As a result of your help, we will be able to pay our rent and utilities in February! I have also been able to buy more of my meds, which is a good thing because I’ve been battling severe depression (probably not entirely the result of my messed up brain chemistry). And, very importantly, we’ll be able to take care of our beloved Balou.

We’re treating him with nutrition, herbs, and other supplements rather than “conventional” cancer therapy. Even if we could afford surgery and chemo, which we can’t, I’d have difficulty subjecting him to painful, debilitating treatments at his age. We can’t be sure exactly how old our wonderful boy is given that he was a fully-grown adult when we adopted him, but he has to be at least 13 and could be 14 or 15. In other words, he’s already quite old for a dog of his size and breed. Our goal is to keep him happy and comfortable as long as we can. He was fading badly in December but has regained some of his strength thanks to the treatment your donations help make possible.

We now have almost a month to get back on our feet financially, and I’ll be spending every waking moment not occupied with the canine pack trying to do just that. Which unfortunately means this blog will likely be neglected a while longer. I will, however, keep you all posted on our situation. We’re currently still without work, but hopefully that will change soon!

After barely making ends meet for a number of years, my partner and I are now in a position where we are facing homelessness. We usually manage to eke out a living selling our skills as freelancers, but during the last few months, work has completely evaporated. We spend all our time searching for jobs, but nothing has panned out.

We have also looked for work outside our field, but since we’re stuck in the boonies without a car, our employment opportunities are severely limited. Nonetheless, in an effort to leave no stone unturned, my partner did put in applications for two local just-above-minimum-wage jobs. Given that he has no experience in these lines of work and competition for any kind of job is beyond fierce around here, this is a long shot. Moreover, even if they do hire him, he wouldn’t get paid enough money fast enough to avoid eviction.

As regular readers of this blog are aware, I live with PTSD and bipolar disorder, which is challenging even when things are going reasonably well. Stress makes my symptoms worse, and not knowing how we’ll survive this situation has been extremely stressful. Consequently these last few months have been very rough in terms of my mental health. I’ve also had to reduce the dosage of my bipolar meds because we can’t afford to buy more, and I’m trying to make what I’ve got last as long as possible. Obviously that’s far from ideal.

My beautiful Balou

I saved Balou’s life almost twelve years ago when I rescued him from a kill shelter in the middle of a distemper outbreak, and he’s returned the favor many times over. He’s the most remarkable dog I’ve ever known, and he’s always been there for me. It breaks my heart not to be able to help him now that he’s sick and needs me.

Balou is our oldest, but we have three other dogs–Laney, Goldie, and Kimo. All are rescues that arrived in various ways over the years. They’ve kept me going many times when I thought I couldn’t go on, and they’re the reason I’m writing this.

Here’s our situation: We can’t pay our rent or our utilities, and we only have enough food money for the next nine days. We have no money for my meds or Balou’s treatment. We got this far with the help of friends and family, but everyone we know is also poor, and while they would like to help, they’ve done all they can without jeopardizing their own survival.

If it was just me and my partner, we might be able to go to a shelter, but with the dogs, that isn’t an option. Nor can we live in our car, since we have no car.

If we lose our home, I honestly don’t know what we’re going to do. There’s literally nowhere we can go with our dogs. And I would never, under any circumstances, abandon our canine family members.

That’s why I’m turning to you. If you’re able and willing to help, I can’t even begin to tell you how much that would mean to us. Any and all donations are beyond welcome! If you’re not in a position to help financially, please use the share buttons below to link to this post on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Mentioning our situation on your blog would also be much appreciated. Oh, and if you would like to hire us for a job, you can contact me at SashaSaidX at gmail.com.

I’m desperately hoping that we can scrape together enough cash to stay in our home and pay our bills. Whatever you can do to help, please do it! Again, I wouldn’t ask if I saw any other way, but I’m terrified of what’s going to happen to all of us if we lose our home.

UPDATE (01/20): First of, I want to give a huge “thank you” to everyone who donated, blogged and tweeted about our situation so far. I realize most of you aren’t exactly swimming in cash either, and I want you to know how much your help means to me. You’re awesome!

At this point, we’ve got a little over one-third of the rent payment, which unfortunately means we still got a ways to go. We’re prioritizing rent over everything else, including food, because, quite frankly, losing our home = game over. Even if we somehow managed to survive sleeping outdoors (which, given various predators and the nighttime temperatures this time of year, is iffy at best), we have no way to earn a living and get back on our feet without a computer and Internet connection. Never mind that finding another rental with four dogs, an eviction, and no car would be pretty much impossible…

Which brings me to my first issue with Occupy Wall Street. Who exactly are “the rest of us”? From a branding perspective, the 99% versus the 1% is very appealing. But is it accurate? Clearly not. If your household income is half a million a year, I’d say the system has been working very well for you. You may even be part of the problem if you outsource jobs or pay workers less than a living wage. But you’re still part of the 99%.

At the same time, “the 99%” has become synonymous with the downtrodden, debt-ridden, and dispossessed. I remember a Tumblr entry written from the perspective of a small child who’d witnessed her mom cry because she was unable to buy her kid a birthday present. It ended with the words, “My mom doesn’t know that I know we’re part of the 99%.” Huh? The mom doesn’t realize her kid knows she makes less than $590,000 a year? No wonder people are confused. I’ve seen numerous blog posts and comments by individuals with low six-figure incomes stating that they “stand with the 99%.” No, actually, if you have a low six-figure income, you are the 99%. In fact, if your household income totals $190,000, it could triple and you would still be part of the 99%.

So. Not very useful, is it? The bottom 90%, on the other hand, have an average household income of $31,244, which is probably more like what people have in mind when discussing the economic difficulties experienced by “the 99%.”

Okay, so maybe the focus is on the top 1% because they’ve been gobbling up a disproportionate share of income and productivity gains and wield a toxic amount of political influence. But then, why stop at the 1% mark (average annual income $1,137,684)? The top 0.1% (average annual income $3,238,386) are even more culpable and the top 0.01% (average annual income $27,342,212) are the most culpable of all.

