to off some heads. I did yell at some people canvasing last week. (Hello, it is the Internet stupid, if I wanna know about your slim ball candidate, I will look him up.)

If it were up to me, lots of heads would roll. Lots... I have decided the most useless, entitled people on the planet are in politics. If they really cared they would get real jobs, helping real people. Our two party system is crap, both parties know it and they work damn hard to keep everyone else out. (I mean who wouldn't want a job, where deadlock is rewarded one way or the other.)

If I were in charge, it would be off with their heads, let's dance cuz the wicked beasts dead. (the parties not the people, I am angry, not homicidal... although one more phone call might push me over the edge.)

Scared, very scared...

I have been controversial on Facebook the last few days. I keep my Facebook limited to friends only. I did want to share my thoughts with those of you who aren't on my Facebook.

I am very scared. I am scared for myself as a woman and for my daughter, who is now a tween. I believe to my very core that Romney and Ryan will set us on a course that will send women and women's rights into a tail spin. These men do not-- based on their deeds and their words respect women as equals.

Understand my opposition to Romney and Ryan is not an endorsement of Obama. Obama has been a huge disappointment and all of our civil rights under Obama have been effected-- THAT said he does not make policy based on gender. His moves are more rooted in political ideology. Doesn't give me a warm fuzzy-- but I do not feel that Obama is going to force my daughter to bear her rapist child, if god forbid that ever happens to her... Ryan has already said that is exactly what he would do and happily so. (Heck me too-- I am still biologically able to have children. I don't want any more children and honestly given my auto-immune issues, having a child would not be in my best interest.)

So below are my unedited Facebook posts from the past few days. (I was posting links to news stories and making comments. Links to stories included in this post.)

This post from the NYT.

NYT headline: Wed and Tortured at 13, Afghan Girl Finds Rare Justice

 And this is what happens when a society does not respect women as people and their fundamental right to have total sovereignty over their minds and bodies. I am very sure Paul Ryan would object to the treatment of this young woman-- all the

while voting for and proposing laws which are the first step towards making this Afghani girl's life the life many girls in this country will be bound to lead. We cannot go back... religion has no place in government and human rights the rights of all people-- not just the majority or the powerful... how pathetic are the men who tortured this fourteen year old child...

Mitt and Paul lead not with their minds -- not with a sense of fairness and equality-- but their twisted religious dogma. The same leadership style we see in Afghanistan.

I will seriously consider leaving my home if they are elected-- my daughter will grow up in a place that values her as an equal and not as chattel.

I got called on the carpet for being unfair to Christians. I do not believe that is the case at all. I would argue and I think history backs me up here, the Afghans still practice cultural mores and behaviors that are clearly laid out in great detail in the Old Testament. For those who have never taken a comparative religion class-- the Jews, the Muslims and the Christians (who were Jews with a new Leader) all spring from a similar cultural well and the first 5 books of the Torah and the Bible are the same... seriously... I think western Christianity has progressed given what we like to call Enlightenment... However a great many American Christians keep citing those same 5 books of the Bible as the reason that women, gays and anyone else they deem "other" should not be entitled to civil liberties equal to their own. I was merely pointing out that when on sets up a society that devalues women, women's rights to choose and steer their own destiny-- well this example from Afghanistan is what you get.

I am not saying Christians cannot have the right to believe anything they want to believe, in their own homes and their own places of worship. I don't care if they stand on the village green and pray, pray privately before major events in their life... I don't wish to join them, I don't want to be forced to join them and I do not want them forcing me to live my life by their belief structures. I don't believe life begins at conception, nor do I believe gays and lesbians are an abomination. I believe every human is entitled to basic civil rights and liberties.

Since my credibility was questioned and it was insinuated that I was bashing-- I offered another example-- this time from Communist China-- where religion is not part of the legislative process.

This post about forced abortion in China...

NPR:

After A Forced Abortion, A Roaring Debate In China

I was accused of being too harsh yesterday-- so here, an example from China, where the government has forcibly controlled women and men's right to choice with respect to family planning. Government officials kidnapping and forcing abortions on women who violate a law, that is an unconscionable violation of basic human rights. This One Child policy has caused a huge gender imbalance (because hello-- CHINESE CULTURE FAVORS MALE CHILDREN and girl children are aborted or abandoned in distressingly high numbers-- because people are allowed only one shot...) and as a result, this going to have dramatic impact on the number of workers in less than 10 years... not to mention the number of marriages and child bearing for years to come, given the dramatic gender imbalance which has happened since 1979. So here is another example of why government has NO BUSINESS meddling in the very private matter of child bearing. Adults, who intend to have children, should privately decide what is best for themselves. Women should be allowed to decide when and how many children they wish to bear and care for. No government should have the right to decide-- when, where and how many children a woman should have. It is her choice and her partner's choice to a degree. It is her body... Forcing a woman to have a child against her will is no better than forcing an abortion on her-- both actions say "you do not have the right to control your own destiny and your own physical body." The government does not know what is best for me, I know what is best for me... 

China is another example of a culture that really does value boys more than girls... and then this gross violation of a woman's fundamental human right to choose when and how she will bear children has created a cultural and societal problem, that is reaching epic proportions. (It is a violation of a man's right to choose too...)

I don't want to live in either of these systems. 

I think Mitt and Paul will take us in a direction that will set women's rights back light years...  I am scared, very, very scared...

The Letter A...

I have read The Scarlet Letter more times than I care to remember. Oy, it is dense prose, so very dense. That said I was thinking about my recent music Monday post. I don't want to go back to 1776 or even 1850, the time Hawthorne was writing and certainly not 1680-- the time of Hester Pyrnne. Have the people who speak about going back-- really read any of the literature of time, cracked a history book? I don't think so.

