I’m so behind on stuff! I have clothes from iGigi to review, memes to fill out, about ten thousand and one knitting projects, fluffy fiber to spin on my wheel. And my house.. fuggetaboutit, I’ve lost total control of the house since getting the stomache thing.

But I was tagged for something that’s been provoking my thoughts all week so that’s magically moved up to the number one spot.

The inimitable Vanessa, aka PluckyPunk, who was tagged by Zuzu at Feministe, tagged me for a seemingly simple meme called Five things feminism has done for me.

Plucky Punk is one of those secret friend crushes for me. You know those blogs you read and feel like that writer would be such a cool friend to have in real life? She’s made some big changes this year: quit her evil corporate job, had a baby, went back to school. And she still manages to be active in the online feminist blog world. And she bought my craaaaazy scarf during the Katrina fundraiser last year! And she wears doc martens! So she has great taste in shoes and accessories too!

I was surprised that she tagged me because I’ve mostly been blogging all about knitting and very little about anything else lately. I used to be quite the politico-blogger, once I was called a pundit, but this became more of a knitblog than much else as the hobby took over my life during the last year and a half. Don’t get me wrong, I still rant the political in person! But I made a conscious choice to cut down on the political and really personal posts for my blog a while ago. It keeps the mean commenters away and my mother from worrying that I’m going to get firebombed or something. She reads this ya know. Hi Mom!

This tag has given me something to think about, something interesting to discuss with Cody. I want whatever I write to be well thought-out and not just imitating other’s answers! And I want to focus on positive aspects, not complain about things that need to change, just enjoy the good parts for the moment. All this buildup for five things. I guess I should get on with them.

Five things Feminism has done for me

I can choose my family
Obviously I don’t mean parents and siblings, although I got lucky there anyway. I mean I can choose who I marry. Or to not marry. Or if I want to just live with someone. I happened to fall in love with someone of the opposite sex and I really wish people who fell in love with someone of the same sex could have as many choices, but I’m trying to focus on the positive here. I can choose to have children, or to not have children, or just have pets and treat them like children. Maybe to have children later on. It’s up to me. My father can’t sell me to a man for a goat (not that he would, obviously). I won’t be forced to marry some creepy old gross man so I can clean his house and birth his little farmhands. My choice. Mine.

I can choose my career
Career is sort of an odd word for me since mine has been sort of not a career, as such. But what I’m doing now is not far off from what I wanted to do when I was young: Stay at home and create art. You know that character Whoopi Goldberg plays in Moonlight and Valentino? Her life (awkward marriage aside) pretty much nailed what I’d always wanted to do. It actually spooked me when I saw it. The art I’m creating is in a different medium than I expected, I thought it would still be pottery. It’s a little different because I thought I’d live in a more country setting and have kids. But never say never.

The important part is, I was able to choose my major in college and get a really good education. And if I want to, I can go get a post-graduate degree or go get a “real” job if I want to. Or both. With the full support of my friends, family, and mate.

There are so many smart women in my life that have worked and gotten advanced degrees. Both my and my husband’s moms worked. My mother put herself through college working, along with my dad. She has a master’s degree in mathematics. She taught and worked and even had her own business for a while. My sister has a master’s degree in English and works and travels for work and is always crazy busy. My best friend has a JD from law school and is back in school for her LLM to be a law librarian now while she works in the library for a law firm.

My father-in-law once asked me if I thought that a woman who got a college degree then chose to stay at home with the children was a waste of an education. (he does his best to have what he thinks are progressive conversations with me, so I try to give him the benefit of the doubt with questions like this) Right off the bat I pointed out that the important part was that she had the choice to do so. And that college-educated fathers had the same choice. And studies have shown that educated parents will raise smarter children. I wouldn’t say that an education exists simply for career advancement, for most people I’ve known, it’s been for the education itself.

I am not a possession
This was touched on with the first one but it goes deeper than that. When I go to the doctor they won’t let Cody go in with me. I actually don’t like this as I want him with me because doctors make me nervous and just his presence calms me down. But the reason behind him not being allowed into the exam room is important enough that I don’t fight it: they want me to answer the questions, not him. They want to be sure I’m healthy and if I need to say something about issues that I don’t want him to hear or to answer any questions about potential abuse, that I can freely without his coersion. Of course, I don’t need this, but I want other women to have that so I accept it.

