Category Archives: Human Rights

Teach Your Children. . . Well

Posted on by
20

I am getting so damned sick of having to bandage shaving wounds I inflict upon myself with gauze and medical tape to stop the bleeding, then having to go back to clean up scenes reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in my shower.  This is what I get for having epiphanies while holding a razor so near to my ankle.

But this time, it’s worth it.  I haven’t had words for a very long time, they had literally gone, but thanks to a friend of mine (whom shall be henceforth known simply as The Muse, she has inspired so much that matters in what I write) and a conversation we had, I have something important to say, and I know how to say it.

So sit down and listen, because when Mama Ruby talks like this, those who fail to pay attention do so at their own peril.

Now I am going to say one word, and I’ll only say it once, so you will not turn away because you are over-saturated-sick-to-death of reading and hearing about it:  Steubenville.

SIT.  BACK.  DOWN.

That’s not what I’m going to talk about, not directly.  A lot of people have already done a much better job than I ever could, and I’ll provide some links at the bottom for those who are interested.

But, as it would turn out, I have something to say related to this that hasn’t yet shown up on my radar as having been discussed.  And if it has, it bears repeating.  Mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, anyone who is raising children, this matters.

I’m going to tell you how to talk your children about sex, and how not to.  I don’t mean I’m going to give you my value system, so you in the back there, getting up?  Yes, I see you.  Sit.

I had a conversation some time ago with a child of mine.*  I’m going to withhold all details of which one out of respect to her.  She’s old enough to be talking about sex (I think nowadays kids start doing that at preschool, right?), but what popped out of her mouth that day floored me.  It was a remark that came from some of her friends about rape, and if it hadn’t gotten me so livid, the subject matter probably would have taken me a bit by surprise.

The comment was how “such-and-such” behavior meant boys were going to rape her, if she didn’t do it differently.  Again, not mine to share, also not the point.  I got so whipped into a frenzy by this, I gave her the “doesn’t matter what you wear, do, if you’re drunk, etc.” and moved on and on, performing my denouement somewhere around, “I don’t care if you are lying naked on a bed, with a man you have had sex with hundreds of times before, I don’t care if he’s your husband, if you say no, he has no right.“

She got a little quiet by the end of my soliloquy — and I mean in demeanor, she never breaks in on me when I “get like that”, which isn’t very often.  In fact, she smiled a little inside.  Being able to read her, I can tell you it is exactly why she mentioned it, consciously or not.  She knew, but she needed the kind of fiery hot rage of reassurance that only Mama Ruby can provide.

She has good parents.  Wonderful parents.  And I guarantee that they have talked to her about sex.  Rape?

Here’s the thing, my loves.  I don’t believe in an abstinence only approach.  I also don’t believe that every child should be given condoms at a certain age.  I believe that if you are raising a child, you should absolutely do your best to instill your values into them (unless your values are really messed up, in which case you shouldn’t be raising a child and God help them).

But.

Your children are going to grow up, and they’re probably going to do some things you don’t agree with.  And even if they don’t, the odds are extremely high that they’ll have something done to them.  Every parent has that worst nightmare, and so do I, and every parent says, “not my child”.  That second thing I hope and I pray with everything in me, but I don’t say it blindly.  In the United States, one out of every six women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.**

Here is where the conversation parents have with their children needs undergo a seismic shift.  Because we live in a rape culture, that is a fact.  It’s an ugly one, and one that needs to change, but I’m not dealing in what “should be” right now, I’m dealing in the ugly reality of what is.

Parents, when you talk with your daughters (and sons) about sex, if you tell them to wait for marriage, if that is fundamental to your beliefs, I support you wholeheartedly.  With two caveats.  And to clarify, the second caveat applies to whatever stance you take when you talk with your kids, so those of you who have no problem with pre-marital sex, back in your seats.

