Time for protest

After my first year of college, my rebellious stage started. There were plenty of opportunities to express it. I joined Campus Coalition for Human Rights, Women Working for Change and the Gay and Lesbian Student Union. Through these different groups I protested locally in support of a woman's right to choose, against the University of Delaware's investments in South Africa many times, for gay and lesbian rights and in Philadelphia, New York City and Washington DC for similar classes.

 Once Janet and I got together, we continued this trend, primarily protesting in support of women's rights and gay and lesbian rights. As a matter of fact, one of our first  " dates" was to a protest in DC. We have a wonderful picture of us looking lovingly into each other's eyes, while wearing matching Gay Pride shirts with DC as a backdrop.

But people get older, they may get sick, they may not be able to do what they used to do. I naïvely thought that when this happened to us, we'd be able to hang up our protest signs and our armbands and have the next generation pick them up and carry on the fight. It seemed to work for a while, we've been out of the protest scene since I had difficulty walking about 10 years ago and the world seemed to continue without our voices. I was hoping my writing would be a big enough contribution.

Things have been going on politically that have pushed more buttons than Ronald Reagan did when I was in college. It's these Damn Tea Party People that have managed to reverse women's contraceptive rights to wire coat hanger levels and I worry about all the other rights that we finally have achieved. Janet and I finally were civilly unionized and if Santorum won the presidency, he had vowed to dissolve it. I no longer feel secure as a woman and as a lesbian.

 Janet and I have been talking… I'm in a power chair and she has arthritis in her feet and in spite of that we are starting to feel the need to do something about this. I'm not saying that the next generation didn't pick up where we left off, it just seems as if everyone needs to get active. We are threatened! There is supposed to be a big march in Washington DC in September. I plan to be there… How about you?

My bully – pulpit

I have to admit, because of my current reclining situation in the hospital bed, I often watch morning and daytime talk shows. One of the big current topics that struck a chord with me was the new movie," Bully". It brought to mind memories of elementary school. Then when my mom was visiting, she saw something promoting the same movie and struck up a conversation about my experiences as a kid. Then, when you consider that I've been in contact with my elementary school teachers lately, of course it's a topic I have to write about.

I don't know why I was at target… Or maybe I do. My deficiencies in the little girl world were many… To make it easier for a reader to follow, I'll bullet list    them.

·         I was a quiet introspective child who had a strong sense of right and wrong and related better to adults than children. I didn't make friends easily so I didn't have a lot of defenders.

·         I didn't have the trendiest clothing or accessories. My mom, when I was younger, wanted me to wear dresses to school a lot longer than the other little girls. When she finally conceded and allowed me to wear pants, she still wanted me to dress up and actually I agreed if I couldn't wear jeans. Thus, the reign of the pantsuits began; Hillary Rodham Clinton would have been envious of the selection. When I was finally allowed to wear jeans, my mother insisted on ironing them and when they got faded, comfortable and cool, she said they were worn out and threw them away. Thus my blue jeans were always stiff, brilliantly blue, with an ironing crease down the middle of each leg.

·         I also developed my womanly features early but did not get a bra until junior high school.

·         I was very uncoordinated, and always was the last to be picked for any sport from jump rope to kickball.

·         I was considered one of the lucky ones by doctors when I was diagnosed with scoliosis during a screening in gym class in about fourth grade. I had the privilege of wearing a Milwaukee back brace (that went from the pubic area to up around the neck) for almost 2 years.

·         I was found to be farsighted in third grade and to add to my geekiness, I started wearing glasses at a young age.

·         I was endowed with the final crowning glory, a great big gap between my front teeth. I don't know which was worse in the elementary school frame of mind, the gap or the braces that came later to resolve it.

 If you put everything in the list together, perhaps you understand why I was picked on endlessly from about third grade on.

I won't mention names, but there were several girls who lived in my neighborhood who were just wild. Because we were the same ages, I was expected to play with them, but I had nothing in common with them. I tried but they didn't want to play with me, so avoidance began but when we had to be together for some reason it was never good. There were also a few girls in class that didn't like me simply for the reasons listed above. The girls in class were the main instigators of problems at school. The girls in the neighborhood I just avoided.

 It rarely got physical at school. There were threats and an occasional punch in the arm muscle but that was the worst of it. The main ways to girls went after me were verbal. They had a wonderful song they made up about me sung to the tune of the Gumby Show theme song: "Pam was just a little green ball of scum, scum – be…" Perhaps it is selective memory issue, but I don't remember the rest. They would leave nasty notes in my assigned desk, draw on the top of it when the teacher wasn't looking to get me in trouble and leave things on my chair so I would sit in them and the list goes on. One thing that sticks in my mind particularly was when we had a class trip for a weekend to Mount Misery… The name should have been a warning. We were set up in cabins and thankfully I was not with any of them. We were supposed to make our beds when we got there and then meet up for some reason. The cabins were left unsupervised and one of my nemesis, I'm not sure which ones, went in and took my toothpaste from my bag and squirted it all in my sheets and all over my pillow. Luckily I was forewarned by the minty fresh smell of my bed and didn't climb right in. Thankfully one of the camp counselors let me wash the sheets in the camp machine but they were ruined because of the bleaching done by the toothpaste. I had no toothpaste for the weekend so I had trash mouth. In spite of the efforts of my enemies, I still had a pretty good time and had my first dance with a boy that I had a crush on.