Ultimately the 99% is more about branding than reality. Which, I suppose, is okay, as long as we don’t forget that there are HUGE differences among the 99% and that we are NOT all in the same boat. Even if we ignore the 99 percenters with household incomes topping $200k, there’s an enormous difference between a family making $160,000 and a family making $60,000 a year. And there’s an even bigger difference between a $60,000 household and a $16,000 household.

If the power elites had half a brain, they would have been content with exploiting and oppressing the people at the bottom, while continuing to provide economic opportunities for those in the middle. Most 99 percenters were just fine with a system in which the disproportionately black, brown, and female folks at the bottom of the income pyramid were paid so little for their labor that an entire lifetime of hard work was insufficient to escape poverty. And even the ones who saw the injustice and had a problem with it weren’t about to take to the streets to protest the exploitation of the working poor.

Alas, the greed of the power elites knows no bounds and they began outsourcing middle class jobs and cutting middle class pay and benefits. So here we are. We’ve now got the beginnings of an economic justice movement. People are starting to wake up to what those of us at the bottom of the pile have known for a long time: The system is rigged. Hard work and skill are not enough. The rules that apply to most of us don’t apply to the people at the top. And these people have been waging war on workers for over three decades. Their greed commodifies and destroys everything in its path.

So, yeah, I realize that this newfound solidarity with workers came about only because those who grew up expecting to live a middle class life with decent pay, home ownership, vacation time, health care access, and savings accounts are seeing their prospects evaporate. But you know what? I’ll take it.

As for the much-discussed demographics of the Occupy movement, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that white dudes with middle class upbringings are disproportionately represented among the “full-time” occupiers. With the exception of those currently unemployed, the working poor are typically too busy working two or three jobs to keep a roof over their head to occupy stuff. If we don’t show up for work, we don’t get paid, and if we don’t get paid, we can’t make the rent. The Occupy movement doesn’t just protest the economic realities in this country, it also reflects them.

Women are not only more likely to be poor and underpaid (roughly two-thirds of all minimum wage workers are women), but with all the unpaid domestic work and caretaking we are saddled with, we’re going to have far less time to join protests. On top of that, the ever-present threat of rape serves as a powerful deterrent against overnight stays in tents surrounded by dudes.

It’s absolutely critical that the white male protesters who are in the majority at every “occupation” understand *why* they outnumber female activists. I’ve seen some pretty disturbing statements from dudes who clearly don’t. Suggesting that those present 24/7 at Occupied sites are more committed to the movement’s goals than those who are able to stay only a short time demonstrates a stunning lack of awareness of male, white, ableist, and class privilege.

Unfortunately there seems to be quite a bit of that going around. There have been reports of general sexism (lots of it), sexual harassment, and even a couple of sexual assaults. While that’s no different than what happens outside of the Occupy movement’s encampments every minute of every day (don’t get me started on the hypocrisy of right-wing blogs who have seized on these incidents as supposed evidence that OWS represents the end of Western civilization), male OWS protesters are supposedly trying to fight injustice and inequality. That, my brothers, will require tearing down patriarchy, male privilege, as well as porn and rape culture.

It probably won’t come as a shock that many lefty men have no intention of abandoning male supremacy. That became, once again, abundantly clear during the Occupy Wall Street Perv Project fiasco (otherwise known as “Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street”). Women can be objectified, dehumanized, and used as perv bait without their knowledge or consent, and, judging from blog comments, about half the pro-Occupy dudes think that’s a-okay. Oh, and feminists are overreacting, of course. Perv project creator Steven Greenstreet is actually helping the movement by getting more people dudes to show up at the protest, so it’s all good! Who cares that he’s creating an unsafe and oppressive environment for women in the process.

The absolute lowest point, however, came when Occupy London Stock Exchange invited probable rapist and definite sexist sleazoid Julian Assange to speak at the LSX protest. While there were some boos and a few people left, the vast majority of the crowd cheered for this piece of shit. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. LSX sent a clear message that day to women and rape survivors that we’re not part of their “justice” movement.

So I understand why most radfem blogs have concluded that Occupy Wall Street is a men’s movement in which dudes set the agenda and women clean, cook, and look pretty. Same as it ever was.

And yet. Linking to right-wing blogs that claim to be outraged about sexual assaults occurring at OWS encampments while they support candidates and policies that make women even more vulnerable to sexual assault and harassment? If you must link to them, it would be nice to at least call out their breathtaking hypocrisy. But then, just like left-wing dude politics have a blind spot where women’s oppression is concerned, feminism can be amazingly oblivious to class-based (and race-based) oppression.

While pointing out that “we” are not the 99%, that the 99% are made up of predominantly women and children, all women are presumed to be in the same boat. In fact, I’ve even seen statements to the effect that low income women have more in common with women in the 1% than with low income men. There are indeed experiences women share across class or race. But there are also important differences, and in some instances, poor women and women of color are going to have more in common with men of their class or race than with rich white women. The point is, we shouldn’t have to choose. We shouldn’t have to ignore one form of oppression to focus on another.

Some of the most troubling comments I’ve seen on feminist blogs question the Occupy movement’s legitimacy because “worldwide, the 99% are the 1%.” Apart from the fact that this statement is untrue (Western industrialized nations are home to substantially more than 1% of the world’s population, and not everyone in the so-called developing world is poor), it comes perilously close to the right-wing talking point that poor people in the US have nothing to complain about because we have it so much better than poor people in the developing world. Sort of like feminists have no business complaining about sexism and misogyny in the US, because, hey, women here are so much better off than women in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.

Let me be clear. Being poor in the US of A is not just about not being able to “buy stuff.” Being poor frequently means going to bed hungry. It means watching your partner collapse after a day of hard physical labor in 100+ degree heat for which he was paid $5 an hour. It means walking home seven miles in icy cold wind and rain because you can’t afford a car and public transportation is extremely limited. It means cops automatically regarding you with suspicion, and courts locking you up for minor offenses. Most of all, being poor in the US means suffering, and possibly dying, because you can’t afford medical, dental, or psychiatric care–and being forced to stand by helplessly as your friends and loved ones suffer.

