Know Your Limits...

Sigh.

I don't even know where to begin.  All across the United States, women are being used as pawns and proxies in a cultural war.  You can probably gather by now which side I'd align myself with, but the fact that there is fighting at all, still, is troublesome and exhausting.   In 2012, one would think that to get to political office you would have to be a little more adroit with your tongue than to say to women forced to undergo an unnecessary and unwanted medical procedure to just close your eyes.  And in 2012, one would hope that the entire national conversation would not be about whether or not women deserve to have their medical needs covered.  Sadly, even a bitter old cynic like me was stunned to discover Arizona's plan to drag up this issue again and defy the man in the White House: a law has been proposed in the state legislature that would make it legal for employers with religious objections to fire women for using birth control, whether or not the woman's company health insurance is paying for it, unless she can prove that she is not using it for 'sexual purposes'.

This won't stand up to any kind of judicial scrutiny for a whole host of reasons, but the problem is that it could well pass and women and their families will be hurt by it until it is torn a legal new one by (presumably) the ACLU.  The greater problem, though, is that supposedly educated men and women (it was introduced by a woman, as it happens) think they somehow have the right to try to pass this kind of law.  They think it's ok to kick female workers in the teeth, as long as it is done in the name of religion.  They think it's ok to violate HIPAA, the Health Care Reform Act and the US Constitution, because they do not like women having access to contraception.  They don't mind that the law will never stick, that it's a complete waste of time and resources that could be better spent on something important and constructive.  They don't even mind that it makes them look rather evil and demented, because everything is apparently secondary to punishing women for being women.  Even women who are using such contraception for 'non-sexual purposes' would be punished, having to pay out of pocket until their employer agrees that their pleading of "I'm not having sex" is to their satisfaction and being charged a fee for the company being kind enough to look at their claim.

I could write a diatribe on how awful this all is, but it is rather self evident.  Just reading about the Arizona bill made me sick.  I was fortunate enough to be born after segregation and after the Civil Rights era, at a time where racism was by no means gone but it at least was not open policy.  Today, misogyny is startlingly palpable in the political world.  It is chilling to find myself in a world where a large section of the population (the largest, actually) is seen as something lesser and it is not even kept quiet.  It's clear that the political ruling class, largely but not exclusively in the Republican Party, are reaching very far to grab women around the neck.  It's a war on women, and they feel entitled to the territory between each and every woman's legs.  Hopefully public backlash will soon show that they are reaching well beyond their limits.

And here is today's moment of zen:

Inspiration

One of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs to those who were reared on the Internet and txt spk) writers receive is: "Where do you get your ideas".  I was fortunate enough to be asked this even before I was out of school.  Back then I described myself as enjoying writing rather than as a writer, but the effect was the same - telling stories had become part of my identity, and on occasion my stories were read to the English class since it shut them up for ten minutes.  According to my peers, at least, I was greater than Shakespeare.

But enough ego-stroking.  The question somewhat baffled me because, like many writers I have subsequently witnessed struggling to answer it, I had no bloody idea.  Inspiration just seemed to hit, but I was reluctant to admit that - it might make it sound like I was cheating.  The cliche runs that talent is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, but I would argue with those measures.  Yet it does seem apt when one considers the inspiration is what seems to hoard all the credit...

Struggling for an answer, I turned the question around on my classmate.  "Where do you look for inspiration?" I asked.  I had met many students who struggled significantly with what to say when it came to essays and the like, and their struggle was generally not out of ignorance.  They knew the answers if prompted, but bearing it out in a narrative form that, as we were always instructed, came to a balanced conclusion was a hurdle they had great difficulty surmounting.

"I just sort of sit and think about it," they'd answer, "And nothing happens."

I did sort of answer along these lines, but not nearly as clearly as I would have liked, as I myself did not fully understand it yet.  But, in short, I told them that this was perhaps the problem.  Inspiration comes to me when I'm not thinking about it, it comes when I am almost making an effort not to think at all.  Sitting on the bus, listening to music, zoning out from the world, I might be struck with a scene that just screams to be fleshed out into a story.  It might make me anti-social, but who am I going to talk to on the bus anyway?  Another flash might occur shortly before dropping off to sleep, which is really annoying because I never did get in the habit of keeping a notebook with me and even if I had, the scrawl of my damaged hand at one in the morning is unlikely to make much sense come tomorrow.  The shower is another favourite place to come across a good idea, and I find it plays out as Stephen King describes, like a palaeontologist stumbling across a fossilised bone by chance, and gradually uncovering it with careful work.  Perhaps even 99% work, but that should not discount the weight of the 1% in this equation.  An 1% may begin in luck, but it requires action to put a writer in the position to strike it lucky.  Consuming stories as much as possible (not just reading, but in film and television and video games and every opportunity that presents itself) and thinking about the craft a lot will help a writer focus, but it is also important to take the time to not focus, to relax and decompress, and just let the imagination go for a stroll.

