I Voted!

Sticker that says "I Voted From China." Image source.

Well I am very proud to tell you all that today I mailed my absentee ballot. I voted for Biden and Harris. And some down-ballot Democrats too. ^_^

If you are an American living overseas, GET ON THIS NOW! Now is the time to be mailing in the ballots! Yes, the deadline isn't til election day, but this year there are concerns about delays in the postal system. GET ON IT NOW.

For more information, go to VoteFromAbroad.org.

VOTE VOTE VOTE!

Do "Pro-Lifers" Know C-Sections Are Preferred Over Vaginal Breech Births?

A pregnant woman talking to a doctor. Image source.

Wrote this a while ago, when I was 30 weeks pregnant

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So I'm 30 weeks pregnant, and just had an ultrasound to check how the baby is doing. Turns out my baby is breech, which means its butt is pointing down. Ideally we want the head to be pointing down, so the head can come out first when it is born.

The doctor said we don't need to be concerned about it, because the baby will probably turn on its own before 36 weeks. (A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks.) But if it doesn't turn, I would have to have a c-section.

See, most obgyn doctors believe that, if the baby is in a breech position, it is more risky to try a vaginal birth than a c-section. If you search online for more information about this, you'll find there are some doctors and midwives who think vaginal breech births don't have to be risky; we don't need to always choose a c-section if the baby is breech. So from what I can tell, this question might not be settled, and maybe in the future there will be different standards about when to choose a c-section and when to try for a vaginal birth.

But anyway, the situation right now is that most doctors say you have to have a c-section if your baby is breech. Why? Because it's less risky. If you have a vaginal birth where the head isn't the first part to come out, there's more of a chance the baby might get stuck and can't breathe, or the umbilical cord will get pinched and cut off the blood supply for the baby- and these things can lead to injury or death for the baby. So even though the majority of the time, a vaginal breech birth would turn out fine, it's better to just not risk it. Let's do a c-section instead.

So I'm learning about all this, about the risks and the reasons that c-sections are preferred, and I'm thinking about "pro-life" propaganda that talks about doctors as if they are looking for any excuse at all to kill a fetus. The way "pro-life" advocates talk about so-called "partial-birth abortion" (which is not a real thing) and "late-term abortion" (also not a real thing). About "ripping babies out of their mother's womb." The way "pro-life" advocates talk, you'd think there are tons of obgyn doctors running around, trying to find ways to sabotage a 9-month fetus's health, completely heartless about if it lives or dies.

But here I am, in the actual reality of the real world, where my doctor says if the baby stays in the breech position and doesn't turn its head down, then I would have to have a c-section because that's the least risky for the baby. (His actual words were "you don't have a choice" which I found kind of interesting, but I don't think it's useful to analyze the exact words because that bit was just kind of an offhand remark in the context of a conversation about "is there anything I should be doing now so I can avoid having a c-section?")

Yes, here in the REAL WORLD, doctors are very careful about protecting a fetus's life. If you go to get an x-ray, the doctor or nurse will ask beforehand if you could be pregnant, just in case. When I had an unrelated health problem about a month ago and went to see a different doctor for that, I made sure to tell him I'm pregnant (even though it's obvious) and I asked if the treatment would affect the pregnancy, and he ended up giving me something different than the normal antibiotics, because we didn't want to affect the baby.

So I hear this "pro-life" rhetoric which says there's a huge widespread problem where doctors are looking for reasons to kill a perfectly healthy 8-month fetus, and wow, nothing could be further from the truth. If you actually read about pregnancy and birth and c-sections and everything, you see that it's not like that at all. It's about weighing the risks and choosing the option that has the LEAST risk for the baby and the pregnant person.

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Update: Yes, after this, the baby did turn and I had a normal vaginal delivery :)

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Related:

What Pregnancy Taught Me About Being Pro-Choice 

Don't You Think If It Was Possible To Re-Implant Ectopic Pregnancies, We Would Already Be Doing That?

Blogaround

 1. I am a Christian. Here is what I believe about abortion. (posted September 2) "I trust those women. I trust them more than any indirectly responsible actor who would trample on their subsidiary obligations by trying to usurp the responsibilities entrusted to those women by nature and nature’s God."

2. Former Avalon Singer Michael Passons Says He Was Kicked Out of Christian Band for Being Gay (posted September 11) For as long as I shall live, I will testify to love.

3. How white supremacy works in American culture and media (posted September 2) "This of course is rarely articulated openly, but I guarantee you that if a black female presidential candidate was going to lose the actual vote by millions of voters, but still had an excellent chance of winning the election, this would be considered an absolute travesty — indeed definitive proof that the system was broken and had to be changed."

4. Batman vs. Germ Theory (LSP #156) (posted September 7) This is a really interesting point, about Christianity. 

What Pregnancy Taught Me About Being Pro-Choice

An ultrasound at 6 weeks pregnant. Image source.

I recently announced the birth of my perfect son, Square Root. He is completely amazing and wonderful.

The pregnancy, however, totally sucked.

I was pro-choice before, and now I am EVEN MORE PRO-CHOICE. But in a different way than I used to be. Now my views are based on my actual experience with pregnancy, rather than political arguments I read somewhere.

1. Pregnancy is HARD

Wow, so before I got pregnant, I had ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE what I was getting into. My idea of pregnancy was, your belly grows big, and... that's pretty much it. I bought prenatal vitamins, got my good health insurance plan that covers pregnancy (which is no small task when you're an immigrant shopping around for individual health insurance plans) and thought I was ready. LOLOLOLOLOL.

Then came the morning sickness. Somewhere around week 7 of the pregnancy, my whole life became an endless parade of nausea and gagging and throwing up. Getting up in the middle of the night, every night, to throw up. Throwing up in the morning before breakfast. Throwing up if I waited too long to eat. Throwing up after dinner for no discernible reason.

I definitely threw up at least 100 times, during this pregnancy.