For women, being poor also means that you are more likely to be raped and less likely to see your rapist brought to justice. It means you are more likely to be sexually harassed on the street and at work, and less likely to have recourse against employment-based harassment and exploitation because you really need that job. It means you’re more likely to become a victim of domestic violence and less likely to be able to escape because you’re not paid enough to live alone. And yes, being a poor woman also means that you’re more likely to turn to prostitution or other sex work–either as a “career choice” because that’s the one form of employment open to you that pays enough to possibly escape poverty, or as something you do occasionally to make ends meet.

This is why, despite all the problems, I support the Occupy movement. No, it’s not a radical movement (at this point), and yes, it’s far from perfect, but it’s still the best thing that has happened in this country in a long time. Unfettered capitalism is killing us and the planet. Hell, it may already be too late. But maybe, just maybe, we can still turn this thing around. People are finally waking up and figuring out that something has gone very, very wrong. Our elected representatives don’t represent us; they’re on the payroll of massive corporations intent on devouring everything they can turn into profits–human beings, animals, natural resources, social programs. I’m not going to turn my back on the first (and possibly the last) inkling of a chance to change course because some of the dudes involved are fauxgressive douchenozzles.

Get involved in the Occupy movement and point out how unbridled capitalism, environmental destruction, and patriarchy are inextricably linked? I’m all for it. But not support the movement at all? I don’t have that luxury. I need this movement to succeed. And, really, so do you.

Anita McLemore has been trying to beat her drug addiction for over fifteen years. It’s been a struggle, not made any easier by the four felony convictions she has amassed during that time. After all, finding a job that pays a living wage and escaping poverty is an enormous challenge even if you’re not a convicted felon.

Hungry and desperate, the Mississippi mother of two turned to the food stamp program for help. There was just one problem. The application included a question about prior felony drug convictions and a statement indicating that convicted drug felons are not eligible for food assistance and deserve to starve to death (okay, it didn’t really say that last part but it might as well have). So McLemore did what just about any mom with hungry kids and no other options would do in this situation. She lied.

For this lie, she has now been sentenced to three years in federal prison (via TGW), followed by three years of supervised release and a $250 fine. Desperate to stay out of prison and remain with her children, McLemore had managed to pay back every penny of the government benefits she received. It made no difference. In fact, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate went out of his way to impose a sentence much harsher than the 2-8 months of incarceration followed by probation called for by federal guidelines.

The reason? Judge Wingate was disgusted by McLemore’s multiple drug convictions and outraged that the state courts had mostly allowed her to remain out of prison to take care of her children and seek treatment instead of locking her up like the hardened criminal she clearly is.

This case is one more example of blatant injustice in a long line of cases demonstrating that the system treats the haves and the have-nots very differently. Rich bankers commit fraud on a scale so massive it crashes the economy and causes untold suffering, and the system responds by rewarding them with massive government baleouts, in addition to the usual subsidies and corporate welfare. Poor mom commits “fraud” by lying about past drug convictions on her food stamp application so she can feed herself and her kids, and the system responds by sending her to prison for three years, although, unlike the bankers, she has harmed no one and even made full restitution.

This case is also another example of the grave injustice that is the “war on drugs.” Because what McLemore did shouldn’t have been a crime in the first place. I’ve written before about how we treat drug users worse than rapists and this is another example of that. If McLemore’s felony convictions had been for rape or child abuse or armed robbery or murder or any crime other than a drug felony, she would have been eligible for food stamps and there would have been no need to lie and hence no fraud.

We can thank the 1996 welfare reform act for this injustice. Federal law prohibits drug felons from receiving benefits provided by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), also known as welfare, but the states administering the benefits can opt out of the ban. Most have done just that, either opting out completely or modifying the ban to make it somewhat less punitive. There are, however, about ten states, including Mississippi, Georgia, and West Virginia, that insist on keeping the food stamp ban for drug felons–even though the program is fully funded by the federal government and costs the states nothing. In other words, this ban isn’t about cash-strapped state budgets; it’s entirely about punishing poor people with drug convictions, especially poor women and their children.

As for the four felony convictions and one misdemeanor that so disgusted and outraged Judge Wingate, if you’re poor and addicted to drugs, it’s amazingly easy to rack up convictions once you’re in the system and they’ve got their eye on you. I have friends with more convictions than that, and their lives are a revolving mess of jail, prison, and probation (with mandatory drug testing), interspersed with largely ineffective drug treatment programs.

Why ineffective? Because these programs are not equipped to treat the underlying problem (e.g., rape, child abuse, mental illness) that led to the drug addiction in the first place. Treating the symptom (drug addiction), while ignoring the cause is rarely an effective long-term strategy. Even without an underlying problem, kicking a drug addiction is extremely difficult under the best of circumstances. For people living in abject poverty with no hope or opportunity, the escape that drugs provide can be virtually impossible to give up.

Women face added difficulties because most treatment programs are geared toward male addicts. The last thing female addicts need is a program that further undermines their already badly damaged self-esteem by framing drug use as a moral issue.

Women aren’t supposed to be out of control, so the female addict is keenly aware of her failure as a woman. A man who is out of control is no big deal. It’s almost expected. That, in fact, is part of the reason society insists that women always be in control of themselves. A woman who is out of control is a woman asking for trouble. This is also why so many people blame rape victims who are intoxicated, while letting intoxicated rapists off the hook. Men can’t be expected to control themselves, but a woman who is out of control has only herself to blame for whatever happens to her. In the case of female drug addicts that “whatever” almost always includes sexual abuse, but the drug treatment programs available to low income women rarely offer therapy for sexual assault survivors.

Prison, too, is often harder on women than men, and not just because they are more likely to be the sole caretakers of children. Women are more likely to be sexually assaulted behind bars, more likely to serve a greater portion of their sentence, more likely to be incarcerated far from home, and less likely to have access to a broad array of therapeutic, recreational, job training, and educational programs. With the exception of the sexual assault risk, these disadvantages are all the direct result of women committing fewer crimes than men.

Fewer crimes means fewer women’s prisons, fewer resources in prisons, and less overcrowding (and therefore less incentive for early release). Mississippi, for instance, has no federal women’s prison, so Anita McLemore will be incarcerated out-of-state, making it difficult for her children and friends to visit her. If McLemore was a man, she would be incarcerated in Mississippi. Then again, if she was a man, it is unlikely she would be in this position. And if she wasn’t poor, she certainly wouldn’t be.

