Blog for Choice Day

I have to confess to having been previously unaware of this, but today is apparently the 5th annual Blog For Choice Day. (One of the perks of living on this side of the International Date Line is that you can sometimes get away with being late on these things!) In any case, the topic of the year is "What does Trust women mean to you?"

For Blog For Choice Day, I can't help thinking my entry would be about the same regardless of the exact topic at hand. It would most likely start with wanting to explain why I am as staunchly pro-choice as I am; but I can't do that, because it concerns something a close friend told me once in a moment of alcohol-addled intimacy and then openly wished he hadn't told me.

That's right, he, and that brings me to what would most likely come next in any case: a rather bitter refutation of my inimitible ex's belief that no man has ever - not once, since 1973 - been there for his wife or girlfriend when she was going through the sometimes-unpleasant experience of getting an abortion. (And that would likely lead to me reciting her other greatest hits, such as "all men benefit from rape". But I digress.)

That, in turn, would lead to my addressing the difficult, but essential, point that yes, sometimes the decision to get an abortion is a difficult one for a woman, and sometimes she will experience emotional pain in addition to the physical aftereffects. That, unfortunately, is a tough one for us pro-choicers, since it creates an easy opening for antis to accuse us of contradicting ourselves regarding whether or not abortion hurts women. Here's my response, as neatly as I can put it: sometimes it does, but 1) that is not a reason to ban it; and 2) in many cases where it does hurt women, that is only because the anti-choice movement has done such a great job of stigmatizing abortion.

At this point, any response I make is going to have to veer into an amusing-if-it-weren't-so-pathetic recital of a few of my greatest hits from when I was escorting back in DC. (Tom Paxton said it best: "Some folks you don't have to satirize, you just quote 'em".) These included a lengthy treatise on how the abortion industry creates a demand in order to line the pockets of doctors with blood (this coming from a guy who once gave me a hard enough shove that I nearly lost my balance, and I am very proud to say I didn't hit back); "Margaret Sanger supported eugenics to rid the world of African Americans" (she didn't); "They're gonna kill your little brother!" (that one was directed at a little boy who was entering the clinic with his parents and a younger sibling in a stroller; naturally the kid looked at the stroller and started to cry); "Place of murder, place of death!" (only one time the guy slipped up and said, "Place of abortion" - I nearly spat out my coffee trying not to laugh); "Who's going to take care of you in your old age if you don't have any kids?" (I still regret that I didn't have the nerve to ask that particular woman if she'd never seen or read Like Water for Chocolate); and of course, the songs. Yep, they made up songs on the spot. My favorite: "The fruit of abortion is war!/Nuclear war!", roughly to the tune of "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" from Cabaret, which if you think about it is really pretty appropriate.

And then I would have to admit to the rare moments of actually addressing the folks across the sidewalk as if we were both human beings. It didn't happen often, but it did happen. Of course I didn't tell them my real name; but I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I claimed my name was something extremely unusual, which of course clued the smart ones in to the fact that I was obviously lying. I did consider using my middle name and my grandmother's maiden name - that would be far off enough from the truth that I'd be in the clear - but odds are there really is an Andrew Mayforth out there somewhere and I wouldn't want to be responsible for his hate mail. If I really wanted to get under their skin, I guess I should have told them something very Christian, like Peter. Oh well. (You'll notice I don't repeat the name here that I gave them. Call me paranoid if you like, but remember George Tiller.) In any case, there were times when we actually agreed to disagree, and even a time or two when we could joke about things like the weather. One really cold and rainy day, we joked that God was obviously on somebody's side, but which? Once just before Christmas, the antis sang "We Wish You a Merry Christmas".

But such moments of levity were few and far between. Why? Ignorance. On their part. And that's where I'll finally get around to the question of trust.

You see, there were two distinct types of antis. First, there were the ones who just stood on the sidewalk and prayed. They were mostly college students. We called them "the long skirt brigade," in reference to the way most of the women (and I use that term loosely - they were very young) dressed, no matter how cold it was. I could have done without the part they played in making patients feel guilty (or at least trying to), but at least they stayed out of the way. Then there was the other type, the aggressive ones. The ones who got in the patients' faces and yelled and screamed and waved disgusting signs and did everything they could to make a visit to the clinic as miserable as they could.

What does that have to do with trusting women? Well, obviously, they didn't. And that their mistrust seemed to be linked to ignorance - ignorance both of what Planned Parenthood actually did, and what the patients were there for. Many of them believed - really and truly believed - that PP encouraged abortion, didn't even mention adoption as an option, and offered no other services. There were patients who were there for services that had nothing to do with abortion (exams, pills, etc.), but they made no distinction. They never even stopped to think about it. If we bothered pointing out that there were other services available, well, we were still supporting an institution that supported abortion, and they didn't approve of contraception anyway.

