Female? Be scared *linkage*

Rape is caused by the victims

Oh, to be sure. A sheik compares 'immodest' women to meat exposed where cats (rapists) can find it.
The message was clear, even if he hadn't stated it in so many words - stay indoors, covered up.

That's wrong on so many levels - but note how abyss2hope compares his attitude with that of Christians who emphasise female modesty to prevent rape.
Consider this for a moment - whatever other uses modesty may have, if there were no rapists in the vicinity immodesty would have no bearing on whether or not rape occurred.

Forget EP. Forget male 'nature'. Immodesty is not a cause of rape unless a rapist is present.

But there are rapists in our society, and an easy answer. Women are the problem, lock them up, cover them up so that they are removed from the view of strange men who might otherwise suffer impulses to rape. Problem solved - because there's no such thing as marital or acquaintance rape, of course.

I've made my views clear on this previously. If behaving like a human is suicidal, then I will behave like a human and take the consequences.
I have no interest in a life so strictly controlled that I may not step outside or talk to another human. I have no interest in a life that is approved only when it is invisible.


Pointed out in Abyss2hope's post: adhering to the notion that women are responsible for preventing rape acknowledges that there are no innocent victims. That rape is as easy as eating. And that women are objects - of no inherent worth.

The scary part? All the above is true. Rape is easy. Blaming the victim is obvious. And of course most victims have no worth - they're female, right?
Any sensible person would call b.s. on the last two statements of that paragraph - but just how are you going to convince the guy who is in complete denial of the fact that he might have done anything wrong?
Or his mates, who know he's such a good guy he'd never have willingly committed rape?
Or his mother, who didn't raise him that way?
Or the judge and jury, who have evidence that sex occured but only one person's dissenting testimony that the incident was nonconsensual?

Until society values women according to their true worth there never will be innocent victims, or victims that matter. In the minds of some men there are no victims at all - because it is obvious that rape hurts no-one.

Just as there are no dangers to women associated with pregnancy or childbirth, and no such thing as a female with an interest in politics or who places a value on her time. No females who run businesses, or compete in the Olympics. No such thing as a woman soldier. No mothers who struggle to love their children, and wish for a moment to themselves.
You think I'm talking nonsense? There are a lot of pretty average folks around who either believe this, or believe this should be the way of things.

It's hard to be average when everyone thinks you're ... not

Just for the hell of it, why not go to town with your hair down this week?

Heck no!
I can still remember the last time I did that - what, two years ago?
I'm tired. A day of the sort of reactions dressing well and wearing silky hair down to my waist garners would be devastating.

The absolute fucktitude of the whole thing is that I can't see what there is to like, or exclaim about in my looks. Maybe I really have grown out of it by now. After all, it's years since I've worn my hair down, or even neat. Age is furrowing my skin and the untamed eyebrows are wilder, the skin dry from exposure and scrubbed pink with harsh soaps.
I'm too lazy to link. HF linked to a farcical blog "waytoopretty" and the blog itself, plus the comments in HFs post brought back recollections from the past. A nod when a poster says that her friend dresses to avoid looking too good.
I sense a rather snide disbelief of the fact that it might be a rough life being very attractive.

It's easier to know than to explain.
I find muscle attractive, and smooth unblemished skin. So it's nice to be able to see them in the mirror. There are other things about me that I find unattractive - I don't like the shape of my legs, or the over-feminine figure and wearing rubber boots all day does nothing for the feet. But it's not me that I exist to please. Without a mirror, or a self-contemplative mood, my appearance is of no concern. But it's of every concern to the stranger in the street who looks twice for indulgence, of every concern to the bus driver who goes out of his way to assist the young lady and invite her to sit and talk to him during the journey. It's noticed by the secretary who abandons her other tasks to thoroughly research some little thing enquired about. Most certainly noticed by the fella standing behind you at the grocery store who tries to engage you in conversation.
The elderly ladies who turn their heads and smile as they nod a pleasant greeting, the road worker who wolf-whistles as you pass, or the salesman who touches your arm as he tells a joke - they all notice your appearance, an appearance that was far from your mind until suddenly jolted back into it by the realisation that your less attractive companion is a stranger to this sort of attention.

