Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Privilege

To being with, it is my privilege to address you today. No, seriously. I’m typing this on a piece of equipment that would have made the Golden Age writers go weak at the knees, and posting it over an electronic network that would have made ME go weak at the knees 20 years ago. As in when I read in Friday of the net she used for research, I thought I’d trade everything I owned plus years of life for the right to use that.

Now I have it, and I can type my thoughts and post them for the world [Sometimes half-baked. Apologies again to Abyss and Apex. I’m in the middle of moving, and things are… confusing.]

And you can read them without even the effort of going to the corner and buying a paper off the paper-seller, as my dad had to do for his share of news of the world early morning.

I’m doing this in my PJs, in a comfy heated office (filled with cardboard boxes) sitting at the black glass desk of Evil command. I’m drinking a beverage grown on another continent and transported by tech and human power across the world, so I can enjoy it.

I’m privileged. We are privileged beyond the dreams of kings and queens of past centuries.

Unfortunately when they tell you to “check your privilege” that’s not what they mean.

This is a phrase increasingly deployed by people (usually women – rolls eyes) with an academic background and its meaning is … liberal squid ink. If you’re telling them that Welfare was a disaster for black families (it was) and that affirmative action not only has been a disaster for many organizations, but corrodes the soul (you never know why you were hired. I have friends in that position) and institutes birth-privilege based on who your ancestors were (aka nobility) they will say “check your privilege.” This really doesn’t mean a heck of a lot. It can’t, because they have no idea who you are, or indeed if you have ever received any privilege growing up.

What it is base don is the idea that our society is so inherently racist/sexist/homophobic that just by being straight, white and male someone receives better treatment than someone else who isn’t one or more of those things.

Like most lunatic ravings of the left, it has a point, except for the “male” thing.

Is there some sort of automatic boost you get for being a member of the majority (which women are, despite being accorded minority status.) Of course. You’re a known quantity. Just by virtue of people having interacted with someone like you, you’re going to get “helpful” treatment, even if you are supposedly a minority.

Take me, for instance (well, don’t, Dan would be upset.) Suppose I meet a stranger on the street. Portuguese. What the heck do you make of Portuguese? If you are in a region like Boston that has Portuguese gangs (I had a cousin in one) it might carry a negative connotation. Anywhere else in the country (sorry) most people will think “South America” and have a vague idea I should be herding llamas and wearing colorfully woven stuff.

For a long time, the answer to “Portuguese” was “April in Portugal” or “Portuguese Washerwoman” because of songs.

Now suppose I was from Mexico. Meeting me would be fraught with a lot of stereotypes, but those would be both negative and positive. I mean people would go “illegal?” but then there would come the “Plucky immigrant” and “family values.” On the whole people would treat me better than neutral, trying to make up for their momentary bad-thought flinch.

Same applies, for instance, to being a race other than white that is fairly well known. Even Indian. And if you are a woman, you get the negative stereotype of all the pretty-pretty vacuous women yeah (when I was young and pretty, people assumed I was an idiot.) But you also get the strong push we’ve been seeing from media and even commercials of “women save the day.” On the whole, people will treat you slightly better, because, well, they feel bad for that first flinch.

OTOH white male? Unless you’re upper class, well dressed, etc, people are going to assume you’re a doofus, just like in all the commercials. Because of all the propaganda about how you dominate the world, if you’re not successful, people will think you’re an idiot.

This sort of unconscious evaluation is human, can’t be helped, and will always exist.

Several years ago, Dan and I were shopping for a car. Our friends Alan and Becky went with us. To the eye we all present as white (unless I’ve been in the sun a bit, but even then, I could be Italian.) All of us were casually dressed. Alan, however, was tall, blond, blue eyed. Becky is tall and blue/grey eyed. She was also slim.

Dan and I are both short, and were both rather overweight at the time. We were the ones looking for a car, and we had the cash to buy it outright. They – for various reasons – didn’t. The salesmen swarmed them and fairly ignored us.

Micro aggression? Privilege? Oh, sure. No, not really. It amused us greatly, but at first scanning (and there were more details I don’t remember now) our friends presented as “having more money” so they got the attention. Fine. We still looked at cars.

This is the sort of privilege they’re talking about. In the long run, it really doesn’t mean much. What matters is what you make of it. The first glance might make salesmen run from us, but once we start talking about what we want, and how much we’re willing to pay (no, not now. That car is 17 years old, but you get the point) they’ll come back and (duh) sell us a car. The difference? We don’t go away in a huff when they make a mistake. And we don’t take unreasonable insult from a reasonable assumption.

The reason so many academic liberals deploy it as a war cry, though, is because they are mostly academics from – da – privileged backgrounds. This sort of “insult” is the worst they’ve ever suffered. They’ve never been low man on the totem pole with sh*t flowing downhill for things you couldn’t even vaguely control.

So they imagine these casual slights are the worst thing ever.

It’s sort of like kids who always got all the candy they wanted, feeling crushed because you said “no chocolate before breakfast.” It’s the worst thing ever, because it’s the worst they’ve ever experienced.

They also find it useful to shut up opponents because well… if they say it, any normal rational people thinks of my opening to this post. They think “Well, I am unusually blessed, maybe—”

Don’t. Just don’t. Most of the people who use “check your privilege” could buy you and sell you outright. The real “downtrodden” battling to get to the top will often have the same reaction YOU have.

The point is, we’re all equal under the law. Human discrimination is not something you can stop, but it’s also not something that is triggered to the Marxist categories of race, orientation or even class. It’s usually more subtle. I might discriminate against someone because something about him bothers me: accent, gestures, something. I might not even know why. It might be unjust.

It’s just a result of humans not being perfect. No human society can get rid of it. Giving people the power to point and cry privilege to shut others up will just privilege a bunch of academics and bureaucrats who will use it to their advantage.

When told to check your privilege, I suggest you answer “it’s fine, thank you. How about yours? A bit overlarge, no?”

So, I’ve been packing/cleaning (painting starts this week, hoo hoo — not) house so we can put it up for sale for two weeks, and then we spent five days sitting/listening to lectures at a seminar.  (Was good.  Got to see Boss-Lady, aka my publisher.)

I got up much too late today, and I don’t know which of my regulars was supposed to be up.  I didn’t prod him/her, obviously. Yesterday afternoon/night we got home just in time to clean and do some things that couldn’t wait any longer, like laundry and dishes.

Overnight I started feeling like I was coming down with a cold and so I was intending to take a break and write something light, maybe fiction, for the blog.  (BTW I have talked Stephen Green, aka. Mr. Vodkapundit into doing an audio of “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear.”  We’re going to put it on audible and see how it does.  What do ya’ll think.)

