Dear Alabama Representatives,

I was so excited when I saw that you’re putting forth a bill requiring bathroom attendants in bathrooms open to transgender people and that other states are putting forth similar legislation!

I’m sure you designed this bill to protect god-fearing citizens while avoiding the unpleasantness (lost tourist dollars, an ousted governor) the bathroom bill in North Carolina caused. After all, this lets anyone pee, so we certainly can’t be accused of prejudice!

Something has to be done! I mean, we’ve not had any legislation about who can use what bathroom since the bathrooms were invented (by a good Christian, surely) until recently. Do you remember what it was like? I mean, I never had a problem in a bathroom, but I shudder now to think that the person in the stall next to me, who was passing toilet paper under the divider when I discovered I didn’t have any, could have had any type of genitalia at birth! If I’d thought about it then, I’m sure I would have wiped with my underwear and then left my stall commando, like the lady of good breeding that I am, rather than risk talking to a person of the opposite sex!

However, I’m sure you’re aware that this bill doesn’t go far enough. Bathrooms designed for single sexes won’t be attended at all! How are we going to know if people are going out of their way to find a bathroom with an attendant instead of just using the single sex bathrooms in their town?

Say we call up a citizen for jury duty. At this time, transgender people can still serve on juries and vote, and we would hate to discriminate as long as these people are still legally citizens (you’re going to fix this soon, I presume). Our courthouse will likely have single sex bathrooms–we value law and order. Perhaps there’s a trans person serving–a guy, let’s say. He would have to hold it all day. He, of course, couldn’t use the women’s room in the courthouse, but we don’t really want a guy who looks like a woman in the men’s room.

That’s distracting and dangerous.

There have already been cases of actual women being attacked in women’s bathrooms because they didn’t look feminine enough. I mean, that’s partly their own fault, of course. Why did God invent makeup if not to help us out?

I’m sure once you think about it, you’ll agree that every bathroom needs a monitor!

Please consider this letter my application.

I will be able to bring many desirable qualities to this job.

First, I understand that to do a good job, I cannot judge on superficial traits. Have you seen trans porn? I’m been watching it a lot lately to understand these sick and twisted individuals. There are LOTS of men who pass as women, until they take off their panties.

Each body going into a bathroom will have to be checked–thoroughly!

I’ll be good at this for several reasons.

A. I do not get tired of looking at genitalia, as evidenced by my capacity to watch trans porn for hours and hours at a time.

B. I know that some men “tuck” their penises, so I might need to handle people’s genitalia to make sure it’s in the correct position. I’m willing to make this sacrifice.

C. From my extensive porn viewing, I also know that some men have micropenises (I’m sure you’ve seen a few around the capital!) and that some women have giant clits. Even with handling, it might not be possible to tell the difference. I’m willing to make an educated guess, though it might require a bit more than handling. If I think I’m doing a check of a clit, but semen comes out, I’ll know it’s a man and let him pass into the correct bathroom, confident that he’ll be unmolested by perverts once inside his stall.

D. Speaking of micropenises, I’m very good at keeping a straight-face. This will perhaps be my most valuable bathroom monitoring skill.

E. I’m also happy to keep a picture book of venereal diseases with me when I work, so that if I see something strange, the bathroom goer and I can match up the symptoms. (A lot of people are really concerned by your blessed work to defund Planned Parenthood and to separate people from their access to health care–regular checkups by bathroom monitors every time someone needs to go to Walmart will surely make people more comfortable about losing access to those egghead doctors.)

Of course, my physical examination still won’t be enough, which is why I’ll need to check everyone’s birth certificate when they come in–the original copy.

And I won’t consider those “Certificates of Live Birth”s! I remember when Obama tried to pull one over on us by showing us one of those!

My parents say I was born in Arizona. After learning of Obama’s deception, I checked–my own form has “Certificate of Live Birth” on the top. My parents won’t admit that they’re hiding something, so I’ve stopped speaking to them.

Don’t worry, though–I’m a red-blooded American, which is why I know transgender bathroom problems are the most important issues America faces–and I know you lawmakers agree, since you spend almost as much time thinking about other people’s genitalia as I do!

I’m going to get naturalized, though, just in case I was actually born somewhere else, if I can get my immigration attorney to return my calls–he keeps calling me crazy.

