What to Expect When You’re Aborting is definitely my new favourite feminist blog. Created by a 23 year old American woman, this blog chronicles her experiences with being pregnant, getting pregnant, deciding to have an abortion, waiting for the abortion, and dealing with her life’s new changes.

What I love most about What to Expect When You’re Aborting is the sheer strength of the writer. Most often images of women who encounter abortion as an option show them emotionally weak and weepy, or “too good” to do “something like that” to their bodies, or incapable of taking care of themselves so an abortion must be the only answer to the regrettable pregnancy and thus they live with this horrible regret for the rest of their lives. But at this time when the discussion of choice is so rampant and the media pressure not to choose is bearing down on you, the author of this blog is standing by her choice.

I am so proud of a young person standing up in that environment and continuing to exercise their right to choice. To take that one step further and to document it in a somewhat brash, down-to-earth, and self-supportive way makes me sing from the rooftops!

As more time and events transpire with my partner, I find myself battling with mainstream ideology on what long-term commitment is all about. I’ve shared some of the similar musings of other feminist writers on being vocal about it, and while I’m not sure that mine are exactly the same, I do know that I personally don’t believe in inviting the government into my private affairs by way of “marriage”, and as a Native woman, I know I don’t need to do that in order to solidify or celebrate my partnership. (We honour unions in our longhouse as something you become twice as responsible to the community for with two people coming together, so it’s actually not just about you, it’s about what you are giving back. Oh and you don’t have to sign a paper to prove that.)

I’m all for people doing what they think is best for themselves, and I truly believe in choice in every sense of the word, but I can’t help but see these “yeah, I know the system sucks but I did it any way” occurrences everywhere that I don’t know how to feel about, especially as a life-long rebel and stick-it-to-the-man-er.

Case in point. My partner and I finally got out to see a movie together (something we rarely get to do) and what do we see on the screen before the show starts:

“Want to enhance your relationship? Then go to www.thinkmarriage.org!”

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Rebecca Traister has an article about Sarah Palin in Salon where she asks: “how did I, a die-hard feminist, end up terrified at the idea of a woman in the White House?”

What Palin so seductively represents…is a form of feminine power that is utterly digestible to those who have no intellectual or political use for actual women. It’s like some dystopian future … feminism without any feminists.

Traister is a great writer and I heartily recommend the article.

But I couldn’t help but feel a whirling sense of deja vu.

Back in March, the Shameless Team and I had the pleasure of attending WAM. There we heard the legendary Helen Thomas assert that feminists should vote for a female candidate, just because she’s a woman.

At that point, I suddenly became aware of the fact that I was in a woman of colour in a room that didn’t have a lot of women of colour.

At the same conference, the very ugly rift between grassroots feminists of colour and grassroots non-anti-racist feminists was brought to the harsh light of day. And it was that weekend when I really started to feel worried, and a little heartbroken, that the movement I’d poured so much of my life into, didn’t - at present - feel like it was for me anymore.

McCain picked a woman to run as his VP on purpose - in the hopes that Republicans might be able to pick up female voters who were still holding to that dream of a woman in the white house. But when Traister says in her article, “Plz, Palin is a woman but that doesn’t mean anyone should equate her with feminism - in fact, please don’t,” I am reminded of how I felt about Hillary.

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Partly because it’s Monday and I worked too much today. Partly because I’m psyched that there’s no semi-clad-dancing-girl-accessories in this video. And even if it ruins my “I listen to bands that don’t even exist yet”
indie-cred, partly because I can’t get this song out of my head.

But mostly because “Before he speak his suit bespoke” is a damn good lyric.

And after you have your dance break, read A Feminist Critique of Pop Media‘s September 2007 take on Kanye’s sordid past with sexism.

Riding the bus down to work this morning I was humming away on my anthropologie-inspired caplet when a rider gets on and sits across from me and he says, “Are you knitting me socks?” My response to this question is usually snarky, but all I could muster up today was a murmur and groan, hopefully hiding the boil in my blood system.

I am the kind of knitter that knits wherever I go. This means that whenever I am knitting in public space someone feels entitled to comment. Often it’s from flight attendants, old men who wanna talk to a sweet young lady, and middle-aged women who think that younger women aren’t domestic anymore. I find it annoying and invasive for a few reasons:

First, I started out as a knitter who knit for others but that’s over now. I knit for myself and love it! I feel a sense in pride in letting down my “must do whatever I’m good at for other people” guard and making self-crafting my personal mantra. Why stop now?

Second, it’s not okay for men to think that the knitting they see me do in public is for them, even if it’s a way to talk to me. Way to start off on a bad foot! Women and knitters are not here to serve strangers with our crafts.