Do you think any of it makes me feel good? I can't help it if people choose to seek out my company for my looks, or make presumptions about who I am. It makes me feel as if I'm operating under false pretences when men bend over backwards to help me, knowing that no male in this world is ever going to get any satisfaction from that - I'm not wired that way.
I hate being placed in a stereotype.
I hate not being allowed to do things for myself.
I hate the presumption that my career advanced on my looks - or sleeping with the right people.
I hate being told I should maximise the 'power' good looks can bring.
I hate coming up against the belief that I have no worth beyond appearance and gender. I can't help either of those. I can't take credit for being female. I can't take credit for having good skin which I've done my utmost to destroy my whole life. I don't want those things - those things I haven't worked for and can't alter - to typify who I am as a person.
I hate the men who aspire to their dreams, and can't believe that their dream woman doesn't like them that way. I even hate the ones that shrug and say, "Oh well, I wasn't good enough," as if their perceived lack of attractiveness were the deciding factor.

But how can you explain it to someone who doesn't know? How can you get them to understand that every time you set foot outside, your looks affect the way people react to you? Or that you wonder every time you grade excellence if you were truly tested on the same scale as everyone else - and yes, I've heard it suggested many a time that there are different scales of marking in operation as I get consistently top grades?
Somewhere along the way I've got lost - the person I think I should be, overshadowed by the appearance of the body I walk around with.
I appreciate when I'm treated as a normal person. And that is why it's a mistake to wear my hair down, or to dress smart.

As a teenager, I was imprisoned by adults' fear of my looks. Not permitted to wander, warned to stay inside. Attempts were made to chaperone me when I travelled, and voices raised when I tried to break bounds.
Weekly I was reminded by parents and teachers of girls who had been raped and/or murdered for the crime of being in a certain place, or being alone.
Between this, incessant admiration and the loss of self to my looks, I wanted nothing more than to destroy them.
Never quite definite enough to submit my looks to fire, knife or acid, I've instead refused to look after them. Rough-chopped my own hair; worn dirty, ill-fitting and ill-matched clothes. Never worn make-up or looked after my skin or 'worked-out'.
Never attempted to act 'feminine', or stand with good posture or practise cute expressions.
I get a *lot* of flak for that.
And it's so partially effective that there are still times I think an accident with fire in my younger days would have served me well.

and just another thought

hauled up from the great whirlpool of twisting thoughts.

A long time ago, when there was a general discussion on feminist credibility, I wrote a post on the subject. But there was one thing I didn't see then.
I thought of it as stepping aside from the real issues, concentrating on such unimportant matters.
But it's not unimportant.

A couple of feminist bloggers have posted about the negative reactions they've received for not shaving.
Well, men shave, right? And no-one harasses them when they're going through college exams or busy spells at work, and don't shave for a week or two. Time and again my friends and colleagues have, in unison, sprouted beards when the pressure goes on. The young man who calls to arrange for contracting at my farm has a more pronounced growth every time I see him - he probably barely has time to sleep right now.

As a teenager, I remember telling my mother off because she was wearing a short-sleeved top and I really thought she shouldn't go out in it, because there was icky visible hair showing in her armpits.
Her right to not shave wasn't greater than the world's right to not have to look at her underarm hair, in my mind.

But now I think that we need more women like her. I've never really known why I shaved, so I made up a little story in my mind that men believed women didn't grow leg hair and it was women's responsibility to ensure they kept on believing that becasue the world would end if the fiction was shattered ... sort of a 'don't step on the pavement cracks' type fiction.
As I grew older, it became obvious that guys did know that women had body hair, and they wanted it off. Naked of clothes wasn't enough, they wanted their women naked of hair also.
As a teenager, the only natural body hair I'd seen was on my mum. TV actors were all smooth; photographed models, shining and hairfree, women at the swimming pool were bald in the armpits. You could be forgiven for finding body hair ugly, when suddenly confronted with it in a hair-free world.
And since that thought surfaced, I've no interest in cultivating the fiction any more. Like the guys who don't get around to shaving when they're busy, my time between picking up the razor has also lengthened since calving began. But instead of pulling on a pair of jeans to cover my legs when I go to town, I just go anyway. So people notice. I don't care. If I want to be smooth, I'll shave, if I can't be bothered, I'm no longer going to do it for the convenient fiction that women are hair-free.
And each time a woman leaves her home attired for comfort and practicality, wearing her own face and her own hair she is paving the way for others, as people become used to her and after a while no longer find her appearance offensive.
I hope that is the way it would work, at any rate.

