The Liberal Media Doesn't Speak Up When They're In The Wrong

Originally written February 22, 2013

I have some conflicting feelings. As many of you know, I do not associate with either of the major political parties, but I take a little from all I learn, regardless of its political color. 

Colorado Democrat Rep. Joe Salazar said a few days ago some rather distasteful and thoughtless things about women and rape when discussing "House Bill 1226 which bans concealed carry firearms inside of all college campus buildings in the state [of Colorado]." (HuffingtonPost.com).  He went on to say during this discussion: 

"It's why we have call boxes. It's why we have safe zones. It's why we have the whistles, because you just don't know who you're going to be shooting at. And you don't know if you feel like you're going to be raped, or if you feel like someone's been following you around or if you feel like you're in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop... pop a round at somebody." Rep. Joe Salazar (D-Thornton)

Googling for this story, pretty much only shows conservative websites up in arms about these statements (odd, as they are usually the ones saying them). Wasn't it mere months ago that there were several men on the conservative side and "doctors" claiming women's bodies couldn't get pregnant from rape and that it doesn't happen that often? Around election time, that birth control is killing babies? And this uninformed crazypants. My hair bristles just thinking about their utter disregard for women and safety. 

Where was the liberal media? I had to specifically type into the search "Huffington Post" in addition to "Joe Salazar Democrat Colorado Rape Gun" to see if they had written anything about it, because it was not posted under the News section of google when I searched for the original key words I used to look up this matter: "Joe Salazar Democrat Colorado Rape Gun". HuffingtonPost's article is apologetic and paints the conservatives that came out of the woodwork for this one as noisy tattle-tails, mangling the words and looking to win some women's rights points back. True, some of them do this. It happens every time.

Of course, each side is taking turns blowing it out their asses. Taking it to extremes, "the real war on women is disarming women"?... Please. You were trying to take away my rights to plan for a family on my time, according to my desires, only a few months ago. As if my rights to my body aren't already a battlefield.

Watch the video of Salazar. I was taken aback.  

I've had over 20 years of listening to my gut to protect me. To say that I might not be able to tell when someone is going to attack me is an insult. I don't talk about it, but I was attacked in broad daylight on a busy street. Because I felt I was being followed, I broke into a run and yelled. He still pursued me running down the street. The only reasons it didn't go as he planned was because I got to my car in the nick of time. I should have run into the street, in retrospect. I wish I had had a gun when I was 22 years old.

This is the list of actions women can take to protect themselves according to the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.

1.    Be realistic about your ability to protect yourself.

2.    Your instinct may be to scream, go ahead!  It may startle your attacker and give you an opportunity to run away.

3.    Kick off your shoes if you have time and can’t run in them.

4.    Don’t take time to look back; just get away.

5.    If your life is in danger, passive resistance may be your best defense.

6.    Tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating.

7.    Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone.

8.    Yelling, hitting or biting may give you a chance to escape, do it!

9.    Understand that some actions on your part might lead to more harm.

10.    Remember, every emergency situation is different.  Only you can decide which action is most appropriate.

  

TheBlaze.com is run by Glenn Beck, not someone I am a fan of, in any respect. Sadly, this is only article I could find that has all the links and lists in it.

The list of things a woman can do in an instance of being attacked and raped is misleading. Yes, you should fight, yes you should stand up for yourself or run... use those heels to stab that fucker for attacking you... if you can walk with a friend, why wouldn't you... but if your attacker wants to accomplish something, they will have thought of ways to incapacitate you before it even starts and are already ahead of the jump. Trust your gut. 

"Be realistic about your ability to protect yourself." ...What the hell does that mean?

"Understand that some actions on your part might lead to more harm." ...If you hit them, yeah, they might hit you back, but in some states if you don't show that you tried to fight back in a court of law, you weren't really a victim of rape. How healthy is that? You get judged for being raped by people that didn't think you fought hard enough so you got what you deserved.  Fuck that. 

Yes, mace, tasers and other tools are effective. If you have been trained and legally obtained a concealed weapon permit, you carry a gun - NO one should take that right from you. I don't care where you are.

The Beck site references RedState.com for statistics, but those were linked even deeper to a site that looked... well, uber rightwing-y, but mostly about self-denfese in the broad sense.  

