Mendolonium

I made the mistake this weekend of reading an article by a flight attendant about ten gross things she’d witnessed on an airplane.  I clicked over to the article because it had come up on my google news feed under the topic of “breastfeeding”.  Wondering what she had to say about breastfeeding I read:

9. Breast Milk Drippage
A few passengers notified me of something leaking from the overhead bins down onto their heads. The look on the men’s faces was priceless when a woman stood up and said, “OMG….My breast milk! It’s not frozen anymore and it’s leaking what should I do?!”

Can we stop already with thinking of breast milk as gross?  I would hope that people realize that without breast milk none of us, including, Ms. unprofessional flight attendant, would be here.  How exactly does she think that babies are fed?  Or is it that women are not to leave the house as breastfeeding mothers lest we somehow expose people to breast milk.  I would also hope that people know that when they ingest cow’s milk that they are drinking a fluid that was recently inside an animal that likely spends most of its day standing around in her own feces.  If any milk is gross, it’s not breast milk, that’s for sure.  But why did the author include this example as one her “grossest things they have seen” – because it is breast milk.  I don’t think it would have made her list had someone’s soda bottle or baby’s bottle of formula dripped down upon the other passengers.

I am a working, traveling breastfeeding mother and have pumped on and carried milk onto multiple domestic and international flights.  I feel such empathy with that poor mother.  When I have come home from a trip, cooler full of breast milk, I thought of that breast milk as the most valuable thing I was carrying.  You know when you get the safety lecture about how if you must evacuate the airplane due to an emergency you should leave all your belongings behind?  When listening to that lecture I always thought, “I’ll leave everything but the milk – that is coming with me!”  Instead of bashing the mother who was only trying to do the best for her child, perhaps the flight attendant could have acted professionally and helped her – offering to store her milk in the galley refrigerator or providing her with ice to help keep it cold.

I am not asking anyone to drink breast milk or touch  breast milk or even like the idea idea that breasts exist to make milk.  But the idea that breast milk is “gross” is just ridiculous and needs to just stop.

My boys have a silly little game they like to play.  One of them suddenly will call out “Raise your hand if you like….”  The “like” can be followed by anything; they’ve asked if we like snakes and princesses, ice cream and grilled cheese, (for the record, not really, not really, yes and yes).  You get the idea.  They are both delighted when everyone in the room raises their hand; when we find something in common between all of us.

I was perusing CNN and came across this piece:  Where are all the millennial feminists?    Born in 1978, I fall on the border between Gen X and Gen Y (the Millennials).  I don’t quite fit in with either generation.  But I am definitely a feminist.

If you had asked me ten years ago, when I was 24, I am not sure how I would have answered.  Of course I would have said that women should receive equal treatment to men but I am not sure I would have identified as a “feminist”.  I suspect that for many young women such as Katy Perry and most likely my younger self, the notion of feminism is ingrained with negative tarnish?  I wonder why this is; is it because fundamentally women want to be thought of as likeable and we think that likeable does not equate with challenging the status quo, or specifically men?  Maybe I thought that because I liked wearing a bra and high heels that was somehow mutually exclusive with being a bra burning feminist?  At 24 I didn’t even know that the entire image of a bra-burning feminist was, in fact, a complete myth – IT NEVER HAPPENED.

Now, at 34, I have personally experienced more incidents of insidious and outright discrimination than I can count.  I have seen how people already treat my one year old daughter differently than her brothers.  I have read story upon story of the heartbreaking discrimination and abuse that women continue to be subjected to based solely on their gender.  When I was younger I might have heard about a woman being disscriminated against and said it was wrong but also not had much sympathy for that woman unless she spoke up and fought back.  Now I know the deep love that a mother has for her children and her fierce visceral need to protect them that might make her reluctant to speak up lest it jeopardize her security.  I can see how our children are sponges absorbing everything we teach them and how a child raised in a culture of gender bias may simply be unable to speak out; even as an adult to comprehend that life could be different.

We all – men and women – regardless of race or creed or country of origin – have something in common; we all started out as children; children given birth to by a woman.  The human race ceases to exist without women.  I don’t have a choice about being a woman and while I might have a choice as to whether or not to have a child, women as a whole do not.   You don’t get to treat people differently for biological circumstances that are beyond their control.   You don’t get to treat people differently for having a different skin color, or having a disease, or loving someone of the same gender.  You don’t get to treat someone different for simply being a woman or a mother; for having uterus and choosing to use it..  Not only is morality on our side, but the law is as well.  But just because something is enshrined in law doesn’t make it so.  We have to keep pushing to demand equal treatment and equal protection.

The CNN piece references this simple definition of feminism:

 Merriam-Webster’s: Feminism (noun) 1: the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2: organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests

This is feminism:  equality between men and women and working to achieve it.  By this definition I am a feminist; my husband is too.  I expect my daughter will be a feminist and I expect the same of my sons as well.  Feminism is not about what age or what gender you are – it is about equal treatment for all people, regardless of gender.  “Are you a feminist?”  We should all raise our hands.