So I get up and I’m checking comments, and I found I’d been linked back by someone who is very upset indeed at Sad Puppies and linked back to my Puppy Sadness Has A Cure post.

I’m going to admit right here, right now that I didn’t read the whole thing.  The bits I got to see on preview were hilarious enough that if I read the whole thing I’d probably end up in the hospital for a sprain of the laugh muscle or something.

First of all, this person says that Sad Puppies is about awards no longer being based on talent or popularity or anything but politics. At which point I thought:

Because, got it in one.  Sad Puppies is about no longer rewarding the “cool kids’ and the “correct thinkers” with awards that have nothing to do with ability or good work, but only with “We want to endorse this message.”

Of course, they don’t mean it that way.  And of course, they have a point, right?  After all, who could be against awards going to such immortal works as If You Were A Dinosaur My Love or Redshirts?  Talk about fiction that will live forever!

After all, I mean, who the heck wants to reward unpopular works, like say, Monster Hunter Nemesis?  I think I’m one of five people in the world who has read it.  And by five, I mean five million.

And as for ability how can people who want to be PRESERVED from reading anything right wing (by which they mean anything that deviates from the sacred gospel of Marx and Lenin, in case my readers are at risk of getting sprained brain trying to figure out how I’m right wing) know if those works they refuse to even open have talent and ability or not?

Oh, wait, they can’t have talent or ability, because they don’t hew to the sacred gospel of Marx and Lenin, which “all smart people” and “all good people” believe in, so they must be stupid and bad, right?  And this, of course, is how the “smart people” think.  For… er… a definition of think. You know, one that includes tourettes-like noises of approval for the left and no actual, oh, yeah, what do they call it?  Reasoning.

Which is why sad puppies this year is running a solid right wing slate? Right? Including such notorious right wingers as Kevin J. Anderson and Jim Butcher.

But then I read the rest of the preview in the tag and it said “Sarah Hoyt thinks you should think of the children — will no one think of the children — and that they should read only adventure stories.”

I was wrong.  They can be that stupid.  In fact, they can be that stupid with flares on and a little outboard motor to get to dumb as heck FASTER and with more style.

Do these poor creatures get an ironioctomy at birth?  Don’t they know “do it for the children” has been a joke phrase since the nineties?

And do they honestly, in their heart of hearts think that all the other side writes is “adventure stories”?  REALLY?  Hell, the story I mentioned the other day, Tom Bailey is more of an introspective memoir than an adventure story.  And has anyone who read my stories, particularly short stories, HONESTLY think all I do is “adventure stories”?  (Oh, like Thirst or What She Left Behind, or Never Look Back, or….)

And I realized what we’re facing is not just people who are stupid (though a few of them are.  And it’s not made better by their thinking their political ideology makes them “smart”) or people who are crazy (though a lot of them are, particularly the ones who honestly think humans are not influenced by sex hormones int he way they think.)  No, what we’re facing are the deliberately blind, the ones who put out their eyes so that they can avoid seeing “the wrong thing” and questioning received wisdom.

This is one of the great sins. It is a sin that enables all other sins, too, because if the received wisdom demands you believe some people are not human, you can’t correct for it if you’ve deliberately blinded yourself to all expressions of humanity from those you are told are the enemy.

And that is what we face. And that is what we fight. People who deliberately believe in lies.

I was talking to my friend Bill Reader about “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” and I told him my moral certainty that the story started as a gay short story (I have a vague idea that I might have published with Abyss and Apex [I’m reliably informed that I maligned Abyss and Apex, and the silly dino story came out in Apex.  OTOH I still don’t remember if I was published in Abyss and Apex], maybe, unless they were the ones who sent me a rejection saying I clearly had never been in another country and was “a narrow minded pain” — I can’t remember.  After 120 short story publications, they all run together.  However I do know that my stories with gay protagonists, like Songs or Never Look Back got a lot of pushback and editors saying “if you just change it to” before someone published them as is.  No, I don’t know why.  There’s nothing shocking in these stories.  But progressives imagine the rest of the country are homophobic troglodytes.  It’s important for their self image.  Which is part of the point I’m trying to make.)  “Not because it makes more sense that way,” I told him.  “But because liberals are convinced any gay man entering a rural bar will get beaten to death, even though the instances of exactly this occurrence are… let me see… I’m thinking… exactly zero percent a year.”  And he said “No, I know what you mean.  It makes liberal-sense.  I’ve started calling this “para-logic.”  I.e. the sense that they live in  a parallel world, and if you buy the premises of that world, instead of your lying eyes, and believe that the rest of the country are frozen somewhere between the middle ages and the imaginary 1950s filled with Stepford Wives, then their stories and actions make perfect sense.”

Bill is a better man than I and better able to articulate these things.  When faced with liberal paralogic, like the idea that I was serious about “do it for the children” or the idea I think children should only read adventure stories…

I just…

Because I work in the imaginary world, I try my best to see the real world as it is. Really see it. And reading this stuff is like reading dispatches from crazyland, so that I am caught between laughter and crying, but mostly I’m sitting here with my mouth hanging open…

So, yeah, Straw-Sarah, the one who is a twit and wants you to “Only write adventure stories” “for the children” would like to remind you to go look at the Sad Puppies slate and maybe to read these people and consider voting for those notorious right wingers, like Kevin Anderson and Jim Butcher, and Mike Resnick, or indeed any other right wingers you want to vote for. Or left wingers. Or people with no wings. (What the living h*ll, I’m a libertarian. Do whatever the heck you want. Just try not to vote for cr*p no one reads because that hurts the prestige of the award and hurts all of us professionals in the long run.)

Mind you, I don’t expect us to win. I know that worldcon has an elderly and conservative (in the sense of supporting those in power) fandom, who will not only not speak truth to power, but who are trying to support power as hard as they can. This is normal for the elderly and out of touch, and we shouldn’t blame them (too much.)

But then again I also didn’t expect these blog posts about Straw-Sarah. So maybe I’m out of touch. Or maybe I’ve come to the point where pointing and making duck noises is not enough.

So, as soon as I get my PIN (what is TAKING THEM SO LONG) from Sasquan, I shall read the books recommended, and other books/stories, and I shall carefully make my selection and vote. Because they need to know we’re out here, and we’re not whatever straw-creature they like to make up.

Defeat para-logic. Vote Sad Puppies. Show that you believe your lying eyes!

Do it for the children! Because, yeah, we’re totally about the children. You know, the children who read the “adventure stories” which is all we write.

Go. Write. Read. Have fun. And when you come to the place you can no longer point and make duck noises, shake your head and pity these people. They once had the ability to think, but they turned it in for a pot of message.

So, some of you know I finished the Superstars Writing Seminar this weekend, which is why this will be a very short post. There’s a field trip today and I’m going. (And yep, this afternoon will find me typing away on Through Fire, because I was writing by hand at the Seminar.)