My core advice would be to never be afraid to write an idea down.  No matter how stupid it might sound, it can always lead to another idea, or seem a much better one from a slightly different perspective.  Not every good writer sits on the train and has their story pull into the station of their mind fully formed by the time they get from London to Edinburgh, but no one should feel that they are expected to pluck pure genius from thin air if they want to be considered creative.  Believe in yourself, believe in your ideas, and believe that you can actually find them without straining your brain trying to look.

Now unwind with today's moment of zen:

A Man Who Trusts Women

I trust women.  I like women.  Most of them.  Well, most of the ones I know.  The rest I largely have no ill-will towards, and those I might dislike, I do so because of rather specific actions of theirs.  Like threatening to nuke Buenos Aires, turning international politics into a joke or failing to use their indoor voice for my entire childhood.

But even these women that I might not like so much, I do not feel any sense of ownership over.  I do not have any power or responsibility to guide them or cajole them, to judge them or to denigrate them.  What they do, while I might dislike it and I might complain about it, is up to them.  It has never even crossed my mind that these women, even the ones I don't like, should be subjected to my whim by force of law.  So why is it that millions of women, across the United States and the world, are finding their choices limited and their motivations prejudged and second-guessed?  Why is it that women's health care is a divisive issue that the entire country is talking about?  Why is it a bargaining chip, seemingly requiring a shrewd poker player to keep it in the stack.  It seems baffling to me that it was on the table to begin with.

Today is International Women's* Day.  I don't know if there is an International Men's Day, and I don't care.  While there are always issues that affect men that are worth talking about (social pressure to conform to the constructed concept of 'masculinity', fear of getting probed in the butt to check for prostate cancer, etc.), it isn't often that the entire gender finds itself the subject of political humming and hawing over whether or not they deserve access to basic health care.  Lots of men don't get access to basic health care, because they are poor, unemployed or already sick ('born this way' doesn't fly with Republicans for this issue either).  But they don't get denied because a certain segment of a certain religious sect firmly believes they should.  Viagra isn't something you need a trans-urethral ultrasound before you're allowed to get it (except maybe in Ohio).  Women are, as ever, the ones punished for daring to have a sexuality, and are shackled by the idea that they are somehow too fragile or stupid to make decisions for themselves.

Rubbish.  I know plenty of women who are perfectly capable of making decisions for themselves.  I also know a handful I wouldn't send out for a sandwich, but that has nothing to do with what's between their legs.  And the same goes for men, and for anybody else who might consider themselves trans or whatever other gender.  Individuals are different from one another, and every individual deserves the opportunity to make their own health care choices without a third party's religious or moral convictions interfering.  That men largely get this and women do not is a scandal and a stain on the reputation of the faithful.  Faith, if it is to be anything, is to be a help to oneself, not a hindrance to another.


Your moment of zen today is a video involving some women who do not appear to be fragile at all.  As I have mentioned in the past and in my bio, I'm a fan of professional wrestling, and one of my favourite companies right now is Shimmer Women Athletes.  While I find the name a bit daft, and the DVD covers make my mother think I've ordered a stack of porn, this product is incredibly refreshing for a jaded wrestling fan.  It involves people (who happen to be women) with talent, enthusiasm and a little bit of fun, mixing all that together in the ring to make for a solid wrestling show.  It's entertaining, it's engaging, and it's not "good for women's wrestling"; it's plain good.  As it should be, there's no reason women cannot wrestle just as well as men.  Some of the women happen to be attractive, but that's besides the point.  Plenty of male wrestlers are attractive too.  What matters is that I appreciate and enjoy their work, and I trust them to have their own agency and make their own choices in life, without myself or anybody else throwing hurdles in their way.  Would we really accept trying to force John Cena to watch a brain scan of a football injury victim before allowing him to get into the ring? 

*That apostrophe is in the correct place, despite it being a plural.  Don't ask me why.  The English language was never meant to make sense.  Its arbitrary absurdity is probably why the English invented Monty Python.