Alabama and Georgia... Holy Shit

I, like every other woman I know, have been thinking about abortion a lot over the last two weeks. People I respect and admire like Busy Philipps and Jameela Jamil have unapologetically shared their stories, and people who aren’t famous braved vicious trolls to participate in Twitter threads and Instagram comments conversations.

I feel a little like everything that can be said has already been said by people with much more life experience than me. However, this blog has never been about hot takes. Not in high school, and not now. Although I was really proud of the pun Kavanaugh-onsense.

All I can do is share my experiences and try to process what I’m feeling. Fury, rage and hopelessness spring to mind. But this is about to get hella personal. Here we go.

I’ve never had an abortion. I’m gay and my experiences with men have been few and far between. But, whenever anyone asked hypothetically what I would do, or the time I had to take Plan B last year because the guy with the “great reflexes” didn’t time things right, I always automatically said I would have an abortion. No question.

I thought about who would take me. My pregnant cousin seemed like a weird choice. My roommate at the time was kind of casually anti-abortion, but never actually said it out loud. I wasn’t sure where she stood on choice. My best friends lived far away, and the idea of telling my mom, after I’d finally gotten her to understand that I’m gay, was not an option. But that’s a different, and much longer story. When I expressed this to Plan B guy, who was an emotionally abusive asshole, he seemed offended that I wouldn’t ask him to take me.

I didn’t realize in the past that it was possible that this wouldn’t automatically be an option. Like feminist hero Susan Collins says, “Roe is settled law.” Even as time went by and I saw the John Oliver segments about restricted access to abortion and I would have conversations about how insane it was that some places had waiting periods, or required trans vaginal ultrasounds, I still kind of thought everything was fine. I couldn’t really process that women were losing access to safe and legal to abortion. Which I acknowledge is an unbelievable amount of privilege.  

But when these assholes in Georgia and Alabama, and I’m sure others, started overtly and aggressively policing our bodies, I sat the fuck up. Suddenly, everything felt real to me. Like we know people hate women, but I don’t think I put together exactly how much. And the thing is, people are making very logical arguments about if you don’t give people proper sex education, or access to abortion, or address the maternal mortality rate, or provide universal health care or free pre-k, how the fuck are we supposed to survive? What I think is getting lost is that the solution is clear. They don’t want us to have sex.

That’s how we survive. We’re supposed to refrain from acknowledging our sexuality and from expressing it freely. Women are ovens for babies and nothing more. Except of course, when the old white men want to have sex. Then we’re blow-up dolls. And abortion is completely acceptable as long as their names stay out of it and their wives don’t find out.

That was a low blow, but it’s kind of where we are right now. This shit is a mess, and I’m feeling lost about what to do. When I feel helpless like this, I write. This blog helps with that. Kind of.

It also helps to scream in my car and donate money and complain to my mom and read Twitter and watch old shows I love (Parks and Rec) and current shows I love (B99). Most of all, it helps to reach out to my sisters who are feeling these same things or whose painful experiences are being brought up for them to live through all over again.

Stay strong. I love you.

7 Years

Ok. So. There was an election and the blue wave was monstrous and real and made me cry. We were disappointed about Beto, and Gillum and Stacy Abrams, but all in all, we fucking crushed.

And I was definitely going to write about it. I even had the title of the post picked out:

“We must meet disappointment with power and joy” Beto and the Blue Tidal Wave.

(It’s a Beto quote that I stole from Stephanie Wittels on twitter forever ago. It’s on a sticky note at my desk at work.)

However, more news kept happening. And then it was Thanksgiving. And I kind of just needed a minute. And I was thinking.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. 

For people that may not know me, my Hamilton obsession is pretty intense. I saw the show when it came to LA. 

Twice.

Time #1: Me and Momma

Time #2: Solo and sobbing

I know all the music, of course, and I want to know about everything LMM does. In a I like to watch him on Ellen way, not a creepy stalker way. I was just listening to a podcast that he was a guest on, and I almost started crying. In a coffee shop.

 Unacceptable.

The reason I bring this up, other than just enjoying having an excuse to talk about Lin is because I’ve been thinking about the fact that it took him 7 years to create Hamilton.

It took him almost 3 years to write 2 songs until Tommy Kail told him to get his shit together and start writing if he ever wanted this thing about the founding fathers to be anything. My brother is my Tommy and has told me to get my shit together many times. It works in the short term.

But then.. I don’t know. I get distracted. I let his deadlines wiz by, and I decide I’m going to write a movie. Or a pilot. Or a play. Or a research book. Or a sex book, but it’s a novel maybe. Or I’m going to give it all up and work in politics. At a media company. Or for a campaign. Or I’ll write about it.

Being in my head is exhausting sometimes.

The point of all of the thinking and the Lin and the brother and the frustration with where I’m at in my career and feeling some pressure about turning 26, is that I’m on the hunt for something that sparks something in my brain and overtakes it completely. Something that I like enough to do for 7 years.

This isn’t really about politics, but this is our blog and it’s what’s on my mind. And I do know I want to do something political. Or at least partly. Like maybe I want to be Aaron Sorkin. Only funnier. Like all the funny parts of The West Wing, without all the shootings and kidnappings.