I found a research study about rape statistics. I recommend reading it:

"Women who used knives or guns in self-defense were raped less than 1% of the time. Defensive use of edged or projectile weapons reduced the rate of injury to statistical insignificance (Kleck and Sayles, 1990)." (Source)

So I guess in conclusion, I find it odd that this story has not made the rounds and felt it should be aired out.  This is more than I usually write about these things, but it must have been time, because it just came spewing out of me. I feel very strongly about women's rights, women's safety and citizen's rights to own guns and carry them when done so legally. 

So there.

Tyranny of Cheerfulness: Thoughts on Pink Ribbons, Inc. Documentary

“This cancer has no cure.”

As I sit here watching the documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc. I am thankful that the women talking seem to know that we are being fed a bunch of bullshit.

The capitalism that utilizes people's emotions makes me very uncomfortable. Now yeah, if you're going to purchase that product anyway, Yoplait, for example, and you happen to be one of those people that does keep the lids and does mail them in, every little bit helps, but this is not something that can be solved with the 10 cents that you sent them plus the 45 cents that you spent on the stamp to mail it in the first place... you might as well have just sent the money straight to Susan G. Komen For the Cure or the Avon Foundation.

I'm not saying support isn't important because it is BEYOND important. If someone in your life is fighting cancer of any kind, you go along with whatever makes them feel impowered. If a pin with a pink ribbon on it makes them feel powerful, I will wear it and proudly. I have before. The walks/runs/events are community building and supportive. I won't knock that. Where I have an issue is when cancer-causing products are funding the event or giving items away at the event... seriously? Are you kidding me?? Poor health affects the lives of so many of the American people and we have KFC with a promotion with pink Buckets of fried chicken???

It feels like a mockery. It's insulting to those with cancer, and those of us with friends and family that have cancer. Our medical system treats patients like lost causes. When my uncle was dying of esophageal cancer, a doctor that was covering for his normal doctor walked in one day and said something to the effect of "Don't know why you're fighting so hard, this is a lost cause"... what are we if we are without hope? That doctor took a man that was fighting for his life and positive every step of the way in the face of all adversity, and crushed his spirit in an instant.  My uncle passed away a few months later, but I will never forgive that doctor. No matter how hopeless or pointless it might seem, life is always worth fighting for.

But back to Breast Cancer. Pink. Pink everywhere. Pink Ribbons... where did they come from anyway? In the early 1990s, a lady by the name of Charlotte Haley "bundled them into sets of five, each with a card that read: 'The National Cancer Institute annual budget is $1.8 billion; only 5% goes for cancer prevention.'" (Source)  This was a grassroots start up that came out of the protests against big companies that are expelling poisons into the air, into our foods, cosmetics and into household items. They wanted to know why. Why are we getting more cancer? What causes it?

It feels as though the overuse of the Pink Ribbon and products that are pink "in support" of the Susan G. Komen For the Cure normalize and make this all... fluffy. I don't know how else to really say it. I find it odd that we are always told how much money has been raised for whatever walk or run or fundraiser... what I want to know is what did that money DO? Show me results. Are we closer? Are we able to isolate what causes breast cancer in women and a few men? Is it a gene? Is it a food? What? I don't know what I would do with 5.5 million dollars... but I know I would want to see what it is doing to resolve this matter.

Yes, it is important for “the cure” to be found... but no one talks about cancer prevention. It is mentioned in the film by one of the speakers that they were told there was no prevention plan because we don't know what causes it. I don't accept that for a second, and neither does Deborah Rhodes. 

I had a friend who lost her mother to breast cancer and was a high risk herself. She was diligent and checked herself and when she would try to get mammograms because she knew her history, doctors would tell her she was too young and that she didn't need a mammogram. When she found a lump in her breast and tried to get help, she was met with so much resistance. I was appalled at how she was treated. Finally she found someone who would listen to her and found that yes, she had breast cancer, a young woman in her early thirties - it happens. She is in remission now, but her road has been rough to say the least. I am so grateful for her and inspired by her... I wish that her doctors would see her that way and not as a number and dollar signs for pharmaceuticals. 

A couple of years ago I saw this TedTalk titled: Deborah Rhodes: A tool that finds 3x more breast tumors, and why it's not available to you Dec 2010. It's about breast cancer screening, and was amazed this wasn't already being used around the world. We lose the big companies that make mammogram machines, their technicians and radiologists that read the picture. It's all about money. 