He’s probably worried that if I were born in another country, and then got lied to by my parents my whole life, that I won’t be able to fully embrace America.

In all honesty, I sometimes worry about that when I’m taking a porn break. I tell you what, though, I really hope I wasn’t born in Finland. They’re communist, of course, with their healthcare and whatnot. They probably think they’re better than us just because their kids always test the best. Well, as Donald Trump says, “I love the uneducated!” I learned once too that those wily Finns only have one pronoun.

Can you imagine? My daughter, if she were a Finn, could come home from school and say, “My teacher tried to teach us science again. Hän needs to read the Bible more!” How could I possibly be expected to understand this statement without knowing what kind of genitalia the teacher has?!

Speaking of genitalia again, did you know that 1 out of 1000 people is born with both kinds? The internet says they’re intersex–and that it’s actually a chromosome issue, instead of a choice.

I sometimes don’t know what to think about that. God doesn’t make mistakes, after all. Maybe those mothers took birth control or thought about taking birth control, and God punished them?

We’re going to have to figure out what to do with them. They probably have to pee sometimes too. This may require a whole new bill.

Also, while you’re thinking about bills, I would like you to consider another oversight in this one–as I mentioned before, we lived for ages without laws about who could be in what bathroom, but that means gay people have been in them with us this whole time!

If a girl pretending to be a guy can’t be allowed in the men’s room, why do gay men get to go in there? They might try to look at other men’s genitals, even though they aren’t self-trained bathroom monitors!!!

By now, you’ll have to admit it will take a very skilled worker to fill this position.

I am that worker, someone who understands that good Americans’ privacy in the bathroom is of the utmost importance! That’s why I am going to start checking genitalia right away. I trust you’ll be impressed by my initiative in this matter and will be contacting about my compensated employment soon!

The sooner the better–I really need to be able to write off my porn subscriptions as business expenses.

We all know the ways in which 2016 has sucked.

I’ve cried a lot more this year, over the deaths of heroes, over the death of reasonable elections, over the fear of how much worse it might get.

But there were good things in 2016.

Melissa Bender and I had a book come out.

I spoke at conferences in Spain, Sweden, London, San Diego, Portland, and Chicago (twice).

I saw Love and Information, The Deep Blue Sea, The Suicide, Aubergine, Keith Lowell Jensen, Emo Philips, Blackberry Winter, Macbeth, Igudesman & Joo, Mr. Burns, Women of Will, the Cashore Marionettes, Disgraced, To Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday, Frankenstein, Latin History for Morons with John Leguizamo, The Totalitarians, the opening of the Shrem Museum, and The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips.

I did guest lectures and interviews and stage talk backs. I taught courses that I love, films that I love, plays that I love, creative nonfiction that I love.

I taught 15 courses, got my first grad student through her PhD, mentored and performed with my stand-up students, got another Atwood journal out, started prepping for next year’s Oxford course, ran a program, and got chosen to run another.

I made old family favorites and tried new recipes, including my first shepherd’s pie, my first souffle, and my first carnitas. I made tons of soups and stews and proved the worth of my crock pot time and again.

I can’t get over why reporters can’t get over voter hypocrisy.

There have been several moves Trump has made that could already be called executive over-reach or “pay to play.” Reporters interview voters/supporters and say, “But didn’t you say this was wrong? Why is it okay when Trump does it?”

The answer: “Well, what he’s doing is going to fix all these things.”

There is no admission of what the truth is: it’s okay when Trump does it. It’s not okay when Obama/Hillary does it.

That’s all.

We’ve all seen the videos of voters being read Hitler’s quotes and being told Trump said them. They love the ideas!

We’ve all seen the videos of voters being read Obama’s policies and being told they’re Trump’s. They love the ideas!

We are all guilty of this, to some degree.

For example, Republicans say they believe in small government decisions, favoring the state over the country, the city over the state, except of course when the small government passes pro-marijuana, anti-discrimination, or gun control legislation.

Generally, I’m a federalist, rather than a states’ rights person. I don’t think my rights should be different in different states or that I shouldn’t be able to ship wine to myself from one American place to another or that a lawsuit against someone basically falls away if they move across a state line.