Anyway, it occurred to me that writing is such a strange avocation, pulling things out of non-existence and putting them in someone else’s head that writers – by which I mean true writers, not people who write so that they can get their next promotion in academia or what have you, but people who are compelled to tell stories – need these seminars and workshops, even if they learned nothing new at them. Why? Because we spend three or four days in the middle of a bunch of our peers and we start thinking we’re not the cursed outliers of the human race.

Now this is the third year I’ve attended Superstars. I’m not going to say there was no information. Among other things, we had the inimitable Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith as speakers, and even if you know the information, you always catch some nuance in what they say that lights up a lightbulb.

There was also a lot of info I’m not ready to use yet, and might never use – Hollywood, comics – but which is good to have in my quiver because one thing in this business your career is likely to do is take a sudden turn to the weird when you least expect it.

That’s all fine.

But the most important thing about it for me, this year, was feeling energized by knowing I wasn’t alone and even my peculiarities (writing a book while listening to talks) were shared by some of my peers.

After the seminar yesterday, a friend asked how she could finish her book really fast, and ramp up on her career (she writes romance) to where she’s making money.

I wished she’d taken the seminar (I tried!) but since she couldn’t this year, I am going to distill some stuff from the seminar for her.

• Don’t stop. You can’t sell books you haven’t written.
• Write through the distractions. There is never going to be a distraction free life while you’re alive and in the world.
• Keep writing. Particularly in the indie game, but really in all of it, you need productivity to make actual money. As in, living and buying groceries money.
• If at first you don’t succeed, pick yourself up and write again. This business is WEIRD and even the best get knocked down. The long-terms continue working through everything.
• There is money in them there hills, but it is work to get there. So – as Kevin Anderson says – the books ain’t gonna write themselves.
• Vary what you do. You never know what will hit. The more tickets you have the better the chance of winning the lottery.

And now, I’m going to go to my field trip and to write. I’ll be back on Tuesday with more reasoned commentary.

Meanwhile behave and ix-nay on the pink walls hey.

Being Prepared – Cathe Smith

There was a farmer and his wife, and they had a beautiful farm on the rolling prairie. There was the 80-ft hand dug well faced with local limestone, and the numerous outbuildings required for small self-sufficient farms in the early 1900s. There was the sheep pasture in the front of the house for the sheep, and the spreading Burr Oaks lining the ravine. There was the barn with foundation walls a foot thick and made from fieldstones, with its walls held up by eight-inch beams.

The house was a solid thing of cement blocks with a deep basement and lots of windows to let in the light. The farmer and his wife filled it with music from their record collection, and the wife decorated with crocheted pillowcases on the beds and anti-massacres on the chairs.

And the farmer and his wife loved to read; history books, how-to books, biographies, everything and anything that caught their fancy. They filled their house with love and books. Every room of their farmhouse had homemade bookcases filled with books. The farmer and his wife were known in the community as readers, and their friends would call upon them to settle bets or find information.

Eventually the farmer’s wife died, and the farmer cleaned out a few of her things from the house but kept the china and kept the 50^th wedding anniversary plates they had been given. He kept her scarves, and the crocheted pillowcases, and kept her crafting books and magazines. In the fullness of time, the farmer himself died and the house, all of belongings of the farmer and his wife, the farm, and the farm land were inherited by a sister.

The sister did nothing with the farm or the house, and so the books sat on their shelves waiting. Eventually vandals and thieves broke in, looking for things to steal and wanting to cause mischief. The books were flipped through, because sometimes old people hid money in them, and then they were tossed on the floor. They knocked over furniture, looking for hidden things, and ripped out wiring from the walls.

Then came the kids looking for a place to party, they threw things around sometimes just to hear the noise something made when it was broken. They scattered old clothes around, and threw the silk scarves the farmer had kept onto the ground. The books on the floor became just another surface to stand on. Or try to burn.

In the quiet times, the animals came in looking for a place to shelter. Raccoons and opossums used the books as their litter box, and rodents used them as shelter. Birds nested in what was left of the light fixtures and vines grew along the ceilings. And underneath it all, the insects came in. The Dermestid beetles eating old paper and glue from the bindings, the book lice eating the mold and fungal spores, the caterpillars eating the rotting cellulose, and the centipedes and spiders that made their homes in such a rich hunting ground.

And with that first window broken, the damp came in. It settled into the books and helped mold and mildew grow. It warped covers, and destroyed bindings. It caused ink to run and colors to fade.

For 15 years the house stood, with its furnishings slowly going to ruin. There were those in the community that pleaded with the sister to sell the contents of the house and put the farm on the market. It was on the rolling prairie, the soil was good and the property was desirable. But the sister did nothing until her health was failing and she started disposing of her property to pay for her care.

By that time, the books were beyond saving. I shoveled first-edition military history books into a front-end loader along with biographies of interesting people, old crafting magazines, and early scientific farming books. And every load was dumped into the brush fire. I used a barn shovel to scoop up scattered books a foot deep in the house, and watched them all burn.

The almost physical pain watching those books burn caused in me was surprising. I was telling myself that the books were just things; just possessions and that I was being overly emotional, but books aren’t just things. Books are some of the longest lasting repositories of data storage we have, they are what help us remember what are, show us what we can be, and remind us of times when we should have known better.

And to watch someone’s book collection, and indeed 98 percent of their belongings put on the scrap heap, made it worse. No matter what a person believes about the afterlife, or if they believe in one at all, we all hope that the things we leave behind will make someone happy. We hope that the boxes of books your family sells at the auction will go to someone that will get some enjoyment out of their use, that the set of china you leave your niece will help her set up her house one day, that the set of old knives you leave your son will help him pay off the debts he never told you about.

So the lesson I learned that dreary day is this: It is not enough to have someone to leave your possessions to, you must leave them with instructions on how to dispose of it. Because if you don’t, whatever you hoped would happen, whatever joy you thought you’d left behind might all end up in smoke on a cold day in January.

Awake and rejoice! At long last and out of a not-so-distant land, the Promo Post has arrived! There’s been a drought of entries lately, as everyone grapples with that messy, so-called “real world” I’ve heard so much about. I’ll never quite grok you vertebrates and all your hustling around. So as we enter the glorious weekend, anchor yourselves to some comfortable couches or chairs and read a good book or three. Don’t forget to leave helpful reviews! As always, future entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Code Wrangler, Minion Trainer, and General Henchman-For-Hire

Alma Boykin

Peaks of Grace

Colplatschki Chronicles Book 5

Before Elizabeth von Sarmas came Odile Rheinhart and Marta and Edmund de Sarm…

Stone Walls: Marguerite Thomasina Antonia de Sarm’s father and maids trained her for life as wife, mother, and Lady Sarm. Lovely, practical in the extreme, sheltered behind the walls of Sarm Hall, Marta de Sarm harbors no ambitions but many illusions. Her husband’s apparent treachery shatters those illusions, forcing her to take up power in her own name. Can she trust her father’s men when Phillip of Frankonia, richest man in Colplatschki, pounds on the gates?

