Levels of Love

Can you love someone else's children? Adoptive parents say "absolutely yes!" Do step-parents say the same thing? http://www.thedhx.com/2008/08/17/other-womens-children/

Hide the Presents

It's time to hide presents at our house. My parents used to hide presents before Christmas, but I always found them. It was rare for me to not know what I was getting well before the big day. The challenge was to find them before they were wrapped - sometimes I could get enough of the tape neatly unstuck to peek inside and see what I had, but that was always dangerous. One tiny little rip could give away the whole covert operation.

In my house, wrapping the presents ahead of time actually causes more of a problem than merely hiding things in plain sight. Our autistic son Jack loves presents, by which I mean he loves opening them. He generally cares little about what's inside, it's the thrill of opening that gets him going. And he is absolutely oblivious to the shame of detection. He'll unwrap a present right in front of you, at high speed, just to get it open before you finish leaping over the furniture in a vain attempt to reach him before he exposes the big surprise you bought for one of the other kids. If it's his present he opens, it's basically "so what?" Just wrap it again and give it to him on christmas morning.

So in our house, if you wrap presents before you hide them, you had better have them under lock and key. And on Christmas morning, assign someone to guard the presents, otherwise Jack will have opened EVERYONE's presents within three minutes of being let into the living room. I can't count the number of times he's opened everything when no one was looking - the first time he did it was before christmas and he opened every single thing under the tree and then we had no idea what belonged to who or where it had come from. That was a mess. That was the last year we put any presents under the tree. Ever since then our tree has been rather lonely looking, as all the beautifully wrapped packages that get delivered immediately get locked up in the back of the closet. So much for pretty wrappings. We also had to stop using tree ornaments that looked like little wrapped packages after he tore all those up as well.

My kids love cell phones

. . . and I don't know why.

My two teenage girls go wild for new cell phones. They are both at the young end of teenagehood, so they don't actually make that many phone calls. I don't allow text messaging, so they don't do that at all. (They also are bewildered and completely unable to comprehend why I don't allow texting, which I'll liken to my own bewilderment as to why my parents didn't allow me, at 16, to go out to bars even though I could).

Experience Mental Illness

I do not have bi-polar. But I do have some insight on how mentally and physically tiring it can be for those who do have it. And you, too, can gain this insight. Here's how.

Sign up to live for a week with a person who is cycling. Cycling is the psychiatric term for moving from one mood level to another. Not all who have bi-polar cycle to the extreme ends of the mood spectrum, but they swing farther and faster than those who do not have bi-polar. There's also differences in how long each cycle is. For some, each cycle can be weeks or months, for others, there can be several cycles in one day.

In my house, my husband's cycling tends to scoop me up and carry me with it. When he cycles, he sort of clings to me, I assume for some hope of stabilization to prevent himself from taking destructive actions when he's not fit to be making decisions, but by demanding my attention I am forced to respond, at least to some degree, to his own mood, which often takes me through extreme emotions as I struggle to respond to the panic in his own behaviour and mood. It often is like the reaction you would have when you recieve tragic news - a loved seriously injured, a crisis pending, family members arrested, you know the type of thing. For a person without bi-polar, that is the type of event that can cause an uncharacteristically sudden change in mood and thought. Those times cause stress and fatigue.

So when my husband is cycling, and I am forced to respond to his out-of-proportion reactions to events or words, the same type of sudden change is induced in me, along with the stress and fatigue that follow. And it intereferes with my ability to go on about my normal daily activities. Which, I believe, gives me a tiny taste of the toll that mental illness takes on those who live with it.

It ain't pretty.

Wow there's a lot of us

I have to give a shout out to AMC Theaters. They are a national chain and they have begun a regular event - "sensory friendly" movie showings. They appear to be working with autism societies in cities all over the country to publicize these periodic showings of first-run movies designed specifically for audiences who might have trouble or be worried about attending regular showings. I could find no mention of this on the AMC Entertainment website, but they are doing these all over the country.