If Dick Durbin thinks debt reduction is the preeminent challenge we’re facing, all I can figure is that he must be living in some alternate universe. Which I guess he is. Durbin and the rest of the millionaires’ club in the Senate are so far removed from the lives of the people they were elected to represent that they might as well be from another dimension. The deficit that so concerns Durbin and the DC establishment barely even registers as a concern for the people in my community. Indeed, the only reason it registers at all is the ruling class’ relentless propaganda campaign.

Let me tell you, Dick, what people in my California community are concerned about. Our county’s official unemployment rate is 14.7%, but the real unemployment rate in our neck of the woods is at least 10-12 percentage points higher. Sometimes a whole week goes by without a single “help wanted” ad appearing in the local paper (not counting “make thousands stuffing envelopes from home” schemes and the like). Jobs are so scarce and people are so desperate for work that a supermarket putting up a Help Wanted sign for three no-benefits, minimum wage positions received hundreds of applications in a matter of hours.

While at least one in four are unemployed, many more are underemployed or stuck in low wage jobs that don’t pay enough to cover the basics. The lack of discretionary income in the area has devastated small businesses. The barbershop that used to cut my partner’s hair, the Mexican restaurant we occasionally stopped by for takeout before our car broke down and we couldn’t afford to get it fixed, the two Internet cafés we visited a couple of times per month to escape the unbearable slowness of our dialup connection–they’ve all closed their doors. So have countless other businesses during the last few years. You can’t run a business without customers, and most people in our area have no money to spend.

The cops, however, are busy. The vast majority of police calls involve drugs and alcohol, domestic violence, and mental health issues. Many people are self-medicating because they have no access to health care. If you’re in agony and can’t afford treatment, you’ll use whatever is available to numb the pain. If that “whatever” happens to be illegal, you may find yourself locked up and your future employment prospects greatly diminished by a criminal record. All because you were too poor to access medical or dental or psychiatric care.

Substance (ab)use and financial hardship also take a toll on relationships. Many women are stuck in abusive households, because low wages make it very difficult to move out and live alone. While home prices have plummeted due to the housing crash, rents have not. On the contrary, the large number of people losing their homes to foreclosure has increased demand for rentals, driving up prices. Without government assistance, it takes two minimum wage earners to rent a home, and the waiting list for Section 8 housing is long.

In short, Dick, my community, like so many others all over the country, has been absolutely devastated through no fault of our own. The challenge we’re facing isn’t the deficit. That’s easy enough to fix (hint: you may want to take a look at how it was created in the first place), but frankly, given the extent of the crisis, the deficit shouldn’t even be a concern right now. And if McCain had won, it wouldn’t be.

Ever notice how Republicans never care about deficits when they are in the White House? They run up massive debts with no concern at all. Go to war while cutting taxes? Sure, why the hell not! But all that changes the moment a Democrat is elected. Then, suddenly, there’s nothing more important than the deficit. Why do you think that might be, Dick?

Look, we know what the Republican endgame is. It’s all about dismantling what’s left of the New Deal and the Great Society. In their Randian utopia, it’s every man and woman for themselves. No worker protections, no environmental protections, no minimum wage, no pensions, no social security, no food stamps, no government assistance or regulation at all (actually, make that no assistance for the public and no regulation of business; there will be assistance for business and regulation of the public, especially the uterus-equipped public). That’s their goal. What’s yours?

Because, let me tell you Dick, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell you guys apart. Two percent less evil won’t cut it. And make no mistake about it, reducing the already grossly inadequate benefits of people too old or too sick to work? Evil. Depriving people of the opportunity to earn a living wage by pushing free trade agreements and refusing to support unions? Evil. Locking up the poor for trying to survive while the rich get a free pass? Evil. A country as wealthy as this one condemning people with treatable illnesses to needless suffering and death because they can’t afford medical/dental/psychiatric care? Evil.

None of these things become any less evil because you managed to close a loophole for corporate jet deductions or got the rich to pay a little more in taxes. Shared sacrifice is a bad joke. There is nothing shared about sacrifice in this country, Dick. People at the bottom do nothing but sacrifice, while those at the top, and that clearly includes DC Democrats, don’t know the meaning of the word. If you did, you wouldn’t suggest that millionaires giving up a minor perk constitutes sacrifice, especially sacrifice on par with having to go without food, medication, or heating oil.

Protecting the social safety net programs is the bare minimum we should be able to expect from congressional Democrats, but it’s not enough. The boundless greed of the rich has destroyed everything in its path, from the environment to the hopes and opportunities of middle and working class Americans. To get this country back on track, we’re going to need to reverse course, and the Democrats will have to decide whose side they are on. Unfortunately, it’s abundantly clear that most of you already have.

As jobs are increasingly outsourced or replaced with temporary contract work, more Americans will find themselves in our shoes. That’s bad for workers, but it’s also bad for the overall economy. Aside from the lack of pensions, 401Ks, and health care benefits, people who aren’t confident they’ll have much income next month won’t be spending much money this month. They certainly won’t be making any big purchases. You may have had a good month or two, but since you can’t be confident that you’ll continue to get work, you save every dollar you don’t absolutely need to spend.

Of course it’s not just contract workers who lack confidence. With a lousy economy and sky high unemployment figures, those fortunate enough to have a full-time job that pays a living wage realize just how precarious their position is. If you are laid off, it could take a very long time to find a new job. Better save that discretionary income in case your job makes tracks to China or India.

Businesses also lack confidence, but it’s got nothing to do with the deficit. It’s more like they lack confidence that they’ll have customers. This is why short-term stimulus won’t work. Businesses may see demand for their products or services increase, but if they believe these increases are only temporary, they won’t translate into new jobs. Much safer to ask your existing employees to pitch in more than to hire someone new if you have reason to think your customers will be broke again in a few weeks or months.

The only way out of our economic mess is to put more money into the pockets of poor and middle class Americans, and not just temporarily. We have a situation where people with needs have no money to spend, because nearly all productivity gains have been flowing to the richest of the rich. The rich, of course, are too few in number and already have everything they need, so the amount of demand they generate cannot sustain a consumer-oriented economy such as ours. Unless we find a way to reverse the massive redistribution of wealth perpetrated by the richest 2% against the rest of us, we are so screwed.