The unspoken requirement for a woman to be presentable in the patriarchal ideals of appearance is an ongoing symbol of woman's repression. Intuitively I'm as much against allowing radfeminism to dictate grooming habits as allowing the patriarchy to - but when you look at the whole picture, it's clear that every woman who can shrug off the patriarchal ideals is paving the way and improving the world for other women. Society needs to get used to real women, not air-brushed models.

Blogger doesn't like me, hence this won't post. I thought my thoughts were independent, but if Hugo Schwyzer's latest post is any indication I've caught the edges of a raging discussion and missed the main part.

His post was a reminder though, of three young girls I've spent a lot of time with over the last few years. These girls are Maori, and I'm Pakeha and one time I'd taken them home and we were sitting in my car outside their house talking, and we started comparing moustaches. I have one, though because I'm dark-skinned, it's nothing like as noticeable as my paler sister's was. Each of the girls had soft dark hair over their upper lip.
That day we peered at each other and ourselves in my car's rearview mirror and each claimed that we had the best and biggest moustache, for those few moments glorifying the dark hairs that society could have taught us to be ashamed of.
Most of the time I don't even notice the moustache. But that day our moustaches were welcome and beautiful to us.

Cultural Repression

Okay, so I couldn't resist linking to thisWho's scared of tampons? and kudos to the Happy Feminist who spotted the post first.

It brings up a lot of stuff that's part of my background - the total lack of education, lack of positiveness about sex.

It didn't all come from the LDS church. Mum had been raised catholic, by an abusive mother. She was in an abusive relationship, and had had other previous nasty encounters with males. I don't think it's any wonder that when she tried to tell us sex was actually a good thing, it didn't sink in. Because in an unguarded moment she might say what she really felt.
And that we took notice of.

But seriously, the link's worth a read and it isn't serious at all though it does bring up some rather ponderable points.

Repression. Is that what you call it? The training that results in a person who would rather just pretend sex doesn't happen, that it's a procedure of marriage and you have to just get it over with and forget it.
It wasn't Mum's intention to pass on a negative attitude. But we had no other close influences - and how could she possibly pass on a positive one given her experiences? And although some replies to that link say repression of sexuality isn't a function of the church, I'd suggest that they're in a privileged position where they can't see the cause or the action of repression. Privileged place or blinkers on, one or the other.
Quoth she who has never worn a tampon and was in her late twenties before she realised where and what her cervix was, has never yet figured out this clitoris thing everyone talks about but can pee standing perfectly well thankyou - so enough of the jibes that women are useless because they don't pee standing (as if our worth hinged on the prefered method of urinating).

Okay, stupid story. You know how you sometimes hear people talking about their 'bikini line', mostly in reference to removing hair.
Well, you know where a bikini top goes, right? Pretty much the same place a bra does. I was always mildly curious as to why I never grew the sort of hair that might have to be removed to wear a bikini, but just presumed I must be unusual and every other adult woman naturally grew hair on her bikini line.
The years passed and in spite of eating lots of porridge and leafy greens, no chest hair eventuated.
At twenty years old I was with a group of college students who were passing round some pornographic cards and the girl in front of me held one up and said, "she hasn't done a very good job of shaving her bikini line, has she?"
Um, yeah. Dark thatch in the 'down there' place. All became clear - enter the horrified thought "wha...? You're supposed to shave down there?".

In the news - practising safety can harm your health

Paedophile fear makes children fat

Not as crazy as it may sound. The article hypothesises that parents are so scared of their children being preyed on by paedophiles that they keep them inside, babysat by the television.
A generation grow up without the freedom to run. A generation far removed from the day when kids played footie in the street, rung bells and ran away, chased each other and tussled in play fights.
The world is changing.

But for female children, this is nothing new. I sneaked out daily in my teens, knowing that to ask permission was to be denied and that it was easier just to be shouted at on return. Until my responsibilities were such that I could not leave. Females have been restricted in their movements for centuries, lest they tempt predators or insult 'real' people.
Now hopefully the world can acknowledge that the restrictions society places on women can harm their health.
Not that it'll make any difference. Not in a world that approves of corsets and baby-a-year production.

from religious extremism

Laurelin has a post up discussing the trollish response recieved by Biting Beaver and Stopmyabortion lately

I don't want to link to the replay of those comments because frankly, seeing them once was enough. They display a rather extreme level of misogyny and hatred directed at their recipients - whose crime is what? Planning an abortion. Attempting to prevent pregnancy.