Custom’s Walls: In the village below the Hall, Odile Rheinhart struggles to find a place in the world. Some villagers call her cursed and whisper about secret sin, others pity her as a pathetic burden. Until the day an accident pulls her out of her sheltered home and into a world she’d never allowed herself to dream of. Do her new ambitions truly reflect Godown’s will?

Sheltering Walls: Two women, very different, both working with their walls. Overlapping duties and fortunes draw Marta and Odile together even as Phillip the Majestic threatens to break their world asunder. Hall and convent, Lady and Sister, Godown’s Grace may provide them strength to retain their freedom. Or destroy all that they hold dear.

For Godown’s Grace shatters hearts and walls.

Mary Catelli

A Diabolical Bargain

Growing up between the Wizards’ Wood and its marvels, and the finest university of wizardry in the world, Nick Briarwood always thought that he wanted to learn wizardry.

When his father attempts to offer him to a demon in a deal, the deal rebounded on him, and Nick survives — but all the evidence points to his having made the deal.

Now he really wants to learn wizardry. Even though the university, the best place to master it, is also the place where he is most likely to be discovered.

Also available from these fine booksellers:

• Barnes & Noble
• iTunes
• Kobo
• Inktera
• Scribd

*Yes, I know, that political closet had see through doors, shelves…  As a friend pointed out, it wasn’t so much a coming out of the closet, until about a year before I did, but a slow conversion.  Though it wasn’t exactly a conversion either.  I was always an anti-communist.  It just took me time for the softer stuff to start bothering me.  I got through school by parroting it, and I didn’t see its intrinsic evil until it started dawning on me much later.  This is one of those “dawning on me.”  Interestingly, of all the political posts I made before throwing the closet door open, this got me the most attacks, to the point I had to password protect the post to stop the attacks.*

There is a war between the men and the women — a blast from the past post Dec. 7 2006

And the women are winning.  And this is a bad thing.  Seriously.  Indulge me.

(Pardon the misspellings.  I’m ranting.  There’s something unholy to an orderly, spellchecked rant.  I won’t inflict it on you.  Besides, I have REAL writing to do.)

I know this goes completely against everything you’ve ever heard and learned.  History — and SF — is full of dreamers who are convinced that if women ruled the world it would all be beauty flowers and non aggression.  (To these dreamers I say spend a week as a girl in an all-girl school.  It will be a rude awakening.)

Dreamers of the Dan Brown stripe posit a peaceful female worship, with yet more beauty and flowers and non-aggression.  They ignore the fact that 99% of the goddess-worshiping religions were scary.  And don’t tell me that’s patriarchal slander — it’s not.  The baby-killing of Astoreth worship has been documented extensively.  (Of course, the Phoenicians were equal-opportunity baby killers.)  The castrations of Cybele worship were also well documented.  Now, I can hardly imagine a female divinity without imagining hormonal episodes requiring appeasement — but that’s because I’m a woman of a certain age, and that’s fodder for another altogether different discussion.  Suffice it to say that the maiden and mother usually also had a crone persona who was … er… “not a nice person.”

Anyway — all this to say since I joined the MOB (Mothers Of Boys) the scales about such things as the inherent equality of men and women as far as their brain structure and basic behavior have fallen from my eyes.  (Well, the scales that remained.  My experience in school notwithstanding, I’d been TAUGHT that females were getting the short end of the stick and that’s a hard thing to overcome.  Learned wisdom is so much more coherent than lived wisdom, after all.)

Again — indulge me — I’m going to make a lot of statements I can too back up, but which would take very, very, very long to document — so it will seem like I’m ranting mid air.  Stay with it.  If I feel up to it later, I’ll post some references.

Yes, women have been horribly oppressed throughout history including the rather disgusting Victorian period that most Americans seem to believe is how ALL of history went.  I contend, though, that women were not oppressed by some international conspiracy of males — yes, I know what Women’s Studies professors say.  I would however remind you we’re talking of a group of people — men — who a) have issues finding their own socks in the dresser they’ve used for ten years.  b) Are so good at communicating as a group that they couldn’t coordinate their way out of a wet paper bag, or to quote my friend Kate, couldn’t organize a bonk in a brothel.  (In most large organizations the “social/coordinating” function is performed by females at various levels.) c) That women being oppressed by a patriarchy so thorough it altered history and changed all records of peaceful female religion would require a conspiracy lasting thousands of years and involving almost every male on Earth.  If you believe that, I have this bridge in NY that I would like to sell you. — Women were oppressed by their own bodies.

Throughout most of history women had no safe and effective means of stopping pregnancy. — please, spare me the “herbal” remedies.  I grew up in a village that had little access to medicine.  If there had been an effective means of preventing pregnancy we’d have known it.  TRUST me.  There are abortificients, but they endanger the mother as well.  However, until the pill there was no safe contraceptive.  The herbal contraceptive is a plot device dreamed up by fantasy writers.  Also, btw, the People’s Republic of China TESTED all these methods (including swallowing live tadpoles at the full moon.)  NONE of them worked.  SERIOUSLY.

What this meant in practical fact is that most women were pregnant from menarche to menopause, if they were lucky to live that long.  I’ve been pregnant.  If you haven’t, take it from me it’s not a condition conducive to brilliant discourse or reasoned logic.  On top of that, of course, women would suffer the evils of repeated child bearing with no rest.  In effect this DID make women frail and not the intellectual equals of men.  And it encouraged any male around to “oppress” them.  I.e., when the majority of females around you need a minder, you’re going to assume ALL females need a minder.  It’s human nature.  Note that beyond suffrage, the greatest advance in women’s equality came from the pill.  Not a coincidence, that.

However, the people who think that women were oppressed by an international historical cabal rule the establishment.  Including the educational establishment.  I find it hilarious that in their minds men/boys are so powerful that they must be kept back and are suspected of being criminals just because they have a penis.  This is attributing to them god-like powers to rival what any Victorian housewife would believe.

Anyway — these people have decided all efforts must be made to equal male and female performance in school.  Since, in practical fact, this is impossible because males and females develop at different paces and favor different areas, they’ve settled for hobbling the all-powerful males.

You see this everywhere from Saturday morning cartoons to kindergarten to all the grades beyond.  In cartoons these days, the girls ALWAYS rescue the boys.  (They do it while keeping impeccably groomed hair, too.  Impressive, that.)  And in school all the girls are assumed to be right and all the boys are assumed to be wrong.

