Category Archives: Activism

GENERAL – Light posting lately

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I’m getting married in the morning! Ding dong!
The bells are gonna chime. Pull out the stopper!
Let’s have a whopper! But get me to the church on time!

I gotta be there in the mornin’
Spruced up and lookin’ in me prime.
Girls, come and kiss me;
Show how you’ll miss me.
But get me to the church on time!

If I am dancin’ Roll up the floor.
If I am whistlin’ Whewt me out the door!
For I’m gettin’ married in the mornin’
Ding dong! the bells are gonna chime.
Kick up an rumpus But don’t lost the compass;
And get me to the church, Get me to the church,
For Gawd’s sake, get me to the church on time!

I have been a little preoccupied lately with wedding preparations and thank you for the forbearance you all have shown. Tomorrow I’m getting married, there won’t be a honeymoon, and I’ll be back in the saddle again. We did the ceremony Saturday.

Two meager bunches of calla lilies cost almost a hundred dollars. I had no idea. None. Where I grew up those were weeds. But then again even there they didn’t bloom in January.

So the house is ready, the food is ready, the guests are on thier way and we’ll do it in front of the fireplace – before a cross though, no chalice and dagger.

Back among you on Wednesday.

WEDNESDAY

That article was supposed to post on Friday, but I got busy and besides it would have distracted from Xakudo’s rather meatier posts anyway, so I let it slide. But I’m back on the block again.

The ceremony itself was short and efficient, but the minister made it dignified, relaxed and very warm. We held it in front of the fireplace in the living room. My husaabnd choked up during his vows and I managed to hold off telling him to pull himsefl together until the very end, when he had pulled himself together. My mehtod of keeping level was to stare forward or at the floor. Whatever works. Then when the minister proclaimed us married, everyone broke out in applause. This unsettled stodgy Episcopalian old me; this kind of thing is more Lutheran, but what really unsettled me was how long it went on – minutes and minutes, seemingly forever. Most of our friends there were straight; I hadn’t realized how much this meant to them too. I thanked them for coming and honoring us with their presence, and for their votes and said that this was one time the political was personal.

Seattle One Night Count

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Last night my girlfriend and I participated as volunteers in this:
http://www.homelessinfo.org/what_we_do/one_night_count/2013_press_release.php

It was actually quite a lot of fun, although I could have done without the 2am starting time. A whole bunch of volunteers divided up into groups, each of which was assigned a small part of Seattle. Each group thoroughly walked their area and counted homeless people. The intent was to get some good numbers on how many unsheltered homeless there are in Seattle during the winter.

Our group only ended up seeing a single homeless person, but other groups saw quite a few more. Here are the final results:
http://www.homelessinfo.org/what_we_do/one_night_count/2013_results.php

The gender of most of the homeless people could not be determined (1615 unknown gender). For example, the homeless person we saw was wrapped in many blankets, and given that we were not to disturb them, it was therefore difficult to determine their gender. But of the homeless whose gender could be determined[1], the large majority were men (897 men vs 205 women). Which shouldn’t be surprising to those familiar with existing homeless statistics[2].

There could be a variety of reasons for this disparity. But I couldn’t help but notice that the press release phrased this as “2,736 men, women and children had no shelter in King County last night”. There’s nothing particularly wrong with such a phrasing. But I couldn’t help but wonder if the gender ratio were reversed, would they have still used such gender-neutral phrasing? Maybe they would. I don’t know. But it caught my eye regardless.

In any case, I’m very glad I participated, both because it was fun, and because I feel good helping out with data collection. Solid data is important.

Footnotes:

[1] It’s worth noting, of course, that there was likely some amount of mis-gendering that happened for a variety of reasons (e.g. transgender people), but I think it’s unlikely to have biased the gender numbers substantially.

[2] However, it’s good to be skeptical of numbers where such a large proportion fall under “unknown”. It’s easy for there to be confounding factors–many of which we might not think of–that would make the known ratio not translate to the unknown ratio. So I would call these numbers on the gender of unsheltered homeless “suggestive”, but not definitive.

ACTIVISM – One Piece of Advice at a Time

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“Is cunamh mór comhairle mhaith” – “Good advice is great help.”

It is also a form of activism.

Someone getting ready to marry was presented a really lopsided prenup and didn’t know what to think of it, so he asked the Reddit community on r/Mensrights. As far as he’s concerned, they came through for him.

This is what he was wondering about:

My future in-laws want to talk to me about a pre-nup and they want to add a few extra clauses in it. I have not spoken to them yet, but I suspect the clauses are: 1. My fiancee will keep all of the inheritance (probably during the marriage too, not just in the case of a divorce). 2. Assets will be split 75%-25% (75% paid by me of course) On top of this: – My fiancee will be a stay at home mom – I will probably pay an obscene amount of spousal support, especially considering the stay at home mom part.

As others pointed out, the mandated SAHM part and the weird split of assets as well as the presumption of spousal support are all big throbbing red flags. Even the part about the way her inheritance would be handled is a red flag, because it means she reamins financially separate in a way he doesn’t. In all it makes him look less like a husband and more like a live-in sperm donor.

Anyway, this is a form of activism, because after all the personal is political.

Family law is unequal in the US as are the cultural expectations around marriage. The only way to make permanent change is to work at one marriage at a time, one parenting agreement at a time, one DV case at a time. Of course there will be times when some broad institutional action is needed – an unfair law or policy has to be overturned, a bigoted judge has to disciplined or even taken off the bench. But in the end, it’s the eaches that make the real difference.