I have recently had to read more mommy and Christian mommy blogs than I can choke down without a corresponding scream mushrooming up through my esophagus.  I don’t do this to myself for recreation, I promise you.

The declaration that overpopulation doesn’t exist and is a figment of liberal fantasy to try to control people is unbelievable.  A real case of reading data very selectively.  Someone asserted that there is a “birth dearth” and the numbers support this.  Looking at numbers in a vacuum, like most people do, is dangerous and leads to a lot of misinformation.

You have to consider that while world birth rates might be down this year from last (Oh God!  HAVE MORE BABIES NOW SO HUMANS DON’T GO EXTINCT!) the population of humans on this earth works in exponential numbers (do you remember those from math class?) and you have to compare the number of people on earth right now (over 6 billion)   to how many people were living on this earth fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago.

There used to be room on this planet for humans AND Mastodons.  Hell, there used to be room for humans AND elephants.

Overpopulation isn’t about whether or not we’ve sustained a population number from one year to the next.  This planet has been over populated for a long time.  It was overpopulated last year.  And the year before.  And a decade before that too.  So when you pull out the yearly birth numbers you should put it in a context that actually tells you something.

When the world population is down by fifty percent there will still be so many people on this planet God really need not fear we die out, relieving all of you of the necessity to go forth and produce multitudes of babies.

I think that how I look at over population and how other people look at over population are very different.  Some people apparently don’t think it’s possible to overpopulate the earth.  Some people think as long as they and their family still have water and food then the earth can handle more people.

I ask this: how well is the human population on earth doing?  How many resources can we possibly use up, how many more millions of people on this planet need to live in poverty and die of hunger before we consider that maybe humans have already collectively bred too fiercely for the earth’s resources to support them?  Hunger and starvation don’t happen because people are too stupid to grow things for themselves or to find clean water.  There isn’t enough room for us all to grow enough food and sometimes when we have the room we don’t have the water or the money to keep it going.  And sometimes there’s the room but it’s all owned by government and other corporations who don’t give a shit about you and your subsistence living family.

Whether or not you care about over-population (and your part in it) is up for discussion between you and your conscience.

Whether or not it exists is a matter of mathematical fact arrived at by the measurable finite resources on the planet (food, water, land, breathable air), the amount of those resources needed by each human, the number of humans needing those resources, and how fast humans multiply.

You also have to decide whether you’re doing the equation with the minimum needs of people or what they’d need to consider themselves leading a healthy and abundant life, which is really what everyone hopes for, right?

I don’t personally need to write out that complex math problem because I already see the evidence of the answer all around me.

I don’t care about anyone but me:

Having to read this choice piece of idiocy “I don’t care where my meat comes from or how it’s raised.  I buy  meat based on two factors: taste and price.” made me tired and sad.   The same person goes on to claim that all this crap about ethical and environmentally responsible methods of raising meat is just hyperbole spread by people with the specific agenda to boost sales in niche markets.

I’ve never heard a more calloused dismissal of the treatment of livestock by human beings or of the quality of food you put in your body and the bodies of the people you love.

Taste and price.

Taste and price.

I wonder what my life would be like if I based all my decisions based on taste and price?

I’m not a natural woman:

I’m not a normal woman.  I get fresh evidence of this every single day.  The more exposure I get to people the more uncomfortable I feel.  Either I’m uncomfortable with them and their beliefs and their values and their choices or they make me feel uncomfortable about mine.  I know and love so many incredible women and yet I find myself outside their feelings about so many things.

I often feel more like a man than a woman.

I don’t want to BE a man.  I don’t feel like a man in a woman’s body.  Yet I sometimes feel that my general lack of sentimentality is a seriously unfeminine quality.  I put my writing ambitions ahead of my husband and child the way a man is expected to do, to be ambitious enough to demand the time and space to achieve what he’s supposed to achieve out in the world.  I did stay home with my kid and I’m deeply thankful I was able to do it but never has having a child been the fulfillment for me that it seems to be for most other women.

I see children as people.  I don’t have a soft fuzzy lens through which to appreciate them.  They are simply underdeveloped human beings who have a lot of needs.  I really like kids when they aren’t in bunches.  I don’t get them from a maternal viewpoint, though.  I evaluate them as developing people.  I see them as humans who are one day going to piss me off.

I read blogs where women are gushing about their kids and I feel like what I really need to do is go find a quiet corner in a men’s club and light up a cigar and read the paper.  There are a few parenting blogs where the mother in question is a keen observer and an excellent writer who can make me really care about her children and her experiences parenting but so many posts women write about their kids gush shit like “I’ve learned SO MUCH since I had you, my little fluffball-poopy-pants!” but they never actually say what the hell they learned.  Mostly what they seem to learn is that parenting is hard or that they are so very blessed in their lives.

Which is nice.  I’m happy for them.

But what about all the ethical questions being a parent forces you to grapple with?  What about the lessons about death, dying, and how some kids want to kill themselves and aren’t feeling all that blessed.  What about that?

If I was a regular woman I’d say things like “My uterus aches every time I see a baby.” and “Now that my kid is ten years old I feel devastated that he’s not my little baby anymore!” and “I will put off writing my novel until my kid no longer needs me, when I die.”  and “I just MELT every time Max farts!” and “I completely submit to my hubby because God made him the leader of my goddamn pack of feral dogs-

Oh wait- I got a little carried away there.  That was obnoxious of me.

I feel feral most of the time.

When sex is a four letter word:

That brings up this other trend I’m noticing amongst the conservative Christian crowd: the great return of the subservient woman.

I hear women say they are submissive to their husbands even when they know their husbands are making poor decisions for their family well-being because God expects the men to be the head of the family and it’s the duty of a woman to support him even if she can steer the family’s well-being better.  I guess some women think they’re sacks of potatoes.

It makes me angry.

There are conversations out there where women are suggesting that wives should have sex with their husbands even when they don’t want to, because it’s their job.

The other word for making a woman feel obligated to have sex with you when she doesn’t want to is: RAPE.

What kind of asshole bastard man wants his woman to submit to having sex with him when she doesn’t want to?

Any woman can tell you that if you have sex with a man because you feel you have to but you don’t really want to:

a) it hurts physically

b) it feels like a violation

c) it’s demoralizing

d) it’s bad shit and should never NEVER happen

Is this just another way I’m unfeminine?

I’ve been married for almost eighteen years and one of the reasons for it is that I’m not married to an asshole power-tripping megalomaniac.

Rise, Martyrs, for you have suffered for the sake of suffering and now must be rewarded with NOTHING:

Suffering for the glory of suffering for your faith because it’s an honor to suffer for your man/family/children/god… I’m not the martyr type.  Suffering happens spontaneously enough in life that no one should have to orchestrate their own special hell so they can feel good that they are surviving it.

The other day the image of Christ leading people over the edge of a cliff to their doom like lemmings popped into my head.  I didn’t think it on purpose.  I didn’t think it to offend my Christian friends.  I just thought about the concept of complete faith that Jesus is good, that he will only lead people to good things, that no part of his plan is to make you suffer…

and the image just popped into my head because no one can be sure that Jesus doesn’t plan to walk everyone off the cliffs of Dover.

Ted Bundy was charismatic too.