Hooters and Balls

Yesterday was a bang-up day. I met with my accountant and then had a mammogram with Nurse Ratched. She wasn’t really Nurse Ratched, obviously, but if you can picture Nurse Ratched in a fury, handling your tits like they had not listened to her for the last time, that’s what happened.

I want to be careful because I know some women are scared of mammograms, or haven’t had one yet. This was not my first rodeo, or my second. This was probably my twelfth - it’s not like I’ve been keeping count - but my maternal grandma died of breast cancer. I had a few benign tumors removed in my twenties, and I am vigilant. I started getting mammograms when I was forty, I think. I’ve had core biopsies, I’ve been tested for the breast cancer gene (don’t have it), I do self-checks in the shower. My mother would never get a mammogram, so I have been on my own with this issue for decades and I don’t mess around.

Point is, mammograms are not a fun way to spend twenty-five minutes, but they don’t usually hurt. There is discomfort, not pain. I realize this is subjective, but I stand by that. It’s not a big deal, and it’s a lot less of a big deal than getting breast cancer. Having said that, you can do all these things and still get it, but early detection is everything.

Please get your mammograms, and stay on top of your self-checks, and don’t let my story worry you because it’s one in twelve, and my jugs are just fine now. I also need ultrasounds because I have dense breast tissue. If you have dense breast tissue, you should be getting those, too. Of course, if they gut the ACA, good luck to us all. Also Veterans’ benefits, Medicaid, SNAP…it would really suck to have to choose between paying for a mammogram or feeding your kids, but not everyone cares about that stuff. Not one Republican senator cares about that stuff if you like facts. Anyhoo.

Let’s get back to Nurse Ratched, who was actually a mammography technologist. I don’t know what the deal is, I just know there are ways to handle boobs during a mammogram that mitigate the discomfort of having them smooshed between plexiglass at all kinds of angles while you lean forward, but thrust your shoulders back, or face the machine, but turn your chin and hips away…and there is whatever happened to my hooters yesterday. (Do I have to say that people who don’t have breasts should stick to the word breasts when describing breasts?) The technologist was kind. She seemed to be in a perfectly fine mood. We had a pleasant conversation. And then she unleashed the Wrath of Khan on my knockers. Or maybe that’s just how she touches people. I know it wasn’t intentional. Lots of people walk around just doing their thing, not realizing they are obliterating everyone in their wake.

I want to say something here about living in a body that cramps and bleeds in your nether regions every month from the time you’re somewhere between ten and fourteen (I was fourteen) until you’re somewhere in your thirties, forties, fifties or sixties. And yes, there is that much leeway - some women go into early menopause, and some women get their periods until they’re sixty-two, like my mother. I’m fifty-four, and I’m in perimenopause, which means I’m in the fun part of the event where you never know if, or when, you’ll get your period! It’s fantastic. You also don’t know if it will last a day, two days, or a week. And then you might not get it again for a month or two, or just for fun, you might get it again the following week, and it might be a regular period, like you didn’t just have one! If you’re someone who gets migraines and they’re triggered by hormones, Level 4 chaos for you.

You’re not in menopause until you haven’t had your period for a year. Then you get to figure out how to deal with those symptoms. Of course, we were already dealing with a huge disparity in funding for research about women’s health versus men’s, and now we aren’t going to do much of that medical research stuff at all. But there’s always the internet, and our older, wiser girlfriends. One way or another, we work it out, and we usually do that while we are taking care of other people. Sometimes those people are our partners or our parents, sometimes they’re our kids or nieces and nephews. Sometimes we’re doing all of that, and making sure our neighbors are okay, too. If we sacrifice taking care of anyone, it’s usually ourselves.

I want to talk about growing human beings inside your body, in case you haven’t done that. I want you to understand it’s hard. Every pregnancy is different. With my son, I was tired the first trimester - I’d find myself passed out on the couch if I sat down to read, which was unheard of for me - but other than that, I had an “easy” pregnancy. No nausea, good energy once I hit the second trimester. I led a yoga retreat on Maui when I was five months pregnant, and hiked 12 miles across the Haleakala crater at sunrise. Third trimester there were some very cool things. Feeling an elbow or knee slide across the inside of your belly is wild. Toward the end of my pregnancy with him, I started to feel like there was not enough room for the both of us. I felt like my organs were being pushed out of the way.