I am secure in the fact that I am an equal in our marriage, that I have the same amount of input in all decisions and will be heard if I have an opinion about any subject. We joke about him being called Cody Pendent and to a certain extent we are codependent. And we like it. We desperately need each other, but equally. I am not just a little living extension of his success as a man, I am his partner. He goes to work to get money so we can live a happy life together. I stay at home so the pets are healthy and the house is mostly intact so when he comes home we can live a happy life together. But the tables have been turned in the past, there was a time when I worked and he stayed at home. We know what it’s like to be in the other’s spot.

I can choose to look however I like.
Sure there are still people who think that women should act, look, or behave a certain way to be a “proper woman” but in this society in general, I can choose to wear a dress or not without getting stoned by the populace. I don’t have to wear a corset, hell I don’t have to wear a bra. And the worst punishment for that might be someone takes a picture of my saggy boobs with their camera phone and makes snarky comments on their blog. Big freaking woo.

I can also choose to be the girliest girl that ever lived in girltown. And it’s ok because it’s my choice. I don’t exactly approve of Barbie and her clothes but I defend to death the right for her to wear them. As long as she doesn’t give me crap about mine it’s ok.

I can have an opinion
I can write this post without worrying that I’ll get arrested, threatened, shunned by my friends and family, or tarnish my (already oxidized) reputation forever. I’ve written on touchy subjects ranging from religion, the president, the war, dumb movies, evil media conglomerates, unbelievably weird sado-masochistic murder mysteries, to the defense of fun fur and freestyle handspun art yarns. I may joke about the threat of getting firebombed for my writing but only in the most minute little corner of my mind does it seem like a reality. I’ve had some ugly comments on my blog once or twice calling me a dumbass pinko liberal or something but not once did someone threaten to come here and shoot me or my dog. Someone did threaten to shoot out my tires once but she’s from Texas so that seemed to be a matter of course.

That’s the big one to me. You may not agree with me but I can have this blog. And I can choose who I’m voting for in a month. And on that ballot I’ll have to choose between two women for the US House of Representatives for my district: incumbent Heather Wilson or the current state Attorney General, Patricia Madrid. No men in that election. How about that?

So now I’m supposed to tag people. I hate the pressure of tagging people. So don’t freak out if you’re tagged and you don’t feel like it ok? I’m going to choose several smart women whose answers I’m genuinely interested in.

Beverly
Ramona
In fact, everyone in the stitch and bitch group? Consider yourself tagged!
Jocelyn
Susan Colagirl
My sister

Or if I didn’t tag you and you want to write about it, please link in the comments I want to know!

check it - jewelry made from inactive birth control pills to raise money for Planned Parenthood of Greater Cleveland. link via Colagrl

Barry says thumbs up.

Well, he does from his plush envelope flying somewhere over the Atlantic anyway.

I’ll probably be updating this a lot. Please scroll down for new posts.

Items for sale in the CraftRevolution Etsy Shop

felted desert spring bamboo handled purse
Ziggy Zaggy Scarf

PeskyMac’s items up for sale
Olive Heather handspun yarn
Castle Stone handspun yarn

Also, Whitters is knitting stuff to order to benefit the Red Cross and Petsmart’s hurricane relief fund!

I’m bumping the rest down into the extended entry.
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Original Child Bomb

interesting mefi thread about it

Ok, folks let’s have a serious chat for a minute here. Now, I understand patriotism and I fully support it. Really. I promise. I’ve traveled around the world and while I was always proud to be so adaptable as to be thought of as a local (or at the very least not a fucking annoying American tourist) wherever I was I was also quite happy to come back home. Naturally there are things that happen here I’m not proud of but years ago I made a conscious choice to live in the US when I could have done otherwise and right now I think it’s part of my job to stay here and try to fix it at least by the example of not becoming a paranoid xenophobic hate machine.