Third, the women who ask me what I’m knitting or when I started knitting don’t bother me as much, but I get irked when they say they used to knit but got too busy being a mom and working to knit and never picked it up again, as if I’m young and I can knit whenever I want without life repercussions. Also, I’m not fond of the refrain, “You don’t see many women doing that these days”. Because we are.

Now that my rant is over (phew!) I’m going to go back to knitting in public and maybe, just maybe, I’ll not be so tired next time and let it out.

Challenge of the week: assert a boundary.

It was a rough weekend and the new week isn’t any more smooth.

I decide to just take care of myself and let the crises in my life sort themselves out. I order the medium instead of the default small. I let the dishes sit over night. I get a massage.

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Today on The Kitchn there was an article about The Perfect Tomato Sandwich and it reminded me of Harriet’s struggle with her mastery of cutting a tomato.

I always felt kind of childish watching the Harriet the Spy movie with my little sister. I was in high school and “kid” movies like that weren’t supposed to make me cry! Especially since I read the book when I was a wee one. I think what I liked most about the story was that it was about a curious young girl who had a love for tomato sandwiches and an ability to have incredibly true emotions for a young fictional person. I love the part in the movie where Harriet is fighting with her mom about being a big enough person to cut the tomato for her sandwich, but her mom gives her a butter knife and splat goes the tomato. Oh the angst of the pre-teen. Didn’t her mother know that she was an amazing spy and had the skills to use a sharp knife?

It was that moment of her struggling with the tomato that I took on the tomato sandwich as my daily I’m-a-new-vegetarian lunch. I mean, if this cool spy can relish in the tomato sandwich its simplicity was good for me!

Reading about the latest anti-choice militancy to end abortion in Canada sure does make me wonder why we in the pro-choice community are not organizing more.

On September 23rd, the always-contradictory titled “40 Days For Life” campaign (as if beliveing in choice does not equate wanting the best life possible for you and your offspring?) starts in Ottawa, where anti-choicers will be protesting across abortion clinics and generally making a scene with their condemning antagonistic message.

These religiously-based gatherings garner hundreds to thousands of participants in support; the “March for Life” alone had over 10 000 attendees this past May.

Does the number of people who show up make what they are doing right? Absolutely not, there are several historical attrocities around the world that have occured which prove that the masses following one state of mind can be quite dangerous, however there is definitely some apathy around defending choice in Canada that it would be nice to do something about. Especially as the younger generation whose ovaries and vaginas are the ones people are attempting to make decisions over for us.

We’ve got a lot to pay attention to in regards to restricting reproductive freedom in this great country of ours. While we might be the only Western nation with unrestricted access to abortion, a closer look at what’s happened in the past six months might make you gather some friends together and stand up for the right to choose.

It’s just too bad that it so often takes the threat of losing something to act on keeping it. But several actions and events are planned for the next year so stay tuned, we need you!

As some of you may know, a week from now I’ll be a married woman. Since my partner and I decided on Valentine’s day earlier this year that we wanted to be wed, I’ve navigated the strange world of the “wedding industrial complex” and tried to figure out, on my own terms, what it means to me to be a married feminist. That meant dissecting the tradition bit by bit and disposing of things that didn’t feel right for me (changing my name, my Dad giving me away, legal paperwork, a white dress), but it also meant having to justify a lot of the things that did (bridesmaids, a limo, an expensive pair of shoes, and a hair and makeup appointment.)

Here at Shameless we’ve talked about how it can sometimes be difficult for feminist writers to talk about their healthy relationships, and we’ve also talked about wedding pressures on women that seem to supercede love, and one’s feminist beliefs. (And then there’s marriage traditions that supercede sanity, but that’s another post entirely.) In the end, I feel like both of us have been true to the things we love and hate about declaring your lifelong partnership to your community, and although at times it’s been hard to negotiate satisfying our own needs and the needs of those we care about (okay Mom, we can have flowers), I think overall we’ve done a pretty good job. Getting married and planning an event to celebrate that transition has been a wonderful way to solidify not only my feminist beliefs in the context of my relationship and my community, but to understand the value of compromise and understanding. I’ve always been very anti-marriage for a variety of reasons, but I realized that it is possible to make a public promise to the person you love without sacrificing who you are or what you believe.

Sure, there will still be people who will be disappointed because they didn’t get a monogrammed wedding favour or a chicken or beef option, and there will be folks who don’t think we’re “really married” because we didn’t go the legal route, but what really matters is how we view our (personally defined) committment to each other.

So in honour of the planning being close to over, I thought I’d post a video of one of my favourite married couples singing about exactly what I think marriage should be.

Extra special wedding-related bonus from our beloved Joss Whedon (which will likely make it into a wedding speech) after the jump.

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