And suddenly there were a whole ton of foods that I could not stand to think about, let alone to smell or eat. Suddenly, it became extremely difficult to find food that I could eat.

And there I am in the first trimester, trying to work a full-time job when I just feel like throwing up all the time, talking to my manager, trying to cobble together some combination of sick days, working from home, and coming in late, so I can get through the first trimester. I'm lucky I have a job with enough flexibility that we were able to make it work.

I was pro-choice before, but wow after all that throwing up, I am EVEN MORE PRO-CHOICE. Nobody should EVER have to go through all that if they don't want to. I felt so sick, so terrible, and my husband and I kept reassuring each other that it would be worth it, because we want a baby so much. But WOW, if you didn't want a baby, or if you didn't want to be pregnant, for ANY REASON, then DEFINITELY don't put yourself through all this. 0/10 do not recommend.

(I'd like to make a disclaimer here- I think for me, the morning sickness was worse than usual. So if you're thinking of getting pregnant, don't let me discourage you. Probably for you it won't be this bad.)

Then in the second trimester, the heartburn started. Oh, and also I still had morning sickness in the second trimester- even though apparently it's supposed to stop at the end of the first trimester. Nope, mine didn't stop, it just got a lot better, so I only threw up once per day, instead of, like, whenever. But then the heartburn started. Every evening I had THE WORST heartburn. I had to get an American friend to bring Tums to China for me.

And I could go on and on about all the wild symptoms and body changes that happen during pregnancy. And on top of that, there's the actual birth, which a lot of people say is the worst pain ever. And in the US, somewhere around 30% of births are by C-section, which is a MAJOR SURGERY and can affect future pregnancies.

"Pro-life" ideology talks about pregnancy as if it's no big deal. As if it's totally reasonable to expect people to go through all this suffering just because they have an unplanned pregnancy. They say women are having abortions "for convenience"- as if throwing up 100 times and experiencing all these symptoms and problems for 9 months and then having painful contractions and maybe a major abdominal surgery is simply an "inconvenience."

Back when my morning sickness started, I wanted a baby so much, but I didn't have a baby yet. I had an embryo. And throughout the whole pregnancy, I was shocked at the sheer amount of work I constantly had to do to turn that embryo into a baby that's able to breathe on its own. In order to make Square Root, I had to throw up over 100 times. I had to- it couldn't have been anyone else. If he was going to grow into a baby who could live outside of my body, it would require me- Perfect Number- to go through all this suffering. And I did it because I really really wanted a baby. And I love him.

But WOW, "pro-life" people talk about how a fertilized egg just "develops naturally" into a baby if it's in a uterus. Like it's no big deal, like it just simply happens. Umm, no. It totally takes over the pregnant person's life. It causes all these awful symptoms.

"Pro-life" people say a fertilized egg is already a baby, already a person. Well, I wish it was- I wish it was already capable of surviving outside my body. That kind of language discounts all the work I did to develop Square Root into a whole baby with functional organs. I suffered for nine freaking months to give him what he needed to get a good start on life. He didn't already have that, at the moment of conception. I worked hard (and barfed a hundred times) to make it happen.

2. On using the word "baby"

So Hendrix and I went to our first prenatal appointment when I was 6 weeks pregnant. I had an ultrasound. We saw a little white blob on the screen and we said "it's our baby!" and I loved that baby already.

But then I thought, I'm not supposed to use the word "baby" because I am pro-choice. "Pro-life" people call it a baby, but pro-choice people call it a fetus and believe that "life begins at birth." ... Umm, actually, no, that's not what pro-choice people believe.

"Pro-life" advocates are so incredibly hung-up on "life begins at conception"- and so they imagine that pro-choice people believe "life begins at birth" and that the unborn baby has no value at all before birth. And ... I guess subconsciously I sort of still bought into some of this "pro-life" ideology; I thought that since I am pro-choice, I shouldn't use the word "baby" until it's born. I shouldn't think of it as a baby.

Well, that's ridiculous. I'm calling it a baby because it's going to be our baby eventually, and we're super excited for that. We can't wait; we want a baby so much.

Also, I realized that before I got pregnant, most of my opinions about pregnancy came directly from the abortion debate, not from the day-to-day reality of being pregnant. So there were times where my friends would use certain language to talk about my pregnancy, and my first thought was "are you trying to make some kind of 'pro-life' point?" Like when people would say "wow, is it weird having a person inside you?" ... the word "person" is so incredibly politically-charged in the context of the abortion debate. But I realized that no, people weren't "trying to make some kind of 'pro-life' point." They were just congratulating me and showing their support.

And at all the doctor's appointments, all the childbirth classes, all the other pregnant women I met- all of them use the word "baby" to talk about the fetus or embryo. Nobody was like "we need to call it a FETUS because it's NOT A BABY YET and also I am SO PRO-CHOICE." Nobody mentioned abortion or "pro-life" vs pro-choice at all, actually- because people who come to prenatal doctor's appointments and childbirth classes have already decided to have the baby. (I think maybe once or twice I heard someone mention that as a pregnant person you could choose to test for various problems or not, and maybe you make that decision based on whether you'd want to abort in the event that your baby does have that problem. But that was it- that was the only time anything remotely related to abortion was mentioned.)

So I discovered that the language I use to talk about pregnancy wasn't right- it was based on a "pro-life" strawman of what pro-choice people supposedly believe. (Honestly I'm still not sure about the word "unborn" though- is that a word only "pro-life" people use? Should I not use it? But like, sometimes I wanted to say "my unborn baby" and I couldn't really find another term that worked.)

3. Bodily autonomy is FOR REAL

So back when I was "pro-life," it seemed pretty pathetic to me when pro-choice people talked about bodily autonomy. I thought, on the one side, you have A BABY'S LIFE, and on the other side, you have "I want the right to make choices about my own body," which seemed pretty abstract and unimportant to me.

