Mom Discrimination in the Workplace

An article, titled "Half the mothers I know have been driven from their jobs," in today's Guardian brought back many painful memories for me. This headline/quote is true for me. Many women that I know/knew had babies around the same time as me. Approximately half of those women lost their jobs. Now that my daughter is three and those women's children are older, many, including myself, are back in full-time employment. But not with the employer that we were with when we got pregnant.

My former employer was very supportive of my pregnancy. When I went on mat leave, I felt there would be no problem with my return -- a great person was hired to take over while I was gone and my job would be waiting for me when I returned. It was. But I learned on my second day back that I had essentially been demoted. The department of one that I had turned around and worked for years to reform and make very profitable had changed. The atmosphere had changed. I was no longer supported in leaving to pick my daughter up at daycare or take her to the doctor (though she was so sick she was hospitalized at one point). My former ability to work from home and work flexible hours was taken away. I complained. A week later I was let go.

A close friend working in a similar position was made redundant from her unionized job (which we all thought was safer) a month before she was due to return to work. The guy who replaced her happened to be bilingual. Though that skill was not needed her position, her job description was changed to include bilingualism as a requirement so that the company could keep her replacement full-time.

Another mom from my neighbourhood found out she was being let go a few weeks before her maternity leave was up. Downsizing. Several other professional women I know were downsized out of their positions while on mat leave. Much easier to downsize someone who isn't there, especially if no one replaced her while she was gone. If two people can do the work of three, why bring back the third?

I realize that the economy hasn't been at the top of the cycle for the past few years, but this problem seems to be systemic and international (judging by the Guardian article). Workplaces are run on men's timing, men who either don't have children or aren't involved with their children; that needs to change. We have the technology and the capability to offer all employees, including fathers, work/life balance with shared hours, flex time, telecommuting and good old empathy. But so many employers aren't doing it. We have to stop assuming that mothers are going to be less focused on their work or that moms will be happy to be out of a job they love. Mothers can bring fresh perspective to a position and a workplace. Yes, we want to be with our kids, but we also want meaningful work. And a little understanding.

Rape Joke: A Poem

This poem was written by Patricia Lockwood. It is beautiful and devastating. It needs to be read.

Rape Joke

The rape joke is that you were 19 years old.

The rape joke is that he was your boyfriend.

The rape joke it wore a goatee. A goatee.

Imagine the rape joke looking in the mirror, perfectly reflecting back itself, and grooming itself to look more like a rape joke. “Ahhhh,” it thinks. “Yes. A goatee.”

No offense.

The rape joke is that he was seven years older. The rape joke is that you had known him for years, since you were too young to be interesting to him. You liked that use of the word interesting, as if you were a piece of knowledge that someone could be desperate to acquire, to assimilate, and to spit back out in different form through his goateed mouth.

Then suddenly you were older, but not very old at all.

The rape joke is that you had been drinking wine coolers. Wine coolers! Who drinks wine coolers? People who get raped, according to the rape joke.

The rape joke is he was a bouncer, and kept people out for a living.

Not you!

The rape joke is that he carried a knife, and would show it to you, and would turn it over and over in his hands as if it were a book.

He wasn’t threatening you, you understood. He just really liked his knife.

The rape joke is he once almost murdered a dude by throwing him through a plate-glass window. The next day he told you and he was trembling, which you took as evidence of his sensitivity.

How can a piece of knowledge be stupid? But of course you were so stupid.

The rape joke is that sometimes he would tell you you were going on a date and then take you over to his best friend Peewee’s house and make you watch wrestling while they all got high.

The rape joke is that his best friend was named Peewee.

OK, the rape joke is that he worshiped The Rock.

Like the dude was completely in love with The Rock. He thought it was so great what he could do with his eyebrow.

The rape joke is he called wrestling “a soap opera for men.” Men love drama too, he assured you.

The rape joke is that his bookshelf was just a row of paperbacks about serial killers. You mistook this for an interest in history, and laboring under this misapprehension you once gave him a copy of Günter Grass’s My Century, which he never even tried to read.

It gets funnier.

The rape joke is that he kept a diary. I wonder if he wrote about the rape in it.

The rape joke is that you read it once, and he talked about another girl. He called her Miss Geography, and said “he didn’t have those urges when he looked at her anymore,” not since he met you. Close call, Miss Geography!

The rape joke is that he was your father’s high-school student—your father taught World Religion. You helped him clean out his classroom at the end of the year, and he let you take home the most beat-up textbooks.