I certainly do not want trade my freedoms now for a life that Hester and her daughter Pearl would have lived. A life of a theocracy. Puritan legalism is still alive and well in our culture, it is dying but it was in full force in Hester's life. There is a movement, among mostly Republicans to go back, to go back to this time, where "god" was a legal scholar and where one interpretation of truth and justice was the only interpretation. The grand irony is, when they branded her with the A-- for adulteress, and cast her out, she found freedom. She had rejected their ways and rejected their culture and found a new way. A way of enlightenment. In many ways Hawthorne is speaking through Hester but even in his life time, there was little religious freedom. There was not one state church, but American culture was very wrapped up in repressions of a religious sorts. It was also a time of great rebellion-- on the continent and soon to be had in the United States. Some say Hester is a metaphor for countries and revolution and enlightenment. Maybe so, but the reality is, this is the status of women, at the time. What I have always loved is Hawthorne at least made her an active participant in her life. She was not seduced or raped. She conceived a child in love, at least we are lead to believe that.

I will also give Purtians their due-- unlike our culture, which is very much rooted in Victorianism, males who committed adultery where also branded. That means men like Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Bill Clinton and John Edwards would have similarly been branded.

In the North-American Puritan settlements of the 17th century, men and women sentenced for having committed acts of adultery were branded with an "A" letter on their chest (men) or bosom (women). (from Wikipedia)

 That aside, I do not want to return to a time where other people's morality are the judge and jury of my behavior. We can all have an opinion about adultery, mowing the lawn on Sundays, the consumption of beer and wine or brewed anything for matter, eating meat or not eating meat and so on and so on. There is no one right answer. Since our country is founded on the very principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It really does not get anymore clear:

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (see the real deal here)

So I fail to see how we can say in one breath (I am looking at you GOP) that we want to go back to the time the Bill of Rights was written and then in the next breath say that we need to protect God's commandments? Oh really, which ones and which God? There are so many versions and flavors running around. (and btw I don't really care for any of them.)

Women were no more free and equal partners in 1850 than they were in 1680. Adultery is still illegal in many states in 2012. Now branding, thank goodness is no longer the punishment, but the law is still on the books. (and Ladies... the rules for you are vastly different than for the men. In fact it really is all on us ladies. Oh goodie, look how far we have come...)

I hope I am being convincing here. I really don't want to go back. The correct direction is forward. We learn as we grow and from our mistakes. Remember in 1776 they walked around in their own sewage. On a hot day that had to be so pleasant. Our laws should always error on the side of inclusion. They should not be based on anyone's holy text and they should not ever make someone a 2nd class citizen.  If we think a behavior is inappropriate or a social custom isn't for us, then we don't do it. We can write about it, we can join groups of like minded people, who also don't do it, we can build big buildings and hang out with other people who don't do it, we can discuss with our children openly and honestly why we do or don't so something,  but we cannot make laws that force everyone to do it this "one right way aka OUR way." There isn't one right way.

I like my tea, my bacon, and freedom. I don't like tobacco, raw sewage and narrow minded people.

See, there was that so hard? No need to go back. If some people want to wallow in their own sewage, I am not going to stop them. I am not going to visit them either.

The Irony

I stumbled upon this cartoon via various Twitter sources and I think it is worthy of posting. The thing I cannot  stand most about most people is the hypocrisy of their opinions, most especially about politics, most especially about the legislation of social issues.

I love that Senators on the far right, who keep trying to slap their religious views all over my body, bristle over the fact that the Congress passed a health care tax package(so says the Supreme Court-- who totally made a judicially conservative ruling btw), which they reject.

So which is it-- the government can control women's access to health care but women's and women's alone? A woman's employer should have more rights than she in the matters of insurance coverage based on his or her religious values-- even though the employer requires her to pay a portion of the premium? I have seen in my life time the erosion of my choices and the availability of those choices. I have been denied care by a pharmacist who did not agree with the availability of a drug which has FDA approval. I shelled out roughly 14% of my take home pay to purchase an insurance policy, which covered nothing in terms of GYN care or birth control... because my employer thought it was trivial. A little known fact-- most of us are covered under ERISA health care plans-- so guess what-- the government has been involved in your health care insurance for a long time-- the Department of Labor to be specific.

Music Monday: Lady Gaga - Born This Way

 L had her Spring Dance show this weekend. She has been practicing like there is no tomorrow. This year the theme was music. The girls started in 1900 and danced their way through the decades.  All the way to 2012!

L's group did a great King Swing... then the two youngest members of the Tap Co danced the heck out of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy! 

While I loved the entire show... the moment that made me cry was the finale, when L came out with a million dollar smile, singing and dancing to Born this Way! Her passion and enthusiasm-- to be who she was born to be.

That is all I want for either of my kids. I want to them to feel that they are free to be who they were born to be. The best part, I don't have a say in this. I firmly believe there are some things about us, that we are just born with. For L it is her passion to dance. Her father and I are not making her do this, we are supporting her. The drive, the enthusiasm,  the talent and the desire. That is all her. 

This goes for who my babies will marry, if they marry. Who they are at their core was decided before they drew their first breath. L danced in my womb and E napped most of the time, with a stretch every now and again. L has a big personality and E is quieter. 

When the time comes, they will fall in love and they may or may not decide to build their own families and I will be happy for them. It isn't for me to decide what or who makes them happy. It isn't for anyone else to decide either... All the gods in the world don't get to decide either-- sure all choices may have consequences in the here after (if there is a here after.)  We own our own choices and we were born that way.

I want my children to grow up in a world where they are free to pick which religion, if one, suits them. I want them to grow up in a world where they are free to love and build a family that fits their image, not someone else's.

My babies were born that way.

Music Monday: Lady Gaga - Born This Way