The solution is obvious. The government needs to put people to work because the private sector won’t. Lord knows, it’s not like there’s a shortage of things that need doing in this country. Whether it’s repairing our crumbling infrastructure, beginning the transition to clean energy (that’s solar and wind, not nuclear), cleaning up the environment, expanding broadband access and increasing connection speeds, or improving education and health care, there’s much to be done if we want to remain competitive. And imagine the effects on the private sector and on communities ravaged by poverty and unemployment if millions of currently unemployed and underemployed people suddenly had jobs that pay a living wage.

Unfortunately this solution is entirely unacceptable to the powers that be. It’s not even up for debate. The millionaires in both congressional parties have zero interest in using the power of government to put people to work. The best we’ll get from them is tax breaks for businesses, but all the tax breaks in the world won’t make a company start hiring if it lacks customers. So we’re screwed. Businesses won’t hire because there isn’t enough demand to justify more employees, and there isn’t more demand because so many people are unemployed, underemployed, or living in fear of being unemployed and underemployed.

Meanwhile, politicians in both major parties are determined to make the problem worse by slashing spending at a time when we desperately need to reinvest in America and Americans. Cutting spending will boost consumer confidence, we are told. Oh sure, that makes a lot of sense. There’s nothing like reducing funding for programs average people rely on to make them reach for the wallet to make those all-important consumer purchases. In reality, of course, austerity measures have exactly the opposite effect on consumer confidence. And I find it difficult to believe that our “representatives” don’t know that.

The Personhood amendment would outlaw all abortions in the state. Also under attack is emergency contraception. And in neither case would there be an exception for victims of rape or incest. While the amendment, if passed, is likely to be challenged in federal court and declared unconstitutional, it’s the increasing hostility toward rape victims I want to discuss.

It used to be that most forced pregnancy activists supported rape and incest exceptions. Whether it was compassion for the victims, or a desire to punish only “sluts” who willingly had sex, or wanting to protect men from the possibility of having to raise the offspring of their wife’s rapist, or perhaps a combination of those factors–until fairly recently, most anti-choicers were not advocating prolonging the torture of a 13-year-old incest victim by forcing her to give birth to her own sister. “No exceptions” was largely the battle cry of the farthest right fringe.

In the last 2-3 years, however, this fringe position was propelled into the mainstream by the likes of Sarah “No Mercy for Rape and Incest Victims” Palin, and minds began to change. For Personhood Mississippi, though, they’re not changing fast enough, and so the group pushing Mississippi’s Personhood amendment decided to launch a “Conceived in Rape” Tour. Yes, you read that right. The “Conceived in Rape” Tour’s featured speaker is professional forced pregnancy activist and family law attorney Rebecca Kiessling, who is an excellent example of why I would always abort the spawn of rapists.

Kiessling’s website is quite something. She claims that in the late 1960s, i.e., pre-Roe, her birth mother (Kiessling was adopted as a baby) was impregnated by a knife-wielding serial rapist. She further claims that the rape counselor advised her birth mother to have an abortion and referred her to a back alley abortion provider. In fact, she was referred to two different “abortionists,” but the conditions were so deplorable and she was treated so shabbily that she decided not to go through with it–just like most women back then didn’t go through with it for those reasons. Riiight…

A couple of things jumped out at me as I was reading Kiessling’s “story.” The first is the complete lack of empathy and compassion for her birth mother. Imagine being brutally raped by a man who is threatening to slaughter you, then learning you’re pregnant by that psychopath and knowing there’s no legal way for you to abort this pregnancy. The absolute and complete horror of this situation sends chills through my entire body. Not so for Rebecca Kiessling. There is not a single word to suggest Kiessling feels the slightest bit of compassion for the torment her birth mother endured. The entire page is ME, ME, ME!

Which brings me to the next point: Kiessling’s grandiose sense of self-importance and entitlement. The mere suggestion that her birth mother should have had a choice about whether or not to carry this pregnancy to term is a personal insult beyond compare. If her birth mother had a choice, Kiessling might not have been born, and there is no greater horror or injustice than a world without Kiessling! After all, she writes, “Your life is different because she could not legally abort me because you are sitting here reading my words today!”

I can’t help but see the parallels between Kiessling and her birth father here. “Daddy” was a serial rapist who hunted women like prey. He was able to do this because his victims weren’t real to him. They weren’t real people with plans, hopes, responsibilities, and loved ones. They were objects to be used and discarded. They didn’t matter. Only he mattered. He couldn’t care less about the suffering he was causing them and the potential for lifelong scars.

Maybe he even got off on their pain, fear, and humiliation, in which case he would positively adore the idea of the state extending their torment for another nine months. Or maybe he wasn’t a sadist. Maybe he figured what he was doing was no big deal because, hey, that’s what women are there for, right? Who needs consent when all you’re doing is using the bitch for her intended purpose? How traumatic could that possibly be?

That seems to be what Kiessling is thinking when she argues that rape victims should be forced to bear their rapist’s offspring, after which they’re free to give the baby up for adoption so it can grow up to be as self-absorbed and lacking in empathy as she is. Nine months of forced pregnancy followed by the agony of forced labor and forced birth? No biggie. After all, that’s what women are there for. Complications resulting in incontinence, paralysis, or death? Oh well. Will Kiessling consider herself guilty of murder if a twelve-year-old rape victim she denied an abortion dies from pregnancy-related complications? Don’t be silly! That would simply be God’s will.

Kiessling and her birth father both believe they have the right to commandeer a woman’s body and use it as they see fit. They are wrong. That’s the part that gets lost in all those “when does life begin?” debates. There is no question that I am very much alive. But if it turns out tomorrow that I require a bone marrow transplant for my continued survival and Rebecca Kiessling is the only match in the world, that doesn’t mean I can force her to give me some of her bone marrow. Even though donating bone marrow is far less painful than going through labor and giving birth. Even though, unlike pregnancy, no one has ever died from donating bone marrow and the procedure is not known to cause long-term health problems and permanent physical changes. And even if I will die with 100% certainty if I don’t get a transplant–I still can’t commandeer her body against her will to ensure my own survival. Nor should I be able to.