I do not want to worry anyone who might be pregnant right now, but when it came time for childbirth, nothing at all went according to plan. We almost did not make it. I’m here writing, so clearly it worked out, and I am more grateful than I will ever be able to put into words that my son made it, too. But it was touch-and-go, and childbirth can be like that. It can be like that especially in states like Texas, where OB/GYNs are fleeing, and medical residents don’t want to do residencies there, because no one wants to go to jail for trying to do their job. It’s one of the reasons I feel rage about restrictive abortion bans in states like that - I know all too well what can happen when you desperately want a baby, and there isn’t a qualified, experienced doctor there to make the right call in a life-and-death situation.

With my daughter, I was sick as a dog the first trimester. Sick like I’d been on a bender all night, every night, for three months straight - except I hadn’t - and that feeling lasted all day. Sometimes I’d get the spins. And I had a toddler, and was teaching full-time, and my son was still nursing. I didn’t want to wean him abruptly. You figure stuff out because you have to. You show up because if you don’t, no one else will. You take care of your children because you brought them into this world, and the very least they deserve is the best you’ve got.

I’m sharing all of this because it would be very fucking nice if women got some respect. Not just those of us who have babies. Those of us who live in bodies that could have babies. Those of us who decide having babies is not for us. Those of us who want babies but can’t have them. Those of us who’ve lost babies and still have to go on. All women. Queer women. Black women. Brown women. Indigenous women. Trans women. It would just be great if we could exist in this world and get a little fucking respect, you know? If maybe the people (not all men) who beat their chests (not all men) and plant their flags (not all men) could listen once in a while, since they wouldn’t exist if a woman had not pushed their fucking cranium out of her vagina at some point, feeling like her hips might break, and her body might split in two while she did it.

It’s not the only reason to respect women, let’s be clear. But if you want to talk about strength, don’t talk to me about having balls. Balls pulse for thirty seconds and then release sperm, and I’m pretty sure it feels great. That’s their big contribution to the continuation of the human species. Hanging around doing nothing except getting scratched and adjusted, retracting in cold water, and having orgasms when the time comes. God forbid they get kicked, please be sure to treat them gently. Jesus, sign me up for that fucking job.

Peel a cantaloupe and shove it up your ass, then come talk to me about strength. I’m nice, see? You can peel the cantaloupe, and you can even take twelve to thirty-six hours to get it up your ass. You can have people in the room to encourage you, and you can have drugs if you want them. And I’ll tell you what. If you’re one of the good guys who respects women and girls as complete human beings worthy of the same rights as everyone else - and that includes all women and girls as defined above - who fights for them and speaks up when some dude is being aggressive in public, or when their rights are on the line - then don’t worry about cantaloupes, and thank you. But if your name is Ed Bejarana or Sheriff Bob Norris, you can shove unpeeled cantaloupes up your back passage, no drugs, and I don’t want anyone handing them lube, either.

If you missed the video of Teresa Berrenpohl at the town hall in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, I want you to know it made me physically ill. If you are at your max, watch it later. But when we get to the point where women can’t go to a town hall and express dissent without being dragged out by unidentified men with zip ties at the behest of the local sheriff, it’s time to be very alarmed. This, while the emcee mocks her from the stage, calling her a “little girl who is afraid to pay the consequences for what she did” - namely, exercising her First Amendment rights - you better wake up and smell the Commanders coming.

I wrote Ed an email because his website is public. Big tough guy deleted his Instagram, though, guess he isn’t feeling so tough now. I called Audible, because Ed has narrated 20 books for them and I thought they should know he belittles women in public, so we can only imagine what he does behind closed doors. I called the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, the County Commissioner’s Office, and Governor of Idaho, Brad Little’s office, because I don’t think a sheriff should direct three unidentified men to assault a citizen he’s supposed to protect, just because she has different political views than he does. Because this is still America for the time being. Will it do any good? No idea. But it’s better than not doing anything.

I’ve reached the part of this simulation where I have to laugh so I don’t cry. I’m never going to be on the side of the people who ban books and scare transgender kids and think our undocumented neighbors should be deported even if they’ve lived here for thirty years, working hard and paying taxes. I saw the L.A. Times post about immigrants’ rights this week - things like, you don’t have to answer the door unless an ICE officer has a warrant signed by a judge, and you can ask them to hold it up to a window or slide it under the door so you can verify that. Or, you don’t have to talk to anyone without an attorney, and if you can’t afford one, here is where you can find someone who will represent you, anyway. Basic stuff.