A few people have suggested that the people making these comments are just out for kicks, simply following the mentality of the child who pulls the wings off a fly and then pokes it to make it crawl.
Perhaps some of them are. But too many of them are using religion as their back-up. Too many of them invoke the name of God or Jesus when they tell the recipient of their hate that she deserves ill-fortune. Deserves death. Are they all willingly inciting the wrath of a God they don't believe in?
No. I can say for certain that a great many of these posters - these people who have sent death threats and ill wishes and accusations - are sincere. They not only believe in it, they believe that their actions are right and good.
The thought makes me shudder. But I stand by it, because I've seen it. I've even believed the things I was told as a child. It's age, common sense and experience that has - I hope - successfully turned me away from following the condemners.

I was taught that homosexuals are evil, and still witness children being taught that in church. Our mother told us that AIDS had been introduced to the world as God's punishment for the evil homosexuals having sex with monkeys in Africa. She claimed she was unable to feel sorry for the people caught up in the Asian tsunami, because there was such a culture of sex tourism in that area. Again, for her, God's justice has prevailed in sweeping the perpetrators of abuse form the earth. She is vehemently anti-abortion, and somehow believes that the average person does not have extra-marital sex. Certainly book characters are not allowed to do so, lest they lead innocent readers astray.
I have a sister who is 'possessed'. Modern Christians still believe in such things. I'd rather not, because it's really freaky to be thinking about evil spirits floating about looking for bodies (especially when the light bulbs spontaneously shatter and gates clash untouched).
If the Bible is the Word of God, and God is supreme; then isn't it right that a woman raped should be stoned for adultery? That I should chop off the braids wrapped around my head because they display vanity? Isn't it right that a woman's role is to leave her father's house only to obey and serve her husband, bear his children and forfeit all male rights such as voting, speaking in church, owning property?
Which religion are you following if you believe all that? Not Christianity as the Lord Jesus taught it? Examine his words. Note his respect for people. Note kindness. Note the human weariness that beset him. And remember above all things, he came to fulfill, to repeal the old laws.
Why, two thousand years later, are people clinging to the Mosaic code and setting aside those laws that are common to most religions - harm not, have respect for each other, love each other?

When a person's sense of what is right prevails and they feel they have to enforce it on all others, with no thought that the other person is human too and abides by a personal, different, moral code; then we see harm coming from religious values that should only emphasise love and tolerance.
Christians are quick to 'recognise' and label evil. Quick to condemn it. Slow to realise that they've missed their mark, and are hurting their fellow human beings. And far too fast off the mark when it comes to correcting and guiding those they perceive as 'wrongdoers' by any means necessary, including force, and believe they're doing it for the wrongdoers own good.
No wonder so many of the world's population are adamant they 'don't want to be saved', once they've encountered a few who bear the description 'Christian'.

Throughout my life at home and at church I have seen people condemning each other. I have seen them express hate and anger, in the name of progressing the Lord's Kingdom. I'd like to think that it's always stunned me, that I've furrowed my eyebrows and thought, "But that can't be right", but I can't truly remember, and it's just as likely that I believed them. I wasn't allowed my own opinions until after I left home. Through my formative years, right through my teens, nothing I expressed verbally or by my actions could be out of accord with the views of my mother and church leaders. I'd been told often that such thoughts were invalid. As children, we were taught to always speak of our religion, to find the lost sheep and bring them back. We were taught that our moral code was higher far than the riffraff, and that we must always stick to it regardless of the world's temtations. The world is presented as an evil place, full of the lures of Satan, and our fellow people with their lesser code as the lost ones who need to be saved.
Think of a fourteen year old with that upbringing, comunicating with the world on the Internet. Wouldn't she be shocked to the core at the disregard for Christainity she finds to be rampant in the world? All her teaching is that she must try to convince her fellow humans of their wrong doing, and teach them of the higher moral code they must live by if they want what she has been taught is true happiness.

Generations persist in twisting Christianity to their own needs of superiority, and teaching this to their children. Individuals are confused, by turns clinging to the lessons they are taught and seeking an interpretation of their own, then doubting their own conclusions.

People who are not Christians and are not inducted into the codes of behaviour required by those religions have no requirement to live by them. And those who do live by them have no right to condemn them.
It's that simple.
Morality is a personal thing. BB is a moral person. She does not set out to deceive herself or anyone else.
When she was denied EC, it was because the doctors saw fit to judge her not only for not adhering to their moral code, but for wishing to escape the drastic consequences that non-adherence could naturally lead to.
But - and here the hyprocrisy is evident - how many of those doctors who denied her EC were morally perfect according to the very highest moral code existing on the planet?
And how reasonably could that very highest moral code demand that every person, believing or unbelieving, must adhere to it?
Suddenly the whole argument of "you can't get rid of/prevent baby because it's immoral" is turned on its head, and the doctors and legislaters revealed as a manipulative group determined to increase their own standing at whatever cost.