Because it’s been determined girls learn better in groups — not all girls.  I HATED group work.  But most girls — group work rules the class.  Because girls do better in homework, particularly of the “decorating and coloring” kind, this homework persists well into highschool — even with no pedagogical excuse.  Because single-sex education is good for BOTH genders, but BETTER for boys, single-sex education is anathema.

As a matter of fact I don’t  know ANY parents of boys who haven’t been told their sons are ADHD at some point and told the boy needs ritalin.  Even my older son, who is almost as verbally inclined as a girl, and who has always been interested in learning had this pushed at him in first grade.  Middle school is insane for boys, as their verbal skills at that age lag well behind the girls.  They are not only behind academically, they also tend to have issues working in groups.  Boys are accused of sexual harassment on a regular basis at this age.  No girl ever is.

I remember going to the parent teacher conference for my older son, in sixth grade, and sitting in the hallway listening to the other parents.  All the parents whose children had perfect grades were parents of girls.  All the parents whose children were inexplicably not doing well, despite high IQs, were parents of boys.

You’re not outraged?  Reverse those.  Perhaps it will help.  Imagine that our method for teaching teens was leaving all the girls out in the cold and favoring boys.  Wouldn’t it shock you?  It should.

On top of all, we’re fostering a victim mentality in these girls.  We’re giving them the advantages AND telling them boys are oppressing them — these boys are all powerful creatures from which there is no escape.

You’re not worried?  You should be.

If an alien species had devised a way to stop the human race from reproducing they wouldn’t have come up with a better way to drive both girls and boys crazy.

Look — this is striking at the core of our society.  by which I don’t mean American or even western society.  I mean SOCIETY.  Human.  Association.

Insofar as that goes — and without in anyway defending it — there is a reason that, given the chance (mostly by nature and that pesky pregnancy thing) societies became ridiculously anti-woman.  There is a reason Islamic countries are terrified of the female half of their population — no, don’t want to hear anything about higher observances.  Female circumcision.  Veiling (anyone who thinks those who put women in slip covers respect women needs his or her head examined.)  Women’s testimony being worth half of the man’s.  Women punished for being raped.  If that’s respect and kindness, give me insult and intolerance any day — there is a reason Imperial China circumscribed females to non-human status.

The reason is that we ARE more powerful than they are.

No, seriously.  And I’m not talking about the ability to bear life within us, or some such chestnut dreamed up by an anthropologist.  I’m talking about — creating social links.

Women, perhaps because they were the child caretakers and therefore had to be able to communicate child care lore as well as teach the children, seem to have learned to organize and create cooperative links.  Men’s brains seem to run to hierarchies — the order giving necessary to cooperative hunting — while women’s brains run to networks — the communication lines necessary to pass on recipes and child care tips.

The farther we go back, the more we’re sure the greatest innovations leading to civilization were the work of women: agriculture.  Animal domestication.

I’m going to take a wild leap and assume we also invented language.  Stands to reason “Gog go around mammoth from front” is far less complex than “Iga make sure child doesn’t eat poisonous berries.”

In that sense we MADE society.  We fit into society naturally.  Our aggression is verbal, social.  It’s an aggression that consists in freezing out and/or going around people.  Male aggression consists of hitting someone over the head.  Our society — any advanced society — condones the first, but not the last.

We are — so to put it — house broken.  Males aren’t.  Young males MUST be trained to fit into society.  Young females instinctively know how to go around and manipulate the system. (Yes, I’m talking generally.  I had no social clue and was very much male in my approach.)

THIS, ladies, is our turf.  They had a handle on us while continuous pregnancy weakened us.  They could even get the upper hand and push us to a corner.

NOW they can’t.  Science has equalized the odds.  And therefore, our superior organizational skills — ever more needed in an increasingly complex society — already give us an advantage.

On top of that our schools are treating our boys as guilty until proven innocent.  This is alienating them and making them crazy.  It’s also giving them a distaste for learning, which is why most college graduates are women.

We’ve won.  They’re on the run.

It’s now time to remember that they are our fathers/husbands/children.  It’s now time to remember that if we demand that men behave like women and become women in all but equipment only a small percentage will be able to accommodate.  The rest will become embittered, disillusioned and, ultimately, aggressive.  Because that’s how men behave when they’re not happy.

It’s time to stop driving the young warriors from the tribe to live in the wilderness.  They only become dangerous and come back in attack mode.

We’ve won.  Fly the standard.  Sound the trumpet.  And then extend your hand to the enemy — bring those boys back in.  They are no more guilty for the crimes of their ancestors who were terrified of women than the little girls today are guilty of the crimes of women who in the last four decades have been terrified of men.

It’s time to stop this nonsense.  We’re two halves of a whole.  Regardless of how your preference runs, or whether you have both genders in the home — it takes both to make a society.  Or at least a functional society.  And — until science overcomes that — it takes both to make a physical human being.

Go out there and hug a man today.

I’m a little worried about a development at Mad Genius Club yesterday.

It brought to mind when I was a little writer, knee high to a grasshopper — all of 14 or so — and started a fantasy short story.  I was about a bunch of kids who find a magical key that takes them to a parallel world where they can start a colony and do things their way.

One of my more… ah… indoctrinated friends (look, it was a socialist regime.  We were all indoctrinated, but she drank the koolaid.) told me that the story should end after chapter three, because the young people should realize they should come back to the real world and try to change it.

I didn’t say anything and felt vaguely guilty.  Some of the indoctrination must have taken. I abandoned the novel unfinished.

If I were answer it now, my answer would be “These are my middle fingers, Grace, baby.  You’re just p*ssed off you can’t write any fiction.  That change the world b*llsh*t?  F*ck off.  It’s what your side does to encourage the poor prols to fall in line.”

Because here’s the thing: EVERY communist I knew in the seventies told me that about everything, from the school association, to the communist party itself.  “If you don’t like it, you should join and change it from within.”

There is a reason they do that.  As the current administration is finding out (they probably thought the press was the nation, so they thought it would be easier) it’s almost impossible to change an organization “from within.”  The only way to do it is over a long time (as they’ve been trying to do to this country — 100 years and counting) gradually.  Hence “the long march through the institutions.”

One person going in and trying to change it will meet one of three fates: get expelled and then told they have no status to complain (in countries this can mean being dead, of course); get co-opted and given all sorts of busy work so they can do nothing; get disgusted and quit again.

Now, this might be worth it when the institution is the by G-d United States of America.  But … SFWA?  SFWA???????

SFWA’s trouble started with being an organization in search of a mission.  It was supposed to advocate for writers, but the only way to do that is to have the organization run by lawyers, not writers.  In an Oligopoly system, writers didn’t dare oppose their employers who could effectively blacklist them for life.  Yes, some of the early, idealistic ones tried.  And yep, when science fiction was a cash cow they had SOME standing.  Now that it’s the rump end of most publishers who are owned by international concerns?  What are you gonna do, strike?  Before or after they blacklist you?

