In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

When it comes to taking time off for a new baby, the best-laid plans often go awry. Sonya Underwood had worked at a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, for eleven years before getting pregnant with her third son. As a single mother, she prepared to cover the income she would lose during her unpaid leave, hoarding paid time off and taking out disability insurance. And then real life intervened. Doctors told Underwood that she had an incompetent cervix and put her on bed rest three weeks ahead of schedule. Then her son arrived at twenty-six weeks. The twelve weeks of leave she is guaranteed by the Family and Medical Leave Act soon ran out, as did the insurance, even though her son remained in the NICU. “I didn’t have any money left,” Underwood said. So she went back to work and visited him at the hospital every day.

But once her son came home, Underwood’s situation quickly became untenable. Daycare centers wouldn’t take a medically fragile baby. Her human resources department informed her that her only choice was more unpaid leave. “It didn’t help out my situation because I still had rent due, my car note due, utilities, everything else,” she said. After she exhausted that leave, she was let go from her job, lost her car and couldn’t qualify for unemployment insurance because of her role as her son’s caretaker. The only places left to turn were Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and a loan she already knew would be difficult to pay back. “I’m a victim of FMLA because it didn’t help my family,” she concluded.

Thanks Ms. Scopophiliacs for the link.

Debbie says:

I’m sorry to say I never heard of Kuttin Kandi (also known as Candice Custodio-Tan) before I read this article, clearly because I’ve been hiding under a rock.

The woman is a force to be reckoned with:

The first woman to reach the DMC USA Finals and a founding member of the all-female Anomolies crew, the Queens-bred Filipina turntablist has shared the stage with legends (Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa), big kids (MC Lyte, LL Cool J) and period contemporaries (Jay-Z, dead prez, Immortal Technique). In addition to beat juggling and competition-judging, she writes revealing poems, lectures regularly, does grassroots organizing and serves as a mentor and educator at the UC San Diego Women’s Center. She’s also spearheading a compilation album, The Womyn’s Hip-Hop Movement, co-writing a book about Filipino-Americans in hip-hop culture, and she proudly represents the 5th Platoon crew, Guerrilla Words and R.E.A.C.Hip-Hop (Representing Education, Activism & Community Through Hip Hop).

In April, she was diagnosed with a heart condition called “atrial fibrillation.” Shortly after she learned that, her heart stopped beating for seven seconds. Her medical professio nals prescribed a pacemaker and an indefinite course of blood thinners.

She’s been telling her story in a Facebook series called “Notes of a Revolutionary Patient.” I don’t read Facebook, so I’m not up with her writing there, but apparently she gets into everything from her hard childhood history to fatphobia in the medical profession. In the Colorlines interview, she’s extremely clear-sighted:

I realized I was receiving biased medical care the moment they didn’t ask me what work I have done and haven’t done to “be healthy.” The moment they told me, “You need to lose weight” without asking my personal health journey, I knew they were judging me. They didn’t look at me as though I was a person; they just looked at my pounds. If weight is the issue, okay fine—let’s discuss the weight [and] what got me here. But i think it’s more than just weight. For any patient, doctors need to know the details. I know that there’s a whole herstory about me. I’ve [suffered] a range of mostly invisible disabilities including depression, bulimia and binge-eating/compulsive disorder. In my 30s I was diagnosed with anxiety and panic disorder, agoraphobia, diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea, bipolar disorder and severe allergies that require two shots a week for three years. I also have an Auditory Processing Disorder, which I occasionally reframe as a different learning style. Doctors need to take their time explaining things to people; many people have different learning styles.

And, the “true understatement that needs to be stated over and over” award goes to:

the simple fact that the health care industry is not [generally] educated in social justice, power, privilege and oppression is systemic racism.

I want to engrave that on a plaque and hang it in every hospital and doctor’s office in the country. Yeah, sure, I know; no one would let me. But I want to.

Everything else she says in the interview is golden: about histories of sexual violence, about working in male-dominated industries, about life/activism balance.

I’m sorry that her misfortunes brought her to my attention, but I’m so glad to know she’s in the world. And somehow I feel confident that she’s going to stick around and teach us (starting with her doctors!) for quite a while longer. Here’s her fundraising site; I sent some money. If you are in a position to, I hope you’ll consider it.

Thanks to Jan Herzog for the link on a mailing list I read.

(As always, if you have anything even remotely spoilerish, leave it in comments to the original post and link to it here using just the names of the characters involved. The management appreciates your support.)

Next up: Next Saturday, May 19, we’re going to take out Section 2 with chapters 10-18. It’s more reading than we’ve been doing, so if you feel like it’s a bit much, let me know.

Trigger warning for violence.

“I want to make you happy”. That’s what he used to tell me sometimes after another rage fit of his. And for almost two years I believed that. I believed that even after he slapped me for the first time, taking a swing at my upper arm. I stopped believing it after the second slap, the one that landed on my back (luckily, not with full force). The one which allowed to me finally break free from the hell he put me through and see him for what he really is. The one that finally gave me the strength to leave him, some 3 months later.

That first time leaves you numb. In denial. You stand there thinking “This did not just happen. Not to me. Not from him. This isn’t real”. You tell yourself you imagined the twist of his lips, the one that turned his handsome face into a grimace of hate for that spilt-second when the adrenalin made time stand still.

How did you come to this point? You, the self-proclaimed feminist? The one who always talks about independence, and red flags, and women’s rights? The one people turn to advice to? The one no one would ever believe this could happen to?

Because they don’t warn you about the “Feminist abuser”, that’s why. They tell you it would be the guy who cuts you off from your friends; they never tell you it can be the one who would actively ask to meet them. They tell you it would be a conservative who wants to chain the woman to the sink; they never tell you it can be the recycling, left-wing supporter of women’s rights. They tell you it would be the guy who tells you not to wear that certain type of clothes; they never tell you it can be the one who would help you make the sign for the SlutWalk.