There are kings, and there are pawns, and then there are some of us trying desperately to stay off the chessboard and not get caught up in the battle. Yet so incensed are the players at our refusal to join them that they must turn with their arrows and shoot us, instead of the enemy. And now, methinks they have lost sight of the enemy and allowed the opposing colour into their ranks while directing their hatred towards the bystanders, and the players on other boards.
And all in the name of Christianity.

Where do you call quits... or can you?

Mating season is approaching. It starts on Thursday.

Calm down! I'm talking dairy cows here. They've been romping about having free lesbian sex for the last few weeks, and shortly they're going to meet the pleasures of anal penetration while a tiny amount of semen from a far away bull is squirted through their cervix. A few weeks after that, they get to meet a real bull and we retire the human technician. All great fun for them - not!
The lucky ones only have to get mated once a year. That depends. I think some of the bull's girlfriends think they're lucky.

It was a welcome relief last year to work with a technician who came in once a day and talked about bull breeding values and calves, instead of incesssant sex, sex sex (watch the site meter jump. I should write more posts about dairy cows.)
There's a calf in the shed that I'm not sure will make it off the farm alive. He's a large Hereford, beautiful lines, bright eyes. He's two days old. And he can't stand up unassisted.
I've known several calves over the years that couldn't stand on the day they were born. Usually the problem is contracted tendons, which forces the joints into a bend. It gradually improves, and most of those calves are on their feet and running about by day four. A little bit extra time with them on those early days pays off with a healthy calf.
This one doesn't have contracted tendons. He's got zero sense of balance. I've never seen that in a calf before. And there's been no improvement since he was a few hours old.
What do you suppose I'm going to do with a calf that cannot, and may never, stand on its own four hooves unassisted? In time, the same as I did with two other Hereford calves that proved to be brain damaged. A good sharp tap on that lovely white head and check that the breathing has stopped and the nerve action stilled.
A vet was curious when I mentioned how slow the Hereford calves were to figure out life, suggesting that the cause is less likely to be a breed trait than the chance of BVD entering the herd while their mothers were at a critical stage of pregnancy, or something similar. Recent research shows that calves born infected with BVD suffer illhealth throughout their lives and often die young.
My research some years ago into genetic manipulation turned up a lot of data about the large chance of malformities, higher mortality rate and poorer health of transgene and cloned animals. The causes weren't fully understood, and attempts to fine-tune procedures and find solutions have been largely unsuccessful.

So when Germaine Greer spoke in the whole woman about the procedures involved in IVF and embryo donation in assiting infertile couples to have children, and the health problems those children encountered, it all made absolute sense.

The difference is that Germaine Greer was talking about human beings. Homo sapiens. An unviable Bos taurus individual is quickly released from life before he/she suffers excessively or places large burdens on their carers.
An unviable child is placed on life support and wept over and operated on and finally sent home with scared parents to be cared for. Many of those children are doomed to a half-life, and often a mercifully short one. In and out of hospital, unable to walk and run as other children do, unable to learn beyond a certain stage of incapability. Perhaps some of them are almost normal. Or a premature child has delayed development which is significant enough for him to be placed in the special section of a mainstream school and be tormented by the mainstream kids.
Children stuck forever in that frustrating phase of being able to think without being able to articulate the words they know.
There is no way out. No relief from life for the children. No easing of the burden on their carer. One of my friends was a normal baby, thrown against the wall by his mother. He cannot now sit down with a cup of water in his hand, because his body won't co-ordinate both activities at the same time. He cannot talk to people who haven't the time to decipher his words through the slurring. He lacks the emotional strength to deal with bullies. He was in his early twenties when I knew him, living at home with his adoptive parents.
In age, agin there is the challege of ill-health, of Alzheimer's that destroys the brain leaving only the shell of the person a family once knew. For younger people, a stroke. A broken neck leaving the victim alive but permanently paralysed. Modern medicine can do wonders.
Modern medicine can keep people alive who might otherwise have died.
And will keep people alive who might prefer death.

It's a choice that no other person has the right to make. But it's also a choice that the individual is not permitted to make on their own behalf, forcing them to resort to desperate and secret measures if they choose death as the best alternative.