I remember seeing images like this, and nodding along because I thought it was an airtight argument:

Image says "For the logic-impaired:" then a silhouette of a pregnant woman. The woman is labelled as "Your body" and the fetus inside is labelled as "Someone else's body." Then the text: "NOT your body. NOT your choice. Abortion is murder." Image source.

Yes, I heard pro-choice people talking about "my body, my choice," and I thought it was nonsensical because it's not about your body at all, it's about the "unborn baby." And how on earth could you weight a BABY'S LIFE against an abstract concept like "choice" or "reproductive rights" and decide those things were more important than A LIFE?

The above image labels "your body" and "someone else's body" as if there's a clear and obvious separation. Well let me tell you, the WHOLE ENTIRE MEANING of pregnancy is that the pregnant person and the baby-to-be are connected. The baby/embryo/fetus relies on the pregnant person for the nutrients and oxygen it needs to live and grow. And the pregnancy causes huge changes throughout the pregnant person's ENTIRE BODY. It's not just "their belly grows big." IT'S THE WHOLE BODY. Swelling feet and hands. Nausea, vomiting, heartburn. The growing uterus pushes other organs up, and that can be painful, and it reduces lung capacity. The amount of blood in the body increases by about 50% and the heart has to work harder. Back pain. Breasts grow bigger because of the hormones. And you experience all sorts of emotions because of the hormones.

It's not something you can neatly divide into "your body" and "someone else's body."

I remember feeling sick, feeling nauseous, feeling tired, feeling weird pains in different places every day, and thinking "I want my body back." I was wrong about thinking "bodily autonomy" was just some silly meaningless thing. It's not some theoretical abstract concept; it's about me feeling sick all the time. It's about me not being able to go to work. It's about back pain and gaining weight and my fingers swelling so I can't wear my wedding ring any more.

4. My *feeling* is it's not good to have an abortion in the 2nd or 3rd trimester

At about 12 weeks, we had another ultrasound. We saw that our baby had arms and legs, and they were moving! I was so surprised; I had no idea the baby would be able to move while still inside my body.

And sometime around 18 weeks, I started to feel his movements. And they just kept getting stronger and stronger as he continued to grow, throughout the whole pregnancy.

When I started to feel him moving more and more often, I thought, "Great! It moves now! I'm finished making this baby! I did it!" But HAHAHAHAHAHA actually no that wasn't true at all; I was only halfway done with the pregnancy. Still 4-5 more months to go.

And as I continued to feel him moving every day, it made me feel more and more connected with my baby. I thought "oh our baby will be so active when it is born." Felt like I was sort of getting to know his personality, a little bit.

So because of this, I now *feel* like it's not good to have an abortion once you're past the point in the pregnancy where the baby has arms and legs that move. (So, somewhere around the start of the second trimester, about 13 weeks.) I realize, though, that this is just my feeling based on what it looked like on the ultrasound or felt like when it was kicking me, and maybe in reality it would make more sense to research when a fetus has brain activity, or when it can feel pain.

So I would advise that if you want to have an abortion, you should do it as soon as possible, because the more developed it is, the more sad it is to end its life. (And in fact, yes, this is how abortion works in reality: about 90% of abortions are performed at or before 13 weeks, and 99% at or before 20 weeks. A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks.) But, MOST IMPORTANTLY, I would NOT want to make a law about this, because in reality there are always cases where people need abortions but weren't able to get one in the first trimester. Maybe they didn't know they were pregnant, maybe they couldn't access abortion because of financial or logistical issues, maybe it was a wanted pregnancy but then some terrible health problem came up.

Most people who have an abortion DO get it sometime in the first trimester. And, of course they do- if you don't want to be pregnant, and you are having morning sickness or other unpleasant symptoms, wouldn't you want to stop all that as soon as you can?

But my point is, back when I only thought of pregnancy in terms of the abortion debate, I never thought about the stages of development the fetus goes through, and how it would be more moral to have the abortion earlier. I thought, for "pro-life" people, they believe it's a full person with rights that override the pregnant person's rights, right from the moment of conception. And for pro-choice people, they believe abortion should be accessible any time at all up until the moment of birth. (Well, these are the ends of the spectrum, but of course a lot of people's views fall somewhere in between.) So I wasn't aware of anybody talking about how incredibly different a fertilized egg is from an 8-month fetus.

I wouldn't want to make a law about it. Or rather, I would support a law made by actual doctors who actually understand pregnancy. Not a one-size-fits-all law made by a bunch of cis men.

5. When we think of "pregnant women" the image that comes to mind is NOT AT ALL representative of who is getting abortions

Another thing I've learned, again related to my complete cluelessness about pregnancy, is that my idea of what pregnancy looks like was totally wrong. Typically, when asked to imagine a pregnant women, people would imagine someone with a huge, obvious baby bump. Indeed, if you do an image search for "pregnant woman", that's what you see. But these images aren't representative of what "a pregnant woman" looks like- they show what a pregnant woman in the third trimester looks like.

Instead, try an image search for "6 weeks pregnant bump." You get a bunch of results showing smiling women proudly posing for a baby bump photo to share on facebook. You can barely see any bump at all; you certainly wouldn't guess they were pregnant. But they are. This is what "pregnant women" look like, just as much as that image in your head of giant baby bump is "what pregnant women look like."

Go ahead and search "12 weeks pregnant bump" and "20 weeks pregnant bump" too. This is what pregnant women look like. Remember, 90% of abortions happen at or before 13 weeks, and 99% before 20 weeks. And also, the women sharing their baby bump photos on social media are very proud of their pregnancies and trying to emphasize the size of the bump as much as they can. But if you didn't want anyone to know you were pregnant, you could easily hide it at that stage.

(A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks- you can search "40 weeks pregnant bump" to see that. Hmm, that looks more like what everyone imagines when they think of "a pregnant woman", doesn't it?)

