Now, with pictures!

So, I like studies. I find numbers very reassuring. (1. I blame my awesome geekdom & science-heavy background. & 2. Yes, I know numbers can be manipulated to mean whatever you want.)

Anyway, I can across some super neat numbers today & I want to share them with you.

Let's start cheerful. The first studies are about dying.
Drugs are bad, m'kay.
This study is put out by a group who are advocating the legalization, so consider that. It does, however, come in an easy to digest table form. And, it compares the number of deaths that're directly attributable to pot to those that are attributable to several other drugs including Vioxx, Adderall, and... Viagra.
(On a side note & from a personal agenda, 7 women have died from use of RU-486 [the abortion pill/Mifepristone], you can check it out on CNN; they did a story on it within the last week or so. This study attributes over 2000 deaths to the use of Viagra, & I've heard estimates that place the number above 5000. So, where are the CNN stories to get that outlawed?)

The second look at the most common anti-abortion measures that are sought. Again, this bit has an agenda. It examines the claim that abortion is murder & says... well, she says it pretty succinctly...
"[T]he leaders of the abortion criminalization movement have consistently put their political weight behind policies which make little or no sense if they genuinely think that abortion is identical to child murder. And those same leaders routinely endorse policies that make a lot of sense if their goal is to penalize women who have sex."
Read the whole (short) story here.

Or, you can just cheat & check out the fun table/graphic.


And, finally, on a happy note, Cecelia Fire Thunder, first female president of the Oglala Sioux tribe of South Dakota, has said she is bringing an abortion-providing Planned Parenthood to her reservation.
She said, "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."
The Salon story I pulled this from here.

I was wrong

There are so many thing I want to blather on & on about today.

SCOTUS handed down a decision saying accusers MUST appear in court if hearsay evidence, like a 911 tape, is to be admitted. Which means that abused women, who are still living in fear of their abusers, or may have some misplaced emotion for them, have to sit on the stand and be intimidated by him & his lawyers. (Check it out here)

I read a really neat article saying that, though religion (any of them) is nothing more than a social construct, it is a necessary one to keep society functioning, to some degree. (accessible here)

I read a piece at Salon.com that I felt I should write about. You can read it here. It's about a group of young women, all about 20 years old, who've started an organization aimed at educating children & teens, boys & girls, about abusive relationships. Signs of abuse, what to do, where to get help, that sort of thing. I wish I'd had it at that age.

My senior year of high school, I was in an abusive relationship.

He never hit me, but he came close.

He was covertly abusive, you could call it. Our friends (because, by the end, I wasn't really allowed to have any that weren't his, too) thought he was great.

He never said anything bad in front of them. In front of them, he never made me feel like he was the best I could ever do & I should pray to God & thank him every day that Matt (his name, obviously) was in my life.

In front of them, he was peaches & cream, love & kisses.

But, alone, I never felt good enough.

I was a cute, quick-witted honor student who felt like she needed to work her ass off to keep a clingy, controlling, manipulative guy, who barely graduated, happy.

And, I loved him.

Because I didn't know any better. He paid attention to me. I was a geek. What 17 year-old wants a geek with thick glasses who wears baggy jeans & t-shirts everyday?

But, I was wrong.

Once, he raised his hand to slap me.

He brought it half way back down.

I can remember exactly how his face looked.

The fury in his eyes.

The blame he made me take as mine.

Then, he called me a name and told me I was wrong for talking to platonic guy friends between classes. He yelled at me for not doing what he told me to. For going against his wishes, his orders.

I walked out of his house.

The next day I asked him to forgive me. Our friends asked me why he was so upset; what had I done.

Two weeks later, I let him take my virginity. I thought it would make things better. That's what he wanted; if I gave him what he wanted, everything would be fine.

Later that week, as he was grabbing my arm and dragging me down the hall, through the school (so I wouldn't talk to anyone he didn't approve of), I realized that something was wrong.

I thought about how he said he loved me, and almost hit me in the same afternoon. I thought about how much my arm hurt as he was leading me around the school; I wondered if he was leaving bruises.

I thought about how sleeping with him hadn't made anything better, and how he was more and more controlling, even just in the last 3 days.

So, I left him.

On Valentine's Day.

And, my friends (sorry, our friends) gave me shit for weeks, and couldn't understand why I had done what I'd done.

I didn't have the courage to tell they why I'd really left him. I was afraid they all thought too highly of him and wouldn't believe me and would take his side, anyway. I wasn't sure I could put into words the bad feeling in my stomach that told me this was the right thing to do. (I still haven't told most people I knew in high school.)

But, I knew I'd done the right thing.

I'm glad I did it.

He took my virginity, he took my trust in boys for a long time, and he made me feel like I wasn't good as anything but a lust object, a trophy, a THING that could stoke his ego (and him) when he needed it.

To this day, I regard giving up my virginity in a useless relationship with an abusive boy one of the biggest mistakes of my life, and leaving him 7 days later one of my greatest triumphs.

In 14 months, I will graduate law school.

It's been a long time since I've had a day without an honest smile.

Today, I am happy.

And, I was right.

I totally own a gun

There were so many choices for what to talk about here... Unwed fathers' parental rights, Mansfield's new book "Manliness," I really great op/ed piece by Jon Carroll, calling right-wingers "thoughtless, gossip-mongering abominations." (Actually, I think I may very well have to come back to this later on.) But, time is limited & I have a term paper looming over my shoulder.

So, instead, I'm just going to comment briefly on an ABC News, "Women Get Trigger Happy: More Women are Buying and Using Guns." ("Available here") The article talks about the NRA's "Women on Target" program, which is trying to encourage women to own & use guns. (They're worried about the little ladies' safety.) I don't much care for the NRA, myself. I see no reason to argue that Joe Suburban has the right to own an AK-47 or armor-piercing bullets.

But, I do own a gun. A Remington 12-gauge shotgun. She lives in my closet. When I was in my senior year of high school, I was the captain my high school's girl trapshooting squad. And, I took 4th place in the state high school trapshooting competition. (It was way fun. A neat little day trip. I beat out a couple dozen FFA girls & came in 4th, while my friend, Maggie, took 2nd place, after a shoot-out for 1st place.)

And, I support gun ownership, as long as gun owners have some reasonable understanding of gun safety.

So, I will support the NRA this one time (the pain!) and say, way to teach women how to responsibly use guns. Train them & teach them safety. Give them practice so that, when they do use their guns, they don't shoot wildly into a crowd.

On a side note, I also found a sleeve of Tag-Alongs in my cupboard & I'm so awesomely happy about it.

In the beginning...

I feel an overwhelming urge to rant recently. I don't want to post on, say, MySpace, because, although people seem to have a decent reaction to what I spit out, I don't feel like it's the right forum to really write & rant & try to make arguments. So, here I am & here I'll try to do this.

But, it's after 3, and an AM time with more than 1 digit seems like a better time to try and put real effort into this.