I’ll admit though that even I get a little defensive when people who’ve never even been to the US try to dictate what we should do - in the same way I get annoyed when our president does it to other countries and we know how limited his travel experiences have been. Or someone who’s never been to the south attempts to dictate the culture there for that matter. People who have grown up in these places don’t usually fully understand the nuances of their own culture how the fuck should someone who’s never even been there be able to fix what’s wrong with it?

So, no, I’m not anti-American or a self-hating American or whatever the current demean-the-liberal phrase du jour is. I actually do consider myself a patriot - just not the kind that’s so insecure in my beliefs that I feel I have to prove it every five seconds and shove it down others’ throats by pasting stars and stripes on every god damn thing I own.

That being said, the existence of an ornament with Santa Claus being wrapped in an American flag is probably the creepiest thing I’ve seen in a few weeks. That’s saying a lot folks I was in a Wal Mart parking lot in Los Lunas on Black Friday.

No goddammit, Santa Claus is not exclusive to the US. He is not a patriot. To literally wrap Santa Claus in the American flag pretty much goes against the modern concept of Santa Claus giving gifts to the children around the world doncha think? He doesn’t only go to American houses to bring presents! He doesn’t even live here! The north pole is not a US territory.

First, we stole the concept of Santa Claus from the Dutch - although there he actually ‘visits’ on a different day entirely and rarely leaves anything bigger than little fun trinket toys. And that figure’s origins go back to a weird amalgam of Odin flying in the sky casting blessings during midwinter while his son Thor wore red and fought the cold to bring the light back combined with a kindly priest who lived around 600 ad later adopted as a saint by the church. And guess what? The original Saint Nicolos was actually a Christian Greek-speaking Turk!

See, Christmas is a big combination of lots of different cultures’ winter rituals - the ancient origins of Winter Solstice or Yule involved having a huge celebration on the shortest day of the year. I’m paraphrasing of course. It was essentially hijacked by the church so pagans would be more comfortable with Christianity because they could still practice the rituals they were already familiar with. Examples of Christianity absorbing then dominating rituals like that exist in pretty much every culture and is associated with every modern Christian holiday.

The tree? The Druids decorated trees with apples and nuts and candles to celebrate and thank Odin for the harvest while later the Romans put candles and trinkets in trees to celebrate the week long Saturnalia parties honoring their god Saturn. Around the same time Egyptians were doing something similar with palm fronds (hello palm sunday). Later during the middle ages there’s the Tannenbaum tree in Germany - which was brought inside because it was a crime to have under strict protestant no-false-idolatry rule at the time. Then under Charles II in England the ability to celebrate Christmas was considered law and the tree thing spread to other countries. Ironically, the Christmas tree was first brought to the US by the Hessians - Germans hired by England to fight against the US revolutionaries.

The date? Historians generally agree that the origin of the date now celebrated as Christmas, December 25th, was traditionally celebrated by the Romans as the birthday of a “child of light” better known as Mithra, a Persian Sun-God who was also considered a kind, redeeming deity. Blah Blah, adopted by the church blah. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Mix those all together and now the modern concept of Christmas in America can be primarily attributed to a big combination of history, Charles Dickens, and various tomes written to make the poor and middle class happy during the Industrial Revolution. And copywriters for chain department stores so you’d buy all their crap.

Got that? Santa Claus is not an American. We do not hold exclusive rights to the celebration. And while I’m delighted by the concept of giving presents, being nice, and making other people happy in whatever religious or secular form it takes…get that flag off of him. Now. Because it’s shit like that that makes other countries hate us so much.

I apologize profusely to my various sources, to the cultures I didn’t discuss, and especially to the ones I did. I didn’t want to write a dissertation I just wanted to get my point across. Tis the season and all that jazz.

It’s not all about us and our flaccid elections, folks. (couldn’t resist the pun there.)

There was some very sad news today (yesterday) from The Netherlands about the assassination of Theo Van Gogh, great-grandnephew of my favorite painter, and controversial filmmaker who had received death threats after making a film about muslim women.

there’s a very interesting weblog entry about it here

ps-my last present of the day in the extended entry
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I totally stole this from motorcitybadkitty