The rape joke is that he knew you when you were 12 years old. He once helped your family move two states over, and you drove from Cincinnati to St. Louis with him, all by yourselves, and he was kind to you, and you talked the whole way. He had chaw in his mouth the entire time, and you told him he was disgusting and he laughed, and spat the juice through his goatee into a Mountain Dew bottle.

The rape joke is that come on, you should have seen it coming. This rape joke is practically writing itself.

The rape joke is that you were facedown. The rape joke is you were wearing a pretty green necklace that your sister had made for you. Later you cut that necklace up. The mattress felt a specific way, and your mouth felt a specific way open against it, as if you were speaking, but you know you were not. As if your mouth were open ten years into the future, reciting a poem called Rape Joke.

The rape joke is that time is different, becomes more horrible and more habitable, and accommodates your need to go deeper into it.

Just like the body, which more than a concrete form is a capacity.

You know the body of time is elastic, can take almost anything you give it, and heals quickly.

The rape joke is that of course there was blood, which in human beings is so close to the surface.

The rape joke is you went home like nothing happened, and laughed about it the next day and the day after that, and when you told people you laughed, and that was the rape joke.

It was a year before you told your parents, because he was like a son to them. The rape joke is that when you told your father, he made the sign of the cross over you and said, “I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” which even in its total wrongheadedness, was so completely sweet.

The rape joke is that you were crazy for the next five years, and had to move cities, and had to move states, and whole days went down into the sinkhole of thinking about why it happened. Like you went to look at your backyard and suddenly it wasn’t there, and you were looking down into the center of the earth, which played the same red event perpetually.

The rape joke is that after a while you weren’t crazy anymore, but close call, Miss Geography.

The rape joke is that for the next five years all you did was write, and never about yourself, about anything else, about apples on the tree, about islands, dead poets and the worms that aerated them, and there was no warm body in what you wrote, it was elsewhere.

The rape joke is that this is finally artless. The rape joke is that you do not write artlessly.

The rape joke is if you write a poem called Rape Joke, you’re asking for it to become the only thing people remember about you.

The rape joke is that you asked why he did it. The rape joke is he said he didn’t know, like what else would a rape joke say? The rape joke said YOU were the one who was drunk, and the rape joke said you remembered it wrong, which made you laugh out loud for one long split-open second. The wine coolers weren’t Bartles & Jaymes, but it would be funnier for the rape joke if they were. It was some pussy flavor, like Passionate Mango or Destroyed Strawberry, which you drank down without question and trustingly in the heart of Cincinnati Ohio.

Can rape jokes be funny at all, is the question.

Can any part of the rape joke be funny. The part where it ends—haha, just kidding! Though you did dream of killing the rape joke for years, spilling all of its blood out, and telling it that way.

The rape joke cries out for the right to be told.

The rape joke is that this is just how it happened.

The rape joke is that the next day he gave you Pet Sounds. No really. Pet Sounds. He said he was sorry and then he gave you Pet Sounds. Come on, that’s a little bit funny.

Admit it.

-Patricia Lockwood

A Breastfeeding Curtain Call

A friend's post about breastfeeding reminded me that I hadn't written about the end of my breastfeeding days. My daughter turned three in March and as we hit her birthday I realized that it was time to end breastfeeding. She no longer needed the milk and I would still provide the same comfort to her and cuddles with her without breastfeeding. Some nights, if she was very tired, she fell asleep without milk, so I knew it was only about comfort and routine now. I worried for a week about how I would stop: should I put vinegar or lemon juice on my nipples and tell her the milk was sick, or say no and endure many nights of crying. In the end I didn't have to do anything. One night, I told her that the milk was going away soon and that she could still cuddle with the milk (she calls my breasts "milk" in addition to calling milk "milk") but soon she wouldn't be able to drink it. She cried for a minute and I held her, and then she was back to her old self. It was not my intent to stop breastfeeding that night, but that's how it worked out. She didn't ask for milk and she fell asleep. And with that we were done. I think I was disappointed that it wasn't a more monumental thing. There was no great sadness, and that's a good thing. We still cuddle the same way we always did. And it's important for me to keep doing with her, even when she thinking she's too old for it. I never did with my parents and it took me a long time to feel comfortable even giving my parents a hug as an adult.

I thought I would quit breastfeeding when I returned to work when she was one, but instead we both adapted to just morning and night feedings. I'm so glad that I didn't listen to others and stop earlier because it's what you're supposed to do (and the Time magazine cover about attachment parent is not how anyone breastfeeds a three year old or any age child -- it's pretty detached, and the mom involved was pretty pissed; see her second cover photo below). This was right was us. Three months or 18 months might be right for others. But we're all different and we have to do what works for us, our children and our families. Everyone needs to just chill out about breastfeeding, bottle feeding and how long you're "supposed" to do it for. Relax, people. It might make me a hippie granola mom, but my favourite saying is true, "It's all good."

