Atrocious Anti-Vaxxers

A few months ago, I dreamt that my son inexplicably died in his sleep. It was completely devastating, like a hole had opened up where my heart used to be, but I resented anything that might soothe me, even for a moment. It was agony, but I held on to it, knowing that for the crime of allowing my child to die, I deserved much worse. When I woke up in my bedroom with my fiancé sleeping next to me and our 1 year old sleeping in his crib just a few feet away, I was more relieved than I’ve ever been in my life. Crying softly, I lay back down and curled around my partner like my son around his favorite lovey (a fluffy pink rabbit), and went back to sleep.

My pregnancy was not intentional. I have always been a rather cynical person and I was terrified to bring a child into a world so filled with anguish and violence. I’m still terrified, every single second. My son was born into Donald Trump’s America, a place I assumed was an alternative universe up until I cast my vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. As we lay in bed that night staring up in horror at our little glowing screens I said one of the few fox hole prayers of my life. The next one came in 2017 when I took a home pregnancy test. I sat on the toilet, shaking, hoping the second result would contradict the first. Once Donald Trump was elected I was sure that I didn’t want to have children. What I didn’t know was that I was already pregnant by that fateful November day. The moment I saw my son, I knew I would do anything to keep him safe and happy and healthy. I have never loved anyone this way, and I have never been so happy. I can’t imagine my life without him in it. The very idea is painful to ponder.

In the time I’ve been a mother, I have also struggled. Romantic break ups, postpartum depression, leaving my lifelong home, living with family, all the difficulties that come along with caring for a newborn, and I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Knowing I’m autistic has been very illuminating. Nonsensical incidents and behaviors from my childhood suddenly make sense, lifelong mysteries have been solved. I’m sure it would’ve been easier to grow up neurotypical, but I love myself as I am and my life as it has played out. I wouldn’t change a thing about it, including and especially the fact that my parents chose to have us vaccinated.

Despite outrageous claims to the contrary, there is no concrete, extensive, or respectable evidence to suggest that vaccines cause the development of Autism Spectrum Disorder, but even if there was, my decision to vaccinate my son would not have changed. The fact that anti-vaxx parents are willing to risk the deaths of their children and others in order to avoid autism is completely abysmal. I believe people who choose not to vaccinate their children against the recommendations of their pediatricians are not just child abusers, they are domestic terrorists.

When my grandmother was pregnant with my father in 1962, she contracted the measles while traveling. She survived, and the pregnancy was carried to term successfully, but my father was born partially deaf. He didn’t learn to talk until he was around 3 years old, he suffered ridicule and isolation from his peers, and my grandmother never forgave herself for daring to travel while pregnant. She carried the burden of that guilt and shame until Alzheimer’s ravaged her mind and erased us all for good. I still wonder what my father’s life might have been like had he and his mother not been victimized by the measles, a formidable and contagious disease that is often written off by the ignorant as being relatively harmless. I know of a woman (a friend of a friend) who refuses to vaccinate her children. She has one young child, and a newborn. Numerous members of her own family refuse to allow their children to play with hers, for understandable reasons. So, if it weren’t enough that this idiotic woman is risking the lives of her children and any immunocompromised people they might encounter on the street or in the grocery store, she is isolating her children from potential playmates and friends.

Any parent knows the terror that comes with having children. My son is nearly two years old, and I still fight the urge to interrupt his slumber in order to check his breathing about every 10 minutes once our bedroom has gone quiet. We’re fortunate enough to have family who are willing to provide us with part time childcare. I can’t imagine having to leave my son in the care of relative strangers, something most parents are forced to do from the beginning. The thought of enrolling my child in a school littered with potential Columbine kids, possible sex offenders, and unvaccinated human disease factories is haunting me on a daily basis. But I know I can’t raise my son to live in fear. I can only provide a loving, functional home, and do my best to adequately prepare him for the numerous horrors of the world.