I had a gut instinct about him from the very first week we got together. I felt that something about his temper isn’t right. That I tense up around him. That I’m not myself. But he was stunningly handsome, and smart, and agreed with all my political and religious views, so I told myself that he’s just going through a hard time (he actually did, but that’s no excuse). I know that I can be a handful, so I told myself that we just need to figure out how not to step on each other’s toes. It worked perhaps once or twice, but rage fits became a routine. I’m petite, 1.60m, little more than 52 kg. He was a 100 kg of strength and muscles, towering over me at 1.85m. It was the reason I felt like in the safest place on earth when he hugged me, and it was the reason I felt an instinct to protect my face every time he raised his booming voice at me. Walls and furniture were punched – to this day the sound of crashing objects startles me. “I hit walls so I don’t hit you” he told me at the very beginning. “I don’t want to hurt you”. And I was in love, so I talked myself into believing that his awareness made it all okay. That he has a temper, but he’s working on it, and he would never take it out on me. I just need to learn not piss him off and to keep the distance when he gets like that. And besides, how often could this happen?

All too often, it turned out. Nothing I did was ever good enough. If I was too late, if I forgot to do something, if I did the dishes the wrong way, if I didn’t hear something he said and did the opposite of what he wanted – outbursts inevitably followed.

But that was only the visible part. The culmination of it was what finally made me leave. But it was only in hindsight that I saw the quiet, insidious, emotional abuse in inflicted on me – one I am still healing from, and that hurt more that the couple of random slaps. That undermined my confidence and my sense of self more than any physical damage he could have done.

Throughout our entire relationship, he constantly showed support for my professional goals – at least on the surface. He encouraged me to apply for various projects, and then downplayed my success in them, disguising it as constructive criticism. He asked me for help with his work, telling me how much better I am at particular aspects than he is, and then lashed out at me when I missed the ones that are not a part of my training. He helped me fill out applications when I got stuck with bureaucracy, while telling me how stupid I am not being able to fill out a simple form. When I called him out on it, and said never to call me stupid again, he said it was a matter of free speech. That if I tell him which words he can or can’t use then I am de facto abusing him. It became his favorite word to use on me during arguments. Every time I was too tired to watch television shows related to my profession which he wanted to watch, he would say “You claim to be a —, how can you not be interested?”. He “wanted the best for me”. He wanted me to “keep improving myself”. After a while I was thoroughly convinced that I am just a notch above the IQ required to properly function in a society, and no good at the thing I’ve been doing for a living since age 18. After being told by everyone all my life how exceptionally smart and gifted I am, two years with this man were enough to convince me of the very opposite. I am still not sure if I’ll ever reverse that.

How could I, the self-proclaimed feminist, come to this point? Because I was constantly looking for any sign of the classical red flags for an abuser – and found none. I followed my guts into an indepth research on domestic violence, but he was the exact opposite of the men described in the endless writings on the subject. He was never jealous or possessive, not even for a second. He never said a bad word about my male friends. He loved my sense of fashion, and even had me help him pick out clothes. He went along with my BDSM inclinations, even though it was hard for him to cross that barrier, because he knew it was a part of sex I can’t live without (I was super gentle). He built up in me a confidence in my physical appearance I never had before I met him, and basically saved me from the edge of a full-fledged eating disorder. He was a supporter of the left-wing and green parties. He spoke about the importance of education for women in countries like Afghanistan. He took part in multi-cultural projects. He was nothing like the wife-beater you see endless movies and crime series about. He was nothing like the men the teach you to fear and avoid.

And he hit me.

How could a self-proclaimed feminist come to this point? This is what abused feminists hear every time they speak out, and this is what they learn to ask themselves. The same women who march at SlutWalks become dedicated victim-blamers. They learn not to talk about it, because admitting to it challenges their feminism.

I refuse to take part in that. I am not a perfect girlfriend, and I am not a perfect person, and I have my share of screw ups, but I did nothing to deserve that treatment.

Being abused does not make me less of a feminist. If anything, it makes me more of a one. Being a feminist helped me get out at warp speed after the abuse became physical. It helped me admit what’s happened. And it helped me talk about without fear (the only reason this is written anonymously is so as not to hurt my family). And it helped me write this text, for other women to know that there aren’t always red flags. Sometimes they’re green.

Johnson’s wife, Kathy Hale Johnson, told the New Zealand Herald that that Johnson recently returned to live in New Zealand where he donated sperm to at least 10 women without her knowledge.

“He wants me to move over there. He’s not coming back,” she told the newspaper.

She said Johnson plans to apply for residency so he can stay in New Zealand, and that he intends to donate sperm to additional women.

Johnson began donating sperm in 2011 while in Christchurch as a disaster-relief contractor. So far, he’s donated to at least 10 women, three of whom are currently pregnant.

Johnson told the New Zealand Herald that he was unable to have children with his wife and that the urge to have biological children was “a need that I have.” The Herald also reports that fertility specialists recommend that donors not donate to more than four families; some women say Johnson misled them about the number of women he’d impregnated. Johnson says he had planned to tell his wife about the pregnancies after the babies were born.

A conservative Christian who opposed gay marriage in his 2010 Alabama gubernatorial campaign, Johnson has said that he feels a responsibility to the babies made with his sperm, despite the fact that he mostly donated to lesbian couples and thus the babies will have two parents already. He’s returned to Christchurch to await the blessed event(s).

“He’s back there now. He says he has a commitment to them. He says he created these children and he has a responsibility to them,” [Kathy Johnson] says.

“I said ‘what about your commitment to your wife.’ He walked out.”