And that's because they didn't trust women. (Or men either, but that's another rant.) As one anti calmly explained to me once, his beef with us was that we didn't tell the patients about adoption on our way to the clinic. How arrogant, you're probably thinking; and so did I. Out loud. His response: "Adoption isn't mentioned much as an option, and I think you're arrogant for not mentioning it!"

The sheer stupidity of that comment was one of the things that kept me getting up at 7:00 on Saturday mornings for two years to go to the clinic. But it could be discouraging, too, when you realized that was the level of ignorance we were dealing with. They thought trusting women with their own bodies was "arrogant". How on earth do you even rationalize that? How do you put up with that week after week, along with the nasty pictures and slogans and female antis who were born long after Roe v Wade and thus don't even know what they'd be in for if they got their way?

Well - and this would be where the big climax comes if I were writing a movie screenplay or something - the answer didn't just come to me. It's a real incident that happened one Saturday morning. One of my fellow escorts was a grad student in women's health policy (or maybe the official title of the program was just "women's health"; I forget), and she told me about it during a lull in visits. Remember the Long Skirt Brigade from several paragraphs ago? Later on that morning, while my fellow escort and I were still chatting, two of them came over to us.

"Excuse me," one of them asked. "Did I hear you say you were studying women's health?"

"Yes."

"How come?"

"To fight back against people like you, frankly," my friend said.

The girl laughed, surprisingly politely, and went on to ask my friend what she knew about polycystic ovarian syndrome. It turned out she had several symptoms of PCOS (unexplained weight gain, irregular periods, etc) and hadn't been able to get any help for it because...well, because she lived in a world that doesn't have a place for addressing women's health problems. My friend answered her questions as best she could, and made some recommendations for how to get help. And then they were off to return to their very conservative Christian college out in Virginia somewhere, where she probably wouldn't have access to a doctor who could or would help her.

That is what "trust women" means to me. We were (and back in the States, others still are) fighting a battle that features almost constant hate and ugliness and occasionally results in somebody getting shot, but every now and then, a young woman figures out that she needs to cross the line for her own good. Why? Because we trust women, and they don't.

(A big shout out here to anyone from WACDTF if you happen to read this. Give my regards to 16th Street!)

Not quite the solution I was looking for

Do you ever get the feeling that you inadvertently caused the wrong solution to the right problem?

Allow me to explain. Singapore has a lot of great restaurants, but for reasons I haven't quite been able to figure out, service here is the worst of any major city I've ever been to, consistently. I've thought of a number of possible explanations - it's an extension of the local culture where people tend to act like robots and not pay much attention to anybody else; some wait staff are nervous about using their English with a native; I moved here from Paris and that's an impossible act to follow - but really, it's anybody's guess why. In any case, I've never experienced more cases of waiters hearing something other than what I really ordered (as I discussed here, or waiting on some people before others who've been waiting longer, or just plain ignoring hungry patrons. Along the way, I have also discovered that "Are you ready to order?" and "Have you already ordered?" sound just about the same with a Singaporean accent. I do know one unlucky waiter who will never make that mistake again after he asked me the latter and I heard the former and answered "yes". When he walked away, I got up and followed him and made very clear what I had heard!

But I digress. Among the numerous "good food, bad service" experiences I've had was a bratwurst place here. If you know me well, you're probably thinking I don't like bratwurst at all. And you're right, I don't. But this place also has - or at least had - the best pancakes in Singapore, as I discovered one morning when I was at that particular mall waiting for some store to open. Since the pancakes were terrific and that's hard to find in Singapore, I made a note to come back and have them again next time.

And I tried to. Oh, how I tried to.

But on my return visit, I placed my order, paid for it and went back into the seating area and waited. And waited. And waited. After about ten minutes, some other people turned up in the dining area. Ten minutes or so after that, their food came. Mine still hadn't. I asked the waiter where my food was, and he said he'd check on it. A few minutes later, he returned and said it would be out shortly. Around that time another party came in. We're now talking at least fifteen minutes after I had arrived. Next time I saw the waiter, he had their food. He once again said my pancakes were on the way. That was the last straw: I got up and went back up front, and politely asked for my money back. I got it, with apologies. That at least was nice. This is one of those places where you can see the grill right by the register, and - you guessed it - they had just poured my pancakes on the grill, after having served everybody else first! The sad thing was, I wasn't surprised.