But I love it when California tells the rest of you to go f yourselves sometimes (although of course I want the whole country to get more progressive, so we don’t have to be different) and, during difficult Presidencies, I tell foreigners that I’m from California when they ask. It automatically makes them like me more.

My hypocrisy is absolutely glaring in another way right now.

I believe in empathy, in Rogerian arguments, etc. And yet I cannot yet empathize with Trump voters. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do so with those who are attacking people, who are threatening the Islamic center in my town, who are making me and my friends and my students angry and afraid.

Americans (and humans) have problems upholding their principles; no wonder we elect people without any.

Trump: “China is laughing” at us.

Trump: “I have the best brain.”*

Trump: “I think I know more about foreign policy than anybody running.”

[Taiwan calls. Trump the takes call.]

China: Um . . . you’re not supposed to do that.

Diplomats and all the rest of us who follow politics**: Um . . . doesn’t that threaten 40 years of policy?

Trump: It’s Taiwan’s fault! They called!

China: We’re not actually that upset about it. We know you have no idea what you’re doing, Mr. President-Elect. [not subtle tittering]

Thus, the prophecy is fulfilled.

Conservatives tell Democrats to stop freaking out. They say we can only be upset if we’re upset at Obama’s and Hillary’s foreign policy decisions.

Democrats stop rolling their eyes long enough to point out that this wasn’t a decision so much as a gaffe & a logical consequence to someone getting a job he’s not prepared for.

Trump’s team: Umm, no. We totally planned that. This was well thought out. You know, even though Trump said it was Taiwan’s fault–it was in the plan all along.

*I wanted to paraphrase these lines too–but there really wasn’t a way to dumb them down any further.

**This statement doesn’t take a side in the dispute–it just acknowledges there is one.

A few weeks ago, I published this on Facebook, but it’s another useful paraphrase:

Republican story: Obamacare is awful in every way. We’re gonna get rid of it and give you something better.
The story I’ve lived through: Republicans do nothing to help people get care for years and years. Millions and millions uninsured, sometimes because of pre-existing conditions.
Republican think tank comes up with a plan to cover everyone.
It gets implemented in Mass.
Republicans don’t want it to spread.
Obama basically uses that plan when he has to compromise & not give us a single payer option.
It gets called Obamacare.
It gets called evil.
Republican states sue so they don’t have to cover their poor people, even though the plan will SAVE them money.
They bitch, while my family and friends finally get healthcare.
Their new leader says it’s the worse thing that’s ever happened to America.
Their new leader gets elected.
He googles Obamacare, admits that most of it is awesome.
He and Ryan are going to “keep” a lot of it, but do some interesting things that will likely make premiums go way up.
They pretend to save us.
(Remember when they didn’t didn’t care about this problem at all? It took Obamacare to get them to DO ANYTHING.)

I also recommend my recent post/manifesto, if you haven’t read it yet.

Today is Thanksgiving, and I’m having trouble giving thanks.

It’s not that I don’t have things to be thankful for. I do. My friends, my family, my job, my waking up this morning, etc.

Still, it’s hard this year to celebrate this particularly American holiday, because it’s hard to be American right now.

Thanksgiving is always difficult, politically. The shadow of what the settlers and the American government have done to the people who shared the first feast hangs over us, especially this year, as our government stands against Standing Rock.

Thanksgiving creates political problems in another way–as we overeat in the company of those who have just voted in ways we find just plain silly or downright evil.

And today I think back to how Thanksgiving in its modern form came to be.

After the Civil War, the country was divided. A woman wrote to President Lincoln, suggesting that we have a national day of Thanksgiving–an American holiday–to bring us together.

It worked, for a while, for some.

We’ve been divided for quite a while. It’s hard to remember that we didn’t say “red state” or “blue state” in the 20th century. It’s hard to remember that the American flag used to belong to all of us. In the early 2000s, it became synonymous with Republicans. Even under Obama’s leadership, when I was feeling very American, it would have felt weird to fly a flag. I would have been worried that it would signal that I was conservative.

It pisses me off that they somehow took the flag.

So today I need to be really clear about what I’m thankful for.

I’m thankful that, through fate alone, I was born here and now.

I’m thankful that more Americans voted for Hillary than for a demagogue.

I’m thankful that the vast majority of this nation is not on his team.