During these special showings, the lights are left up, the sound is lower than usual, and the audience is free to be noisy or walk around as necessary. The theater also allows people to bring in their own snacks and beverages so that special diets can be accomodated.

I attended one of these this past Saturday. I have one son with cerebral palsy and one with autism. I still take the son with cerebral palsy to regular movie showings, even though he can get loud when he is excited. He's non-verbal, and since he uses a wheelchair he is obviously disabled, so while I would prefer he not shout in the theater, other audience members give him a bit of a pass. It's harder with my son with autism, though. He does not look so obviously disabled, but he is also loud sometimes, and he also ocassionally jumps up and down or rocks violently in his chair, which is disconcerting to others, especially now that he is larger than I am. So we had pretty much stopped taking him to theaters.

But Saturday, it didn't matter! Everyone in the audience knew what was going on , and was probably sitting next to their own child who was doing something "weird." One little boy was wandering the aisles examining people's watches. Another ran around and around the front section of seats for most of the movie. I saw people escorting special needs audience members from toddler age to up into their twenties.

The experience was so wonderful, and I will definitely be going everytime they have one. I think our local AMC is planning to do this monthly. It was great because both my sons enjoyed themsleves immensely - without me constantly trying to shush them - and because so many other parents were able to do something fun for their kids without being stressed about their behavior, which means the kids didn't have to stress either.

Support AMC. They are good corporate citizens.

Parenting Teenager, Seeking Sanity

My youngest daughter got up this morning in a great mood. She’s always in a great mood when she gets up. I’m used to it by now, but always amazed because she gets up soooo early.

Anyway, I got on her about putting her hair pins in a box or bag instead of leaving them loose on the counter, where they regularly migrate to the floor, sink, drain, etc. I’ve been telling her to do this for a couple of weeks now, most recently last night, at which point she got up and went into the bathroom. I don’t think I was out of line in assuming that she went in there to put the pins in a bag. I was, however, mistaken, because this morning they were still all over the counter.

So I said, standing over her in the bathroom, with great drama, “Put your hair things in a bag!”
I got the look, and a highly indignant “I’m doing that right now!” as she grabbed a bag and started stuffing things into it. The shoulders turned away from me, the jaw clenched, the feet stomped. Silence deafening. Clearly I was so very out of line in telling her to do something she was obviously just about to do!

She stomped and huffed for a while, until she forgot to stomp any more.

Later this morning I went to the book store and bought a book she needs for class. She needed it today, or she would lose points for not bringing it. I ordinarily don’t run materials to school, but it was my fault she didn’t have the book, because she told me last Thursday she needed it for today and I promised I would get it.

I didn’t. I’m a forgetful mom sometimes.

Anyway, this morning when she asked for it I told her she would just have to say it was at home. She stuck her lip out a little bit, and said she would lose points anyway, but she didn’t even really get all that upset.

But I felt bad. She did what she was supposed to do. I was the one who needed points taken off.
So I went and got the book and delivered it to school in time for her English class. She threw herself at me with delight and told me “thank you thank you thank you” in that high pitched squealy voice she uses to denote extreme excitement and/or gratitude.

I need to point out that this is not my bipolar child. This is normal child bouncing wildly. How we tell the difference between normal and bipolar often escapes me. This is me, parenting teenager. They do grow up, don't they?

The magic of anxiety

Anxiety struck last night. My daughter was supposed to be inducted into an honor society at her school. I wasn’t able to go because of travel obligations with the other children, but her dad took her. She was excited about the event, and we had even rescheduled her therapy appointment so she could attend – turns out she needed the therapy more than the honor. She got all dressed up and looked lovely.

Then the ugly head of anxiety reared its head for some reason. She entered the room where the students were gathering and left about two minutes later. Her story to us was that it turned out she was supposed to be wearing black and white (which she wasn’t), that the kids were looking at her like she was a dork because she wasn’t dressed right, and that the teacher who was sponsoring the honor society gave her a disapproving look and sighed angrily. So she left, certain that if she had stayed the teacher would have “yelled” at her and was about to send her home anyway.