Not so much this:

More like this:

When Your Mother Says She's Fat

This letter written by Kasey Edwards to her mother is beautiful and absolutely heart-breaking. It's all about that self-defeating language women use and how it has to stop. We are all beautiful, we are all important, we are all special. We need to KNOW it. Our daughters need to KNOW it. The letter comes from the book Dear Mum, which is collection of letters from Australian celebrities to their mothers.

I'm posting the entire letter below, or you can read it here.

Dear Mum,
I was seven when I discovered that you were fat, ugly and horrible. Up until that point I had believed that you were beautiful - in every sense of the word. I remember flicking through old photo albums and staring at pictures of you standing on the deck of a boat. Your white strapless bathing suit looked so glamorous, just like a movie star. Whenever I had the chance I'd pull out that wondrous white bathing suit hidden in your bottom drawer and imagine a time when I'd be big enough to wear it; when I'd be like you.

But all of that changed when, one night, we were dressed up for a party and you said to me, ''Look at you, so thin, beautiful and lovely. And look at me, fat, ugly and horrible.''

At first I didn't understand what you meant.
''You're not fat,'' I said earnestly and innocently, and you replied, ''Yes I am, darling. I've always been fat; even as a child.''
In the days that followed I had some painful revelations that have shaped my whole life. I learned that:
1. You must be fat because mothers don't lie.
2. Fat is ugly and horrible.
3. When I grow up I'll look like you and therefore I will be fat, ugly and horrible too.

Years later, I looked back on this conversation and the hundreds that followed and cursed you for feeling so unattractive, insecure and unworthy. Because, as my first and most influential role model, you taught me to believe the same thing about myself.

With every grimace at your reflection in the mirror, every new wonder diet that was going to change your life, and every guilty spoon of ''Oh-I-really-shouldn't'', I learned that women must be thin to be valid and worthy. Girls must go without because their greatest contribution to the world is their physical beauty.
Just like you, I have spent my whole life feeling fat. When did fat become a feeling anyway? And because I believed I was fat, I knew I was no good.

But now that I am older, and a mother myself, I know that blaming you for my body hatred is unhelpful and unfair. I now understand that you too are a product of a long and rich lineage of women who were taught to loathe themselves.
Look at the example Nanna set for you. Despite being what could only be described as famine-victim chic, she dieted every day of her life until the day she died at 79 years of age. She used to put on make-up to walk to the letterbox for fear that somebody might see her unpainted face.

I remember her ''compassionate'' response when you announced that Dad had left you for another woman. Her first comment was, ''I don't understand why he'd leave you. You look after yourself, you wear lipstick. You're overweight - but not that much.''

Before Dad left, he provided no balm for your body-image torment either.
''Jesus, Jan,'' I overheard him say to you. ''It's not that hard. Energy in versus energy out. If you want to lose weight you just have to eat less.''

That night at dinner I watched you implement Dad's ''Energy In, Energy Out: Jesus, Jan, Just Eat Less'' weight-loss cure. You served up chow mein for dinner. (Remember how in 1980s Australian suburbia, a combination of mince, cabbage, and soy sauce was considered the height of exotic gourmet?) Everyone else's food was on a dinner plate except yours. You served your chow mein on a tiny bread-and-butter plate.

As you sat in front of that pathetic scoop of mince, silent tears streamed down your face. I said nothing. Not even when your shoulders started heaving from your distress. We all ate our dinner in silence. Nobody comforted you. Nobody told you to stop being ridiculous and get a proper plate. Nobody told you that you were already loved and already good enough. Your achievements and your worth - as a teacher of children with special needs and a devoted mother of three of your own - paled into insignificance when compared with the centimetres you couldn't lose from your waist.

It broke my heart to witness your despair and I'm sorry that I didn't rush to your defence. I'd already learned that it was your fault that you were fat. I'd even heard Dad describe losing weight as a ''simple'' process - yet one that you still couldn't come to grips with. The lesson: you didn't deserve any food and you certainly didn't deserve any sympathy.

But I was wrong, Mum. Now I understand what it's like to grow up in a society that tells women that their beauty matters most, and at the same time defines a standard of beauty that is perpetually out of our reach. I also know the pain of internalising these messages. We have become our own jailors and we inflict our own punishments for failing to measure up. No one is crueller to us than we are to ourselves.