I’m thankful that the vast majority isn’t trying to drag the rest of us back to the fifties. The vast majority believes in equal rights, in women’s right to work, in women’s right to say no, in women’s rights to be on juries and to direct juries from the bench, in non-christians’ rights not to be forced to pray in school, in religious freedom to practice religion (while not demonizing people who pray differently or who have different sexual desires and identities), in the fact that black lives matter to, in fighting white supremacy.

We are not the silent majority.

We are the loud as fuck majority.

They want to go back in the past.

We are moving to the future.

We’ll win.

This is #21stcAmerica.

It’s ours.

Post (election of) Trump Stress Disorder

I have PTSD. I was diagnosed a couple of years ago when my living situation with a family member triggered me–heart rate problems, flashbacks, high blood pressure, nightmares.

My living situation is different now, and I’ve done extensive EMDR therapy with a psychiatrist who specializes in treating this problem.

I’d been having a much higher level of anxiety in the months leading up to this election, but so was everyone else. All of my doctors report their patients having problems with this. But I still didn’t think that what was scaring me could happen.

It happened.

It has taken me a few days to admit that I’m being triggered. My heart rate is way too high, I’m having flashbacks, my blood pressure is way up, and I’m having nightmares. Today, I was listening to the news and sending an email, and suddenly I realized that I was unwell. I didn’t know if I was going to throw up or fall down. Luckily, I was able to recognize it as an anxiety attack and get through it before it was time to go to school.

Stress is, of course, a trigger, but there’s simply more to it than that.

I feel physically unsafe, both for myself and my students. I’ve lived through Bush, and while his policies scared me, I wasn’t scared of his supporters in a physical way. I am currently afraid of some of my fellow Americans–mostly because I know they don’t see me as American–only they count when they talk about Americans. I’m a race traitor, I’m a woman, I’m an ally, I’m an atheist, I’m a progressive, I’m an intellectual.

But it’s even more personal than that.

My PTSD, if I may diagnose myself, is being triggered because of long ago traumas.

Slow dissolve.

Pensacola, Fl. My mother’s apartment.

I am barely 18.

I am technically between homes, having moved my stuff out of my grandparent’s house the day before (long story). I hadn’t been living with my mother, mostly due to her abusive boyfriend, Don: racist, redneck, sexist. His son had praised Hitler in our one conversation. Don had once told me he was glad I was carrying to term, since women who got abortions should be shot. My mother, solidly pro-choice, had sat silently.

I am getting ready for bed; I’m in a T-shirt and underwear. My infant son is resting quietly.

My mother’s boyfriend appears, screaming and drunk.

“There isn’t room in her life for both of us,” he says.

And then he comes at me.

I run out the door, luring him away from my son, who is now screaming. I hide in the bushes. I pray.

The landlord comes and chases him away.

My mother makes excuses. For him. To me.

The next night, he comes over. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, but you ARE A BITCH.”

My mother wants us all to watch TV together. Don was just drunk, she explains again.

I have no car, no money, no license, no way out, until she takes me to move into my great-grandfather’s bedroom (two hours away) the next day. He had just died that morning, and decisions had been made.

I don’t want to watch TV with him; I don’t want to pretend he didn’t attack me. My mother insists. I call her sister, who tells my mother that I should be allowed to nurse and read quietly in another room.

I had never been physically attacked before.

Whenever my mother and ex-stepfather would drunkenly scream at each other, when I was younger, she would take me aside after, explaining that calling a woman a bitch was the worse thing you could say.

“Don’t ever let a man treat you this way.”

Flash forward to this boyfriend, him attacking me, and her behind him, quietly saying, “No, Don, don’t.”

This is what I flash back to. This is where the nightmares are coming from. Racist, sexist, violent, hate-filled people who don’t think there’s room enough in their country for all of us. I am physically afraid of them.

This time, my mother isn’t even saying, “No, Don, don’t.”

She voted for him.

On Facebook, I see different people excusing themselves from responsibility of what happened.

“Oh, I voted for a third party in a swing state, but it’s the fault of people who didn’t vote at all.”

There’s more than enough blame to go around here, people.

It is the fault of those who voted for Trump because they loved him.

It is the fault of those who voted for Trump even though they could see him for what he was.