Often I wonder why human life is sacred when so much of it is full of suffering and pain.
There are many stories of peope who feel fulfilled in caring for a dependent and disabled person. There are people we believe are normal, battling daily against eczema and asthma, stomach pains and dizzy spells. People who believe that that is what life is, never realising that it may all stem from prenatal or early childhood complications.
I know that if one of my calves is seriously sick, that animal's health is compromised for the rest of its life.
When the risks of IVF and embryo donation and transfer are so well known, why is it so widely used? Whose right is it to play God and say an indefinite number of compromised children will be born, because a couple would rather have a child with some of their own genes than no children or an unrelated one?
I get to play God with the cattle. I make their breeding decisions for them, supervise their births, take away their calves and look after them. And if I deem a calf to be unviable - that is, unfit for a healthy future - it gets sent right back to where-ever the life force that was in it came from. No-one thinks that is a fun part of the job. But the majority of farmers do it, because to leave the animal to die in pain and distress is illegal, to care for it takes time no one can afford and which is almost sure to end in the animal dying anyway.
But because people are worth less than cattle but their life-force is worth more, we condemn sufferers and their carers to the exhaustion and distress from which we spare the livestock.

I wonder sometimes if our 'civilised' society and laws are really the result of logic. There have been times in history, and still in other nations a baby with no suitable future may be quickly removed of its life force. And we all, in our superiority, cry "barbaric".
The masses condemn abortion as murder, without sparing a thought for the potential lives - by which I mean, quality of life.
The fetus is not the sole deserving sentient being in this world, and nor is the newborn baby. Destroying lives to save a life-force is not ethics. It's the result of a loss of sense.

ETA: I brought up this issue with someone who immediately said that there were lots of support systems for people with illhealth /impaired abilities.
Which is true. Without modern medicine, many lives would be less bearable. And without modern medicine, fewer people would live. As you research further into family histories you find families of nine and ten children of which only one or two reach adulthood. One of my ancestors is the sole survivor of such a family, her mother having buried a baby of a few months old nearly every year. Such high mortality was normal then.
Now medicine can save most lives. But can our society ensure a life for the saved impaired?

And in case you were concerned about : (Well, my internet connection must be sucky because three attempts to upload the photos have failed, but the short news is that the calf with no sense of balance showed slight improvement - enough to get a reprieve - and stood unassisted for the first time at five days old and today (six days old) is able to struggle to his feet and stay on them. Walking is beyond him, lurching around he can manage. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that in a few more days he'll be able to convince a truckie that he's a normal calf and be picked up with the others. The photos were cute, btw, he's a gorgeous fellow.

my mothers

Just continuing my thoughts on mothers: mothers and tied by a bell

In the years since I left home, my mother has mentioned interests I didn’t know she had, things she never complained about not being able to do when we all lived at home.
She would have liked to have finished her studies. She could have done an Open University degree, she says, if she hadn’t had that business of Dad’s to look after.
She could have looked after her kids, and taken them places if she hadn’t been tied to that phone.
She could have done so much more, she reckons, if she’d actually been a solo mum – if she hadn’t had that big kid coming home late every night to cook for and his business to look after when he’d left in the morning before any of the kids woke up.
One time she called me in some distress because she felt she’d failed us, because she’d never been able to give us all the things a parent might want for her kids.
Now she’s married again, with a husband so inconsiderate and demanding of her time that she still cannot pursue her own interests.

My grandmother died when I was still in my mid-teens, and because she lived in another country we’d never had much chance to get to know her. I loved her because she was beautiful, in her old age. I had no idea what she’d looked like as a young woman.
I loved her because she liked children, and always took the time to talk to us. When we visited, she had a box of toys in the bottom of her cupboard for us to play with. She had an old-style garden, with berries and flowers in gay profusion. She seemed interested in all the things we were interested in.
I loved her because she was skilled. She was an artist, and generous with her talent.
And I’ve never forgotten that she told my younger sister off in a situation where my own mother had refused to intervene – my sisters were so intrigued by my early development that they would try to handle, look, discuss. K had stopped me as she passed to try and feel my breasts and when I pushed her away, my gran spoke very sharply to her.
No one else has ever stood up for me like that.
There is so much of her life I didn’t know. In the years since, I’ve heard a word or two from her children, and my mother who was a daughter-in-law. I knew she had eight children. I didn’t know my grandfather was just as traditional and demanding as my own father, if not more so, until I heard it from her children. I’ve heard them say she was lucky that grandfather ‘allowed’ her to paint.
One of my aunties showed me some old photos once, and when I’d say, “I didn’t know granny was interested in x” she told me how involved my gran had been in these interests – travelling to foreign countries, writing letters back and forth, immersing herself in new customs. “She would have been a bigwig in politics if she hadn’t married Daddy,” my aunt told me.
I’d heard exactly the same sentiments from my mother. It was a side of my grandmother I’d never known while she was alive. She was one of those women who was passionate about her interests, who couldn’t be knocked back. She had a charisma she didn’t know she had.
Her life, like that of most other women of her time and in history and now, was devoted to a husband and children. Her obedience was demanded by her husband, as per the marriage vows. Her time wasn’t her own.