What I knew at the time was that the written note she had brought home told the students to dress “dressy” and gave some examples. It did not say they needed to be in black and white. I also knew – but only because I kept asking her until she finally answered – that my daughter had not actually spoken to either teacher in attendance, nor had either of them actually said anything to her.

Tonight I called the sponsor and asked what had happened. It turns out the kids were not required to be in black and white, although many of the band students had worn their band clothes, which are in fact black and white. And it further turns out that the sponsor hadn’t even seen my daughter in the brief time she was there. So not only was she dressed appropriately, there were other students not in black and white, and the teacher who was supposedly about to yell at her never even saw her.

Anxiety – the kind that psychiatrists treat, not the kind that makes me not sleep well before a big speaking engagement – is like that. Contrary to what it sounds like to those of who do not suffer from anxiety, my daughter did not lie about any of the events. She really truly believed all those things. But her “truth was made up of misinterpretations, incorrect assumptions, and added information that came completely out of her head to shore up the assumptions she had already made.

Her therapist calls this “distorted thinking.” So for example, when she saw many kids wearing similar outfits, she leaped straight to the assumption that they had done so because it was required. Then, based on that assumption, she “saw” the look of disapproval from the teacher. Then, based on the clear disapproval from the teacher, she jumped to the “logical” conclusion that she was about to be in trouble and banned from the event.

There were a lot of big jumps in a very short time, and she made no effort to slow down and check any of the information she was assembling. She knows she gets things wrong, but because everything is absolutely believable to her, she hasn’t yet learned when to doubt herself and check with someone else. It’s hard for me to watch this kind of thinking, because it is so incomprehensible. I can’t imagine going so far off track that what I believe doesn’t make any logical sense. But I’ve seen her do it over and over and over. When you point out to her that what she is saying or doing or thinking doesn’t make logical sense, you can see the confusion on her face.

It’s like watching a character in a movie that sees some magical act for the first time. They know it is unlikely, and yet they are seeing it with their own eyes. In my daughter’s case, she understands the illogic when you point it out, but rather than take that as a cue to think maybe she got something wrong, she takes it as a moment of deep confusion as to how something so illogical could be true.

My daughter's world is full of magical moments, but it's not the good kind of magic.

I Can Do It - I Always Have

I'm hiding in my bedroom right now. I probably should say I'm taking a break, but the truth is I'm hiding. My bedroom has a lock, and I'm using it.

My autistic teenager was in full autistic bloom when he got home from school today. Not the loud, raging, scary kind of autistic, but the inconsolably obsessive kind of autistic. In a way it was sweet, because the thing he is obsessed about is the fundraiser for Autism Speaks that we are going to this coming Saturday. But even as sweet as that is, his need for me to read the poster to him and say that we are going on Saturday again and again and again ( by which I mean about every 30 seconds, aka constantly without a breath in between) outwore my very practiced patience.

My family has been fundraising for this event. The organization funds research and services for autism, and I have seen first hand the benefits of our ever increasing knowledge about autism. My son is 14, was diagnosed right around his second birthday, and in the 12 years we have been doing autism things, the information about how they think, how they learn, and how they act has increased exponentially, much to his - and our- benefit. There is still a long way to go, but here's a brief rundown of then and now in the life of my son. I warn you - if you do not live in close proximity to a severe autistic, the details are brutally unglamorous, but this is real life for many families. We don't talk about some of these things to "outsiders," because they are almost unbelievable unless you've lived them, but here I speak uncensored.

Then - he slept about three hours a night. Total, not consecutive. Needed to be supervised constantly or either destruction or disappearance into the dark of night would result.
Now - he sleeps eight hours most nights, and on the 2-3 nights a week he is up for extended periods of time, he mostly will stay in his room (a hard fought battle to teach him that) and while an adult still needs to be semi-conscious if he is up "just in case," it can be done without getting out of bed most nights thanks to deliberately un-oiled door hinges that let us track his movements through the house.