The first is that you do not ever use the words “wrong”, “bad”, “immoral” or even “sin” when you do it.  That isn’t going to change the mind of a child/young adult/teenager/adult when they have decided to explore sex outside of the bonds of marriage.  I know, I’m sorry, it hurts to hear that, but it just isn’t.  What it is going to do is plant a deep seed of shame within them.  Such that if they are ever molested, raped, or sexually assaulted in any way, they’re going to be that much more hesitant to come forward and talk to you.  After all, if sex outside of marriage is so bad and wrong and sinful, then they must be bad and sinful, too.  Think what that does to someone who has just been horribly traumatized.

Don’t tell me it doesn’t work like that, either.  You expect them to listen when you say don’t have sex before marriage, but not remember all the other things you said when someone forces sex upon them against their will, their want, the very beliefs you have instilled?  Uh-uh.  No way.  You can’t have both.

Which brings us to caveat number two.  When you talk to your daughters and sons about sex, talk to them about sexual assault and rape, too.  I know.  Really big and really scary and my guts are churning just thinking of how to broach it.  But bite the damned bullet and do it.  Make sure that whether or not you think sex should only occur in marriage, when you teach your child about sex, you also teach them that if they are raped, if they are attacked in any way, it is never their fault.  That even if they have broken every rule you have ever made for them, if they have had sex before, if they were out drunk partying, I don’t care, doesn’t matter, they can come back and tell you what happened and you will support them with all of your heart.  And follow through on that.

If, God forbid, your daughter should come stumbling in at three a.m., clothes a mess, sobbing, and tell you she was assaulted, don’t ask what she was doing out, don’t ask her where she got that dress that’s so short.  Sit down with her and tell her that you love her and will do anything she needs you to.  I can’t tell you what that may be.  Maybe the foundation you laid will be enough to help her want to call 911 and report it.  Maybe she won’t be able to do that, and it won’t be anyone’s fault but the scum who put her in such a state.  But at least she’ll know that you have her back 110%, that you don’t think she’s “bad” or “sinful”, and that you want to do whatever you can to help her.

And, sadly, even that won’t make her magically feel better, like when you used to be able to kiss a bump and make it go away.  But it may make it easier for her to see herself as a worthwhile, valuable, beautiful human being once again.

*For those who don’t know, I have no children of my own.  I do have several “daughters of my heart” that I used to care for and still consider “mine”.

**Source:  RAINN | Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network

Relevant Reads:
I’m angry | Meizac
The Wrong Message | The Bad Luck Detective (trigger warning)

And if you read nothing else, please read this piece:
Steubenville’s Jane Doe asked people to do something…

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The ECT Post

Posted on by

So you want to talk ECT?  Let’s, then.  Let’s, then.  I can’t tell the truth about it when I am sober, it’s still too scary.  It’s even a little scary while I am drunker than I have ever in my life been.  Does that give you a preview?

You ask me if I would tell you to have ECT, “If I wanted only your best interest. . .”  We’ve been over the best interest part.  I have, anyway.

Do you know how simple the conversation about ECT would be, if I had only you to think about, someone I love and know intimately?  Were it only you, I would say outright that ECT is evil, it is the most fucked-up thing I have ever, and will ever encounter in my life, I do not doubt that; and if it were you and me only in this world, that it should be banned, outright? Made illegal, a form of torture, a war crime, a crime against humanity, whatever the very worst thing in this world that would bring forth the worst retribution could be?

Yes.  It’s that bad. Honestly.  So bad that I think I may have to have another blast or two, then take my vodka into the bathroom and write this there, because I am feeling sure anything else will make me throw up.

But I need to get the truth, my honest truth, out to you.

Fuck.  It’s a fine line, because once I start puking there will be no more typing.  But I need to maintain a certain degree of inebriation to be able to let this out.  More than two years in the making.

ECT is the Devil, Em.  Capital D, Devil.  It is the worst thing I have ever experienced in my very intense life.  (And wow am I wishing I had never eaten those potato chips right now.  The fear of vomiting is less to me if I don’t taste first what will come up).  Fuck don’t close your eyes or you’ll get the spins.