So there I was, in the first trimester, riding the subway in Shanghai, feeling nauseous and exhausted and wanting to sit down, and everybody knows you're supposed to give up your seats for pregnant women, but nobody on the subway could see I was pregnant. I didn't "look like" a pregnant woman. I used some tricks like wearing tighter clothes to emphasize my baby bump, rubbing my belly and groaning, and carrying around the book "What to Expect When You're Expecting" to try to get people to notice. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

Also, when I attended childbirth classes and met other pregnant women, it was so surprising to me how the size of everyone's baby bump was so different. We would ask each other "how many weeks are you?" and often my baby bump looked bigger and more obvious than someone who's farther along in their pregnancy, just because of the fact that everyone's body is different. A lot of it also depends on the clothes you wear. I met people who were in the third trimester and I couldn't tell by looking that they were pregnant at all.

My point is, when you picture "a pregnant woman" and the image that comes to mind is someone with a huge obvious baby bump, that's not what most pregnant women actually look like. Maybe 30% look like that. And that's DEFINITELY not what people who get abortions look like, because the vast majority of abortions happen in the first trimester.

The "pro-life" movement is EXTREMELY DISHONEST about this. I knew they were dishonest before, but wow, now that I actually have experience with being pregnant without "looking pregnant", and meeting other pregnant people who didn't look very pregnant, I'm even more angry about the images that "pro-life" people use. Images of women and fetuses in the third trimester of pregnancy. Ultrasounds from the second or third trimester, trying to show you LOOK IT'S A BABY. Yes, as I said in point 4, by the second and third trimester, the baby has developed enough that abortion would be immoral. (But pregnant people KNOW THAT and I trust that if they decide they need an abortion anyway, it's because they have a good reason, so yes they should definitely have access to abortion.) By using images like that, the "pro-life" movement completely misrepresents what abortion is. Yes, I agree it would be bad to kill a third-trimester fetus. But people don't do that.

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Enduring a whole pregnancy has definitely changed my beliefs about abortion. I was pro-choice before, and now I am EVEN MORE PRO-CHOICE. Now it's not just abstract and theoretical; I have actual lived experience. Now I know how hard pregnancy is, and I understand the importance of "my body, my choice" in a way I never did before. And I've learned about how the baby develops during the 40 weeks of pregnancy, how I could feel him moving and feel connected to him because of that, and so it's good that abortion during the third trimester is extremely rare.

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Related:
Why I Am Pro-Choice

Don't Let Pence's Shady Use of Language Fool You. He is Anti-Life.

Why Don't I Want to Put My Baby Boy in a Dress?

A baby-sized pink dress. Image source.

Wrote this when I was 24 weeks pregnant

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In a previous post I talked about how in China they're not allowed to tell us the baby's gender until the baby is born. But I also heard that most international hospitals will tell you anyway. And then Hendrix and I went for our 2nd-trimester anatomy scan ultrasound and there was, ahem, some STRONG HINTING that it's a boy.

I'm convinced it's a boy. Hendrix, on the other hand, lacks confidence in our ability to correctly interpret the strong hinting, and insists we "don't know" what kind of genitals our baby has. At any rate, I'm committed to not telling anyone anyway. As I said in my previous post about the baby's gender, I'm really uncomfortable with people putting all these gendered expectations on my child before they're even born. Let them wait until the birth, and then they can bring their inevitable gendered expectations.

So anyway. One fun thing that happens when you're pregnant is people give you all kinds of baby clothes. So I'm looking through this huge pile of baby clothes that friends gave me, and there are a few dresses. Super frilly pink and purple dresses. And my feelings are "uh it's too bad we can't use this because our baby is a boy" and then "okay why do I think boys can't wear dresses, isn't that a bunch of patriarchal bullshit? what's wrong with me?"

Sooooo ... like how should I think about this?

Well let's back up and talk about baby clothes as a concept. This seems to be an entirely different thing than non-baby clothes. Because the baby isn't able to make choices about what they want to wear. They don't "want" anything; they don't have preferences about their clothes. They just need to be not hot or cold or too tight or scratching their skin. But babies don't know or care about the cultural significance of different colors or patterns or whatever. They don't know about gender or gender expression.

So really, baby clothes have nothing to do with the baby's preferences. Instead, it's the parents' preferences. Which makes this such a fundamentally different thing than what clothes mean for everyone else. For anyone over the age of, uh, 3 maybe (???), they choose their own clothes as a way of expressing their personality- and that includes gender expression. But babies don't.

Furthermore, it seems like the gendering of baby clothes is mostly a way for the parent to communicate to other people what their baby's gender is. Because newborn boys and girls look the same. You can't tell their gender from looking at their face or how long their hair is or anything like that. I think this must be the explanation for why baby clothes in stores are so extremely gendered. I was in the US for a bit during the first trimester and when I went to shop for baby clothes I was just *shocked* at how over-the-top it was ... like everything "for girls" was obnoxiously pink and said "daddy's little princess" ...

But it must be because baby boys and girls look the same, and people get nervous if they can't tell what some random stranger's gender is, so therefore you have to make it really really obvious with your baby's clothing.

I, of course, think the whole thing is ridiculous. And I don't care if people think my baby is a girl, when he's really a boy... like, Baby doesn't understand gender, so why does it matter?

But. Does that mean I'm gonna put him in a dress? ... It really bothers me that I'll have to make decisions for him about his gender expression.

Gender is a social construct. What that means in this case is that the idea "boys can't wear dresses" is a cultural norm with no absolute objective reason why it "must" be true. If you look at different cultures around the world or different time periods in history, there are examples where men wore clothes that we might call "dresses," and everyone thought it was completely normal. So I might argue that in an ideal world, nobody would think it was weird for a boy to wear a dress, and therefore I'm totally gonna have my baby boy wear dresses sometimes.