Then - constant supervision was the goal. Taking your eyes off him for even 30 seconds meant everything in the pantry might be on the floor, or the curtain rods would be pulled from the walls, or something like a candle, magic marker, or crayon would be in his mouth with big chunks eaten out of it. Two adults needed to be home in order for one of them to take a shower. We went to the bathroom with the expectation that we would spend the following 20 minutes cleaning up something in the house.
Now - He rarely gets into forbidden things anymore, and does not need to be watched constantly. He will still break things or make messes, but that is now rare rather than our daily life. Adults can go to the bathroom with returning to disaster.

Then - Anything colorful, liquid, soft, foamy, or not food that would fit in a mouth would be eaten. This includes all bath products, all glue products, chapstick, lip gloss, glitter, playdoh, snowglobe insides, baking powder, uncooked pasta, pillow stuffing, and pots of houseplant dirt. My girls spent their early years having to ask me unlock the cabinet in their bathroom whenever they needed soap, lotion, shampoo, etc. They loved lipgloss like all little girls, but generally only got to use it once before their brother would sniff it out and eat it. They learned to feed themselves later than most kids because all food was kept in a locked pantry.
Now - he will still occasionally eat a bottle of lotion or some shampoo, but if they forget to lock it up right away he usually won't touch it. The only thing we still can't keep in our house at all is glue and playdoh.

Then - screaming, running at top speed, jumping and flailing were his only form of communication. You can imagine how stressful the house was not only because he was constantly doing those things, but because he stayed so frustrated when we (understandably) failed to know what he was trying to tell us.
Now - he communicates with a few words, which are mostly difficult to understand, but he supplements with pointing or spelling, and also will write out words on a keyboard most of the time. He stays calm when he "talks" to us, and doesn't get very frustrated if we don't understand immediately. He'll even try different ways to tell us if we're not getting it.

Then - His one and only goal for school was to stay attentive long enough to be able to learn something.
Now - he can read many words, do simple arithmetic, write his name (not legibly, but still . . . ), follow instructions, complete routine tasks, and help out with chores.

Then - toileting was a nightmare. As with many autistic kids, he pooped constantly. Six, seven times a day most days, sometimes more, often very loose and runny. Many times it ran out of the diaper and he'd continue to do whatever he was doing. If it wasn't totally runny, he would often play with it or eat it. Since he also refused to keep clothes on at home, we would have to clean poop several times a day from couches, floors, walls, bedding, switchplates . . . Mornings were incredibly stressful because we had to race to try and get up before he did. If we didn't, we'd often have to mop, wash walls, clean upholstery, etc first thing. Between poop cleaning and the general mess cleaning mentioned earlier, we rarely had time to do ordinary cleaning. Keeping up with the crises was about all we could do.
Now - he still wears diapers and will not use the toilet, but I haven't bought upholstery cleaner in over a year, morning is not a race to beat him to his diaper, and he doesn't smear poop anymore at all, though there is sometimes a little leakage from the loose stools he still has. But since he will keep clothes on all day now, a change of clothing will usually take care of the mess. And yes, he still eats his poop, but not all the time. And as gross as that sounds, it is a vast improvement.

Our lives are not "normal," and much of our day is still dictated by what our autistic son will and will not tolerate. But we find now that with preparation, we can do many things we never thought we would be able to do with him, and this is all thanks to the influx of information about autism that has come in the last ten years. I have hope that he will be able to live a useful life outside of a residential center, which did not seem possible even five years ago.

So our family has been raising money for autism research. Because it is making a huge difference. And I'll be out of the bedroom in a few minutes, because that's just my life.

Not All Holidays Are On Monday

But most are.

My kids' schools were closed yesterday - I thought for Veteran's Day. And I guess it could have been for Veteran's Day, but then it turns out that today, Tuesday, everything else is closed for Veteran's Day. So the bank and post office chores I put off yesterday in favor of staying home and playing with my kids won't get done today, either.