It is the fault of those who said, “he says what we’re all thinking.”

It is the fault of those who said, “Oh, he doesn’t mean x; he’s just saying that for votes.”

It is the fault of Trump, who is a psychopath, in the full clinical definition of the word.

It is the fault of anyone who ever let that psychopath think he wasn’t one.

It is the fault of those who voted for third party candidates, esp. in swing states.

It is the fault of eligible voters who didn’t vote, esp. in swing states.

It is the fault of the media who gave Trump so much free air time.

It is the fault of the media who harped on the emails.

It is the fault of the media who didn’t equally harp on all of Trump’s scandals.

It is the fault of voters who listened to a single kind of media without doing any fact checking.

It is the fault of conspiracy theorists who kept spreading lies about Clinton.

It is the fault of those who spread lies about America–that crime is up, that the economy is completely down, that Sharia law governs whole cities here, etc.

It is the fault of foreign interests, esp. Russia and Wikileaks, who tried to take down one of the parties. And succeeded.

It is the fault of the voters who let them.

It is the fault of the electoral college system (and the primary system).

It is the fault of Clinton for not being perfect, for making mistakes, and not dealing with those mistakes well.

It is the fault of those who kept insisting that Clinton and Trump were equally bad, were equally dangerous for America.

It is the fault racists.

It is the fault of sexists.

It is the fault of religious bigots.

It is the fault of nationalists.

It is the fault of the homophobic.

It is the fault of the selfish.

It is the fault of the anti-science people.

It is the fault of very religious people who are so against “sharia” law, but who intend to make our laws based on their faith.

It is the fault of those who are uninformed.

It is the fault of those who don’t understand how economics work.

It is the fault of all those who don’t understand their own privilege.

It is the fault of those who don’t understand history–who don’t know that it was the extremely high tax burden on the rich that made the 1950s so awesome for (heterosexual white male) middle class people.

It is the fault of those who don’t see parallels between what is happening now and what happened in Germany, who spent the last eight years saying Obama was Hitler only to go on to elect their own demagogue, who actually is one.

It is the fault of the Republican states who have changed voter rules (and the Supreme Court who let them), making it harder to vote in all kinds of ways.

It is the fault of the first Americans, who, despite George Washington’s advice, established a two party system.

It is the fault of my family members who are continually taken in by that party to vote against their self interest.

It is the fault of other of my family members who only vote in their own self interests, and believe that everyone else on this planet, unless they’re family, should be completely on their own.

There.

It’s basically everyone’s fault.

Can we please FIX IT NOW?

I usually don’t like it when people say The Simpsons has “predicted” something. I’ve even written a blog about it.

However, I was just remembering a long ago Simpsons episode in which Bill Clinton and Bob Dole put aside their partisan differences to defeat a threat to America–a threat taking the undeserved form of presidential candidates.

And now, both of those men (and ALL living former Presidents, Republican and Democrat) are rejecting exactly the kind of man who would like to make us all build a ray gun to smite his enemies.

Don’t vote for Kang/Kodos.

Vote with Clinton & Dole!

Trump, I mean Kang & Kodos, posing as qualified politicians (and exchanging long protein strings).

Republicans like to talk about how they’re going to kick Obama out of The White House next year–it always sounds weird to me–he couldn’t/wouldn’t stay no matter how the vote turns out. They know that, right?

Naturally, I have a preference for how the vote will turn out, but no matter what, I’ll miss Obama.

He has not been a perfect president, but no one ever has.

Am I disappointed by some things? Yes–many. For example, Obama has deported more undocumented people than W did.

Conservatives should love that.

He’s actually done a lot of things that conservatives should approve of–the deficit has shrunken (it initially went up under his rule because he added our foreign wars to the official budget–under W, they didn’t count) by quite a lot. We are in better economic shape than we were in 2008. Bin Laden is dead, along with lots of other terrorist leaders.

It’s also hard for me to solely blame Obama for the failings I see. Republicans began by saying they would work to block every single thing he wanted. And they’ve succeeded in blocking many things. They have also inflamed a part of their base that now embarrasses them–the moderate conservatives I grew up with have been replaced by amazingly unreasonable people–Tea Partiers, overt racists, Palins, and Trumps. Their reactions to him are hysterical (in the older sense of the word): he’s not American; he’s not Christian; he only pretends to cry when children have been gunned down. The latest: that he’s actually on the side of the terrorists.