But this madness has to stop, Mum. It stops with you, it stops with me and it stops now. We deserve better - better than to have our days brought to ruin by bad body thoughts, wishing we were otherwise.

And it's not just about you and me any more. It's also about Violet. Your granddaughter is only 3 and I do not want body hatred to take root inside her and strangle her happiness, her confidence and her potential. I don't want Violet to believe that her beauty is her most important asset; that it will define her worth in the world. When Violet looks to us to learn how to be a woman, we need to be the best role models we can. We need to show her with our words and our actions that women are good enough just the way they are. And for her to believe us, we need to believe it ourselves.

The older we get, the more loved ones we lose to accidents and illness. Their passing is always tragic and far too soon. I sometimes think about what these friends - and the people who love them - wouldn't give for more time in a body that was healthy. A body that would allow them to live just a little longer. The size of that body's thighs or the lines on its face wouldn't matter. It would be alive and therefore it would be perfect.

Your body is perfect too. It allows you to disarm a room with your smile and infect everyone with your laugh. It gives you arms to wrap around Violet and squeeze her until she giggles. Every moment we spend worrying about our physical ''flaws'' is a moment wasted, a precious slice of life that we will never get back.

Let us honour and respect our bodies for what they do instead of despising them for how they appear. Focus on living healthy and active lives, let our weight fall where it may, and consign our body hatred in the past where it belongs. When I looked at that photo of you in the white bathing suit all those years ago, my innocent young eyes saw the truth. I saw unconditional love, beauty and wisdom. I saw my Mum.

Love, Kasey xx

Female Superheroes Revisited

Well, it seems to the desire to see more any female superheroes out there is growing and spreading. Joss Whedon has now weighed in (with the Daily Beast) on the topic of Hollywood's lack of super ladies:

Toymakers will tell you they won't sell enough, and movie people will point to the two terrible superheroine movies that were made and say, 'You see? It can’t be done.' It's stupid, and I'm hoping 'The Hunger Games' will lead to a paradigm shift. It's frustrating to me that I don't see anybody developing one of these movies. It actually pisses me off. My daughter watched 'The Avengers' and was like, 'My favorite characters were the Black Widow and Maria Hill,' and I thought, 'Yeah, of course they were.' I read a beautiful thing Junot Diaz wrote: 'If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.'

Yes! Yes! Yes! I have yet to watch Buffy (I know, I know) but this is pushing me just a little bit more to make the Whedon plunge.

Also, in separate but related female superhero news, I bought the first season of the old Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series for my daughter, who now fully understands that girls can be superheroes and loves to say (especially while wearing her Wonder Woman cape), "Wonder Woman. Superhero. To the rescue." My review of the show so far: a tad lot sexist and shows from our youth are not as good as we remember them. Still my daughter likes it. That's all that matters for now.

Self-Defeating Language

I'm pretty good about not putting myself down in front of my daughter. It happens occasionally and I've been quick to recognize it and correct it.

But that doesn't mean I don't hear it internally.

The main source, like so many people who put themselves down, is appearance. Mostly my weight.

I'm not skinny. I never have been and I never will be. I'm also not morbidly obese. I'm somewhere in the middle. And stuck. I so often feel lost, helpless, uncomfortable, ugly, unworthy, unattractive, unsexy. It's these "uns" that I'm most sick of. But when I'm trying to be healthy that helpless feeling kicks in, the struggle to lose weight seems so difficult, that I turn to my usual comfort -- food. But food doesn't make me feel comfortable any more. Chocolate no longer makes me  feel better, nor does it even really taste good. It's a crutch. It's a habit. It's an addiction. I want and need that habit gone. But I really am not sure how to do it -- forever.

One day at a time. One minute at a time. One pound at a time. But one minute can ruin an entire week. One shitty thought can easily turn into a shitty day. I'm sick of thinking about food every minute. I need a new routine. A new habit. But more importantly, I need a new focus for my brain. And I need to stop beating myself up inside.

It all comes back (as everything does) to my daughter. I need to be healthy for her. I need to model healthy behaviour for her, internally and externally. She needs a fun, happy mom who runs and plays with her everyday. I need to be that person. And I just need to do it. Just do it until. Until it's natural. Until it's habit. Until I don't know another way. Until.

Reversing Media Gender Roles

Some wonderfully bright sparks in a Women and Gender Studies class at the University of Saskatchewan decided to show us what it would look like if men were portrayed the same as women in the media. It's a bit cheeky, but some of the statistics and original advertisements that glamorize rape are shocking.

But I'll let this great video speak for itself. Well done!

http://www.good.is/posts/intermission-what-if-gender-roles-in-advertising-were-reversed