Other missions have been proposed, including getting us some form of health insurance, succor in times of need, etc.

Some wonderful people still believe in what SFWA was meant to be — a haven and protection for SF/F writers — and I’m thinking specifically of Jerry Pournelle, Esther Friesner, Dave Truesdale, all of whom very nicely said, “but we need you in SFWA” but didn’t add “you can change it from within,” because they’re not smarmy, and certainly didn’t add “you should join and pay them money so you can change them.”

As much as I like some of the wonderful people still in SFWA I think they’re not just in a leaky boat.  No, they’re trying to drain the ocean with a thimble.  Idealistic, yes, and they’re better men and women than I.  But reasonable… no.

Part of the problem is that people of liberty (to coin a phrase) don’t join up well.  SFWA and other organizations eventually collapse under the weight of “people who really like to fill forms and hector others about how to be.”

Which I guess is what the commentor at MGC is, of course, consciously or not.

Thank heavens I’m not fourteen and I’m VERY well past being told “you have to become part of the system to change it.”

I mean, I understand them right?  If the Founding Fathers hadn’t become courtiers of George III and changed the British monarchy, we woul….  Oh, wait.  THEY DIDN’T.

They changed it from outside which is much easier than changing it from the inside.  Also, more effective.  For the results of the other theory all you have to see are all the upstanding citizens who are sent to DC and who become … whatever people become in DC.

Meanwhile, for us, the non-joiners, I think the only benefit of SFWA is to be able to say “I really am a pro, look.”

So I propose the Liberty Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.  You join.  We send you a certificate, a hat and a pin.  For $40 a year, we’ll endeavor to also provide some sort of suite at major cons.

This leaves no room for what associations usually devolve into: a vehicle for the social justice crowd.

Hat, pin, certificate, party.  That’s all we can promise.

What else do you need that is realistically obtainable?

Take the pin.  Go write a book.  I don’t know if everybody wants to change the world (I only really care about MY world) but I do know that there are better things to do with your time.

Like write.

The Problem of Labor — David Pascoe

My vantage point these days is an oddly (Oddly?) curious one. A sleep-deprived and writing-deprived one. Perhaps this accounts for the difficulty I have in comprehending how some … people think. Or don’t think. So there I was, minding my own business, which mostly involves me minding Wee Dave’s … business, and monumental foolishness flashed across my feed.

Short aside:

I’m pretty certain (don’t laugh; I might cry) time spent socially networking is proving the bane (one of: shorter aside (nested asides inside nested parentheses! cats and dogs, living together!) being I’m working hard to cut myself slack when it comes to my careers as a father and as a writer. I’ll be attending Superstars this week, paying VERY close attention, and there’ll be an AAR when I’m done and it’s done and the doneness is rare/medium rare or so. That said, this may be my big thing this year. I simply may not have it in me, and in my family, to do a lot else. Except LibertyCon. I have reliable sources that suggest her BbES Princessness will cut me out of the inheritance-by-adoption should I fail to deliver the Young Master to that particular shindig, and I just can’t be having with that. All of which is to say that I’ll be giving up all of the booking of faces, the twits, and as much of the online-y-ness as I can safely manage come the day after Soul Cake Tuesday or whenever that happens. I need the time, and I need the emotional energy to actually make fiction. The news, such as it is, is far, far too unpleasant for me to dwell upon when I have a not-quite-nine-month-old psychic vampire sucking my will to power *cough* live. And as Mrs. Dave recently pointed out to me, I tend to have difficulty asking for help. If you see me online, mucking about with silliness that doesn’t further any of the priorities of great priority-ness, please drop me a line telling me to get back to work. Thank you.

End aside.

So, back to monumental foolishness. This link takes you to Twitchy, purveyor of delightful silliness perpetrated by ostensibly responsible adults throughout these great internets. Should you deign, feel free to follow the links therein to the origin of the idiocy, one of those Great Minds which Think Alike (and Right, and Truth and probably Beauty) over at that Edifice of Rightness, the NYT. Yeah, them again.

Apparently, El Presidente Numero Uno has proposed a tax credit for working mothers parents that should help to offset the costs of childcare. The GOP has predictably (I have as yet to ascertain whether it is also wisely) criticized this as unfair to stay-at-homes. The writer, in all his Received Wisdom, mocks this opposition as wrong headed, evil and all the usual epithets directed at those filthy others Not In the Club.

But the money quote is this one:

The tax code is already hugely distorted in favor of stay-at-home parenting: Labor outside the home is taxed; household work, such as stay-at-home parenting, is not.

So, apparently, I’ve fallen through some red-tinged rabbit-hole into a world where the IRS taxes my labor. Funny, I only remember reporting my income. Is there a block on my 1099 where my employer (slave-driver, I tell you. I never get a day off, and no sick days. On the upside, I can come to work in my pajamas, or even a kilt.) should have tallied said labor? What is the unit of measurement for this work? Is it man-hours? Is there a dollar value attached? I thought that whole calculation was considered extraneous, but what do I know: I’m just a stay-at-home parent, bilking the government and the American People (in that order, of course) out of the untaxed labor I’m putting in while not getting paid. Again, presumably by Daddy Government and the American People. (Seriously, when do I start getting a paycheck for raising an American? Strike that.)

If the logic makes your head spin, well, it should. Keep in mind that you (and I, and apparently all our stuff and all our time) belong to the government, and you’ll start to understand what’s going on here. Also, just why somebody might make that claim. This is really part and parcel of what Cedar wrote about last week.

You see, if you ladies parents decide that you really want to be the ones to instruct your children on life, the universe, etc. and one parent will remain in the house to do so, you’re wrong. You see, you don’t get to have an opinion on that, unless you want to be evil, and you don’t want that, do you? If you stay home, Mom Parent, you’ll be robbing society of the value of your work outside of the home, in a career that actually means something. How can you do that to the generations of feminists who fought for (the mandatory exercise of) your right to hire a nanny, or pay a childcare service, so you can slog the daily nine-to-five like your husband does? Wait, you have a husband? You’re voluntarily buying into the patriarchal notion of marriage? You know that’s just a tool to prevent you from becoming empowered, right? Oh dear, oh dear: I see we have a lot of work yet to do brainwashing education you toward your eventual enlightenment to your rightful place. Look, sweetheart, don’t worry your pretty, little head about it: just know that we’re working for your betterment, and sacrifices will have to be made.