Or maybe I want to write a play.

So what job is political and about women and I get to write and also maybe food?

My brother says the editor of The New Yorker.

He’s not wrong, but that's a pretty big swing. And David seems to have things mostly under control over there.

I’m on the hunt for something. It may be a little unrealistic to be hoping to find something to write that I love that much. But I think I’ll be able to. If my Hamilton obsession has taught me anything, it’s that I think words are magic. Which is embarrassing to say, but it’s true.

God help and forgive me,

I want to build something that’s gonna outlive me.

I just have to find it. 

Happy 5th of November.

Happy 5^th of November. The last post I made was also on the 5^th of November, right before midterm elections. Eight whole years ago. It seems fitting that my return to this blog should be on the same day, which also happens to fall on the eve of the Midterms.  

I could have never guessed what the political climate in America would have been like eight years after Guy Fawkes Day in 2010. I voted in my first national election a few days after I made that post. I have voted in many since then, but I will never forget sitting on my couch almost two years ago when the realization that Donald Trump would be our next president hit me. I got numb. I cried. How in the world could we take such a huge step back when we had just had our first black president who did not get everything done we wanted to be done, by any means but gave us so many fantastic strides forward. And who also (and possibly most importantly) gave us FLOTUS Michelle Obama. But what really got me was how could the MAJORITY of white WOMEN vote for a man who clearly HATES women instead of a white woman who wanted to help women?

https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls/national/president

Van Jones called it whitelash. I agreed. The next day I went to work, and I was so angry that I barely said a word to anybody. For months I came home and sat on my couch watching CNN for hours on hours as the chaos that was the trump administration unfolded. I got so numb from the craziness that I stopped watching the news altogether.

A few months ago, my fellow Liberal Lady texted me and said we should start the blog back up. I still had news exhaustion and was not paying much attention to politics, but I thought about how much I used to love knowing what was happening in the government. I slowly started trying to get back into keeping current with the news. I was mad that Donald Trump not only won the election. He got us to stop paying attention, exhausted from trying to digest the racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, and all the other insanity. Don’t let this be normal. This is not normal.

When the government is not working for the benefit of the vast majority of the people, then it is not a government that is working. I would tell you all to vote tomorrow because we need to stop this dangerous administration and because it is a literal life and death situation for so many people. But you already know that.

So, I will just leave you with this.

Remember, Remember… 

Hatikvah and Other Feelings

I am Jewish.

I am a Jewish American person. And I get really tired of feeling like I have to prove it to people. Yes, my name is Montana. It’s not a Jewish name. And yes my last name isn’t especially Jewish either. And yes I have green eyes and don’t go to temple anymore and my mom is Catholic.

That doesn’t make me “half-Jewish”.

And it doesn’t matter that I went to Jewish summer camp for 5 summers or that I had a bat mitzvah and was confirmed or that I was the social action chair of my youth group or that I went to Jewish conventions or even that I went to Israel for a month in high school.

I don’t “look” Jewish or “seem” Jewish, so I’m can’t be.

However, here we find ourselves after another horrible shooting. This one hits home for me just as much as the one in my hometown. I’m just as much part of the Jewish community as I am the Jacksonville one.

And I don’t want to have to justify that. Because the truth is that my heart is broken. I can’t imagine the pain that the congregation is going through. I really want to have a hot take or something interesting to say. But the truth is simple. Our president is a monster, Congress is broken and republicans don’t care about us.

My brother and I were talking earlier about why people hate Jews so much. Not that any group of people should be hated, obviously, but what is it about Jewish people? And what makes someone Jewish? If they don’t practice or marry a non-Jewish person or decide that everything is the worst and nothing matters and there’s no heaven anyway (though Jews don’t really believe in “heaven”) so why even try, are they still Jewish? What if your aunts and uncles and cousins are and your mom thinks it’s important that you call yourself Jewish even though you’ve never really been to temple and hated camp?

What do we have to do to make us worthy or unworthy of this nasty, vile hatred?

Am I safe because I can pass?

People who hate Jews are certainly getting a pass right now. As I write this, I just got an email about Mel Gibson being cast in a new movie.

What.

Everything is just ok now? There are no consequences? People are barely even tweeting “thoughts and prayers” about Pittsburgh. Why would they?

They’re going to take it back next week anyway. It doesn’t fucking matter.

And yet.. we press on. We get out of bed and I wear my shamrock necklace and yell at my brother for not wearing his and tell my Jewish roommate that I think it’s great she started going to temple again and I go to my industry job and listen to people say that Jews control it. Because what else can we do?

Israel isn’t exactly crushing it right now with their response to this whole thing, but I am going to pull something from them anyway. The name of the Israeli national anthem is Hatikvah, which means hope. It’s a real Esperanza Rising vibe. Did you guys read that book in school? Should I be bringing this up in the middle of this nice thing about the Jewish spirit being enduring?

No.

But, the point is that Hatikvah means hope. And that’s what we really need right now.

To quote lyrics from the song that I still can’t get out of my head, by the star of the Jewish summer camp circuit Rick Recht, “This is the hope that holds us together, Hatikvah, the hope that will last forever.”