She raised at least three wonderful daughters and a son (I can’t comment about the others; one of them is my dad). When I badly wanted to change my name, I revisited her town and spent time with my aunt, and in that time I was convinced that I didn’t need to hate my name – I could carry it for my aunties and for the memory of my grandmother.
It seems ironic that I carry a name bestowed by and retained by the males of the family, to honour the women.
The world needs mothers. But I could cry to think at what the world has lost by the oppression these mothers in my life have suffered.

jersey calves

A woman who made a difference

I picked up the October Dairy Exporter today and partway through, discovered to my surprise the photo of an elderly Te Aroha woman who devoted years to research that has saved countless farm animals from suffering in the last thirty years.

short obituary
NZHerald: The Zinc story

I first heard of Gladys Reid eight years ago, when I was working near Te Aroha. Farmers have a great respect for her and, although she has an interest in researching many subjects, throughout New Zealand she is known for her efforts in trialling zinc supplementation and then convincing the Ruakura scientists that it worked.
Farmers were using zinc long before the scientists turned to it. For years her work was largely ignored while the official researchers doggedly refused to believe in a simple solution.
Today every farmer in at-risk areas doses their stock with zinc to prevent facial Eczema during the danger periods - late summer and autumn. We have a great deal to thank her for. She continued to research, and continued to present her findings to an industry determined to dismiss her.
She died in August, perhaps still amazed at being the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award the previous year.
Facial Eczema is a disease caused by the multiplication of fungal spores in grass to a toxic level, during periods of heat and humidity. The liver damage resulting from ingestion causes jaundice, photosensitivity and a drastic production drop in affected animals. In some cases it can be a cause of death at calving or lambing as the previously damaged liver fails under stress.
In severe cases of photosensitivity, the skin literally peels like an orange and at one time the only known treatment was to keep affected animals inside during daylight.
Thanks to Gladys Reid, we now have a way of preventing the liver damage and clinical signs of the disease.
Zinc supplementation isn't a perfect tool - but no-one has ever found a better.

The world is a better place for women like Gladys: a dedicated pioneering researcher who refused to be knocked back.

a useful quote

I discovered today that I have local fame.
I don't know how I feel about that.
People I don't know, know who I am and what I do.
It's been like that for a long time. But since June, another step up the career ladder and with every step I'm a rarer breed.

I'm female. Single. And farming.

And while my own little world is tossed and turned on its own relatively stable axis - yesterday morning I found a cow dead of milk fever with a calf halfway out and this morning I bring her home on the tractor - she's five years old, in fantastic condition and with perfect conformation and udder. It's such a waste and so I look again at the soil tests and ask the vet questions because I want to know why nearly every cow eligible for milk fever gets it, even when they're being given the minerals that ought to prevent it; and the vets don't have answers.
Time moves inexorably on and I'm hoping one of the neighbours I met today will put me in contact with a relief milker. It's not difficult, but sometimes I do have to realise that very few people can live with no support - moving to an area where they know no-one, as I have done. No contacts, no family to call on when you need a hand with the stock or when things get tough.
And yet when you talk to people, it does often seem as if each is an individual isolated. Everyone truly alone in their own sphere, incapable of being understood or understanding others. You can be alone in a family, a child alone in a class of children. You can be a grandmother and be alone and the alone-ness isn't physical, it's a separation, a barrier that no-one else can cross.
I see human relations as being very superficial.
But other humans try to convince me otherwise.

The energy is bubbling below the surface, directed for an instant into the knowledge that I have only two assignments to complete in the near future and books that are to be written. But it sinks, overwhelmed by day to day tasks and a lawn not mown and financial papers not completed and the intensity of the approaching mating season for the cattle. One by one, the tasks are completed.
There is not the time or energy yet to apply myself to the immersion that is writing a novel.
Sometimes it seems as if there will never be.