But no. It's a social construct, but it's still very real. If my little boy wears a dress, and then people tell him he's doing something wrong, their criticism is real and his feelings about that are real. (This would not be when he's a baby; this would be when he's old enough to understand that people are criticizing him.) In an ideal world, people should accept it, but we're not in an ideal world, and we have to acknowledge that reality and manage it in practical ways.

Like how a woman might tell a creepy guy "I have a boyfriend" even if she doesn't have a boyfriend, in order to get him to leave her alone. In an ideal world, he should leave her alone simply because she has the right to be left alone if she wants, but that's not the world we live in. It sucks, but sometimes you have to invent an imaginary man, for your own safety.

And so I don't want to put my boy in a dress. Of course, if he says he wants to wear a dress, then I support that 100%. But if he doesn't state any preference- or maybe when he's too little to care- then I don't think I'll put him in the dress. Because yes, people *should* accept it if a boy wears a dress, and people *shouldn't* make fun of him, but that's not the world we live in. To even understand what's happening, my baby would need a whole lot of cultural and historical background information. He would need to understand why "gender is a social construct." I can't just throw him into that if he's not able to understand it. All he'll know is "Mommy is a feminist and now people are mocking me and it feels bad"- and those feelings are real and I care about that. So if he doesn't state a preference, then I won't put him in a dress.

I guess? I mean, if he's only like 1 month old then he doesn't care.

I'm thinking about when I was a little kid, and adults would tell me "it's great to see a girl winning awards in math" and I hated that. I was good at math because I'm good at math, and it has nothing to do with gender. Now that I'm an adult and a feminist and a woman working as an engineer, I understand where they were coming from when they said that, but as a little kid I didn't have any of the historical background information to understand it. As a little kid I didn't experience sexism in that way; my parents and teachers encouraged me to follow my interests in math and science, this felt completely normal and natural to me, and it bothered me so much when people would bring up gender, as if there was something *weird* about girls being good at math and science.

My point is, as adults we take for granted that everyone knows society has certain opinions and values, and then we communicate our own opinions and values by using those societal norms as a reference point when we state what we believe. But little kids are too young to even know what the societal norm is- because it's not obvious or objectively true. It's a social construct. You need years of experience living in the culture in order to understand it- and then you end up internalizing it without ever realizing it doesn't have to be this way. So when we tell kids "I think XYZ" what we're really saying is "I don't agree with societal norm ABC and instead I believe XYZ." And for a kid who isn't even familiar with societal norm ABC, it sounds completely bizarre for someone just to come out of nowhere and be like "I think XYZ."

It's like if I, an American living in China, told Chinese people "Here are a bunch of reasons I'm really glad I didn't change my last name when I got married." In China, there's no tradition about women changing their last name when they get married. It just doesn't exist, and people don't think about it, and it would come across as really odd for me to have so many *feelings* about *not* changing my name, because why on earth would someone change their name anyway?

(I'm trying to figure out how to teach my kid- who, by the way, is mixed-race and will grow up as an immigrant no matter where we live- what a cultural norm is, meanwhile conservatives seem to think it's impossible to explain to their kids that gay people exist...)

So back to the question of dresses... My current thinking is that, when my kid is old enough to have preferences about clothes, I can take him shopping and we'll go to the "boys" section first, because I guess he would want to wear stuff similar to other boys. But also I'll tell him we can totally look in the "girls" section too. Really there's no such thing as "boys clothes" and "girls clothes." The store labels them that way, but that's just their opinion; it doesn't mean you have to follow it. Wear whatever you want.

But honestly, the issue of "yes, boys CAN wear dresses" is probably not that important in terms of how I raise this kid. He can live his whole life never wearing a dress and never wearing anything from the "girls" section, and there wouldn't be anything harmful about that at all. (Though I do think it's important that men are educated enough about women's clothes to know that the pockets are useless, the sizes don't make sense, high heels are not comfortable, and so on- just some basic facts that are obvious to all women. Men should know those things because this is the reality that half the population lives with every day.) "Boys can wear dresses" isn't the hill I want to die on, so to speak.

What's actually important is teaching him how to take care of his mental and emotional health. This is an area where societal norms about being "manly" are really harmful to men. Men are taught that they shouldn't be "emotional". They shouldn't cry. They shouldn't go to therapy. Women typically have a bunch of friends that they can talk to about personal problems, and get support, but men aren't "supposed" to do that. So this is what I'm most concerned about, when raising a boy. If he stays within the gender binary in terms of clothing choices, well, whatever, that won't harm him. But the mental and emotional health stuff, that's actually important.

So. I guess the point is, I totally support my boy if he wants to wear "girl" clothes, because I don't believe there's such a thing as "boy clothes" and "girl clothes" anyway. But I won't push him to do that; I'll treat "boy clothes" as the default for him, because I don't want people to make fun of him. Is that the correct, "feminist" way to approach this? I don't know.

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I guess I can post a bit of an update to this; I wrote the above post when I was pregnant, but now I have months of experience buying clothes for this child and dressing him. Basically we dress him in blue a lot. Like we're basically completely following the stereotypical "boy" baby clothes. Oh, wait actually he does have 1 pink t-shirt which is COMPLETELY ADORABLE and I love when he wears it. And he wore a lot of "gender neutral" [whatever that means] stuff when he was a newborn, because I didn't tell anyone the gender before he was born, so they gave us "gender neutral" baby clothes.

But basically this is much less of a big deal than I thought when I was pregnant. We kind of just have a certain gender expression in mind, subconsciously, and we dress him in clothes consistent with that. And it's not really a big deal. Definitely when he's older, he can choose to wear whatever he wants (as long as it's appropriate for the weather). But for now, we choose, and I guess we just chose to dress him in blue and there's not anything wrong with that.

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Related:
On Not Knowing the Baby's Gender

Blogaround

Some posts related to Jerry Falwell Jr.:

1. Jerry Falwell Jr. Is Stepping Back From Liberty University After A Photo Of Him With His Pants Unzipped (posted August 7) How will I explain this to my children.