Childhood is a very delicate time. There are so many ways children can be damaged and destroyed, not just by insidious authority figures, but by their own peers. It’s a parents’ job to minimize risk to their child’s well-being without sheltering them to a degree that they are developmentally stunted and unprepared for the hardships they are bound to face as adults. It’s a delicate balance, and we’re all still figuring it out. There aren’t a lot of easy solutions for the challenges parents face on a daily basis, but the issue of whether or not to vaccinate is an exception. It’s usually a relatively painless solution to potentially fatal problems, and though it is not without risk, it’s worth the risk.

We have arrived at a time in human history when ignorance is no longer an excuse, and it seems that this has made willful ignorance more popular than ever. It’s not simply that people choose to remain ignorant, it’s that they do so repeatedly in the face of direct evidence that proves their positions are invalid. Willful ignorance is an epidemic in America, and anti-vaxxers are just one more symptom of a pervasive, corrosive disease for which there seems to be no cure, and no vaccine.

Tempestuous Teen Terrorists

I was born at the University of Chicago Hospital in the spring of 1992. This makes me a mid-tier millennial, born just months before Bill Clinton was elected president. I remember when phones hung on the wall with curly chords dangling off of their receivers. I remember the screeching of dial up internet that made your ears ring when you picked up one of those receivers at the wrong time. I remember my mom watching live coverage of Columbine on our bulky TV with the built in VCR. I remember asking why anyone would do something so terrible. I remember her not having an answer.

The media gave us answers in the days that followed: Marilyn Manson, KMFDM, trench coats. Once I was old enough to understand the sheer absurdity of these explanations, I sought out my own. Dave Cullen’s in depth account of the murders was published during my junior year of high school, and I picked it up immediately. I would sit on the floor with my back against my locker reading a soft gray hardcover book with the word Columbine printed on the front cover. I have always been rather provocative, in every sense of the word.

The more I learned about the murders the more I realized how naive fear can make people; they’re willing to accept any explanation that shifts the blame for a tragedy onto something simple, like music or movies or video games. They don’t really want to know the truth, they want to reassure themselves that the truth is not only straightforward, but linear. Displays of aggression in media cause displays of aggression in reality. Case closed.

Of course, mass shootings continued to happen, and this reasoning became enervated, so political players had to move on to something more universal. That’s when mental illness became the popular explanation for these acts of terrorism. It was so perfect and palatable that I’m sure they wondered how they didn’t stumble upon it sooner. To most people, the mindset of someone who would commit such an act of violence is completely unfathomable, and what do we call things we can’t understand? We typically refer to them as insane.

Those who uphold this reasoning rely on ignorance and stigmas to perpetuate it. There are numerous misconceptions about mental illness, and it’s something that has been so sensationalized that neurotypical people tend not to think of it as normal, which it is. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t experienced some form of mental illness in their lifetime, whether it’s chronic or situational. I can’t name a single person within my inner circle who doesn’t know what it’s like to be depressed or anxious. But mental illness doesn’t get this kind of representation in popular culture. How many movies have you seen or heard of that feature or take place in asylums? I’ve spoken to people who aren’t aware that asylums no longer exist, which means they think a psych ward is comparable to an asylum. That is truly harrowing.

I’m not disputing the fact that you have to have some pretty serious unresolved issues in order to get to the point where your solution is to buy a gun and kill a bunch of people. But mental illness is neither the solitary nor the determining factor in the process that turns a troubled kid into a killer, because if it were, the epidemic of mass shootings would be happening worldwide, rather than exclusively in America. So, other than psychological imbalances, what are the typical ingredients that make a mass shooter? Most often, they are young, angry, (usually white) men who have easy access to firearms. Does that feel like a pretty broad category? It should, because it is.

Anger in this context does not refer to the emotion. We all get angry, and most of us harbor anger that we’ve spent our lives collecting in little pieces like broken shells on a beach. But you don’t have to be particularly perceptive to realize that we Americans almost seem to fetishize our anger, to the point that it’s a pervasive force in our society. We condition our men to stifle their emotions, all except their anger. We like to think of ourselves as fighters, and we are. We are the sort of people who are willing to beat a dead horse until it’s nothing but a putrid pile of mangled skin and brains. We can be counted on to fight hard and dirty, because we never doubt ourselves, and we think this is a good thing. Doubt is what keeps us from becoming our worst selves. Doubt reminds us that we are fallible, but Americans don’t want to be fallible because we see fallibility as a weakness. It could be said that we see everything but anger and pride as a weakness.

