Police Women of Cincinnati

I’ve been pondering how I feel about this show A) as a somewhat-feminist, and B) as a woman, and C) as native of Cincinnati.

Oh Hell.

I have to admit that the show is entertaining. John and I have been known to watch it. And it is sort of amusing to see these locations on the small screen and know exactly where they are showing/ talking about. And then it sinks in. That there are others out there who have never been here to Cincy and have no idea that the areas they are showing are our inner city, and this is not the whole of my hometown. Can they not just show a few traffic stops in some of the nice areas just so the rest of the world can know that they exist. So there’s that- the sheer embarrassment.

And then I am full of girl pride for some killer women out there handling business. Go, girls.

But really? Really really? If these officers were men, they wouldn’t have their own show. Well, there’s Cops, but they include both male and female officers. Does TLC’s making a show about women officers mean that it is an extraordinary thing? That this is abnormal? I mean, I’m not trying to belittle the bravery of any law enforcement—male or female—who put their butts on the line to keep us safe. I could not imagine a job where I had to strap on kevlar to start my workday. But why the big distinction between man and woman if we are equal in the workplace?

So I don’t know how I feel about this show. I’ll just have to keep watching until I figure it out.

Image: Officer Colleen,, of TLC’s Police Women of Cincinnati, getting ready to kick some ass and take some names.

Fight Like a Girl

So I hear this news story about this high school kid who is a favorite for his state's wrestling championship. And I tried just now to find a link to it to show you, but Yahoo and Google hate me right now, I think. But the story goes that this kid turned down his shot at the championship because his opponent was to be a girl. His family said it went against his morals or how he was raised or some crap. Okay.
My first thought at this was to wonder if that girl would get the title by default now. And if so, poor girl. Because even if she won, her accomplishment would be dwarfed because it could always be said that the favorite backed down from the competition. Bastards. And then I thought about my boys and how I would like for them to handle the same situation. Would I want them to wrestle a girl? And fight to win? Hells yeah I would.
Because while I do believe there are biological differences between male and female that make us predisposed, as a gender, to excel in certain areas, I do not believe that those differences should bar us from working to excel in areas we desire to. With that being said, if this girl has worked and performed at a level that makes her eligible for a state title, and one of my sons were to be her opponent, that would tell me she wants a fair shot at it. And she is good enough to be there. And that her posession of a vajayjay should have no influence on the competition. And I would expect my kid to be in it to win it.
I guess since this is wrestling, it brings up the subject of men fighting women. As if the state high school champioship is the same as a knife fight in a back alley. It's not that type of fighting, y'all. It's a fricken sporting event. Like football or swimming or tennis. Giving this girl fair competition is not the same as beating the crap out of your wife later in life. It is not disrespectful to women. If anything, I see it as the ultimate in respect.
To win in an arena where there are separate standards for the sexes is not the same as equality. We can look to the idea of "separate but equal" philosophy of the civil rights movement. There is no such thing as separate but equal. There wasn't for race and there isn't for gender. And it has been a proven fact that boys' and girls' sports in schools operate on completely different budgets. The girls get slighted. I'm not saying this to sound like a whiny, bitchy feminist. I'm saying it because it's very true. On some levels, this is fair. Girls' softball, for example, just doesn't hold the same spectator appeal as boys' football on a Friday night, which generates revenue in ticket sales, concessions, blah blah blah. So be it. But if I am a serious female athlete, and I truly excel in my sport, I don't want to be hindered by confinement to the second-rate girls' teams. And if I want to venture into the realm of boys' athletics, I should expect for them to give everything they've got to beat me.
Of course I can competely extrapolate this into other areas. I hate and take offense when someone refers to my abilities in anything to be good in spite of my membership to certain groups. Just recently, I was renewing my ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support for those not in the know) certification for work. I got perfect scores on everything, and when we were finished, the instuctor found out I am a respiratory therapist. "Oh, well you did extremely well for an RT", he said. Wha???? Of course there is no way he had any understanding of what it is exactly that I do in my 12-hour shifts. Most think we just hand out inhalers and breathing treatments all day and don't stop to think that we have to respond to every resuscitation in the hospital, manage life support, and have had extensive education in all things cardiopulmonary. So if I wasn't an RT, my perfect scores would mean less? No, I did extremely well for the whole damned group, thank you very much. It's the same concept with being a woman: I don't want to do anything well for a woman. I want to beat out every-damned-body. And if a man doesn't want to go toe-to-toe with me because I am a woman, than that is just retarded.

So anyhow, whoever this girl is, and wherever she is, I hope she goes to that competition and she cleans house. On level playing ground. So noone will tell her she did well....for a girl.

"Unnatural": A Sure-Fire Way for a Husband to End Up in the Doghouse

I am not a domestic diva. I never have been, and never want to be. I can find my way around a kitchen well enough that my family does not starve. Well, that and my husband can cook and used to even aspire to be a chef. But this evening, after a dinner of mainly convenience-food crap, I decided that Evan and I would do a little baking. Nothing major: chocolate cupcakes and some brownies. Okay, I wanted the brownies, but Kiddo decided he wanted cupcakes instead, so we made both.

We made the batter and got everything ready. I put both pans in the oven. Of course the 20 or so minutes it took for them to bake was just too much for Evan, so he ran off to play. The timer dinged. I got my potholders and pulled them out to carry them to the cooling racks I had already set out. The he said it...

"You are not a homemaker! What are you doing????" Ahhhh. My husband. Of course to get the full scope of the irony here, I should tell you that while they were baking, I was trying to get a little further in my rereading of Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. Ha! But regardless, what in the hell did he mean? Just because I do not normally choose to do something does not mean that I am not capable. So I asked him to elaborate. And he explained that while he could find no fault with what I was doing, it just didn't look right to him. He called it unnatural.

Unnatural. Me. The woman who has been breastfeeding a baby every hour, on the hour, because he is going through a growth spurt. The woman who has nursed his son's boo-boo's for years. The woman who used to do his laundry.

So what constitutes "natural"? To not work? To not have any goals? To want nothing out of life for myself? Because I have a tendency to purchase cupcakes at a bakery when a school function calls for it, instead of slaving in the kitchen, I am less of a woman? Hmmmmmf! So now I am just, well, pissed off.

I have always been proud of the idea that I can support my family well on just my income. That I can perform so well in the academic world, in fields notorious for under-representation from women. That in the professional world, I can be more ballsy than a man and more cut-throat. And I can do it all without missing a parent-teacher conference and while smelling like my Donna Karan perfume. A hearty "Screw You" to whomever thinks differently! But now? It's not that I care whether I am the Queen of Icing, but that my own husband thinks there are any limitations on me at all. That to have a career, I have to make The Choice. That's my whole thing: I can do whatever the hell I want, and not a damned bit of it is unnatural.

I think that, just for fun, tomorrow I am going to dress up like a '50's housewife while changing the oil in the car. I'll show him "unnatural!"