2. Jerry Falwell and the Pool Boy (posted August 26)

3. ‘Keanu hands’ should be taught in seminary (posted August 19) "The best way to avoid being accused of doing anything creepy is to make sure you don’t do anything creepy."

4. And this tweet:

I’m just so irritated right now because being a sexual predator is wrong and exploiting other people is wrong and hypocrisy is wrong but non-monogamous sexual behaviors are not wrong and evangelical Christians do not have the moral or theological range to parse these things out

— Emily Joy (@emilyjoypoetry) August 26, 2020

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1. Real Examples to Puzzle Over: the Natural vs. Designed Checklist (posted August 4) Cool! This is part of a blog series responding to creationist Jim Wallace's checklist for deciding whether something is natural or designed. The checklist is kind of a joke, basically all the criteria are super-vague and opinion-based things like "it's unlikely to come about naturally." The article I've linked here talks about, if you wanted to make such a checklist which was actually useful, you would need to test it out on some tricky examples- and offers a list of tricky examples.

2. 6 Tricks I Learned (For Scamming You) As A Faith Healer (posted 2014)

3. White Jesus ain’t Jesus. White ‘God’ ain’t God. (posted July 30) "That’s a very specific God. And it’s a very different God from the God we were taught to worship and honor and obey when we stood and recited “the Ten Commandments” back in Sunday school and VBS and Bible class at Timothy."

4. If You Cared About Children (posted August 24) "So. A movement to improve the lives of children might start by tackling child poverty. What’s next?"

5. 'Black Panther' star Chadwick Boseman has died (posted August 29) Oh wow. This is very shocking and sad.

Chadwick Boseman as the character T'Challa (Black Panther) in "Avengers: Infinity War." Image source.

On Not Knowing the Baby's Gender

Two sleeping babies. One is wrapped in a pink blanket, one is wrapped in a blue blanket. Image source.

I recently announced the birth of my perfect son, Square Root. Here's something I wrote when I was 18 weeks pregnant.

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I always thought it was strange that, when people announce the birth of their baby, they always include these pieces of information:

1. Name- first, middle, and last
2. Gender
3. Weight in pounds and ounces

Isn't that weird, that it's always THESE EXACT things? It's not even like these are particularly important things to know about a person. Like, middle name, and weight in ounces? Do those really matter? Why are these insignificant bits of information treated with such seriousness as they are passed around from one person to another, as news of this baby's birth spreads?

And then I realized, it's because there is literally no other information available about this person. In the entire world, in the sum of all knowledge that we could possibly have access to, there is NOTHING. We literally know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about this person- except their name (first, middle, and last), gender, and weight (pounds and ounces).

(If they're born with any health problems, there's that too. But if they're healthy then there's really not much to say about that either.)

People are so happy about the baby finally coming into the world, and they want to get to know this baby. So they latch on to the the only tiny pieces of information available, and treat those things as very important. 

I get it now, because I'm pregnant and I love my baby so much, but I haven't even met them yet. It's such a weird thing, to love someone that I don't even know. How is that even possible?

(And now I want to cry for some reason, probably hormones.)

I also felt very weird, when I was in the US earlier in my pregnancy, and my mom took me shopping to get some clothes for the baby. All the clothes were so cute, but ... how can I shop for clothes for someone when I don't even know them? I don't know what Baby will like. It was such a weird experience, and I felt so stuck, no idea how to make a decision. I think I only picked out 1 thing, and my mom picked the rest. (Mom says that babies don't have preferences about their clothes, you just dress them in whatever and it's fine. She says it doesn't make sense to be like "but I don't know what Baby would want." I guess that's true.)

I'm so excited about having this baby, so eager to finally meet them and love them. I don't know anything about what kind of person they are, and I wish I did. I want it so bad. And so at first I wished I could find out their gender.

Hendrix told me that in China, doctors are not allowed to tell you the baby's gender, until the baby is born. (I guess it's to prevent sex-selective abortions.) So we're just not going to know. (Though I have heard rumors that some international hospitals will tell you anyway? So we'll see.) [Update: Yes, in China there are ways of getting around the rules. There are ways of getting an ultrasound technician to spill the beans.]

(I'm using the term "gender" in this post, but remember that genitals aren't the same thing as gender, and trans people exist. I'm thinking the way to do Baby's gender is just go with the one they're assigned based on their genitals, and then if a few years later, the kid says actually they are a different gender, then we support and accept that.)

Then I realized, when I was imagining my baby being a girl or boy, I started with the gender and constructed a whole imaginary person from it. Oh, if it's a girl, we're going to watch Disney princess movies, and she'll wear pink dresses. And she'll be like me, an engineer, and we'll build legos together. If it's a boy... okay I don't really know anything about boys, I don't have any brothers. But if it's a boy that will also be great.

I don't think it's a good thing, to have all these expectations for my child, when I haven't even met them yet. Especially if those expectations are based on their gender. Of course I want to allow my kid to be interested in whatever they're interested in. I don't want anyone to limit them. Especially based on gender. But at the same time, it's understandable that I would make up these imaginary scenarios. I love this baby so much but I don't even know them. I wish so much that I just knew something about them. ... so I want to just make something up.

And all of this reinforces the idea that you know, maybe it's a good thing we can't find out the gender until the baby is born. I don't want people putting all kinds of gendered expectations on my child before the child has even taken their first breath. The world will put so many gendered expectations on them as soon as they're born- but not before, not if I have anything to say about it.

So those are my feelings on my not-born-yet baby's gender. I want them to be free to have whatever interests they have, and wear whatever they want. But the world will try to limit them. Even I find I have a desire to make up an imaginary personality for them, just because I'm so eager to have this baby. And because of that, I think it's good that no one will know my baby's gender until they're born.

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Follow-up post: Why Don't I Want to Put My Baby Boy in a Dress?

2020 Reader Survey Wrap-up

A painting showing several diplodocus around a little pond. Image source.