Yay! A kind of vacation day just for me, since my kids are at school. After all, it's not my fault I can't get my work done, right?

Is That Mist On The Lens?

Lots of stuff to think about today. The decade long presidential campaign is at an end. What? It wasn’t a decade? Well, it seems like it’s been going on forever. But this election, as Obama keeps saying, was a defining moment in American politics. This election busted down the gates of leadership, and recreated our collective view of who can be a leader.
I’m glad about the outcome, I definitely want the Democrats back in control of the White House. I can’t say I was an “Obama supporter,” exactly, because I think that term has taken on a particular meaning infused with a bit of zealotry, but I did support Obama in this election. I am not pleased with the level of experience in political business he has, but now that we can look back at the way he ran his campaign, I do see some signs of hope for his ability to accomplish major policy goals.
The very fact that the campaign ran so long was likely a calculated move on Obama’s part. He was a fairly new politician, mostly unknown, with racial baggage and a “scary” name. He needed time to let the country become accustomed to him, and then familiar with him, and then unfazed by him. That was not something that could have happened in a short period of time.
Most politicians in his position, with the White House as a goal, would have used their Senate seat as a platform to create the needed familiarity, but for whatever reason he wanted to make his run now. He was brash enough to think he could condense the experience factor, but smart enough to know he needed something more than the traditional campaign. And he pulled it off.
So maybe the hope of universal healthcare – or at least some major reforms to the broken system we have now – has moved past hope into possibility.
And even if we don’t get health care reform, I do believe we’ve reformed the picture of a leader.

Scented Shower Gel

Grandmotherly women (who come in all ages, by the way) love scented bath products. I'm not sure what the physiological connection is between a grandmotherly personality and a nose that craves scented bath products, but there is one as surely as my cat will want to be on the other side of a closed door.

Which is all a lead-in to the news that I got a gift of a scented shower gel the other day. So I dutifully took it into my shower this morning, at which point I realized I have no idea what the heck a shower gel is. Is it soap? Because it sure doesn't say that anywhere. I looked all over the label, and there was no information on it's purpose. There were directions for usage - "Lather generously over wet skin" - but nothing that actually said what the point was.

I even looked at the ingredients, hoping to get a clue, but that was even less helpful than the label. The list of ingredients, long and chemical sounding, included some things that I could tell were scent-related or color-related, but nothing that looked like a soap or other cleaning agent. Or a moisturizer, or an anti-fungal, or anything else that seemed useful.

The only ingredient that I clearly recognized was "citric acid," but unless the shower gel is intended to strip your skin from your body, which seems unlikely, I still don't know why I was generously lavishing it on my skin.

Oh well. It was pretty and has a bow on the bottle. Maybe that's the point.

Messiness

Today is October 30. Today was the day that the ballpoint pen was patented in 1888. The innovation of the ballpoint was that the ink was contained inside the pen, so you didn’t have to carry around a bottle of the stuff.

The significance of the invention was that life was a little less messy. Anytime I am prompted to think about life was at some point in history, I mostly dwell on the messiness of pre-20th century life. And I’m not a particularly neat person by today’s standards. But think about it – before ballpoint pens, anytime you wanted to write, there was a little bottle of the most awfully staining material known to humans sitting by your side, ready for a stray cat, arm, or wayward book on your desk to knock it over. And even if you weren’t writing, if there was any chance that you would ever write, then you possessed a little bottle of ink, and in the days before plastic, the bottle was prone to breakage if you carried it around without the proper cushioning and packing (and again, this was pre-plastic, so no bubble wrap).

But ink was the least of the messy possibilities in the olden days. Ink was only an issue for people who were writing. Other messiness attached to EVERYONE, no matter what. For instance, I believe that probably the single greatest comfort invention in the history of humankind was nose tissue. I can’t even imagine having a bad cold without it – or worse yet, living in close proximity to someone with a bad cold who had no tissues.

