Okay, so I promised myself I wouldn’t write about religion or politics anymore, but this renewed War on Women infuriates me.

The extreme Christian right has recently pushed through laws mandating state-sanctioned medical rape (a transvaginal sonogram) in order to get an abortion in Texas; Topeka, Kansas has decriminalized domestic violence; Republican congressmen want to redefine rape, and Colorado Republicans want to make taking the morning-after pill a first-degree homicide. I’m waiting for the ultra-conservatives to start promoting Christian burhkas.

I was baptized in the Protestant church and was fed their toxic, anti-woman dogma since I was a baby. I received the same brainwashing in school and in society. Gradually, over my lifetime, women’s rights progressed. But now, the extreme Christian right has dredged up all this old toxic waste again, lobbed it straight at us and—in parts of the country—have dragged women back to the cave. And I want to beat them all bloody for it.

What the toxic programming has done to my mind is criminal. No one should have these thoughts about themselves. No one deserves these messages. Pets are treated better. I’ve been in therapy for five years trying to rid myself of the poison. And it’s still an on-going battle.

I was taught that I was dirty because I was a woman. I was taught to be ashamed of myself. That everything was great until The Original Sin when women (Eve) ruined the entire world. I was taught that I was a weak moron who wasn’t capable of doing anything but pressing buttons on a typewriter, a dishwasher, or making babies. I was not expected to do well in math, science or sports. I was not encouraged to get an education. I was not encouraged to take care of myself, only others. If I wore a short skirt, I deserved to be raped. If my husband hit me, it was my fault. I had no value unless I was married, and single women were the most pathetic creatures in the universe. Women were harping, gossiping, shallow, vain idiots who needed permanent guidance—children who couldn’t handle responsibility or make decisions.

I was taught that sex was dirty. If I touched myself, I was a slut. If I had sex, I was a whore. If I used birth control, I was a super big whore because I’d planned on having sex. I was taught that good girls hated sex—even with their husbands. Yet I couldn’t say no because I had no rights over my body, I was my husband’s possession. I was supposed to endure the act, find no pleasure in it, and never respond. If I enjoyed sex or had an orgasm, then I was the biggest slut of all. The only reason I should ever have sex was to have babies. If I got pregnant, I was redeemed, but lost all my power and was sentenced to a lifetime of toil, servitude and hardship. If I had an abortion, I was a murderer and deserved to go to Hell.

Basically, I was taught to hate myself. The only way I could redeem my worthlessness and make up for my shameful womanhood was to sacrifice my entire life by serving a man and having children. Only a man could validate my existence.

As a result of these teachings, I’ve always felt defective and ashamed for being a woman. I’ve always been ashamed of my sexuality. I’ve always felt like I was worth less than zero and had to sacrifice every ounce of my energy and every bit of my soul to reach zero. And there’s no path to positive worth. Simply because I’m a woman.

The sole intent of the brainwashing I received was to warp my self-image and make me more susceptible to subjugation and control. The current agenda of the extreme conservative right serves the same purpose: to make women hate themselves.

So when men like Rush Limbaugh call women whores and sluts for using birth control, and Rick Santorum states that he wants to ban birth control because its “unnecessary”, and that mothers shouldn’t have jobs outside the home, these “Christian” men might as well be taking a baseball bat to Grandma’s skull. Might as well knife their twelve-year-old daughter in the gut. Because that’s the kind of psychological damage they inflict. That’s the reality. Putting their own vile words into God’s mouth is the worst kind of violation. Abusing women in the name of God is blasphemy. Promoting the loathsome view that women are subhuman sex-starved breeding stock who must be tightly controlled by a strict father is the same anti-woman agenda sold by the Taliban, Islamic extremists, and the Vatican.

This renewed War on Women is clearly a last gasp effort of a dying breed of terrified old men who have been in control forever and will do anything and everything to ensure they don’t lose their power. The original He-Man Woman-Haters Club.

Certainly, they are making progress in their current war. Some states might actually ban birth control. Abortion might become illegal. But neither change will last. The future is already in motion. More women than men are graduating from college. More women than men are becoming doctors and lawyers. More women are working today than men. Many young women watched their fathers divorce their mothers, leaving their mother destitute because she’d sacrificed her future to raise her children. And many young women have Deadbeat Dads. Girls today do not want to be like the victims of my generation. And they’re ensuring their lives will be different.

With more money comes more clout. With more women lawyers, there will be more women judges. And if the old white male fear-mongers think those ladies won’t have the self-esteem and resources to fight an anti-woman agenda, they’ve got another think coming.

The extreme right is wrong. The Original Sin wasn’t when Eve disobeyed God and bit the apple of Knowledge, it was when men turned their backs on women.

