gateway women

tonight i discovered gateway women, a blog geared towards childless women.  i think i'll be a frequent visitor.

the author is in her late 40s and from the UK, but i'd recommend it for anyone well into their 30s that isn't quite sure if things are gonna "work out" in the marriage/relationship/kids department.

she's definitely spoken to many of the things i've felt and thought over the last few years, but haven't seen written anywhere else.  in my head, i've started referring to them as single people problems.

from the "founder" page: 

Right now, there’s a whole generation of women who aren’t in the right relationship and can’t afford to have a baby ‘by themselves’ (even if they could face it).  Professional, educated, intelligent, capable, loving, emotionally-intelligent hard-working women. Women who’d be fantastic mothers. But it’s not looking like it’s going to happen. Where the hell are they supposed to take their bewilderment, their grief, their rage at how things have worked out?  They’ve followed the script our culture set out: worked hard at school, gone to university, built a career, tried to build relationships with men based on mutual respect and decency.  And where has it got them?

Gateway Women supports those women in the tunnel: those women still hoping that they’ll ‘manage’ to have a family. They’re just not sure how. Or with who. Or when. Or who’s going to pay for it…

Gateway Women sets out to challenge the ideas around identity and motherhood that are often at the heart of much unhappiness when the ‘baby story’ doesn’t work out, and to help women find their nomo mojo...  It is liberating, empowering, exciting and transformational work.

in speaking with a couple of friends tonight about feeling invisible, they mentioned the possibility of me being some kind of pioneer, similar to Jody referring to us as a group of women that (statistically speaking) hasn't existed before.

i can't say it's an exciting "first", but it's good to know i'm not alone.

the fabulous margaret cho

i cannot express how deeply i identify with this:

I fly my flag of self-esteem for all those who have been told they were ugly and fat and hurt and shamed and violated and abused for the way they look and told time and time again that they were "different" and therefore unlovable. Come to me and I will tell you and show you how beautiful and loved you are and you will see it and feel it and know it and then look in the mirror and truly believe it. If you are offended by my anger and my might at defending my borders and my people you do not deserve entry into my beloved and magnificent country.

i've had relationships that were about this. my goddess...

but...her message is much bigger than this quote. read on.

we mad.

yup. sure are.

sometimes you feel like you're by yourself out here... (c) e. badu

but i'm glad that ain't true.

check out this post over at new model minority.

addendum: oh, and while you're at it, check out this one, too.

brothas gonna work it out (?)

there are many gems in this piece, but this here?

...rather than continuing to blame Black women for the decline of the family, another one of Lawson’s really original ideas (side eye), why don’t we finally have an actual conversation about all the economic and social obstacles that impede traditional Black families. If the dude is expected to be the breadwinner, and black men are systematically underemployed, undereducated, and overincarcerated, there’s gonna be a problem. Black folks have been saying that since at least the 1940s; the only difference is that we recognized that we weren’t the ones causing the problem. Structural racism was and is. [emphasis mine]

ooooh wee.

always appreciate the perspective brought by the crunk feminist collective. i think y'all will, too.

whole lot of foolishness goin on...

i'm glad the crunk feminist collective took this on, 'cause i don't have the wherewithal right now.

as for this mess? no. just...no. not never.

and i can't deal with this, either.

i'll be back when my sinuses decide they're ready to show some love.  right now, they're in the midst of a painful and highly inconvenient secession from the union.

the problem with labels

when you're truly about your business, they're not necessary.

srsly, if the common definition for feminism [is] to be treated equal to a man. im not interested in feminism. that is not the goal of the women with whom ive worked. 1/3 of black men are in the prison industrial system. i am working for a different world for my daughter.

word.

let our girls be girls

right on.

spiritual repression in haiti

see here.

the gentleman doth protest too much

backlash for donnie mcclurkin's latest rant

dear old morehouse

word.

hope somebody puts this on obama's desk...

drew westen's "all the president's values".

an excerpt:

But even when [George W. Bush] was lying through his teeth, lying through somebody else's teeth (like Colin Powell's at the United Nations), or bombing the wrong country, you knew where he stood. He had beliefs. He had principles. He had values.

Mind you, I didn't agree with any of those beliefs, principles, or values. But once Bush took off the "compassionate conservative" Halloween costume he wore for the 2000 election, he generally told us what he believed in and pursued it as vigorously as he asserted it.

For example, Bush thought gay people like his vice president's daughter were a threat to civilization (okay, maybe he had a point about Liz Cheney), so he tried to sell a Constitutional amendment to make them the official lepers of the United States (since both he and Jeb still needed Hispanics, and we already had a national flower).

He believed abortion was murder and that premarital sex was a sin (once he was no longer premarital, of course), so he used the big stick of both U.S. aid abroad and the federal government at home to prevent everyone he could from getting an abortion, a condom, or accurate information about birth control.

He thought everyone should be able to carry an AK-47 into church, so he opened an office of faith-based initiatives and let the ban on assault weapons sunset.

And he believed that monopolies constitute a free market and that profits are good no matter how you get them, so he gave taxpayer subsidies to oil companies while gas was at $4.00 a gallon and handed the national car keys to Wall Street traders along with a fifth of Jack Daniels and a race track.

Okay, so he wasn't among, say, our top 43 presidents.

But I wouldn't mind hearing about values from our current president. And more importantly, I wouldn't mind seeing him act on them, whatever they are.

i know obama's in a nearly impossible position, and i think i understand what he's spent most of this first year trying to do, i.e., seeing how far he can get while stepping on as few toes as possible.

but precisely because he's in that impossible position, he's also going to have to take some risks.

the situation was pretty much fked when he got there.
there would have been challenges facing any president after dubya's mess.

but we need more. lots more.  and he's gonna have to get stepping on those toes so we can see what he's made of and act accordingly.

my heart still believes, and i've been saying since january 09 that we should give him at least a year before complaining too loudly.

well, that year's almost here.  and i'm not impressed.  yet.

step up, mr. president.  shut the haters down. 

for the love of new orleans...

healing time

for all those who know her, love her, live(d) there, fell under her spell...

may she rise again, better than ever.

diggin this

sista toldja shines some light...

can't stop, won't stop

i'm not the only one calling out the foolishness.

people, we have got to pool our resources in order to protect our stories, our sacred places and things, and our culture. if we don't, it will be co-opted or erased in the great sea of eurocentric universalism.

required reading

read this.

it's less than 30 pages.

DO NOT PASS GO
DO NOT COLLECT $200

just go and read this, right now.

then allow yourself to at least think about what it says.

you can thank me later.

to paraphrase some of my older family members:

this is some white folks' shit.

how do we know? well...the ifa oracle is a binary system. african fractals were purposefully used before any white man knew what to call them. tales about the serpent and the rainbow weren't just pretty stories, they helped explain dna.

physicists ain't tellin us shit we didn't already know.

too much reason can blind you...

what he said.

gay marriage & the black community


addendum: it got QUITE krunk in the comments section, and i started talking to someone who went so far off base i think s/he left the ballpark. don't you just love when people start responding to you on a message board and act like they know your whole life story/ideology/thought process? ay yi yi.

this is why, often, i just write my own blog about something i see on the interwebs and leave the commenting to the flame warriors.

interesting stuff...

flu satire

there are comets older than the sun.

this is why i always think that stories like lord of the rings have a bit of truth to them. theoretically, all kinds of people, societies and animals could have existed that we can only understand as "fantasy"...

don't let the door hit ya

pow, right in the kisser.

for the babies in iraq.
for the regular folks you claimed to care about, then screwed.
for sucking away reproductive & intellectual freedom.

bye bye, baby.