And along that same line, for most of history there was no toilet paper, (no toilets, for that matter), no tampons or sanitary pads, no daily clothing change, no paper towels, no toothbrushes, no diaper wipes, no huge supply of diapers, and - you get the picture.

Back to the ballpoint pen. Before that, I don’t know how any parent had the courage to teach their kid to write. I guess that was why school kids carried the little personal chalkboards (the forerunner of the personal computer, I guess). But even then, at some point you had to go ahead and grit your teeth and hand over the bottle of ink.

So today, we celebrate the invention of the ballpoint pen. The day parenting became a little less stressful.

Microwaves make you fat

Microwave ovens started out weighing 670 pounds. Really. Read about it here.
I don't know if they were commercially sold at that time, but maybe, because that's not much more than a refrigerator weighs.

And did you know a microwave can make you fat?

The article linked above talks about the connection between widespread microwave use and the rise in obesity in the US. But I had already made that connection. When I got my juicer and started making really really good grapefruit, orange, carrot, apple, and other juices, I noticed just how less likely I was to go back for a second glass, even though it tastes so much better than juice in a carton. The main thing juice in a carton has going for it is that you can pour a second glass without thinking about it.

And think about making a yummy grilled cheese. I make souped up grilled cheeses, using grilled onions, bell peppers, and tomatoes in addition to my Velveeta cheese. But at the end of the sandwhich, at the point you're saying "boy, I could eat another one of those!" I never actually go make another one. But let me crap out and microwave a frozen Hot Pocket, if I want another one (I can't imagine why I would want another one of those, but you know how it goes), it's nothing to rip the plastic off and pop another one in the microwave.

So, yes, microwaves make you fat. But they also save you time for more exercise, so it should even out, right?
Right?

Do You Go Farther with Too Much or Too Little?

Judith Warner appears today in the New York Times, opining on the siginificance of the relatively ordinary politician that is Sara Palin.

As I've said before, I don't think the choice of Palin was significant for the fact that she didn't have to be stellar and over the top with qualifications in order to be considered (although I agree with Warner's general point that it's a good thing when women with mid-level, work-a-day qualifications can be considered). Rather, I think McCain's choice highlights the very subtle sexism that still exists - women are in helper roles, and should never actually challenge the male for the power.

So the question is: Does Palin's nomination prove women are accepted in the workplace and in leadeship roles sufficiently that it is no longer necessary for them to be "better" than their male counterparts to succeed, or does it prove that being "better" than their counterpart is still too much of a threat to choose highly qualified women for the top roles?

Tampons

Tampax brand tampons really were the first commercial tampons. But did you know they were sold in the 1930's? I didn't know that. I thought they were an invention of the 70's. I guess I confused the first time I heard about them with the first time they existed. A mistake not uncommon among teenagers.

But no, really. I don't remember my mother ever telling me about them and that they were an option. No, she told me about HUGE pads and these complicated belt things - the equivalent of a garter belt for your sanitary pad - and said "this is what you do every month." If she said anything else, I totally don't remember it.

I think the self-stick pads really did get invented after my one and only product talk with my mother, but tampons clearly exsited both before and after that time. I just didn't know it. Probably part of my confusion has to do with the fact that television commercials for tampons actually DID begin in the 70's. Remember everyone politely and not at all discreetly suddenly having reasons to turn away from the TV and studiouly not notice the tampon commercial when the family was sitting around the TV in the evening (for that matter, remember the family all sitting around one TV in the evening? Now that's a flashback to a time that no longer exists, at least, not without a laptop computer on every lap in the room).

Crazy World

I'm tired of living with crazy people. I don't mean eccentric, weird in a funny way kind of crazy, I mean the seeing-several-doctors-taking-meds-and-going-in-the-hospital kind of crazy. I know it is tiring for the crazy people, but it is incredibly tiring for the family, too. Their crisis always becomes my crisis as well, and when I fail to agree that there is a real "reason" for the crisis - meaning, something other than the fact that you're crazy - I become the enemy and part of your problem.