©2012, Janet Periat

Recently, I realized that I am going to die. No, I didn’t contract a terminal illness; I finally got out of denial. Not only did my 52^nd birthday alert me to the fact of my impending death, spending time in my parents’ retirement community drove the point home. I’ve watched as several of their neighbors have gone from sitting next to them in the dining room to having their pictures displayed on the piano in the lobby—which is how all the recently deceased are honored. Mom said, “What you don’t want is to walk by the piano and see your picture on it. Then you know you’re in trouble.” And I know someday her photo will be on that baby grand. Not far behind will be mine. Even with my preventive measures—working out and eating right, etc.—I, like all human beings, will go to that giant Disneyland in the sky. (You have your idea of Heaven, I have mine.)

This realization brought about a great disturbance in Janet’s Force. I finally realized I have very limited time left. That it was imperative to prioritize my choices so I could achieve the most important goals before my picture winds up on the piano.

Luckily, my greatest desire was super clear to me: writing the novels. My passion for the work is blinding and all-encompassing. I am obsessed with the stories in my head. My brain is like a cable TV system: tons of channels and all are full of programming. Writing them down is the feat. Even if I do nothing else—like eat or sleep or talk to people—I will not have enough time to write all the books in my head. Partly because there are so many stories, but mostly because it takes so freaking long to write a book.

Which brings me back to My Giant Realization. Not only did I come to the conclusion that I didn’t I have time to do everything on my plate, I didn’t have the time for many of the things I’d planned to do this lifetime. In fact, I had almost no time to do anything besides the books. I experienced a sort of death of dreams. I voiced all the things swirling around in the back of my mind that I thought I’d do, and one by one, gave them up. No time for learning the guitar and starting an all-girl punk band. No competitive racecar driving. No big cat rescue or zookeeper.

Actually, that was the easy part of my process. Since I hadn’t invested time in any of the activities, they weren’t very difficult to give up. The hard part was quitting current activities. Especially the Good Do-Bee volunteer work. Really pushed me up against the ideas society gave me regarding my self worth.

As a woman of a certain age (I bloody hated writing that sentence), I was not trained to care about myself. I was brainwashed into thinking that doing things for others was, in actuality, doing things for myself. I was trained to think that if I focused on my own needs, I was selfish and not a “good girl.” I was taught that good girls had no needs. Which is stupid and why many women my age are bat-crap crazy. Because our basic human right to live our own lives was taken from us.

While I still enjoy helping others and won’t give up all volunteering, I don’t want my obituary to read: “She was a self-sacrificing person who rarely did anything for herself.” I want the headline: “Famous Author Dies In Own Home After a Long and Fruitful Life.” I am the only one who can write my books. What if Jane Austen, Nora Roberts and J.K. Rowling had never written their books? No Mr. Darcy, Rourke and Eve, or Harry Potter. While I doubt my work will achieve that level of recognition, if I put all my energy into my career now, I’ll have a much better chance for success. When I was freaking out about the decision to self-publish, worried I might fail, a friend asked me, “Have you heard of Doris Masterson?” “No.” “Neither has anyone else because she never put her books on the market.” Probably because Doris was busy being a good girl.

After realizing the Good Girl Trap was part of my problem, I examined and judged each activity by asking myself two questions. Does this further my writing career and personal goals? Or am I doing this to be a good girl? Some activities, while on the outside appeared to be Good Girl motivated, actually turned out to be things I enjoyed. Like hosting the family Christmas party.

But other endeavors revealed themselves to be part of my old pattern. Like the MC gig at the Pescadero Arts and Fun Festival. When I started eighteen years ago, it really fed me. I loved being on stage and helping the kids of Pescadero. But it was a really exhausting job. People assumed I breezed up on stage, spouted a few jokes off the top of my head, and waltzed off to party. Not. Preparation and recovery took one to two weeks. In recent years, I performed because I was needed, not because I wanted to be there. So I quit. While the decision was no fun, I felt no regrets. I felt free.

After that, my decisions came easier. So far I’ve quit three major jobs—writing gigs and volunteer positions—and I’m still not done cleaning house.

I can’t tell you how happy these changes are making me. While I have no idea if I’ll reach all my career goals, there are two things of which I am certain. By the time my picture is on that piano, I’ll have many more books on the market. And more importantly, I will have lived the life I chose for myself, not the one that was chosen for me.

©2011, Janet Periat

Barbie and I both turn 50 this year. Other than our birthdays, gender and skin color (along with one other shared characteristic I will reveal later), this is where our similarities end. Yet Barbie and I have had a very complex and enduring relationship. It started off as unabashed hatred and slowly changed to adoration. In light of our shared semicentennial birthday, I have decided to chronicle our difficult and complicated journey together.

