HURRICANES

A friend shared an article last week about people being less afraid of hurricanes if the hurricane is named with a feminine name. I did not click on the link or read the article, but the head line used the word ‘studies’ so it presumably contains some research data. Even if it didn’t contain research data, I would believe that naming a hurricane after a woman would make the hurricane feel less threatening to a number of people. The US started naming hurricanes solely after women in 1953, after abandoning a confusing plan to name storms by a phonetic alphabet. This changed in 1978, but it is notable that out of 101 retired hurricane names for Atlantic storms, only 31 are male names. The truth is, I can’t remember a single hurricane named after a dude. Those hurricanes didn’t make a big enough presence to be news worthy, but those hurricanes named after women have been forces of destruction.

In August of 2005, we lost my nephew, J, to a car bomb in Iraq. That same month Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and destroyed it in the most violent awful ways possible. We watched the horror of events unfold on the news as people were being rescued from rooftops and houses were marked with the number of dead inside. It was heartbreaking on a million levels. Visiting New Orleans always feels like going home, almost as if I lived there in a former life. Watching it’s destruction was devastating. Even now, twenty years later, the city of New Orleans has scars from this hurricane. I thought the naming of Hurricane Katrina to be fitting in some way. My sister-in-law is named Katrina and this storm seemed like a physical manifestation of her rage and grief, of all of our rage grief really, but there is nothing comparable to the rage and grief of a mother. The protective term of ‘mama bear’ is not born of a sweat teddy bear vision of a mother bear coddling her cub. No, it comes from a vision of a larger than life monster of a bear roaring with teeth bared.

I am positive that every single one of you have quacked with terror when your mother has yelled your name in a particular tone of voice. Sometimes she didn’t even have to yell.

Yet, after all this time, we’re still under the impression that women are harmless? I doubt this has ever truly been the case, but more of a social construct designed by the patriarchy. The truth is, people and especially men, know just how fierce and scary women can be. This is why they go above and beyond to keep up their diatribe propaganda, perpetuating a weak and helpless stereotype of women. We didn’t burn women because we thought they were witches. We burned women because they were a threat to a man and then other men looked at the younger women and pointed their fingers. “Let this be a lesson to ya, lassies!” Of course, this particular threat was not one of violence, but one of intelligence. We burn women for being intellectual threats.

Mother Gaia, Mother Earth, is an ancient goddess representing nature and nurture and life and growth. We gendered this planet and she is female. Except this planet is violent. Our continents and islands have all been shaped through violence. Molten lava still erupts from the earth, displacing communities while creating new land. Mother Earth has always destroyed before creating. We should be terrified of hurricanes especially if they have a female name because it is a product of Mother Earth. Hurricanes named after men have always done what most men do. They blow around a lot of hot air before petering out in a disappointing climax. And yes, this might be a little bit mean, but this should be expected if we insist on gendering all the things.

Gender is a social construct that pits us against one another. Look how divided we are over it! Bathrooms and pronouns and Drag Queens, oh my! Who has time for real social and environmental change when we’re in a battle of the sexes? Did you say the government is still shutdown and about 42 billion American citizens are losing their SNAP benefits? I’m sorry. I can’t hear you because I’m too busy trying to figure out if I should be concerned about a category five hurricane. Maybe we can just drop the whole naming hurricanes thing. They have severity categories just like tornadoes and we don’t go around giving tornadoes names. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe when the weather scientists warn me that a particular hurricane, no matter the name, is hitting land at a category five I’d take it pretty fucking seriously.

But I also believe in listening to scientists.

STEP IN TIME

My sugar skull

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Sunday morning we were eating biscuits and gravy while watching my favorite Sunday morning program, CBS Sunday Morning. There was a story about a boy who was a ballet dancer and then he joined the Marines. Actually, there was more to the story than just that. It was a very difficult story for me to sit through, but that's not the point of this entry. Anyway, boys doing ballet. The Cabbage is playing with her Barbies when she hears this story and she looks up all surprised and says "Boys can't do ballet!" This came a couple of days after hearing her say "Only pretty kids get candy." Honestly...when she said that, I was really tempted to say "I guess you're not getting any candy then" because at the time, she was cute, but I wouldn't have said she was all that pretty. Her hair was a total birds nest and she had something sticky smeared on her face. I refrained from saying that though. Instead we had a conversation about how every kid who dresses up for Halloween is going to get candy and the word "pretty" is subjective. Sunday we had a whole discussion about boys and girls being equal.

Age four is looking like the re-programming years. We spend a lot of time at home debunking these stupid things someone is teaching her. I've had several people at work tell me that this happened to their kids at age four. They all came home with this distinct idea that boys only did "boy" things and girls only did "girl" things. One guy said that his oldest son threw a fit once over being handed a purple cup. There was no way he could drink out of a "girl" cup. I work with like minded people who believe in gender equality. Yes there are times when they treat me like the office secretary from Mad Men, but really it's because they're lazy. I would never imagine any of them teaching their children that boys can't do ballet or pink is for girls. Which leads me to guess that someone is feeding this garbage to our children at school or some idiot is feeding this garbage to their child who in turn is passing it along to our kids during recess. 

When I first met the Cabbage, she said she wanted to be a firefighter. She even had a little red firefighting truck that she'd play with. Twilight Sparkle would climb the ladder and rescue Dog Walker Barbie from the fire. Historically, there have been women firefighters for over 200 years, but it would be the mid-70s before we'd see actual career female firefighters. Up until then women were mostly volunteers. On the outside, firefighting looks like a male only job but mostly because it's still very male dominated. Sort of like how ballet looks very female dominated, but I'll tell you something. I've seen some pretty amazing male ballet dancers out perform anyone on stage. The last Tulsa Ballet performance I saw of the Nutcracker, the guy who danced the part of the Russian dancer (a minor part), brought the house down. He was outstanding. That boy could totally do ballet. 

This all got me thinking though. I'm constantly telling the Cabbage she can be anything and that colors don't have a gender and that toys shouldn't have a gender, but am I also passing on the ideas that what's true for girls is true for boys? I mean how do we expect to teach a boy that girls are equal and deserving of the same considerations if we don't give them the opportunity to walk in our shoes. Or tell them that they can walk in our shoes. Remember that little boy who wanted to wear the princess dress to school? Hell yeah, he can wear the princess dress to school and there was a huge out pouring of support for this kid. Because there should have been or else we run the risk of double standards. 

Really...it's all very simple. All of this falls under the Golden Rule umbrella: Luke 6:31 - Treat others the same way you want them to treat you. OTHERS. It says "others." It doesn't say gender or race. In this case, I'm pretty sure "others" is referring to ALL PEOPLE, not aliens (as ET) alien...but it might actually work with extra terrestrials. Who knows? Try it.