And in case anyone thinks I just don’t understand what poor Rebecca went through learning that she was “almost” aborted, my mom, unlike Kiessling’s birth mother, not only had the option of aborting a pregnancy, she exercised that option several times. In fact, I am the result of the first pregnancy she decided to carry to term. My mom always knew she wanted kids, but she felt she needed to gain some measure of financial independence first. She had seen too many women in her working class neighborhood have kids too young and become financially dependent on the men in their lives, who then took advantage of that dependence.

So yeah, the pregnancy resulting in yours truly could have very easily been aborted; it certainly wasn’t a planned pregnancy. And you know what? That wouldn’t bother me one bit. Because I wouldn’t exist in that case. What would bother me though is knowing that my mom had me only because she was forced to. I would not want to live in a society that treats female humans like walking incubators with fewer rights than a zygote. A society in which women and girls can be impregnated against their will and then forced to risk their lives carrying that pregnancy to term. And I can say without hesitation that I would die before I would give birth to the offspring of the men who raped me.

Finally, there’s one more thing I want to address because it’s indicative of the deep contempt forced birthers like Kiessling have for women. Kiessling would have us believe that rape victims don’t really want abortions, just like women in general don’t want abortions. It’s just that we’re too confused, too easily influenced, too emotional, too weak, or just plain too dumb to know what we want. When a woman says she wants an abortion, it’s because someone else convinced her that this is what she should do. In the case of Kiessling’s birth mother, that someone was the evil rape crisis counselor. I don’t think I need to spell out how incredibly insulting that crap is.

But in so far as reproductive coercion is a real problem, the fundies are, as usual, projecting. Because abortion providers aren’t the ones committing reproductive coercion. Far right fundies like Kiessling are the ones who seek to remove reproductive freedom with their “crisis pregnancy centers” and TRAP laws, their attacks on contraception and sex ed, their opposition to family leave policies and government-funded daycare, and of course their economic policies, which promote ever greater income inequality and poverty.

Then again, I’m sure Kiessling doesn’t expect most of the rape victims she would like to force to give birth to actually raise those kids, so who cares if they’re poor and can’t afford daycare. After all, if you’re married, you can’t demand that your hubby raise the child of the man who brutally raped you as his own if he’s not volunteering for the job (but demanding that you give birth to this child is a-okay, of course; unlike hubby, you don’t deserve a choice in the matter). And if you aren’t married, you have no business raising children in the first place, according to social conservatives like Kiessling. But not to worry, there are plenty of nice fundie families eager to adopt and raise your kid to be a rape culture promoting misogynist with the same sense of entitlement and contempt for consent and bodily autonomy your rapist had.

So I followed a link from Ian Welsh’s blog to read this supposedly awesome piece on Obama. It may well be awesome, but unfortunately I’ll never know. Because a few paragraphs into what’s a very long post, I came across this:

“He’s [referring to Obama] dealing with people [referring to the Republicans] whose idea of compromise is a woman having an orgasm while she is raped.”

WTF?!? Needless to say, there was no trigger warning and nothing in the post’s title or Welsh’s recommendation prepared me for this disgusting analogy. My interest in the piece came to an abrupt end and I began to feel physically sick. Images of being raped flashed through my mind. Pretending to be into it so my rapist wouldn’t kill me.

And I thought of a friend who was forced by her rapist to experience an orgasm during the attack. Afterward he claimed it couldn’t have been rape because “she came” and most people agreed with him. Worst of all, my friend blamed herself and began despising the body she felt betrayed her. Even though she understood intellectually that what another friend and I were telling her was true, that the human body responds to stimuli whether we want it to or not and that what her rapist did to her is a torture technique designed to humiliate and destroy victims, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was sick and disgusting because her body experienced arousal during the assault. As a result, she developed an eating disorder and began cutting and burning herself. THAT is the reality of “a woman having an orgasm while she is raped.”

So let’s rephrase: “He’s dealing with people whose idea of compromise is a woman being tortured.”

Hmm, somehow I don’t think that’s quite what the author intended to convey. And why, by the way, must it be a woman? Is the idea of a man or even a gender-neutral “someone” having an orgasm while raped too uncomfortable?

So that’s the first problem with dudely rape analogies: Most of them totally misrepresent what rape is. But you know what? Even if you’ve come up with a killer rape analogy that’s totally on point, in no way misrepresents or trivializes rape, and doesn’t single out women as natural rape victims, it would still be much appreciated if you kept it out of articles that have nothing to do with sexual assault.

Because while rape may be an abstract concept to you, it’s a lived reality for many of your readers. Approximately one in three women have been victims of a completed or attempted rape, and a significant percentage of rape survivors suffers from PTSD. Getting hit with a vile rape analogy when you’re not expecting it can be extremely triggering.

But it’s not just survivors who find inappropriate mentions of rape disturbing. Even women who haven’t been raped are typically keenly aware of the omnipresent threat of sexual violence and the gendered nature of this crime. For a dude to throw out rape analogies with no examination of how the threat of rape functions as a means of control and how rape culture benefits men in general smacks of unexamined male privilege.

And if needlessly triggering rape survivors and coming across as an overprivileged douche aren’t enough to deter you from peppering your writing with inappropriate rape analogies and metaphors (though, let’s face it, you’re not really progressive if that shit doesn’t bother you), you should know that you’re also alienating a growing number of your dudely readers. My partner, who is neither female nor a rape survivor, was similarly nauseated by the above analogy. While he did finish reading the article and thought it made many good points, he won’t be recommending it. Because of that one line. Because that one line is extremely disturbing, triggering, ignorant, and hurtful. That the author most likely didn’t intend for it to be so doesn’t change the fact that it is.

Sexual assault is one of the most violating experiences a person can endure. The trauma is exacerbated by a culture that routinely blames, shames, and disbelieves rape victims, and a justice system that denies all but a very small minority of rape survivors the opportunity to hold their attacker accountable. Studies show that at least 80% of rape victims suffer from chronic psychological and/or physical conditions as a result of being attacked. It’s not unusual for rape trauma, especially when compounded by a hostile or dismissive community reaction, to trigger suicidal ideation, resulting in a drastically increased suicide risk for rape survivors: 1300% higher than individuals not victimized by crime and 600% higher than victims of crimes other than rape.