This is where the wrong solution comes in. Last week, I had occasion to walk by the place again, and I happened to glimpse the menu. Something wasn't quite right, so I stopped and read the whole thing. Sure enough, I hadn't misread it or overlooked anything.

They no longer carry pancakes.

Well, that's one way to avoid repeating a mistake, I guess. But it doesn't really get to the root of the problem, does it?

Sorry, Teddy

Here's a little something I posted on Daily Kos a few days ago:

I have explained elsewhere that if I lived in Massachusetts, I wouldn't be able to bring myself to vote for Coakley. Does that mean I would vote for Brown despite his being a bigot and a shill for the insurance industry? I hope not, but...well, let's just say I'm very grateful I don't vote in the Bay State at this point.

That said, win or lose, I'm already sick and tired of the argument that health care reform depends on this particular seat. If Brown wins (or, more accurately speaking, if Coakley loses), then the Republicans will have picked up one seat, which will be the least senior seat in the upper chamber, and they will be highly unlikely to retain it in 2012, and they'll know it. The Dems will still have 59 seats, and Harry Reid will still be making Mister Rogers look like Malcolm X when it comes to strong leadership, and Obama will still be putting way, way, way too much emphasis on achieving bipartisan consensus with a party that has no real interest in such things. That will be the reason why health care reform fails again if it does, not because the Dems nominated the wrong person to hold the Massachusetts seat, still leaving them with the biggest majority either party has had since 1978.

My opinion hasn't changed a bit, except perhaps that Brown's extremely tasteless comment regarding what he'd like to do to Coakley with a curling iron would probably have guaranteed that I'd have voted for Snoopy if I lived in MA. I don't support him any more than I supported Coakley, and I sincerely hope he loses in 2012, but I'm not at all sorry we won't have to explain away having a senator on our side of the aisle who doesn't seem to have any qualms about destroying innocent people's lives for political gain.

"American Thinker" article on Martha Coakley

If you or someone you know votes in Massachusetts, please read this before you vote in the Senate election, and please think long and hard about the fact that even I would vote Republican in this case.

Yes, American Thinker is a conservative site. Yes, I noticed the insulting use of "Democrat" where it should be "Democratic" and the gratuitous swipe at Barney Frank (what I wouldn't give for him to run for Senate, by the way), and the rather odd comment about Louise Woodward that seems to conclude that she was guilty. But unfortunately, it gets most of the facts right. The seat will be up again in 2012, and if Brown wins, he'd probably lose next time to just about any other Democrat. If Coakley wins, as the article says, she'll probably be senator for life. And we are talking about someone who has no qualms about destroying innocent lives for her political gain.

Speaking of which, the 1980s daycare sex abuse witch-hunt has always been a favorite target of the "men's rights" crowd, partially because Janet Reno was behind one of the false convictions and partially because they always blame feminists when an innocent man goes to prison, as many did in this case. (A certain ex-girlfriend of mine - those of you who know me personally don't need a clue as to which one - actually told me once that a few false convictions were perfectly acceptable it it meant keeping women and girls safe from the bad guys. She probably didn't really mean to say it, but she did say it.) As I always say when this topic comes up, don't fall into the trap of guilt by association here. Smoking isn't good for you just because Hitler didn't do it, after all. Having a female senator who built her career on false convictions would only hurt our credibility against the "men's rights" crowd, if it comes to that.

Incidentally, one thing in that article really jumps out at me: "Periodic internet polls in Massachusetts show that more than two-thirds of the respondents think the Amirault family was unjustly prosecuted and convicted." When I first started following the Amirault case back in 1998 (I worked for a polling firm whose clients included Scott Harshbarger, who helped railroad the Amiraults and then ran unsuccessfully for governor), polls showed quite the opposite. Of course, Harshbarger lost that year, and Tom Reilly (who also had his finger in the case) managed to lose to Mitt "Divorce is mandatory in France" Romney for governor in 2002, so maybe there is hope. [CORRECTION: Reilly ran in 2006, not 2002, and he lost the Democratic primary to Deval Patrick. Thank God.]

The mother of all business trips, or As long as I'm moving...

Friday afternoon saw the latest of a series of altercations with the boss regarding why we weren't making more of an impact. I told him for the umpteenth time that he really needed to start taking the US market more seriously, since breaking through there will give us the resources to hit the ground running in almost any other country (and we definitely don't have that yet). This time, though, he listened. I'm not sure why I got through to him this time where I was never able to before, but I did.