I became aware of Barbie around the age of six. Her atomic breasts are the first thing I remember noticing. They intimidated me. Appearing to me to be roughly the size of a nose cone on a Boeing 747, I remember thinking how alien she was. She represented a sexually active adult roughly the same age of the people who attended my parents’ cocktail parties. While her rock hard, nipple-less breasts were somewhat titillating (pun intended), she represented a future in which I had no interest.

Thankfully, shortly thereafter, Mattel released a Skipper doll. With her flat chest and innocent eyes, this was a doll I could relate to. Problem was, Skipper played second fiddle to Barbie. Barbie was the big woman. The boss doll. Skipper didn’t go on dates with Ken, she didn’t get married, she didn’t work at the Barbie Store. And she didn’t get a Dream House. For all her hard work, Skipper lived in the shadow of Barbie’s formidable breasts. Skipper was powerless. Skipper was inferior. Since I identified with Skipper, I began to feel inferior to Barbie. Which probably fueled my growing contempt for the buxom doll.

My hatred of Barbie culminated one afternoon at my friend Nancy’s house. Nancy had equal disgust for the synthetic brazen hussy. Instead of playing house with the doll, we stripped Barbie naked and stuffed her in an abandoned birdcage in Nancy’s garage. Basically, we created our own Guantanamo and tortured the doll. Short of waterboarding, that Barbie had a very bad day. This is my fondest childhood memory of playing with Barbie. And the last.

After that precious afternoon, I eschewed all contact with Barbie. My attachments to all life-like dolls (not that she was very life-like) was limited. Basically, I hated them. I had no interest in pretending to be a mother. Consequently, as an adult, I have chosen not to procreate. Considering the fate of Caged Barbie, this was probably a good move on my part. Instead, I preferred to play with troll dolls. For reasons I probably need to take up with my therapist, I related more to the malformed, hideous, and less human-like creatures. I didn’t reconnect with Barbie until my early twenties. As before, the contact was fueled by a deep-seated loathing.

When I went punk in 1982, I indulged in punk art, a punk haircut, punk music, punk clothing and a totally punk attitude. Part of this attitude was to reject the societal construct. To this end, Barbie helped me tremendously. Well, parts of her.

During my punk years, Barbie came to represent to me the imprisonment of women. The perfect icon for all that was wrong with the stereotypical women’s role. I blamed Barbie for the oppression of women and the reason the Equal Rights Amendment didn’t get ratified. Barbie was the enemy. And what better way to show my contempt than to attack this heinous symbol of female subjugation and servitude.

My first punk sculpture was Barbie Massacre: a bloody killing scene representing all my anger and feelings of powerlessness at the hands of The Man. After a trip to the local thrift store for materials, I took He-Man and set him up on a plastic tray I’d pulled out of a defunct refrigerator. I chopped up several Barbies: decapitating them, severing limbs and torsos. After gluing He-Man to the plastic tray, I glued Barbie’s various body parts beneath him, then added liberal amounts of stage blood. Voila! Art in Action. Fought the dominant paradigm, worried my new roommate and added a bit of pizzazz to our living room. Three worthy causes all in one shot.

After Barbie Massacre, however, I realized I wasn’t reaching the audience I needed with my grand show of contempt. So I made a collection of jewelry with mutilated Barbie parts. I made earrings out of her severed feet, pins out of her decapitated head and dismembered arms and wore them proudly around the neighborhood. Gilroy has never been the same.

As my punk rage at society became slowly replaced by the realization I needed to actually grow up and take care of myself, I created the last Barbie piece of my punk years: Barbies Under Glass. A twisted combo of nude, de-limbed Barbies tied up with wires with a scattering of miniature skulls for posterity—all stuffed into my grandmother’s bell jar. Received many compliments (and culled many people from my herd) with that artwork.

However, as time passed, a strange thing happened to my pathological hatred of all things Barbie. Somehow, through all this contact with the plastic icon, I ended up falling in love with her. Barbie now reminds me of all those fun, formative, angsty punk years.

As my attitude changed, I began to feel a deeper kinship with the doll. After all, we were born in the same year. I still have Barbies Under Glass displayed in my house. I decided to pay homage to my favorite plastic girl. I also wanted to achieve my dream of looking like an action figure naked (clearly another topic to discuss with my therapist). The only way I could attain these goals without radical plastic surgery was to get the Mattel logo tattooed on my butt. (Costs three beers to see it.) And thus my love/hate relationship with the beloved icon came full circle.

So, Happy Birthday, Barbie. And I mean that. From the bottom of my bottom.

©2009, Janet Periat