Consequently it shouldn’t come as a surprise that drugs and alcohol are commonly used as a coping aid post rape. A study examining a random sample of sexual assault victims found that 44% took prescription drugs (mostly sedatives, tranquilizers, and antidepressants) to cope with the attack. How many self-medicate with alcohol or illegal drugs? We don’t know. We do know that close to 90% of women who are habitual heroin or cocaine users are also sexual assault survivors. Many have been raped more than once. And nearly two-thirds were children when they were first sexually assaulted.

While rape survivors of all socioeconomic groups may self-medicate with illicit drugs in their attempts to cope with rape trauma, low income women are particularly vulnerable. In more ways than one. Most lack health insurance or the funds to pay for doctor’s visits and therapy out of pocket, making self-medication with illegal drugs more likely. While certainly not all, or even most, illegal drug users become addicts, using drugs to numb pain or escape from intolerable circumstances frequently leads to addiction. Middle class women usually have sufficient wealth and income to afford their addiction, at least initially. For poor and working class women, however, things tend to get real bad real fast. Lacking the income to support an illegal drug habit, most must turn to prostitution or petty crime to finance their addiction.

When I tell people that I became a heroin addict after being raped, the usual assumption is that that’s a very bad thing. And in many ways it was. My addiction to heroin made me vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, forced me into prostitution, and eventually landed me on the street. First, though, heroin saved my life.

No, I’m not kidding. After the man I thought I loved had me raped and the people I had considered my friends took his side, I became increasingly distraught and got to the point where I was on the verge of committing suicide. I turned to heroin literally as a last resort. If it hadn’t worked, I would have killed myself. But it worked. That’s the thing about heroin. It’s a very powerful painkiller. It allows you to live with shit that no one should have to live with.

Bad things happened to me as a result of my heroin addiction. In almost every instance, though, the negative consequences were the result of the drug’s criminalization. The high price and lack of widespread availability (neither of which would exist without criminalization) made me dependent on a sadistic drug dealer who took full advantage of the fact that I couldn’t leave him. I don’t talk about the things he did to me. He finally got tired of me and threw me out, expecting me to be dead in a matter of days. But I survived, turning to prostitution to get by.

Sometimes I made enough money to afford a room for the night. Usually I didn’t. I needed every dollar I made to support my drug habit. I crashed in people’s apartments or people’s cars or abandoned buildings or I didn’t sleep at all. One night I ended up with a guy who told me about all the “junkie whores” he killed. I didn’t go to the police.

None of us did. In the eyes of the law, we were the criminals. Virtually every one of the women I knew on the street had a history of sexual abuse, often starting when they were little girls, and the men who raped and abused us were never punished. We were the ones punished. We were the ones who lived in fear of law enforcement, not our rapists. The fact that we weren’t hurting anyone was irrelevant.

Being drug addicts made us more vulnerable than other prostitutes. It’s difficult to say “no” to something you don’t want to do when you’re getting dopesick. Not surprisingly, some men specifically target women who look like they’re going into withdrawal. You learn quickly never to wait till the last moment to make the money you need and when you mess up and some maggot manages to take advantage of your desperation, you blame yourself. I know I did.

If you’re arrested for the crime of numbing your pain with an illegal narcotic, expect to be treated like subhuman garbage. There’ll be no presumption of innocence for you. Everyone you encounter will assume you’re guilty and treat you like the scum of the earth. You’ll be stripped naked in front of strangers and your body’s cavities will be searched for “contraband.” In most parts of the country, you’ll be forced to undergo a brutal cold turkey withdrawal (talk about cruel and unusual punishment). It used to be that way everywhere, but nowadays some jails are a little more compassionate, providing either methadone (rare if you’re not already in a program) or a medicated withdrawal (which often isn’t as helpful as it sounds and may just consist of OTC painkillers).

You also have a good chance of being sexually assaulted while behind bars. Most people think of prison rape as a problem affecting male prisoners, but incarcerated women (over 85% of who are non-violent offenders) are actually more likely to be sexually assaulted than incarcerated men. Having male guards supervise female inmates is a colossally bad idea and prohibited by the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. In the U.S., however, jails and prisons routinely hire men to guard female prisoners because refusing to do so is considered employment discrimination.

Even if you’re never arrested for illegal drug possession, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to be treated like subhuman garbage. And to be sexually assaulted. Drug dealers are so used to desperate addicts offering to trade sex for drugs that many feel entitled to demand sex even if you have the money. Saying “no” can make the dealer decide not to sell to you (a big problem if you’re on the verge of getting sick or can’t get in touch with anyone else); it can also get you forcibly raped. Sometimes you end up going along with the demands because you know what will happen if you don’t. Crooked cops may also prey on you, threatening to arrest you if you don’t do what they say. And pretty much everyone will treat you like trash. I’ve known women who didn’t get horribly infected abscesses on their arms treated because they knew that medical personnel would treat them like shit. As in, “you did this to yourself; you would deserve it if we just let you die.”

But you don’t have to become addicted to heroin or cocaine post rape to be treated worse than your rapist. If you’re raped while attending college and subsequently convicted of using any type of illegal drug–even pot–as a coping aid, you’ll lose your financial aid eligibility for a year. Convicted rapists, on the other hand, do not lose their eligibility. Neither do any other criminals. Clearly drugs are such a singular evil that drug users and sellers alone deserve to be punished.

Or maybe not. What I would like to see happen is for all drugs to be legalized. They used to be legal and could be legal again, but I’m not holding out much hope that will happen. So I’ll settle for decriminalization. Stop treating drug users and addicts like criminals–that should be drug policy priority number one. And I’m not talking about offering drug users treatment instead of prison. Treatment should be available on demand, but it should never be mandatory or coercive.

Forcing someone into treatment before they’re ready can have disastrous, even fatal, consequences. But what if they’re never ready? They may not be. We like to believe that no matter how much trauma someone has suffered, there’s always a way to press the “undo” button. It’s just a matter of finding the right treatment, and voila, they’ll be back to their old self. Or at least functioning well without drugs. Alas, that’s not how it works. Some countries have started to make prescription heroin available to long-term addicts who, often as a result of severe PTSD, are unable to function without the drug acting as a “buffer.” Having legal access to heroin allows them to get off the prostitution/crime/jail merry-go-round and get their lives in order. Prescription heroin programs have been very successful, but what do you think the chances are we’ll give them a try in the punitive, moralistic US of A? Right.