He agreed with me. And then he asked me to write up an itinerary for a two month trip to the US, starting shortly after the New Year. So, in January, it's off to San Francisco for a few weeks, then Las Vegas for a conference in February, and probably at least three other cities. I don't know which cities yet, but I could be visiting as far afield as Boston. The idea of traveling with my boss for that long isn't the most appealing thing I've heard. But for reasons that aren't important here, it would have been a big mistake for either of us to try to pull this trip off alone (and I was deeply afraid he was going to try), so dealing with him will be an acceptable price.

Whatever the drawbacks, San Francisco is one of my favorite cities, I've never been to Las Vegas, and I haven't been "home" in over three years. So this was quite the early Christmas present. Stay tuned for more details.

Just what are the Christmas-in-the-tropics blues?

Since I got in a bit of trouble on Facebook for saying I had "the Christmas in the tropics blues" (and I truly am sorry I made my friends in Denver read that!), perhaps I should elaborate a bit here. There's a limit to how much I can do so without betraying some personal confidences, so I'll have to be circumspect. Here goes.

I like Singapore, and I like my job. In this economy, I like just having a job at all, if it comes to that, but for the most part I really do like my job in its own right. But sometimes a job can't help but make you feel rather blah, and I've been working my way through a case of that this week. (I was quite sick the week before that, so that probably has something to do with it.) And yes, while a 30 degree C/90 degree F December is a hard thing for a guy whose other homes have included New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado and Northern Europe to wrap his mind around, I'd rather cope with the weather here than in any of those places at the moment. My best wishes go out to those who are there now!

Here's where the circumspection (is that a word? it should be) comes in. Since I finished Part I of my novel last week, I finally got to work on Part II this week and it's off to a great start. But I wrote a really good line the other night that made for a rather stark revelation for me. It was something a lead character said about some of the choices he's made in his work- and personal-life, and after getting it down on paper I realized I was really thinking of myself. It made me think about my job and how things have gone in Singapore and certain decisions I've made since I've been here and the results thereof. And yes, it triggered a rather bad case of the blues. When I first came here, I wasn't at all sure I'd be here long, and if I had to guess as to whether or not I'd be at this company beyond the six month internship I had initially, I'd have guessed no.

But here I still am. For the most part, that's been all for the better. As I noted over a year ago, I'm a lot better off here than I'd have been at most other places I might have ended up working. The company has grown quite a bit, and things are looking very positive. Logically, I know this was about the best outcome that could have happened compared to the other places I looked into moving to.

Of course, not all in life is logical. I have always liked Singapore and I still do, but the place can be a bit oppressive in how businesslike and button-down it is, and it's also awfully remote from most of the people I care about. That has had its share of costs, and this week I accidentally brought a reminder of that upon myself when my art imitated my life. More than anything, I wish at some point I could have my career follow my life instead of the other way around. I guess there's no reason why that can't happen at some point down the road, of course. This too shall pass.

Yeah, I know this is one of the more self-indulgent posts I've ever put up here, and that it's also rather cryptic. Sorry about that. I just had to write it down for my own sanity at this point. And somewhat surprisingly, I do feel better!

Bess Lomax Hawes, RIP...and who knew?!

I'm sad to hear Bess Lomax Hawes died last week (I've been sick and also busy with other things, and hadn't kept up with the news), though I have to confess I'm a bit surprised she was still alive. Now, I know who she was, since her family is just as important to folk music as the Kennedys are to politics and because she was a member of The Almanac Singers. (That picture on the obituary, incidentally, is the only picture of them I have ever seen. It pops up every time they are mentioned. You'd think there must be at least one other one out there somewhere.) But somehow, I had no idea she wrote "Charlie on the MTA".

Actually, I had no idea anybody wrote it, if you will. I thought I read somewhere that the original version was a wire recording by an unknown male singer sometime in the 1940s. I suppose that could be true, actually, and the account I read simply didn't bother to mention that not only was the song's authorship known even if the singer of the earliest known recording wasn't, but that said author was a member of one of the most important families in American music. Strange omission, though.

I did know that she lived in Topanga Canyon back before it was taken over by rock stars (or even before there was such a thing as a rock star), because I've read about Woody Guthrie staying at her house on his last trip across the country, after he'd already been committed once. She apparently cut his visit short because of his habit of lounging around the backyard naked when she had little kids. How much more hip could a person be in the early fifties, huh?

Anyhow. There are a number of people I really admire for living a truly full life even if they never become household names, and she was one already. How strange that I didn't know that key part of her life story, though!