This is a brief post by my friend PithAndWit.  I asked her to contribute to the discussion about the anti-abortion Stupak-Pitts bill that was added to the Healthcare Reform Act before passing in the House.  PithAndWit formerly worked for a woman’s healthcare provider that performed abortions.  As you will soon see, she is my best and most charming frienemy for some very good reasons.  – Reed

I was briefly given admin rights on this blog due to the recent healthcare bill. I was going to write something well-conceived and thought-provoking, but having had a few beers, I’m settling for plain old provoking, and talk about conception.

I spent half of the past year working at an abortion clinic. I started off in the front office, but by the time I was finished there I was giving birth control and MicRhogam shots, counseling, performing ultrasounds, drawing blood, assisting the physician during the procedure and even working in the POC room– the Products Of Conception Room. I’m the lady who sorted through the detritus to make sure we got everything out.

After all that experience, and talking to women from all backgrounds who’ve had abortions, strangers and friends, you know what I think?

If I got pregnant, I’d collect donations to get that shit sucked out. I take some steps to keep my womb vacant, but I know that plans get fucked and shit happens. I’ve already offered to name my hypothetical abortion after Mr. Braden if he contributes to the fund. I almost want to get pregnant, just so I can experience what all these other women have gone through.

Dear Congress,

Name one outpatient surgery, aside from abortion, that one-third of American women will undergo. Then suck my left tit when you decide that it’s not necessary for the public to pay for that shit. You’ll let Medicare pay to get herpes treated, and that shit sticks around. At least pregnancy is a sexually-transmitted disease that isn’t contagious. So fuck you, Congresspeople. You daft twats. The youngest Congresswoman was born in ‘70, which means it’s pretty much safe to say that statistically, at least 30 of the 92 Congresswomen have had abortions already. And of the 440+ men– yeah, Republicans and Democrats alike– at least one-hundred of you are the fathers of abortions.  Suck it. Both literally and metaphorically.

Thank you.

P.S. Shit fuck piss cunt ass whore motherfucker.

Ladies, gentlemen, and the rest. I have a confession to make – and this is a big one.

I’m not ‘out’ at work. That’s not to say I’m closeted, because I’m not. It’s just that it hasn’t come up yet. It hasn’t come up, and the longer I leave it the less likely it is to come up at all. The less likely it is to come up, the easier it is to let it not come up. And so it starts – I live a lie.

Here’s the thing. I get a job. I meet people, and the heterosexist norms of society kick in. They assume that the ultra-femme girl – with a boyfriend – is straight. I tell a funny story, mentioning an ex boyfriend, or comment on a hot male customer, and the impression is cemented. After all, as a bisexual, there’s a lot of “straight bits” to me. Once they’ve seen those, they don’t look much further.

See, it’s hard to drop into conversation casually. I’ve never had an actual romantic relationship with a woman, there’s no female-someone I can drop a mention of in the exes category. “This girl I fucked this one time” doesn’t roll off the tongue as easy, and is veering right into TMI territory. 

The only way I can mention it is to artificially drag a conversation around to it, force people to talk about me and my beliefs. And I’ll admit, it doesn’t feel quite right. Because I believe that bisexuality is as normal as anything else, because I don’t think it should make a difference to how people see me and interact with me, I feel that I shouldn’t be making it into an issue. After all, none of them ever came out as straight. 

So I leave it, and I leave it, and it gradually gets more and more awkward. I’ve caught myself a couple of times engaging in the pronoun game – not because I don’t want to come out and be honest, but because the timing is poor. There’s a customer there, or I’m on my way out the door, or I’m eating, or any number of other reasons why I don’t have the time or the opportunity to deal with the fallout.

Because, as I’m sure you’re all aware, there will be some fallout. I don’t think I’ve got many homophobic or biphobic coworkers (and if I do, I am enough of a cunt to take anything they throw at me. I haven’t been a victim for a long damn time). But that’s not at all the issue. As I mentioned in my last post, there are a lot of misconceptions about bisexuality. Understandably, people have questions. Imagine if I came out on the shop floor – and a coworker asked me if I’d ever had sex with a woman, in front of a customer? I won’t get fired for being bi, but I’m pretty sure discussing the details of my sex life in front of our volatile, easily offended customers would be a great way to lose my job. 

And so, again I leave it. And as I encourage another friend towards the door of his own personal closet this week, I feel like a liar and a hypocrite. Because I can say all I like that I’m out and proud, that I’m done with the closet and no fucker will ever get me back in… well, that’s not really true, is it? I’ll never let anyone tell me to be ashamed of myself, I’ll never let anyone deny who I am for their own comfort. But when it comes to my job, it’s too easy to let it slip out of my hands. Let them assume what they want, and make my excuses to myself. Anything for a quiet life.

I mean, I don’t know that my husband, who had EPIC tantrums that his mother still talks about to this day, can even hold a candle to what they’ve got going on.  They’re really handling the whole “Changing World” thing super well.

The Vatican has decided that The Gays, because they are not in alignment with biblical teaching, cannot participate in tourism to the Vatican City.  Oh, how interesting.  So the 97% of American Catholics out there that use some form of birth control should not be allowed to visit the Vatican (or in all rights go to church).  And I guess I’ll never get to see the Sistine Chapel (and I really shouldn’t have visited Notre Dame while I was in Paris) because I’m an atheist.  And if you’ve tattooed yourself you probably shouldn’t be entering holy spaces.  Oh, and feminists, you should probably stay the fuck out, too.  Silly women and men, thinking that women are people, too.

Oh wait.  You mean they’re not being consistent in the enforcement of their biblical laws regarding access to their holy city?  I’m shocked.  Absolutely shocked, I say!

We’ve also got the delicious “I’m going to take my ball and go home” tantrum in Washington DC. Washington DC has a same-sex marriage law in the works, and it’s bringing out a whole host of problems for the Catholic Church.  They’re a little miffed that they might actually have to treat gay employees like people (the bill explicitly states that the church doesn’t have to do homo-weddings  A quote that really struck me:

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

“If the city requires this, we can’t do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem.”

Uh, Susan?  I hate to inform you of this, but we officially have separation of church and state.  It’s not well enforced, but it’s there.  And so, if you want to receive government funds for the “good works” that you begrudgingly do, you need to be a fucking secular organisation.  Assistance should not be dependent upon salvation or belief in your imaginary friend.  At least if you want my tax dollars to pay for it.

Thoughts?  Catholic Church should suck it up?  Or it’s their party and they can piss all over the guests if they want to?