That leaves treatment. Drug rehab, especially for female addicts, must offer therapy for sexual assault survivors as an option and should not have a moralistic component. Female drug addicts already feel like crap; the last thing they need to hear is that they’re “bad” people who’ve made “bad” choices. In many cases they made the only choice they could to go on living after having suffered unbearable trauma. Was turning to drugs a bad choice? Only if you consider suicide preferable to being a drug addict. No, the person who made the bad choice is the rapist or child molester who set the whole thing in motion. And the community that looked the other way. And the friends and family members who sided with the rapist. If anyone’s to blame it’s the rapists and the rape apologists and the rape enablers. But of course we’d much rather blame the victim.

Yet only a small percentage of rapes are reported and of those that are reported, few end in a conviction. This means that rapists are free to go on raping, creating more victims and destroying more lives.

The rape culture myths addressed in my last post have a lot to do with the low reporting and conviction rates for rape. So does this:

The law presumes women old enough to legally have sex to exist in a state of perpetual consent. Unless you are able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt–a very high standard–that you did not consent to sex, the law assumes that whatever dude came along and forced himself on you had the right to do so.

So you’ve been raped. Being a “good” rape victim, you report the attack to police right away and submit to an agonizing examination of your body and every orifice in the hope that forensic specialists will find your attacker’s semen or other physical evidence. And they do! Congratulations, you have just ensured a consent defense (unless, of course, your attacker decides to plead guilty).

What I’m proposing is that we make a small but important change to the law by making consent an affirmative defense in rape cases. I’ll explain what that would mean and how it would work in a moment. First, though, let’s take a look at the three possible defenses in rape cases, shall we?

First up, we’ve got the “wrong guy” defense. In this type of rape case, the defendant will deny having had any sexual contact with the victim. The defense may not dispute that the victim was raped, but argues that the cops caught the wrong guy. For obvious reasons, this type of defense is most common in stranger rapes, though it is sometimes used in cases where the perpetrator is a very casual acquaintance or where the victim wasn’t able to get a good look at her rapist but believes he is someone she knows.

When you read about guys freed after spending X number of years behind bars wrongfully convicted of rape, it’s always this type of case. In fact, Peter Neufeld from The Innocence Project has said that in every rape case where they freed a wrongfully convicted man through DNA testing there was a real rape victim also denied justice.

This type of defense would NOT be affected by my proposal.

Second, we’ve got the similar but not identical “I didn’t have sex with that woman” defense. As in the previous type of case, the defendant will deny having had sexual contact with the victim, but he may not deny having been with the victim or at least knowing the victim. In other words, it’s not so much that he’s claiming to be the wrong guy as that she is either mistaken (usually as a result of being unconscious or heavily intoxicated) or lying about having sexual contact with him.

This type of defense would NOT be affected by my proposal.

Finally, there’s the consent defense. Here, the defendant admits to having sexual contact with the victim, but claims she didn’t object (enough). Many people believe that this type of defense is seen predominantly in so-called date rapes. Not so. The consent defense rears its ugly head whenever there’s physical evidence proving sexual contact between the defendant and the victim. And because forensic technology is advancing at a rapid pace, we’ll be seeing more rapists rely on the consent defense than ever before.

A victim who’s a total stranger, a victim who was tortured or beaten (hey, she “liked it rough”), a victim who ended up dead–none of this precludes a consent defense. And because women exist in a state of perpetual consent, it’s up to us to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that we didn’t consent. It’s no wonder then that rape prevention in this country consists of telling women how not to get raped (hint: it usually involves limiting your freedom and increasing your dependence on dudes) instead of telling men not to, you know, rape us.

But what if women weren’t presumed to exist in a state of perpetual consent? What if consent was an affirmative defense in rape cases?

Affirmative defenses are sometimes also known as justification defenses. The defendant is essentially saying, “I did it, but I’m not criminally liable because I was justified in doing it.” Self-defense is probably the best known example. For instance:

Let’s say Fred tries to rape me and I hit him over the head with a tire iron. Fred goes to the emergency room where doctors inquire about the source of the huge gash on his head. He tells them what I did, omitting the part where he tried to rape me, and they call police. If police don’t believe my side of the story (let’s say Fred is a fine upstanding citizen and I’m a drug-addicted prostitute), I could find myself charged with felony assault or worse. My defense will be that I was justified in hitting Fred with the tire iron because I was acting in self-defense.

Now, here’s the thing: Because self-defense is an affirmative defense, it will be up to me to prove that I was justified in hitting Fred because he was trying to rape me. Fortunately the standard of proof is generally lower than “beyond a reasonable doubt” when the defendant asserts an affirmative defense. So I’ll be okay as long as I can prove that Fred was attacking me (and that his attack justified my actions) by a preponderance of the evidence.

I’m proposing that the same standard apply when consent is asserted as a defense to rape. However, while the victim is currently in the position of having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she did not consent, the defendant would only need to prove that he had consent by a preponderance of the evidence.

I have no illusions that this change would single-handedly eliminate our low-reporting-and-conviction-rate problem. It will still be necessary to fight rape culture with its pernicious victim blaming and countless myths and misconceptions about sexual assault. But it would give rape victims–particularly those who’ve gone through the nightmare of a physical examination post-rape only to have their attacker utter the magic words “she consented!”–a better chance than they have now.

Most importantly perhaps, this change would put rapists on notice and go a long way toward shifting some of the burden to prevent rape where it belongs: the perpetrator. If you’re in the habit of engaging in predatory sexual behavior, targeting women who are too intoxicated or intimidated to give meaningful consent, you’ll probably want to alter your behavior. And if you’re the kind of guy who’s terribly concerned about potential “misunderstandings” leading to “false” rape accusations, there’s a simple solution for you: Make sure all your sexual partners are really consenting. Not grudgingly, but enthusiastically!

* Throughout this post I refer to rapists as male and rape victims as female because that accurately describes the vast majority of rapists and their victims. That said, not all victims are female and not all perpetrators are male, and the points made in this post apply to all sexes and sexual orientations.