Why are quality shoe companies so hard to find?

I need new shoes. No really, the shoes I'm wearing actually have a hole in them (because I guess my dad rubbed off on me and I waited till they were sooo messed up before I gave in to spending money). And so began my search for shoes.

Obviously, my first requirement was that they be green or have green accents. Because what is the point of spending money on shoes if they are going to be ugly and not my style? I work in the mall like 6 stores down from the Nike store. Everyday I walk past the window of the Nike store and see the green shoes with a grey swoosh and think, I want those. Or maybe I want the converse's from the store downstairs. Or maybe I want a different style altogether. (I do really like shoes...I don't know why.)

But then, 5 minutes into my uber consumeristic mental shopping spree, my conscience joins the party. Oh hey conscience, go away I want to buy shoes, I tell it. But it doesn't. So I decided I WILL find shoes that are coming from a company that I can trust is ethical by my standards.

So I added fair trade to my list of requirements for shoes. Sweat shop free, fair wages the whole deal. And I added they must have an anti-discrimination policy I feel like I can support. Race, national origin, sexual orientation/identity/expression, sex, creed, etc. If I had had a mirror at the time I decided this, I probably would have looked at myself like I was crazy, they way you are thinking it right now. But, it had to be possible.

When I typed in "ethical shoe companies" into to google, I got a range of responses. I found a brand called Remyxx, which makes 100% recyclable shoes! It is a small company which just got started on Kickstarter, and their shoes won't even be out until October. But seriously, how cool is that? And the designs are pretty cool to, not just plain. Go him! But they won't be out until October. (I might still buy these shoes, if his company really gets started, or maybe Santa will bring them to me).

Evidently, most people who are looking for ethical shoes are looking for vegan shoes. Being a lover of all things steak, I had literally never thought of buying vegan anything. I mean, I guess I have been accidentally semi-vegan cloth person. Fur freaks me out, I don't like wool because it's too itchy, I can't really pull off leather, and all of my T-shirts are 100% cotton because it's comfy. Vegan-ish. Either way, I had no choice but to settle into my hipster side and accept that my fair trade shoes were probably going to be cruelty-free. Don't worry, I will eat a steak the first time I wear them. :-) .

And then I found literally the best website ever. www.ethicalwares.com is a website of well...ethical products. Including hemp shoes, which would be fun because I could just tell everyone I'm wearing hemp shoes. While drinking a PBR. And listening to obscure bands. And telling everyone they just don't "get" me.

Ok, but seriously. When I found out converse was owned by Nike my heart was kind of broken. Sort of in the way your heart breaks when you remember that Urban Outfitters is worse than Chick-fil-a when it comes to equality. Just a sad moment. But then...the heavens parted.

Ethletic. These shoes are fairly traded, the workers make double the minimum wage of the country they are manufactured in, which is Sweden. They are vegan, which wasn't really a requirement but cool, I saved a few animals. They are the same style kind of as converse, so definitely wearable. They come in green, which makes them awesome. And I couldn't find out of they are welcoming and equal. But they are based in Sweden which is like the most queer friendly country in the world. These shoes are the closest thing to perfect that I have found.

Of course, New Balance came up. They are made in the USA but usually only 25% made in the USA. The rest is outsourced to china and other countries. When I need a running shoe it will probably be NB, because ethical shoes don't seem to come in running.

By the way, ethicalwares.com has vegan Birkenstocks. This might the single most Ann Arbor-y thing I have ever seen.

So, if you need fair trade shoes....try out that website. If you know of other good shoe companies...please tell me about them so I can have the best shoes always. :-).

This is not about Todd Akin.

Some women keep babies that are conceived through rape. And those babies turn out to be wonderful additions to their lives. It is a baby after all, so cute!

This whole Todd Akin thing has proved, once again, how unable to see the real issues we are as a society. This is not a pro-life vs pro-choice argument. This is a time for that horrible division between the two sides to be bridged.