What happens when you make “strength” the only quality that matters for men? What happens when you only give men one way to show their strength? What happens when you encourage and reinforce this developmental process with generations of men, in a country where a gun is drastically cheaper and easier to acquire than a therapist? Anger becomes rage, rage corrodes, and violence is born. So, no, it’s not simply an issue of gun control or mental illness, it’s both, and more. It’s cultural, it’s sociological. If you find yourself wondering where white terrorism comes from, listen to how fathers talk to their sons. Listen to how adult men talk to each other. Ask your brothers and husbands and sons what their greatest fears are. Listen to them, and let them know it’s okay to be afraid. Let them know they can talk to you. It’s obvious that America needs strict gun control and mental health reform, but that’s not all we need. We need each other. We need to be willing to abandon absolutism, and embrace compassion and fallibility. We need to evolve.

Aberrant Attitude of an Asnine Atheist

I’ve been an atheist since childhood. Being a godless child among faithful adults can give you a bit of a complex, because from your point of view, their God is no more real than the imaginary friends you’ve been conjuring for as long as you can remember. You know you’re talking to yourself, and you know Santa Claus is really your parents. You don’t know how to explain why you know these things, but you do, and you always have.

I’ve seen religion do great things for people; I’ve seen it save lives and unite families. My great-grandmother, whom I loved with all my heart for the brief time I got to spend with her, was a devout Catholic. She spent her life making the world a better place for women in the working class. Her personal motto was, “Leave the place better than you found it,” and I can say with absolute confidence that she did just that. She made sure I knew that I was loved and accepted unconditionally. I wouldn’t be the woman I am without her.

Before discovering that I was far from neurotypical, my parents assumed my behavioral problems were caused by substance abuse, specifically a fondness for marijuana. I refer to it as a fondness and not a dependence because I didn’t even keep a supply for personal use. I simply indulged with friends on a casual basis. And so I was shipped off to rehab where I met some of the most complex, entertaining, exquisitely damaged people I have ever known. I spent the next year or so attending 12 step meetings (one of the conditions my father and his wife set for my residence in their home). In that time I saw how addicts often need God, which they usually call a Higher Power, in an attempt to make secular people feel more welcome in their circles. Relinquishing their anguish, guilt, and anxiety unto this Higher Power can provide them with a pervasive sense of relief, giving them the confidence to take more control of their lives where they can. I’ve seen the concept of God save people.

Like any concept, Higher Powers can be corrupted to suit the agenda of a believer. Racism, homophobia, and misogyny find support in many religious texts. Fundamentalism is a popular excuse for violent behavior including terrorism and domestic abuse. The singularity of a religious perspective can also be very harmful, because it isolates spiritual groups not only from the secular world, but from similar groups. The idea, for example, that habits and burqas are so different is something I find completely nonsensical. The fact that Americans assume every Muslim they see on the street could be a terrorist, but have nothing to say about the numerous Catholic priests who simply get transferred to other churches after they’ve molested too many children is completely mind-boggling.

Religious freedom is important, religious tolerance is important. But are these things more important than the advancement of civil rights for LGBT+, women, and POC? Are they more important than the validity of science and the threats posed by climate change? Are they more important than a woman’s right to choose? Are they more important than the safety of our children and the general progression of our society? These are questions we need to answer, or at least think long and hard about. We can no longer afford to believe that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, or that a collection of cells should be seen as more human than a black teenager walking home with his hood pulled up. We can no longer afford to value beliefs over knowledge.

I’m not suggesting that we rid ourselves of religion or the benefits of spirituality. I’m simply proposing that we call these things what they are: philosophies. When we make philosophical differences a matter of life and death, the potential for war is endless because there’s no way to determine who’s right, or if anyone is. It’s depressing to imagine just how many people have died in religious wars over the course of human history, and infuriating to know that it’s still happening. The point of religious freedom is that no one is supposed to have a monopoly on it. It protects your right to believe what you want, but it protects that right for everyone who disagrees with you as well, including those who choose to reject religion entirely. Convoluted interpretations of religious freedom pose a danger to human rights for marginalized groups and the integrity of politics in America. They pose an immediate threat to our ability to save the planet from an irreversible series of environmental disasters. If we can’t find a way to take religion off the world stage we will never move beyond it, and the Earth will wither and crumble around us as we argue about virgin birth and nirvana.