And underneath that post, a white dude who owns a business in Los Angeles wrote DEPORT! And a white woman tagged Pam Bondi and The White House account, as if simply telling people what their rights are constitutes an effort to oppose EOs. I think we know where the people are who would have alerted the Brownshirts about Anne Frank’s whereabouts, my god.

These people who want to end birthright citizenship, but support a president who now wants to sell Gold Card Citizenship for $5 million a pop? I have to tell you, when I saw that I felt embarrassed to my core for our country. Do you get a Trump steak with your membership? Does it buy you a helicopter ride to the top of the Statue of Liberty, so you can sit on her face? Just wondering how low we’re going to go before his supporters say Enough. Not sure there is a bar too low.

Wait until the people who voted for this administration realize they can’t afford healthcare, a doctor’s visit, or an assisted living facility when they need one. SNAP benefits? Nope, sorry, they had to go to fund more tax cuts for billionaires. Meanwhile, his supporters are still with him. I wrote a note on Substack this week. I wrote it right after the president had a full-on, foot-stamping hissy fit at the Governor’s luncheon because the fantastic Governor Janet Mills was having none of him. Here’s the note:

You can see it hit a nerve. Lots of great comments and people cheering for the fantastic governor. You can see I used the word “balls” and I did it intentionally, deciding to insult the kind of men who don’t stand up to the president in their native tongue. In the parlance they understand. Men like Ed who think they have big balls until the video of them demeaning and silencing a woman goes viral, and a whole bunch of women come rushing to her defense.

Most people had great comments in the thread under the post about Governor Mills. Witty, enthusiastic stuff. But one woman decided to play. A white woman. She told me the president had spoken to the governor the way he would have spoken to anyone else in the room, and isn’t that what we wanted? Equality?

And hahahahaha no the fuck it is not. Equality? Like, all of us being equally abused by a malignant narcissist? No thanks, that doesn’t sound great to me. What we wanted was to not have a rapist, racist, grifting president take over, and bring with him an unelected billionaire who now has a sweeeeeeet FAA contract for SpaceX. Those are just some of the things we didn’t want. Do you know I had someone tell me that Musk is the smartest man alive, and that he’s donating his time to the American people out of the goodness of his heart? Oh, honey.

We did not want him, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin and J.D. Vance deciding that government agencies should be gutted, everything should be privatized, and the country should be run by one guy and a lot of AI. We did not want a bunch of terrifying Christo-fascist, mediocre, angry white dudes deciding women don’t need to vote, and actually need to get back in the kitchen and make some dinner, goddammit. Before they get back in the bedroom to pop out more white babies.

We didn’t want to see Medicaid in jeopardy, or Medicare, or Social Security or SNAP. We love our National Parks and park rangers. We like for people to have the right to live and love freely. We believe women are fully capable of deciding what happens to their own bodies, and if you think it’s better to leave those decisions to men like these guys now in power, then please do go and look at that Teresa Berrenpohl video linked above. She’s a very accomplished member of the community by the way, and a known democrat who’s run for office in the area. They knew who she was, this was no accident.

At one point, one of these unidentified security guys tells her it will be a lot easier if she just complies, and she screams “That is what they say to rape victims!” And yes, it is. And no - emphatically - this is not what we wanted and this is not equality and this is not normal. It would be terrific if more people realized that and started trying to help. Especially the people who voted for this madness. I’m not holding my breath, though, and I’m not playing with white women who know exactly what they’re doing when they turn us over to men like this. Bye, Serena. I don’t want to be friends, but while I’m fighting for my rights and my daughter’s, and so many other people I love, I’ll be fighting for yours, too, by default. And I won’t be waiting for a thank you.

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I never thought I’d write an essay called Hooters and Balls, but I never thought a lot of things would happen. If you’d like to meet me in real time to talk about all of the above, I’ll be here 2/28/25 at 11:15am PST, or you can wait for the Come As You Are podcast version which goes out Saturdays. I’m heading to Croatia in June to lead a yoga retreat, and if you’d like to meet me there, I’d love that very much. And I will meet you in the comments section, always one of my favorite places anywhere.