I have said before that I cannot explicitly say that I am 100% for banning ECT, because some people claim it has helped them.  And perhaps so they feel it has.  But it would help you exactly the way it did me.

Which it didn’t.

Would you find some temporary relief?  Perhaps.  Because it would numb and destroy the pain.  It would numb and destroy your brain.  And the pain would come back, but your brain wouldn’t.  And you are so incredibly intelligent, Em, that at some point in your life you would notice.  Lots of people don’t, and so hooray for them, because they never ever know what they have lost.  They live forever in mindless oblivion, and so hooray for them, because of their ignorance, they are happy.

But you wouldn’t be, as I am not.

I have found peace, this is true.  I have gotten back what I can possibly retrieve (which is more than most people, and now I know why I was never an alcoholic), but few days go by, if any, when I am not reminded of what is forever lost to me.

Forever.  Forever.  And ever and ever and ever.  I may finally have reached a point where I have decided to live with what has happened (consciously, I have made the decision), but that doesn’t mean that I am ‘okay’ and am moving on with my life.  In the broader sense, yes, but in the more exact sense, I will never be okay with what was done to me.  What I said, ‘Okay, do to me.  Please, please.  You said it would help, you said it would fix me.  Dear God, fix me!  Make me better.  Please make me able to face another day, another moment.’

I’m sobering up, I think that’s all for tonight.

Except for two words:  Self-blame.  (One word, it’s a hyphenate.  I think I’m going to vomit up that Grey Goose now).
 
 
(I have edited only major mistakes for the sake of clarity.  I will not allow for comments on this post, because I am in a terror at the possibilities.  Please respect that.)

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

On Being A Bitch

Posted on by
24

(I really wanted to first write a post on all the sweet comments and commiserations and sympathy I got from the lovelies who responded to my most recent post, but I guess this needs must come out now.) 

My mother and I were heading upstairs a few minutes ago, her to go to sleep, me, apparently to write this post (though at the time I had no thought nor intention, the fact that I am now hitting the keys with a formed idea tells me it was a forgone conclusion).

Mom said to me, “You’re so sweet.”

I thought about it, and struggled for half a moment, before responding, truthfully, “Sometimes.  Sometimes I’m just a bitch.”

My lovely mother responded with something like incredulity (on my behalf).  ”What, like I’m not ever a bitch?”

You would have to know my mom and me and have been privy to years of us in our most intimate moments to follow the rest of the conversation.  But the gist was about how when my mom is a bitch, it’s in an ‘I’m tired, I’ve had a long day/week/month, I need some space, I’ll snap at you’ way.  Every man, woman, and child had been a bitch like that.  And yes, through the years, she has sometimes upped her game and been a real bitch, but it has been rare.

Even at her worst, though, her most intense, out-of-control-bitch-ness, I don’t think she has ever come close to me (and she agrees, though she loves me much too much to outright say so).  My level of bitch cannot even be explained away as mood disorder related, though on some occasions that has added fuel to the fire.  I am something that there isn’t even properly a word for, when I am a “bitch.”

Because when I am a bitch, I am intense, intelligent, persuasive, subversive, focused, relentless, forceful, and ten million kinds of dangerous.  I could probably do more damage than an H-bomb.  Seriously.  Ask anyone who has known me intimately and at length. Actually, don’t.

I don’t bring out the bitch very much any more.  I keep her in check, because I know well the harm she can do.  She can destroy nations (though her work typically runs on a slightly smaller scale), because she has a pretty spotless history.  All of her crusades have been honest, informed, and honorable.  How powerful is that?  A bitch who only ever fights for causes that are noble and worthy of her faith, and who can stand up to everything that is dished out at her and still walk away without a spot or a stain.  Gives me chills.

Liberty Leading The People ~ Eugene Delacroix

So yes, I have reined in the wrath, and I have learned to wield my power responsibly.  And I have gone from Liberty Leading The People to La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Which has actually brought me full circle in a way that is not worth my words to explain.  

I present, instead, a visual for all of you. I’m not sure whether to be proud of myself or frightened. Probably both.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci ~ Frank Cadogan Cowper


© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

C’est La Vie

Posted on by
Reply

Or so I keep trying to tell myself.

