I'm Just Really Sick of This

I live a very privileged and protected life. By global standards--even 1st world standards--I'm healthy, wealthy, educated, employed, safe in my majority culture, with strong family and social networks. I am lucky. The worst I have to deal with is my own anxiety/avoidance and tendency to procrastinate.

But the rape culture still sucks. I'm so tired of it. I try to forget about it--I want to forget about it--but sooner or later it's right up there in my face again in the lives of my patients or my family and friends.

How many women do I know who haven't been sexually assaulted--their boundaries smashed flat, their autonomy disrespected, their bodily integrity trampled upon and their sense of safety violated? Right now, of the women I've spoken to this week, in and out of psychotherapy--about one in four. One in four not sexually assaulted at one time or another in their lives. They tell me this randomly. Couples therapy, ten sessions into it--oh yeah, by the way, my first sexual experience was a rape. Anxiety disorder--I was molested when I was little, but that couldn't have anything to do with it, could it? Depression--I wonder if the fact that my ex-boyfriend date-raped me last year might be affecting my mood now?

And there's no recourse. I told but nobody believed me. My mom said to shut up about it. The prosecutor said it was "He said/she said" and there wasn't evidence for a case. It was just fondling not penetration. She was too young to really remember so it doesn't matter. She wanted it even if she did change her mind at the last minute. She shouldn't have led him on. She shouldn't have been: drunk; dressed like that; out that late; such a slut; so sexy-looking; so stupid; so unprotected; so available.

Rape is inevitable as long as we keep thinking this way--as long as we focus all our prevention efforts on the victims of sexual assault and not on the perpetrators.

Some days I am just full of rage. Sometimes I think I can afford to be angry because I am not one of the wounded. But even I hesitate to address the ones who actually do the raping. OMG I'll hurt their feelings. They'll be offended that I think they could be capable of behavior like that. They'll get mad at me.

Today I'm just too angry to care.

No rape jokes, rape as a compliment, rape as a metaphor for anything else.
No rape as entertainment, rape to sell stuff, rape as titillation.
Teach your sons not to be rapists.
And DON'T RAPE.

More R&R*

Chris and crew did the battle of the bands again at Timpview. They did Led Zeppelin Good Times Bad Times and a medley of two of their own songs. It was fun to watch/hear them for myself. A very low-key crowd though.

After seeing their show at Muse Music last week, Brett took one of Chris' guitars and rebuilt it for him. What a sweetie. We went north to pick up the guitar last night, and C is very excited about it.

I said to Chris how lucky he is to be able to hear and see all the old rocking greats on YouTube and iTunes rather than having to buy music one scratchy vinyl album at a time, and of course he said he'd rather do it the old way. "It was more real then," he said. He's always been nostalgic.

*Rock & roll Red & the Rovers rest & relaxation

Fashion?

So I have never grokked fashion, but have come to a sort of peace with it by only shopping once every two years and only buying things that are comfortable. But I ran across this blog the other day which is by a certified 13-year-old blue-haired fashion genius, and I begin to get a glimmer of understanding. I also like this blog of fashionable old people, and this one for us fatties. Don't worry, I'm not going to change my behavior or my (lack of) style, but I can acknowledge a legitimate art form, even if I don't have the ability to participate.

And always a treat, here is David Bowie.

Ethan and the Purple Crayon

...And Of Course Ethan Max Wild Thing

Photo from Halloween, by Betsy.

Red and the Rovers at Muse Music tonight

They had a good crowd:
Niels:
I think this photo is cool (by Betsy):

I tended Ethan while B&B went with John. Betsy took the pix and video. It's impossible to get the sound, of course. Betsy said she thought they did a great job, and she kept having weird nostalgic flashbacks to when Chris was a little boy.

Oooh, Pretty!

Our house, the Slagowski's tree, our street, the garden. Happy late January!

Health Care Reform: An Analogy

...brought to you bipartisanshiply from xkcd. The embedded comment says, "I always believe the truth lies halfway between the most extreme claims."

Wow

Found here. And comments here. Read all the way through to the bottom.

Bennions 1991

Visiting the Bennion family in Utah - 1991 from Super Acht on Vimeo.

Erich and Robert came to see us soon after we moved to Springville. In 1997 we visited them in Mainz. As Dave says, it's a treasure.