Thank you so much to all the readers that took my 2020 Reader Survey. I really appreciate all the nice comments. 

This year is a weird year for my blog because I have a baby now and, uh, he is very high-maintenance. I can't keep a blogging schedule, but I'm trying my best to at least post *something* sort-of regularly. I actually have a whole bunch of posts that are mostly written but just need some little edits. My opinions about pregnancy and such. So, yes, EVENTUALLY I will get those all posted.

Also I continue to have a ton of opinions about everything, so yes I have lots I want to blog about. Eventually.

Anyway. Thanks again for taking the survey. Here are a few of the best comments. These made me smile~

• For the question that asked "What topics or posts have been your favorite or least favorite? What do you want to read more of?" somebody just wrote "Sex". Lol I am asexual, like what do I know? But I guess they are interested in my asexual perspective on it. I got a lot of comments on the survey about how people like my asexuality posts. Like it seems like I have way more asexual readers than I thought. :)
• "Your posts looking at Christianity through the lenses of the marvel movies and other nerdy properties posts have been my favorite." Awww thanks~ I definitely want to write more of these.
• Surprisingly, nobody put "athiest" [ie, spelled wrong] as their religion. On all my annual blog surveys I make the "religion" question open-ended so people can type in whatever they want, and usually I get many creative misspellings of both "atheist" and "Christian." But this year everyone spelled their religion correctly??? How did that happen?
• I asked about y'all's favorite dinosaurs, and lolololol I'm so glad I did:
• "Brontosaurus but it doesn’t exist. I hold it in my heart like Pluto being a planet."
• "The one from Meet the Robinsons (or Brontosaurus)"
• 2 people like diplodocus, which surprised me because I don't even remember what that is. I certainly couldn't pick it out of a lineup.
• Another person answered "archelon" and I had never heard of that, but apparently it's the largest turtle that's ever existed, so, hey I learned something new.

Thanks everyone~ hope you are all staying socially distanced and healthy <3

Taking My Kid To Church: Cute Sunday School Crafts About Biblical Genocide

Noah's ark craft with paper cutouts of animals. Image source.

Part of the Taking My Kid To Church blog series

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Okay so what do I do if I take little Square Root to visit some church, and I put him in Sunday School, and he comes back with some adorable little Noah's ark he made?

I mean, ewwwww that's horrifying. "Noah's ark" is a story about a monstrous god who believes that everyone in the entire world is so evil they all deserve to die- except 8 people. This god proceeds to ACTUALLY DO IT- to commit genocide on a horrifying, worldwide scale, drowning all the people and animals except the ones on the ark. And we're supposed to believe this god is the good guy of the story. We're supposed to believe that yes, it's true, all those people actually were so evil that they deserved to die. Entire societies, entire cultures, where every single member of society- men, women, and children- deserves the death penalty. Yeah, we don't know any of them, but I'm sure the person who KILLED THEM ALL is an unbiased source who can totally be trusted to tell us what those "evil" people were like. Sure.

That's TERRIBLE.

But "Noah's ark" is a staple of children's bible books and Sunday School lessons. Because it's so cute! Look, 2 of each animal! On a boat! And there's a dove! And a rainbow! Awwwwww adorable!

I've said this many times before: The criteria for picking bible stories to teach to children is NOT "which stories are the best ones for communicating what we believe and what the bible is about?" Nope. And the criteria is NOT "which stories are appropriate for children- without violence and sex?" Nope. Nothing like that at all. Here is the unifying thread that runs through all the stories you find in children's bibles: "which stories have cool imagery?" 

That's it. That's the whole thing. Talking donkey? Yep put that in a Sunday School lesson. Coat of many colors? Ooh that's cool, let's make a coloring page for the kids. Swallowed by a whale? Nice! 3 men walking around in a furnace? Sweet!

All the Old Testament prophets who warned people to turn from their sin? Uh, boring! Paul's letters? Eh not much to see here. Sermon on the Mount? Let's skip the Beatitudes but I think we can salvage something from the "look at the lilies of the field, not even Solomon was dressed like them" bit.

But anyway let's get back on topic. What do I do if Square Root brings home a cute little ark that he colored himself? (Or anything related to an Old Testament account of violence and genocide- the plagues of Egypt, Joshua and Jericho, David and Goliath, etc.)

Well, I think that's horrifying. But Square Root doesn't know any of this background. And it wouldn't be fair to him if I was suddenly all negative about the fun he had in Sunday School class. He'd feel like he had done something wrong by participating and having a good time- but in reality it's not his fault, how could he have known? Should he just sit alone and side-eye the Sunday School teachers when everyone else is playing a game or making a craft, just in case Mommy later tells him that ACTUALLY that game/craft was BAD?

Here's the key, though: These biblical stories of genocide are only bad if people actually believe the entire story really happened. And maybe that's not an assumption that Square Root has. Maybe he is able to just enjoy the cute animals while not thinking too much about the rest of the story- and if we recognize that it's not a true story, then we can enjoy the good parts and ignore the bad parts, saying "you're reading too much into it" or "this is where the metaphor breaks down" or whatever. Just like one could make the case that the world of Harry Potter is horrifying because wizards are so behind technologically and their Hogwarts education leaves out A LOT of subjects... but people would tell you those things don't matter because that wasn't the point of the story.

Soooooooo... what then? He shows me his animals-two-by-two coloring page and I say "this is great, also good thing this isn't a true story because that would be terrible"? Uhhh.

I guess when he's really little, he's not thinking about whether it's a true story or not, so I shouldn't make any negative comments about it then. He can just enjoy the nice parts. And then when he gets old enough to have the "some people think this is a true story, wouldn't that be terrible though" conversation, then we do that.