My farm owner gave me a quote yesterday. It seemed oddly relevant to my thoughts, the ideas I've been trying to get to grips with. Why so many women are uninterested in, or frankly antagonistic towards feminism.
I mentioned that, and she laughed and said to her son, "We've got an activist here."
When I first discovered the blogosphere, I was excited to find that there were people who saw through the glittery veils of society, people who spoke common sense and worked to make the world a better place. Women who support each other in the reality we must live in. And speak out against that reality.
I wanted to know where the action was. How could I help? Isn't this what my whole life had been geared for?
And gradually I came to realise that - however much on the fringes it might seem we are - blogging does good. It raises awareness. Even all those readers who try to argue against feminism, who miss the point or fall back on insults - they're still reading.
My life does good. My female predecessors in farming had to fight to achieve recognition. But I see now that they weren't just fighting for themselves. They've made the way easier for me, and other women, and our generation makes the way easier for the next.
I'm still unusual enough to be a focus of interest. And my success is crucial not only to me, but to other girls struggling against the naysayers. When I was a kid told I couldn't go farming because I was a girl, I had no example to prove my parents wrong.
And every woman who stands up against the patriarchal ideals of beauty and devotes her energy instead to things she finds more important, paves the way for the next woman to step aside from societal control without being stigmatised.
I'm not an activist. An activist in my mind is far more agressive in lobbying for change - they write letters, they're seen at key events, some part of their thinking is always thinking of ways to further their cause.
I'm still trying to come to terms with what feminism means to me and how it applies in the culture I know.

The quote, anyhow, is interesting:

Those who do nothing cause more havoc by far than those who do bad

If nothing else, it inspires thought. Apathy is dangerous at times.
And 'doing bad' can work surprisingly for good, even where the intent was otherwise. Perhaps 'activists' can make good out of bad. I don't know. It's a large thought.

Richard Adam's novel Shardik came to mind when I thought that. It's a classic example of bad leadership, negligence and utter catastrophe leading to an outcome that banishes an evil from the fictional kingdom and replaces it with a good. Perhaps idealistic - but should one ask the question, why did so much suffering have to happen before change was made?
Should we view the suffering as positive when it brings about such change?
Or wish for a world where common sense prevailed and there was no need for change, and no need for suffering to bring it about?
Where is the line drawn that states 'x' amount of trauma to repeal/make a law is acceptable and 'y' amount is too much?
It can't be drawn. It shouldn't be. But the world is wrong, and such questions are valid.

Bah... foiled!

Okay, admittedly I haven't been to church for a long, long time.
Not since before calving started. There's no question of priorities in my life - the cows come first.

But I'm almost finishing up at an hour in the morning that would allow me to rush home, shower and flip on a skirt to attend. Not today - because I discovered it's General Conference this weekend so I guess everyone will be going to the biggest towns to watch it on satellite - they stopped sending out videos for the small units a few years ago.
No problem, thought I during milking. I can download the earlier sessions while showering and listen to it on the computer.

Uh-uh. We would like to encourage families to view the satellite broadcast at their stake centres, states the website. Therefore we will not be providing an internet broadcast.
There's nothing there, not even text.
The magazine, which can't seem to process new adresses, hasn't arrived for months in spite of the fact that I have a current subscription.

You know what? I'm lazy. I'd like you guys to make it easy for me to obtain the latest guidance and doctrine. I don't have two days to drive to a town a couple of hours away, listen to the broadcasts and return home. It simply isn't possible to fit even the journey and one session in between milkings.
Next month all the proceedings will be printed in the Ensign - a magazine for which I have a current, paid subscription and the distributors of which have been informed of my new address.
Every single time I've moved house the subscription has somehow vanished from planet Earth. What is the problem with entering a new adress into the system?

Oh, but *reminds self* a) I shouldn't be working on Sunday and b) I ought to prioritise my family and attending compulsory church meetings for the day that I'm supposedly not working.
Presumed family, that is. The one I would be part of if I were a 'normal' person.

On a completely unrelated point - I really must find myself a relief milker. I owe myself at least seven or eight milkings off. Preferably before the mating season, which starts in less than a fortnight.
I've done... um - July 62, August 62, September 60, this morning, 1... one hundred and eighty-five consecutive milkings thus far since 105 calved in June.