*sough* Sorry, don’t know what came over me. So this is straight out of the Leftymost playbook. Nothing we think we own is actually ours. Not even the unpaid and untaxed (gah) labor we spend raising children the government doesn’t pay us for. Now truly, I don’t want a check from Uncle Sam for being a parent. I understand that’s called Welfare, and if they give you money for a thing, then they will sure as heckfire start requiring you to meet their standards on how you perform same. With mandates in schools requiring specifics on lunches, on curriculum, on nearly everything, how comfortable to start requiring specifics on out of school times and activities?

Look, all of this aside, there are plenty of people out there, Americans (at least legally so) who think you do not own your own labor. Not simply the fruits of the labor, but the work itself. My mother-in-law raises goats, and enjoys the milk they produce. She doesn’t sell this milk, so she doesn’t earn a goat-based income and doesn’t pay taxes on it, but I guarantee she labors. Should the government get a slice of that? Well, do they really want fresh goat milk, or would they like some of the energy she burns caring for her goats? Nevermind. The point is, we’re dealing – again, still, forever – with a group of people who don’t understand logic, and wouldn’t apply it even if they could. And they’ll continue, despite all evidence to the contrary, to try to force us down the path they’re compelled to follow.

I’m not worried about this, at least personally. Yes, the idiots will continue to idiot as hard as they possibly can, but I’ve got plenty of weapons to hand. I’ve got disruptive technology, and a community of like-minded iconoclasts (well, not precisely, but what do you call us Odds, exactly?) at my back. Between us, we’re putting out the word: we’re not alone in this fight.

So, Sad Puppies slate was announced.  To see it, go to Brad’s Blog here.

I would particularly like to endorse Kevin J. Anderson’s nomination.  That the man has never received a Hugo is a sort of blot on the field. I haven’t read the suggested novel yet, but I have yet to read one of his novels that isn’t head and shoulders above most of the competition. Because he’s a professional.

While the slate is not rigid — i.e. if you really don’t like one of the stories suggested or have a burning desire to nominate, say (cough) my short story Rising Above from the Shattered Shields anthology, or even (using Wheel of Time exception) Ringo’s zombie series as a “novel” you are not only within your rights but highly encouraged — let’s remember that the more we can “pile on” (which will never be to the brainless level of the other side, which votes for books and authors they don’t even read) the better the overall results.

On the other hand, it’s been hilarious watching the reaction to the slate.  For instance, I’m no longer shocked and vaguely puzzled at being called a Nazi and the world’s worst person over telling the idiots that they couldn’t/shouldn’t kick anyone (even Vox :-P) out of human society.

No, the fricking ijits have already started calling Jim Butcher fascist.  It’s gobsmackingly mind blowing.

Was discussing this with my friend Bill Reader today, as he said his Romney/Ryan sticker on the car was getting faded, which led to us discussing the once and future election (in this case both of us agree that while Romney was never better than acceptable, we could do worse than Romney, and probably will) and he said “remember when Ryan was picked for VP candidate, our side was all afraid the dems would attack him on his inexperience?  Instead, they attacked him on having blue eyes and being fit.”

He says he read a columnist — I’m going to guess Dowd — attacking Ryan PURELY on the fact that he looked innocent and THEREFORE, obviously, must have an evil heart.

I told him “these are not serious people.”  Then came home to reports from my eyes on twitter (the other eyes, Christopher) which told me that they were attacking Jim Butcher as fascist SOLELY because he was in the Sad Puppies slate.

Dorothy Grant recently told me about the name for when you stand, with a finger on either side of the bridge of your nose, your eyes closed, your head inclined: Sinal Salute.

Guys, the only reason I’m not doing the sinal salute is that I am typing.  I need a moment.

These people are completely unhinged.  They are so unhinged they don’t know the definition of “hinged.”  It never occurs to them to look at the legitimate reasons to oppose something or someone (say, not liking the person’s writing) or the illegitimate but true reason (not liking the person’s politics, which might not have anything to do with what they write.)  No, they jump straight to the crazy cakes reason to oppose say a Hugo nomination.  “He’z a fazcisssss eleventy!”

The sad part of all this being, of course that the policies they highly approve of are in fact fascist, because it turns out the only way to make a communist regime sort of work is to make it fascist but not call it that, like China.  (And then it only works for limited definitions of work.  I mean, it crashes slower.  But it’s more effective than communist regimes.  Which is sort of like saying paper is more edible than plastic.)

These are not only not serious people, these are people who, in a cartoon, would be running from a guy in a butterfly net.  These are people who think that vagina monologues are sexist, not because — duh — they’re a bunch of twaddle centering on a part of female anatomy that not only never spoke but is highly unsuited to thinking with, but because it discriminates against women with penises.

I need a moment.  (Does Sinal Salute.)

These are people Vagina Vigilants who think the most important thing about a guy who landed a probe on a comet is the shirt he’s wearing.

I’ve written characters who would be locked up in real life for being too crazy to live — Dyce Dare, really — but none of them are as insane as people who think that what makes books “important” is “diversity” usually figured out by the WRITER’S external characteristics.  Which means the stories are usually all alike, since they conform to Marxism — but the writers, oh, by gum, they have people who can tan all sorts of shades and who self-define as all sorts of genders.

Now, if only we could read the authors instead of the stories?  (Did anyone say “entrails”?)

Did I mention that a week or two ago, my Book Plug Friday Post got picked up by Passive Voice.  Great, right?  Sure, except that crazy people immediately started attacking me PERSONALLY in the comments.

With most of my BPF posts, I would to “Well, they disagree about indie/publishing/politics.”  I wouldn’t call them crazy.  Except this post was on EDITING and pointing out to people the difference between copyediting and structural edits and the difference in price, as well as caveats before you allow someone to do structural edits on your novel.

Was there room for disagreement?  Sure thing.  There always is.  What there wasn’t room for was calling me the world’s worst person over them.  Let’s take wassherface who wrote the dinosaur tripe.  I don’t think she’s despicable.  A tad immature, perhaps, but that’s curable.  (I mean she MIGHT be despicable.  I don’t know her.  But I rather doubt it, because most people aren’t.  They’re okay but flawed.)

Let’s say she wrote a post about how paleontologists would surely be murdered for going into a working class bar.  I might call her a few choice names, mostly synonymous with “you don’t live in the real world, do you?”  In fact, I more or less did that based on her short story.  That’s fine.  That’s called disagreement.

But let’s say she wrote an article on how to write characters.  And let’s say it was the worst article on how to write anything since Writing the Eye of Argon Way (I apologize because it’s not fair to presume she’d write a bad article, but it’s necessary for the example.)

I might (if I were trying to avoid actual work) comment and point out the flaws.  But I wouldn’t call the author the worst person ever, or infer anything about her, personally, from a technical article.  Much less would I seize the opportunity to bring in totally unrelated stuff.

The left does this because that’s all they have.