Uh but what if the Sunday School teachers already told him it's a true story? Oh geez. Like should I just NEVER let him attend any Sunday School lesson that *might* present biblical genocide in a positive way? I mean... like on the one hand, yes, because that's HORRIFYING and should not be made into a cute little lesson for children, but on the other hand, no I don't want to isolate him from this stuff. It's part of our society, he needs to know how to handle it in a healthy way. Right?

Of course I am not going to regularly attend a church that teaches its children that biblical genocide was a good thing. Like, that's one of my NON-NEGOTIABLE criteria if I want to find a church. So maybe I'm being ridiculous even thinking about this hypothetical. Why would I put Square Root in that environment anyway? Why would I put myself in that environment? If we could just not, then let's just not.

Sooooooo... okay... So if, on occasion, my child encounters some Christian presenting the story of Noah's ark in a positive way, I won't worry too much about it. And when he's old enough, we can have the conversation about "good thing these stories didn't really happen, because look at all the genocide, that's awful!" 

But... in the introduction post for this series  I made a big deal about distinguishing between "religion" and "morality" and how I'm not going to try to make him believe certain religious beliefs... well "Noah's ark is not a true story" is a religious belief [according to how I defined "religion" in that post]. What I actually want to get at is "never trust anyone (even God) who tells you an entire demographic of people are all so evil they deserve to die." That's morality. That's something all decent people should agree on regardless of religion.

But isn't it easier to just say "this is not a true story" than to answer awkward questions about how God could really think that everyone in the world (except 8 people) deserves to die, and why nice church people are presenting that as a positive thing...?

Well that's all I got for now. I'm not sure how exactly to handle it, but I'm not worried. I don't think Square Root is at risk for internalizing this stuff the way I did. He'll be fine.

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Related:
If Thanos Tells You To Build An Ark, You Say No
Noah's Evangelism
Blaming the Biblical Victim (And More Horrifying Implications of Scripture)

Paperwork for My Immigrant Baby

The photo page of a baby's US passport. Image source.

I wrote this when I was 27 weeks pregnant, but now I have even more feelings about it, now that the US consulate in Chengdu has closed. (In retaliation for the US government forcing the Chinese consulate in Houston to close, because of political reasons I didn't totally follow.) Closed as in, permanently closed- they had to pack up everything and move out, and Chinese authorities took control of the building. It's so NOT COOL how the US president is playing around with provoking China for political reasons, because this stuff affects the actual lives of actual Americans who live in China. When my son was born, I had to take him to the US consulate in Shanghai to apply for his US citizenship and US passport. There must be pregnant American women in Chengdu who are now faced with the problem of how to get their baby's passport and proof of US citizenship. This stuff affects real people. 

Vote. Vote Trump out.

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I'm a US citizen, my husband is a Chinese citizen, and we live in Shanghai, China. So... what kind of citizenship will our baby have?

Well from the US side, baby can be a US citizen because I am. We just need to fill out form "FS-240 Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a Citizen of the United States of America (CRBA)" and baby will get a US passport.

From the China side: Well China doesn't do dual citizenship. But since baby's daddy is Chinese, China considers baby to be a Chinese citizen. So... they're both... but you can't be both... so... how does that work?

Long-term, we want to move to the US, and baby would be better off being a US citizen than a Chinese citizen. But we can't just say "no thank you" to the Chinese citizenship; baby gets it automatically, and it seems to me like it's going to be way more trouble than it's worth.

Because, get this: Baby will not be eligible to get a Chinese visa in their US passport. Because, the reasoning goes, you are a Chinese citizen, it doesn't make sense to issue a Chinese visa. But... when you enter or leave the country, you have to show a Chinese passport or a Chinese visa. Baby can't get a Chinese passport because they'll already have a US passport and you can't have both. So how is this supposed to work?

Well. Instead of a Chinese visa, you apply for an "entry-exit document." This is valid for 3 months and allows you to leave and re-enter China 1 time.

Or, if you're outside of China, you can go to a Chinese embassy and apply for a "travel document", which is valid for 2 years and allows you to enter and leave China as many times as you want.

From the research I've done so far, it seems like it's more of a pain to get these "entry-exit documents" or "travel documents" than it would be to get a visa. Like, both of the parents and the baby have to be present at the immigration office... whereas for a visa, anyone can take your documents and just drop them off there for you.

So let's say we don't want to do all that, and we want to just renounce the Chinese citizenship instead. Wow, yes, that would be much easier, then baby is just a regular US citizen and we don't have to be confused about which rules apply in this *gray area*.

Well... renouncing Chinese citizenship is also a huge pain. I haven't done research to find out what documents we need, but I know we would have to go to my husband's hometown (can't do it in Shanghai because he's not from here) and probably in each city the rules are different (because China), and apparently it can take up to 2 years.

Anyway, Hendrix and I are going to have to figure all this stuff out, for our baby. Baby is too little to understand any of it; we have to do all the work. And we're going to do it, and be successful, and baby won't have to worry about any of this, everything will be fine.

But... our poor child, who needs all this paperwork and bureaucracy, just because they are born as an immigrant. Our little baby, who just wants to live and grow and learn how to be a person, a little bundle of love who doesn't know anything about countries and borders and governments and passports.

Why is everything so complicated, just because baby is born in an immigrant family? I want to say "it's not fair" but I guess it would be more accurate to call this an example of privilege. If you are born as a citizen of the country you live in, and your parents are also citizens, then all of this is easy. I never even had a passport until I was in college; I never needed one before. But here in China we have immigrant moms with their immigrant babies, asking each other "how do I get my baby to open his eyes so we can take a good enough passport photo?" And trying to figure out what paperwork they need so they can take their child to another country to see their grandparents for the first time. And asking each other if it's a good idea to take a 6-week-old baby on a 12-hour flight. All things that you would never even think about if you're a citizen and everyone in your family is a citizen. That's privilege.

We'll handle it. We'll figure everything out. But it kind of sucks how hard this is going to be, just because we are an immigrant family.

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Related:
This Is the Stuff That Happens to Us Immigrants
Feminism 101: Privilege