Looking back on those days, I can say in all honesty that in spite of all the bad girls’ efforts, I still had some good times. I had a few select friends that I played hopscotch, jump rope and horsies with. I also was “friends" with several adults at Johnson School including the woman that watched the schoolyard during recess and the playtime breaks after lunch. I would hang out with her and chat and I really enjoyed our time together. I was a Library Aide and I liked my time doing it and spending time with Mrs. Gargodian, the librarian so much that I think it was a factor in me being a librarian as an adult. (She had such a great librarian name!) Under her tutelage, I learned to use some machines that are still used in libraries today and I could use them better than anyone else and repair them. Of course I enjoyed almost every single teacher I had there. I wouldn't be the person I am today if not for their hard work and encouragement.

 I don't know how I would have dealt with things if there was the technology then that we have today. If that wonderful little song, " Scum – Be Pam" was posted on Facebook rather than sung in front of a few classmates, it would have been a lot more difficult to get over. I think bullying is an issue that has to be addressed more strongly today than in the past. I don't think that old attitude of “If I could deal with it as a kid 30 years ago, then they can deal with it today" works anymore. Times have changed and approaches to problems need to change accordingly.

ESPN and women's sports

I was watching the NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four Championship on Sunday. I had been looking forward to this all week. The men's finals were on a major national network, I believe CBS. The women's championship, however, was put on the less mainstream ESPN network… Well I shouldn't complain about this, at least women’s sports were finally featured somewhere. During the main part of this season, you would find men's basketball on almost every national network and sports dedicated channels buat you only find an occasional women's game.

 But I laid aside my disgruntlement, and settled back with my chocolate covered raisins and my one third of a bottle of beer, the allotment the doctor allows me because of my pain medication, to watch the games. Of course first, there is the pregame show with its little interviews of coaches and players and discussions of team strategies. What came next stopped me in mid-chew. They were interviewing the coach of the Baylor team, the team favored to win the whole shebang, and she is one of the top women's coaches in basketball. I was expecting the interviewer to discuss game day strategy with the coach, Kim  Mulkey. My fourth grade teacher at instilled feminist sensibilities in me and what came next plucked every nerve and I started yelling at the TV. Instead of respecting her as a great coach and strategist, the interviewer began discussing her great fashion sense and how wonderful she looked on the sidelines. Then the camera pulled back and a series of approximately 30 pictures of her wearing different outfits was featured. Another five minutes was spent discussing why she wore pants instead of skirts or dresses. To her benefit, Coach Mulkey approached the whole thing professionally and answered all questions respectfully. I would've ripped the interviewer a new butt-hole.

I decided to breathe deeply and try and enjoy the rest of the evening's entertainment. Right before the game started, as is customary, they had the players introduce themselves. Let me explain how this usually happens. Each player states their name and their position, quite often looking stern to intimidate. This is what always happens at the men's games and at previous women's games I've watched on TV. Now let me tell you how team introductions occurred during the Final Four women's games. Each woman smiled sweetly for the camera, gave her name, her position and told something cute about herself, such as liking puppies or enjoying playing video games on her iPad. There was a lot of simpering and giggling.

 After the feminization of the coach and the players, the games went on and they were very enjoyable. The final championship game took place several days later. I am pleased to say that apparently someone or several someones complained to ESPN about the Coach Mulkey fashion segment. Although they repeated several interviews from the previous presentation, this one was cut out. But they did still include the silly player introductions. My take on ESPN's presentation is that clearly they felt the need to feminize the players and at least one of the women coaches. Why? I don't know. Maybe they felt their viewers would find strong women threatening or intimidating. Maybe They found them threatening or intimidating. I find it so frustrating that strong women often are not celebrated … The Baylor team did something that no women's OR men's basketball team had ever done, going 40 –  0 in a single season.

 Well faithful reader, give me your honest assessment. Would you have been scared of Coach Mulkey if you only knew about her game strategy, rather than her clothing preferences? And would any of the games be less satisfying if you didn't know the players liked puppies, kittens or sleeping? I don't know about you, but I'd like ESPN to approach women's sports as seriously as men's.

Dissatisfying conclusion to the research project

I approached my research with every intention of writing something worthy of the New York Times. To refresh your memory, that I was going to I last wrote that I was going to look on the websites of all candidates to check their platforms about their positions on disability issues. I was also going to go through several databases and find articles from journals, magazines and newspapers that discussed these issues. That looks pretty clear-cut doesn't it?

 Well, I started with Republican candidates and checked the Gingrich, Romney, and Santorum platforms. Since they were quite long, I limited myself to the health-care portion of each figuring that both myself and blog readers would be more interested in the health care related disability issues. I scanned about 30 pages worth of information and became frustrated when I could not find any mention of disability.

I decided to switch to the databases. I used InfoTrac and a newspaper database to start. I searched the candidate' s name linked with the wildcard version of the word disability so that all forms of the word would be found, such as disabled and disability. The search string looked like this:

 Gingrich AND disab$

 When I found very few articles that were relevant after trying each Republican candidate, I have to reach certain conclusions. Other than an article about Santorum's claim that contraception is a way to cull the disabled at birth, I found very little. I started out on this research quest because I thought that I had a mistaken belief that the disabled community seemed inconsequential to the candidates. Although I may be inclined to revisit this project again at a later date, and in spite of the fact that I didn't get to the Democratic side of the issue, I have to say that the assumption that I went into this with seems to be correct.

  The next question is what do we as a community want to do about it? Feel free to comment on this blog post about your thoughts. I gave you mine…