Plenty of Blame to Go Round

Sometimes I wonder if I don't like people's political opinions solely because they write so well [extreme examples here: feminist and libertarian--beware of random bad language]. Matt Taibbi, writer for Rolling Stone and a sort of left-libertarian critic, seems to me to have a handle on the housing bubble in his latest blog post:

...what we’ve learned in the last few years as one scandal after another spilled onto the front pages is that the bubble economies of the last two decades were not merely monstrous Ponzi schemes that destroyed trillions in wealth while making a small handful of people rich. They were also a profound expression of the fundamentally criminal nature of our political system, in which state power/largess and the private pursuit of (mostly short-term) profit were brilliantly fused in a kind of ongoing theft scheme that sought to instant-cannibalize all the wealth America had stored up during its postwar glory, in the process keeping politicians in office and bankers in beach homes while continually moving the increasingly inevitable disaster to the future.

And...

My own personal feeling is that our recent bubbles weren’t much different than pyramid scams and lotteries; they’re the handiwork of an essentially regressive and deeply cynical political organization that systematically hoovers up taxes and investment money mainly from middle-class suckers, where it eventually gets eaten in short-term cashouts and mostly blown on sports cars and tropical vacations and eye jobs for the trophy wives of Wall Street executives. Crackonomics: take literally all the spare money from four square city blocks and turn it into one tricked-out Escalade.

....To me all of these people were equally guilty of making bad decisions to benefit themselves in the here and now at the expense of the whole in the future. When it comes to bubbles, It Takes a Village, and blaming the whole mess on the “socialist” aims of a pair of government agencies seems off base — particularly since the Randian protocapitalists running the banks benefited every bit as much from this socialism as actual homeowners, and perhaps even more, when one considers that homeowners get foreclosed upon, while bonuses are forever.

What do you think?

Me on The Internets...

Here. And here is the cat.

Holiday Party on the Farm

Because Tena and Pesi are moving to Houston next week, we had the party at J.Lynn's house, starting in the garage. Milinda did the decorations. Then we had a birthday cake and photos for Grandma E's 73rd:
Colette and Johnathan are eager to help blow out the candles:
We did the standard gift swap. As usual, nobody wanted the present I brought (maybe they remembered The Brick).
Points if you can identify everybody (hint: the only ones missing were A&J, Michael, Justin, Kelli & Elias):
Johnathan and Colette opened their presents first:


It was a lot of fun. Tena had been hosting it for over 20 years. Not sure what we'll do next year.

Christmas!

On Christmas Eve we went to Rob and Nicolle's house and then down to Temple Square to see the lights. It was very cold, and our trip didn't last long.
On Christmas Day we waited for Rob and family to come after Rob was off work, and we waited for Brett, Betsy, and Ethan to come after spending the morning with Brett's family. We didn't open presents until after 3 pm. How things change when the youngest at home is 16 years old.

Ethan and Brett:
What a stack of loot!
We were so glad to have Dave and Devon here for Christmas:
Grandpa and Johnathan cuddle Babar from Grandma Gene:
Watchers Rob, Colette, Nicolle, and Nicolle's sister Michelle (on couch), Betsy as photographer:
Johnathan Elephant and Colette Pony. Nicolle invented the elephant mask.

Winter in Zion Canyon

On the way back from Las Vegas we stopped overnight at Springdale, and visited Zion National Park. Weeping Rock (above) looks very different in the winter. The deer seemed not to worry about us tourists.
Chris, Niels, and John at the bottom of the Narrows.
The vertical hikes were inches deep in packed ice, and we weren't dressed for winter walking. We drove through the tunnels on the way out. I remember parking at the big bay windows and looking out on the canyon from the side of the cliff when I was a little girl.

Drivers Ed Trip to Las Vegas

So Chris drove to Las Vegas before Christmas with his friend Niels, John, and me. It was originally planned to get Chris all the day- and night-driving hours required for his license, but he ended up with all 40 hours before we left. And it was originally going to be a trip to Los Angeles to visit Boyd & Co. on their way to Utah from Anchorage, but in the end SoCal seemed just too far to drive in the short time we had.

We visited the new City Center,
drove along the Strip,
watched the dancing fountain at the Bellagio,
ate at buffets and In N Out Burger, watched Avatar 3D, slept in, and went Christmas shopping at the outlets. John lost $5 in the slots while waiting for me to come out of the restroom (the $5 was a voucher from the buffet where we ate lunch). After two nights in our $35 Circus Circus hotel rooms we'd had enough Vegas for the decade, and Chris drove us home again. Sweet little trip. It's really not that far away.