These are not serious people. In fact while I want to emphasize they ARE people, they don’t behave like people.  They behave like stray bits of code left behind by the Soviet Union which, devoid of a central animating purpose anymore, or the illusion that it really was better behind the curtain (really guys?  That’s why so many West Germans were shot trying to flee to the East, right?  Oh, wait.) they just carry on their fragmentary and not very coherent bits of programming.  So, the destruction of Western Civ is still on, though only the crazies believe that communism/utopia will magically emerge then.

They remind me of eczema. They remind me of eczema because I have it.  Eczema is an auto-immune disorder.  This means it attacks my own body.  It is also more or less unpredictable.  I mean, there are triggers for the eczema: stress, dry skin, a molecule of detergent left on the clothes after three, four, five rinses, sugars or really any amount of carbohydrates over 20 grams a day (in my case.  Other people have other triggers.)

But you never know to what triggers the eczema is going to react.  Sometimes (my birthday) I’ll eat say a piece of cake, and by rights I should have raw palms (or elbows.  or belly) the next morning.  But sometimes there’s no reaction at all.  Other times it will be all out of proportion.

The only thing I know for sure is that if there is a reaction, it will be disproportionate and counterproductive.

Sort of like the left.

Which brings me to the title of this post.  (I was listening to Leonard Cohen again.  Shoot me.)

Am I tired of the war?  Oh, heck yeah.  They’re not interesting opponents.  They just jump up and down and either name call or scream things that have nothing to do with the subject or that are in and of themselves completely insane.  Like, “discrimination against women with penises, Awk!”  (It helps if you add “awk” or “Polly wants a cracker” to the end of the crazy stuff they say.  Seems somehow more reasonable.) “Sexist shirt, Polly wants a cracker” “Jim Butcher fascist, Need New Cage Liner.”

However, being tired of the war doesn’t mean I’ll give up fighting.  I can’t give up fighting because every time we stop applying a corrective, these people decide they’ve won the war and also that they were right all along.  And THEN they take another step into crazyland.  (Think cartoon character running middair.)  And they are ALREADY not serious people.

Rather being tired of the war means I’ll fight harder because I just — sinal salute — need the craziness to end.  Now.  Yesterday, if possible. I have books to write and I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore.

I didn’t start the war.  I just want to end it.  And the only real way to end it is by winning.  Even if the weapons of victory involve pointing and making duck noises while the other size screams.

I figure duck noises are more sensible than “Awk, Awk, fascisssss, Polly wants a cracker.”

*Dave Pascoe — aka number 3 son by adoption — seems to be trying to write the world (it’s a family thing) so Cedar is pitching in, and he’ll run later this week.  He’s not dead.  He’s looking after a baby.  Which ties in with this essay too.*

False Goalposts       – Cedar Sanderson

I recently wrote a post about motherhood. In it, I detailed the ways mothers are expected to leave their children from birth, go out into the world, and have a career. What I didn’t get into was the ways that is a false goalpost. Remember the old Peanuts cartoon, where Charlie would run at the ball, and at the last second Lucy would whip it away, and he would wind up on the ground, seeing stars and wondering what had happened? This is what a lot of young women are wondering.

Things started out so well. They were going to graduate from Highschool, as Homecoming Queen, natch, and have a prom of the ages, and then trip lightly off to college on a path of rosepetals. After school, they would land their dream job, and somewhere in there would be the perfect 2.1 children, boy and girl (no one ever talks about that poor 0.1 child…) who would themselves be sweetly brilliant…

We all know where this is going. The reality that includes drunken sex, parties at college until the GPA dips too low to keep going, or the parent falling ill and the child dropping out of school to care for them, or… I know a lot of these young people, trying to get through school on their second try. Heck, I am one, I just left a lot more time between my first and second try.

Whoa! Where did the ball go?

So, we have established that not all young women will make it through college. A high percentage of those young women will drop out of school because they are pregnant, either before or after having the baby. Pregnancy isn’t all glows and happy baby kicks in the belly. It is a huge job, of carrying a growing being that is consuming all your energy, nutrients, and then there is the wash of pregnancy hormones that turn a woman into someone she may not recognize. Not to mention the issues that can crop up near the end of pregnancy. I had four happy healthy pregnancies, and one of those where I was on bedrest for two weeks with very high blood pressure. Things happen. Do young women figure this into their plans? No.

Let’s say she manages to avoid all this and keep going through school, get a degree before baby. Now she has a bachelor’s in… something. Let’s make it Liberal Arts, for a catch-all degree. Our girl bounces down the commencement aisle to get her piece of paper, all smiles and sunshine in her cap and gown. Wipe away that tear, and think about what’s coming next for her.

Kids these days think that’s it. Get a degree, get a career. I remember working in an office, talking to a coworker, who was still in shock over having graduated the year before with his fresh history degree. He wound up in the office doing customer service work, and barely able to pay his loans. He was working seven days a week just to make ends meet, and his fiancé was working, too. They didn’t know when they could get married – not soon – or start a family. Buying a house? Out of the question. And yet, both of them had their pieces of paper that were supposed to be the keys to illustrious careers.

Whoops! There goes that ball again.

So now our girl has that piece of paper. She also has a baby now. Where does she find work? Well, in the motherhood essay I talked about the woman who was expected to do it all: have a career, have a family, so off she went, leaving her baby in the care of minimum-wage daycare workers. Guess what, that’s where our girl is, working in the daycare. This is the illustrious career she worked so hard for. Of course, having her own children in the daycare she works at costs her almost as much as she is making. Gas for commuting takes the rest of her pay. But she can’t give up her career for her family, that would be admitting defeat. My parents told me at some point they sat down and crunched the numbers when my sisters and I were young. For my mother to go back to work would actually cost the family. Oh, not a lot, and for most it would be breaking even, not a loss. But this girl never looks that close at the budget, she just drags home exhausted every night, to pizza or something unidentifiable in the slow-cooker.

Where the heck is that ball?

Girls are promised in school that they can be doctors, and lawyers, and… So they can. Nothing wrong with shooting for the moon. The difficulties come when they are reaching for false goalposts, and not re-evaluating when circumstances change. Motherhood is not a penalty, it is a score, but it’s not without consequences. A new life, a tiny daughter… what is our girl going to say to her, when she gets old enough to start running up the field toward the goalposts? Shoot for the score, but when life knocks you down, get up and dust yourself off. Recognize that the goalposts might be false, and it’s ok to have goals that are smaller, or less socially acceptable to the world around you. And above all, it’s dangerous out there, take a friend. He’s called a husband, and he’s meant to be your partner, confidante, and supporter. Don’t undermine him, and he can help you score all the goals.

Charlie Brown could never thump Lucy for being such a pill about the ball, nice boys don’t hit girls. But I’m not a boy, and I can look at her, and walk away. Time to play my own game.