As Thanksgiving approached, my facebook and Google Reader feeds were spiked with frequent, derogatory references to the gluttonous consumerism of “Black Friday“.  People decried the inhumanity of stores that opened at midnight or even on Thanksgiving evening.  Many a facebook status and blog post encouraged their readers to refrain from purchasing anything on Black Friday and to instead support “Buy Nothing Day“.

I went out on Black Friday and bought a few items that were on my long-standing list of things to purchase (new set of sheets for our bed, chocolates, laundry detergent).  I did not support Buy Nothing Day…because Black Friday isn’t the problem.

True, as I walked into Target last week to pick up a prescription, I couldn’t help but feel sad and little sick at the sight of hundreds of flat screen TVs being stacked up throughout the store in preparation for Friday’s buying frenzy.  And I think the desire to get in line outside of a store on the Monday before Thanksgiving to save a few hundred dollars on some electronics borders on mental illness.  But if you buying a computer or a piece of jewelry or a TV wider than you are tall on Black Friday, I tend to think that you were probably going to buy that item anyway.  It is the rampant consumerism of a society that feels that they need the latest and greatest of everything that is the problem.  It does not matter one iota whether or not that item is purchased on November 23 or May 23.  And it goes deeper than those big ticket items too.  I couldn’t help but notice that many of those people who decry Black Friday are the same people that I know make regular trips to a big box retailer to buy bottled water and paper towels and pick up a few cheap pieces of clothing for the kids along with and other consumer items.  Many people have come to perceive such items as necessities and to go through them, literally, like water. When you add up the carbon foot print and water usage of these common items it is greater than buying a new LCD television every year.  For example using one roll of paper towels per week produces 65 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) every year – not to mention hundreds of gallons of water used in the manufacturing process.  The carbon footprint of bottled water is enormous (as much as 600 times that of tap water) and the manufacture of every liter of bottled water requires, on average, three liters of tap water.  Black Friday is simply the most obvious symptom of a chronic disease; of a society that cannot differentiate between wants and needs.

We cannot solve great societal problems in a day.  Call me a cynic, but when “Earth Day” comes around I just roll my eyes.  Is behavior really changed by one day of speeches and advocacy?  As much as I wish it would work to reduce consumption – permanently, “Buy Nothing Day” is doomed to fail as an agent of real social change.  Change cannot be accomplished by one day of sound bite activism. If you really want to make a difference just don’t buy it, period.  Ask yourself what you really need in life, what really needs to be purchased new, and then leave the rest on the shelf – Black Friday and all year long.

I find myself neither joyful nor melancholy today.  I am surprisingly content.

For the first time in a long time I did not engage in much political activism this election cycle.  I am, at the moment, so focused on the day-to-day joys and challenges of life that I simply did not have it in me to get particularly riled.  I don’t expect a great deal from the federal government. I think any bureaucracy with 300 million constituents is bound to be unwieldy and full of compromises that please no one; regardless of who is in charge.  As we filled out our ballots, Jeff and I mused as to how much the result of the presidential election would matter.  While we both firmly supported Obama over Romney we vacillated between the opinion that regardless of who was elected it would be business as usual or that the differences between the candidates, particularly in the areas of civil rights and women’s issues, would greatly influence the progress of the country.  As the election returns came in last night I found myself nervous; hoping for an Obama victory more than I had realized.  The networks started to call the election for Obama and I found my nervousness growing; not wanting a repeat of the 2000 debacle and also hoping that Obama would win the popular as well as the electoral vote; I don’t think a split is good for the country.  We stayed up late and finally relaxed as it was clear that Obama would remain President.  I am glad that we will stop hearing the vicious political rhetoric.  I am thrilled that it will be a while before we have to hear the phrase “the lesser of two evils”.  Evil is a strong word.  As much as I dislike Mitt Romeny I don’t think he is evil.  And as much as I have disagreed with some of Obama’s decisions he is by no means evil.  Both men are products of an imperfect system.  I don’t expect Obama to be a hero; but I am still idealistic enough to hope that he will move our country towards greater equality for all people, a force for peace in the world, and fiscally responsible.

Today I am more content than I thought I would be.  Although Proposition 37 to label genetically modified foods failed I am looking at its existence on the ballot as a huge step forward in advancing the conversation about what we eat.  Proposition 30, sustaining education funding, passed.  Washington, Maine, Maryland legalized gay marriage and Minnesota voted against bigotry.  Elizabeth Warren was elected Senator in Massachusetts.  I read Elizabeth Warren’s “The Two Income Trap” years ago and was immediately taken with her logic.  I would love to see her on the 2016 presidential ticket.

In 2004 and 2008 I volunteered dozens of hours for the Democratic Party and for our local Congressman’s reelection campaign, respectively.  I’ve also spent time advocating at a local and state level on various issues.  Those experiences have all shaped my impressions of government.  I’ve often thought that I might get into politics at some point.  I used to think ambitiously of running for Congress.  After the experiences I have had it is clear to me that my real passion is for the local.  I don’t think we can expect our president or Congress to save us all.  I think that we have to work on smaller scale for change.  Perhaps I will be asking you to vote Gina for city council or school board in 2016.