(I would note, of course, that the terrorists and the Democrats are at odds. We like feminism and gay people and secularism and humor, etc.–they are in fact more conservative about these things. They want to make the world “great again”–but they want to go back to the 700s instead of the 1950s.)

I grew up Republican. I have a deep sense of sadness when I watch those 70s and 80s politicians trying to retain control as the base spirals. My soul hurts when I see my family spiraling down with them.

When Obama won, my mother and I had the following exchange:

Mom: Obama is going to take our rights away as white women.

Me: Which ones?

[LOOOOOOOONG silence.]

Me: ‘Cause as a straight educated white American woman, I have more rights than the majority of the people who’ve ever lived on this planet. I have more rights than some of my friends. And I can’t think of any that Obama could actually take away.

[She changes the conversation.]

Obama has not, in his time in office, taken away my rights as a white woman.

I hope, in fact, that whoever takes the office will continue his work.

Here are a few things I’m happy about:

• I’m in a better position than I was eight years ago, financially. (Many elections ago, that’s what voters were asked to consider as the basis for their vote.)
• My disabled aunt has access to healthcare. For those who know me, you’ll know I had to take her in a couple of years ago for a while–in the South, which rejected Obamacare despite their own budget offices reporting that Obamacare would save them money, she wasn’t able to get it. She was going in and out of emergency rooms (those bills will forever be unpaid), but not getting fixed, not getting to really see a doctor, not getting prescriptions she could fill.
• I have access to more services under Obamacare. For example, my chiropractor, who is not in my insurance network, was able to recommend therapies to my insurance company–a new communication feature under the legislation. I now have a new TENS unit, a traction device, and a back brace for prolonged sitting–none of which I had to pay for–because of my chiropractor’s argument.

Do I wish we had a single payer system? Yes, but Obamacare is better than what we had before.

• Workers are being paid better and slightly more equally. Minimum wage is going up (although it still hasn’t caught up with inflation); overtime pay has been extended so more workers are eligible for it; Obama supports equal pay.
• He has proposed cutting funding for abstinence-only education, after it had been expanded by W. Every study show that it doesn’t work–rates of teenage pregnancy, rates of divorce, and rates of venereal disease are at their highest in the states that support it. Studies also show that those kids still have sex–abstinence only delays virginity loss by a bit, but raises–dramatically–the likelihood that they won’t use condoms.
• No child left behind is gone. I don’t love every part of the new education plan (to be fair, I don’t love every part of any plan that I can think of), but it’s SO much better than NCLB.
• Changes have been made to help Native Americans–our invisible and most oppressed and most victimized minority. Native women, for example, are raped at alarming rates (and that’s within a country that already has high rape rates). This legislation attempts to address this and other issues.
• We have opened relations with Cuba, which is long overdue.
• This administration has done more to support LGBTQ rights than any other. The backlash is, predictably, absurd.

Here are five things I’ll miss:

Have any other presidents talked about Finland’s music (and how it relates to good governance)?

Has any other president called himself a feminist? Obama seems to care about and respect women–and by acknowledging that he is a feminist, he also signals that “women’s issues” are human issues. Oh, and he’s against sex shaming, which is awesome, cause I’m one horny feminist, and it’s good to know my President supports me.

Has any other president included we “nonbelievers” in the list of Americans? No–most ignore us or conflate us with those who either aren’t American or who aren’t patriotic. But we nonbelievers can believe in America.

Depending on who’s elected, I’ll miss my break from having to explain the electorate to foreigners. When W was in office, I was constantly having to explain how he was our President, especially in the second term. I would usually start with “let me tell you about the South.”

Not every foreign person I know loves Obama–many are critical of the drones–but they don’t question how he exists as a leader–the basic fact of him is comprehensible.

As an American, I am deeply ashamed that Trump is the nominee of the other party–it manages to reflect badly on all of us. If he’s elected, I’ll be torn between a desire to be out of the country as much as possible and worrying about how I’ll be able to show my American face to the rest of the world.

But most of all, I’ll miss his sense of humor.

I hope his post-presidency work is just as awesome as Carter’s and Clinton’s have been.