Personal Plights of a Pan Poly Pariah

When you tell people that you’re a polyamorous woman, the typical reaction is doubt. They assume you’re being taken advantage of by some lecherous man, that if you had a choice, of course you would want to be monogamous. You’re probably one of those poor women who doesn’t think she has a hope of finding love in the conventional world, and so has settled for a manipulative partner who is clearly incapable of “true love”.

Let’s explore that concept. True Love. Imagine if you were only allowed one friend in your life, your best friend, because any “lesser” form of platonic love couldn’t possibly be considered “true”. Imagine that if you were caught spending your time with other friends you would be accused of “cheating” and run the risk of losing your closest friend forever, all because of insecurity and fear born of a myopic view of relationships. That seems totally insane, doesn’t it?

Why is this sort of behavior considered normal when applied to romantic relationships? Some might say it’s about breeding. This answer is nothing short of archaic. Not only does it exclude anyone who isn’t heterosexual or motivated by procreation from the conversation, it reads very plainly as an excuse. A narrow, flimsy excuse to hold onto ineffective, nonsensical comfort zones.

Jealousy is a comfort zone. I was researching the pros and cons of monogamy when I came across a Huffington Post article detailing a list of reasons people should stick to conventional monogamous relationships. One of the reasons listed was simply that people get jealous. The writer actually used the phrases, “jealousy gene” and “mere mortals”. Essentially the idea was that jealously is as inevitable and acceptable as hunger, and those who “don’t experience it” are comparable to something other than a mortal being. It was completely heinous, and here’s why: the fact that something is natural and understandable doesn’t make it healthy or productive. Jealousy may be natural, but so is anger, and let’s be honest, anger and jealousy are close cousins. What’s more infuriating is the idea that people who manage to engage in healthy polyamorous relationships were simply born without the capacity for jealousy, which couldn’t be further from the truth. It took time and work for me to overcome the insecurities that lead me to be plagued with jealousy every time my partner expressed sexual or romantic interest in another person. More maddening still, is the response I get from people when I explain that I’m neither a goddess nor an alien, just a human being who put a lot of time and effort into rewriting my conditioned responses. More often than not they’ll ask me something like, “If you had to work so hard to rid yourself of those feelings, doesn’t that mean that they’re supposed to be there and you’re supposed to listen to them?”

No, absolutely not. It takes a lot of time, effort, dedication, and determination to lose weight. It would be a lot easier to continue on a diet of Kraft macaroni and Ho Ho’s, but does that mean it’s the healthy thing to do? Of course not. When you treat your partner as your possession, and agree to be treated as such in return, you are agreeing to a delusion of convenience. You are agreeing to pretend that your love for the other person has rendered you incapable of falling in love with anyone else ever again. You are agreeing to pretend (in some cases) not to be attracted to other people anymore. You are agreeing to destroy your individual romantic self in service of the fantasy that monogamy provides. The fantasy that romantic love is an exclusive emotion that is supposed to validate and complete us as human beings. The fantasy that there is a person out there who was born for the sole purpose of taking responsibility for our sense of self, and assuming the burdens of our emotional labor.

There are rational reasons to be monogamous. It’s safer to keep your sex life contained to one person, due to the mounting threat posed by STIs. It’s easier to have just one relationship to work with, given the amount of emotional energy and time that goes into a romantic connection. It’s typically cheaper to date one person, that is if you’re particularly creative with date ideas, or just really like going to the movies. So, like anything else, it’s a personal choice, and there are pros and cons to both approaches. I’m not here to tell you that there’s nothing valuable about a monogamous relationship, or to force you into a lifestyle that doesn’t work for you. My only motivations are to open a productive dialogue, and to expose the inherent dysfunction that runs rampant within the most popular defenses of a monogamous lifestyle. If you choose to be monogamous, do so from a position of rationality, because if you choose someone because you want to feel chosen, can that really be considered true love? Or is it simply instinct?