Cancer became very real for me when I had 2 friends in their early thirties get cancers around the same time 3 years ago (both are in remission and doing well), and then my uncle's diagnosis in mid 2010 and passing away in Feb 2011. My family went into an extreme research mode in 2010, and we have continued it. We are hungry to know how to prevent cancers and take care of ourselves. I'll probably refer to this TedTalk again in other blogs about food and cancer, but I feel it is worth sharing every time. William Li's Can We Eat To Starve Cancer?  Worth all 20 minutes. Another good site to check is SkinDeep from the Environmental Working Group to see where your cosmetics, lotions and whatnot fall on a scale of ingredients known to cause cancer. 

So why Tyranny of Cheerfulness? Pink is a soft color. Society has made pink feminine and weak. Pink is supposed to make us feel happy. Pink is marketable. Yes, outlook and attitude affect you and those are important attributes of battling cancer... but the pink ribbons symbolize a battle which has yet to see a glimmer of hope. We continue to use radiation, poison - er... chemotherapy, and surgery. And it's not good enough. It's just not good enough.

Documentary watched on Netflix February 2013

Pink Ribbon, Inc.  - Watch It

~ Loud-Mouthed Gal

Why are you a loud-mouthed frog... er, gal?

On March 19, 2003 I was standing in my dorm living room watching television as I cooked food before my next class. President Bush came on tv, and announced the War on Iraq – and my heart sank. Really? This was the answer? I had always tried to be politically aware, but I wasn't as informed as say, an activist would be... I was ignorant by most standards, but always willing to listen and to learn. Sadly, at that moment, the ignorance and disassociation from this government that I felt no longer represented the country I believed in. I turned off my tv, unplugged my cable and didn't watch broadcast television for the next 8 years.

Ignorance was bliss. I didn't engage in political conversations with my peers and I didn't have to argue or take a side. It was hard not to care, it took effort to keep it out of my life, to avoid the poison of television. Once in a while I would go online and watch The Daily Show or The Colbert Report just to see what was going on... it was a blessing to have those programs since basically, their poor people had to watch all the television I didn't want to and distill it down into practicality and satire. Thank you for your lost hours of life watching MSNBC and FoxNews, folks.

I was on a break at work in September 2011 when I came across the Occupy movement online. All the political and humanistic passion I had been holding onto erupted. I watched the livestream online from Zucotti Park all day, had it in the background while I worked, at home while I did the dishes... as much as I could. I was hungry for it and told my boyfriend I wanted to go to the Occupy Los Angeles meet-ups. My boyfriend used to be an activist and he told me flat out “No.” I was taken aback and we argued for a while about it. I finally understood his side of wanting us to be safe and how we can help without having to put our faces in the crowd.

Now, some people might call us cowards, but I had to accept something about myself... I couldn't afford to be detained/jailed because it would lead to the loss of my job, our income, and that is a snowball effect by itself. It was shortly after in October that I was put on a project at work that was in the field I wanted to be in and I was on cloud nine. I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize my time there, but I still watched online, read the newsfeeds and did what I could conversationally when people would talk about it with no knowledge.

The economy finally became a painful reality for me and hundreds of my co-workers when we were let go in a massive lay-off a year ago. Suddenly, everything I was reading, watching, had become front row.

I've been unemployed for a year exactly. There have been moments of clarity and even more moments of loss and helplessness. When I take breaks from researching job sites and writing cover letters, I am watching documentaries and old TV shows I missed during my 8 years of not having cable television. I watch TEDtalks and read NPR. I watch documentaries and then I find myself researching the subject even more afterwards. Women's rights, human rights and health tend to be at the top of my list, but I love a good documentary regardless.

My boyfriend has been on my case to make a youtube channel, to build a fanbase, to make anything. Part of a fragile artist ego is never feeling like anything you do is good enough to share with others. Our most recent discussion of this was during a particularly hormonal day for me, and I happened to be watching the supplemental More The Business of Being Born. It became apparent to me that I can't really share all these long-winded, opinonated thoughts on facebook... so here it is: The Loud-Mouthed Gal blog.

I know I'm not the smartest, or the most eloquent... I hope you will forgive me, and share your thoughts or information with me. I am always willing to learn something new and listen, and even concede if I am wrong.

I have been trying to find employment in the entertainment industry in casting, talent management and production because I need a job and I could see myself enjoying and not hating myself if I did these things. In my heart, I am a performer - I am a singer and an actor, and always will be.

I will be quiet no longer. I have a lot of feelings and ideas about feminism, humanism, and society that may or may not be too terribly popular, but I have to share them somewhere.

~ Loud-Mouthed Gal