I'm just tired. Supportive, but tired. Can't I just support you without participating? My lack of emotion and concern at the third time this week you have had a breakdown and required a large amount of my time and energy does not mean I don't care about yoru problem. If anything, I care more than you, because I desperately want you to get well. If you think it's hard to live in a world of your own making, it's even harder for me to have to live in the world of your making, because I can't even see the world.

Gosh.

When did feminists become women?

Want to see some feel good over the top cheerleading for yourself? The California Women's Conference in Longbeach is going on right now, and they are live webcasting the whole thing. Click here for the website.

I'm not sure where these got started - I'll have to check into it - but Texas has been having a similar event for a few years, and I wonder if there are other states doing these also. I'll have to look into that sometime when I'm mindlessly surfing the net.

Anyway, the California event does have some great presentations that will get you thinking. And the webcast is very easy to watch. It's not just a video tape of the event, but an an actual production, which I guess has a lot to do with it being in Los Angeles (okay, I know it's Long Beach, but let's face it, that's the same as LA, even though people in both LA and Long Beach will object to my saying that - but for very different reasons). The point is, there's good stuff and it's entertaining to watch.

But what struck me the most was the tone. Lot's of extreme adjectives, and all as positive as you can get. It's the "professional" version of the cheery positive saccharine of the "Up With People" group from the 70's. Maria Schriver says "extraordinary" in front of everything she mentions, Debra Norville got stuck on the word "amazing," and I think the audience was exhorted to appluad themselves quite a few times over the course of the day.

I am not a scrooge. I don't mean to say I think the tone was bad. I do mean to say it was SOOOOOO much it seemed a bit forced at times, and mostly I mean to say that wow! this is different than the women's conferences of yesterday, which largely worked to fan anger and indignation so that the women, who were then called feminists, would be fired up to go and work for change in governement and business. This conference seems to be all about patting ourselves on the back and "celebrating" the work that's been done - or rather, kind of ignoring that we had to do the work and just quietly accepting that it's there without acknowledging that people who you used to be able to call "feminist" without provoking protest were the ones who had to work very hard to get to this point.

They do still like the word "empowerment," though. That's good. I like that word, too.

I celebrate the place women are now. I do not wish to pretend that it was easy, or that the work is done.

Why McCain Only Broke a Pebble instead of Ground

Election day is less than two weeks away. Woo-hoo. This is the most exciting election we've had in this country in a very long time, maybe the most exciting since the very first time we got to vote for president. Whatever happens, the perception of the office will have been wrenched into a new vision of possibility for many millions of young, aspiring leaders. The stereotype will have been broken, and in a very "in-your-face" way that no one will miss. We've had firsts before - the first Catholic, etc, but until now all the firsts were wrapped in the same kind of paper - white male.

So this election will create new possibilities in a big way - but the possibility of women as president is still pretty shallow, and here's why: McCain put a woman on the ticket in a race that he actually had a good possibility of winning (unlike Dukakis, who took the "chance" when he really didn't have to worry about it costing him the race since he was clearly going to lose no matter what he did). But McCain chose a woman to fill a very sterotypical role - that of protege and mentee, rather than a fully formed and equal candidate. It is a big step, and I give him credit for that. But he was unable to bring himself to choose a woman who was his political equal. Men are much more comfortable with women in support roles than true co-equal roles, and much as businessmen of old relied on their secretaries for important, substantive work (think Perry Mason and Della Street) but never allowed them in a truly equal partnership, McCain has chosen a woman with definite political gifts, but not in anywhere near a position to "threaten" his own dominance in the team.

There are many well-qualified Republican women he could have chosen. But what if they challenged his authority?

I think McCain is mostly a good man, and I do not in any way mean to imply that he consciously considered this when choosing Palin. But I do absolutely believe that he found her more palatable than other female republicans because of it.


Here's some other interesting, sort of related blog posts:
Remarkably Unremarkable - Political Women in the Limelight
Clinton on Palin

Palin, Clinton, Michelle Obama: Double standards for women in politics?