I’ve been busy the past few days. . .weeks. . . seven months putting music on my new MP3 player.  Toward the end of the ordeal, I was having some problems, because I wasn’t sure everything was transferring properly from my computer to the device.  God help me, I hope that it did, because that thing has so much music on it. . .  I know I missed a handful of songs here and there, but that’s because for some reason they wouldn’t rip onto my laptop.  At first I was damned determined to get them on there, then somewhere in the last 72 hours of solid ripping, transferring, backing up, and checking things, I just said screw it.  I’ll try to figure it out. . . some other time.

In other news, in Syria, teenagers are being tortured and killed by the government.

When I think of the American teenagers I see and the few I know personally, who worry about fitting in with their friends and pressure to try drugs or have sex, or wearing the right pair of shoes or succeeding in school. . .  These are all legitimate, important problems that will affect how these kids grow and what kind of people they turn into, what kind of lives they will lead.

And teenagers in the United States certainly aren’t free from violence, perpetrated by strangers, by family, by friends, by people whom they date.

And we all know that I’m an anarchist who hates and wants to overthrow the American government.

But even I don’t – can’t? – believe that the U.S. government would snatch 15- and 13-year-old protesters off the street, detain them and beat them and mutilate their genitals and shoot them and electrocute them.  And then send them home, wrapped in a shroud.  The American government would at least have the decency to go to great lengths to cover the whole thing up, right?  Ultimately they’d fail, but at least they would try.

If you don’t know the stories to which I am referring, first of all, wake up and get your heads out of your asses.  Secondly, the news source where I read about them has not been able to “independently verify” the stories and video footage.  I respect the fact that they’re trying to remain honest and credible.  But as a consumer, all that I can think to myself is, You know what, that’s right.  Because that kind of desecration and abuse is easy to fake – if you’re a movie studio with oodles of money and all kinds of makeup artists at your disposal.  I somehow doubt these Syrian families have those same resources at hand.

I read an article from a human rights group (completely different case and country) that had in it the statement, “Rape is not a tool of war.”  Hunt me down and stone me, but since when?  The aim of war, be it on the streets of California between rival gangs, or in turbulent nations in the midst of civil uprisings, is to scare and hurt and scar and kill as many of the “enemy” as possible until you are in power, until you “win.”  Rape is a horrible thing, and I’m not minimalizing the effect it has on those who are subject to it.  But by my best guess, these “combatants” have likely never even heard of Geneva, let alone its standards on what constitutes torture.  And even if they had, I doubt that it would matter to them.  Groups and individuals who are willing to rape, shock with electricity, withhold food or water, put prisoners of conscience in cells with no light or outside air for decades, kidnap and mutilate children – oh yes, dear readers, these things are all going on as you sit in front of your computer screen – these groups are not drawing any lines about “acceptable” tools of war.  They aren’t sitting around in councils saying, “Alright, we can beat someone to within an inch of their lives, but we cannot take away their basic human dignities.”

Although who is is worse, the governments and rebels who openly torture “dissidents” from factions who oppose them, or the ones who helped to shape the Geneva Conventions and “covertly” torture innocents – or anyone, then once found out, make promises that they don’t keep to end these practices?

Extraordinary rendition.  Extraordinary indeed.

Moral of the story:  Can’t it happen here?  Does it matter if it’s happening there?  Shouldn’t the human race as a whole stand firm and say, “This is not acceptable, and we will no longer turn a blind eye to the victims?”  But probably I am just a dreamer.  One who cannot sleep soundly at night, because I am not ignorant, I know better, but I cannot do enough to fix this world.

It wouldn’t surprise me if God, if their is such an entity, did end the world, this time on October 21st, or on any arbitrary day.  One morning He might just wake up, take a look down and say, “What hath I wrought?” and decide to wipe the slate clean.  Although for all of you who are waiting for the Apocalypse, what could be worse than what’s already going on now?

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.