A person who is pro-life will tell you they are more pro-woman than a person who is pro-choice. The idea being they are protecting the woman from abortion. Their intentions are good. And a pro-choice person will also say they are pro-woman, protecting a woman from having her body controlled by another. Their intention also are good. Neither side wakes up in the morning and thinks, "I just hate women so much, I'm going to support/prevent abortion just to hurt them".

The so-called war on women is not being waged by the pro-lifers and it is not being waged by the pro-choicers.  This war is being waged by the political establishment so intently set on winning elections and raising money that they will wave whatever words or thoughts in your face to get you to vote for them. That is the real problem here.

The problem is, after a woman gives birth to her rapists child, that rapist has the same parental rights to the child as any other upstanding man. The problem is that women are afraid to report rape because they will have to defend themselves, and prove it was a real rape. The problem is we teach boys that "no means no" rather than "unless you are 100% sure you are both agreeing to participate leave her alone".

Why do we give men the power to approach any woman and hit on her, that he gets to be with her unless she says no. That doesn't even make sense, do robbers get to rob my house unless I put a sign up that says "don't rob me"? No, of course not, a person is not welcome in your house or on your property unless invited. Otherwise it is trespassing and illegal. But a rapist is allowed access to a woman's body until she says, "no, go away".

The truth is, you are not welcome to another person's body unless invited. Seems logical and silly for me to have to say. But think about this, women: when is the last time some guy made a really inappropriate comment about your body or how he would like to be with you? Men: when is the last time you oogled over some woman as if she was a model there for you to just check out?

Of course people aren't blind and women check out men as well. But you know as well as I do the difference between "hey that person walking there is cute."  And the inappropriate version. If you don't, ask someone.

We should be raising kids to think "yes means lets talk about it and make a decision if this is right for us" and anything else means no.  We should be teaching our kids that even if that person said yes, it's OK to still not do it. We should be teaching our kids that it is better to drive someone crazy saying "are you sure, because I just don't want to hurt you" than it is to do anything they don't want to do, ever. And if you are not smart enough to figure out if someone is SURE, then you probably shouldn't be having sex anyways.

Todd Akin is nothing more than the spokesperson for the ignorance of the country. Daniel Tosh is nothing more than the face of millions of college aged men. These people are bullies.

It is estimated that about 17.7million American women have been victims of rape. That doesn't count the women who don't report it. It doesn't count sexual harassment. Maybe they had abortions, and maybe they didn't. But they got taken advantage of in the worst way possible. If you're really interested in protecting women, start by fighting the rape culture instead of supporting the political smokescreen.


Here are 3 important articles to read:
Rapist visitation rights?
A personal account.
The problem with men explaining things

The real reason Mitt won't release his tax returns. (hint it has nothing to to with tax brackets)

So, in case you haven't been paying attention, and I don't blame you if you haven't, Mitt Romney is not following in his daddy's footsteps. That's ok, gotta blaze your own trail. Except the thing he is not doing is releasing his tax returns to the public so that everyone knows exactly who it is that they are electing to run their country. George Romney (Papa Romney) released 12 years when he was running for office, which more or less set the standard for politicians. Mitt has released 2-ish.


"DAAAAD, you're embarassing me" -Mitt Romney

Recently, Obama's campaign manager wrote a (passive aggressive) letter to the Romney campaign promising that if he releases just 5 years (only 3 more) they will stop bothering him for not releasing enough information. Romney's campaign sent an equally awesome and passive aggressive letter back that basically said: "no thank you, now that we have covered this I hope you guys can focus on the real issues at hand" <--paraphrased.

So much speculation has been made around Romney's taxes and why he is hiding them. Maybe he didn't pay any taxes, maybe he didn't pay enough taxes, maybe he is secretly in the mob. But the thing is, no matter what Romney paid in taxes after all this speculation Romney's base will get behind his reasoning and the left will hate him for it. And the undecided voters won't decide based on Mitt Romney's tax bracket. If it was truly all about taxes, even if Mitt paid zero taxes it would be easier for him to just release them to show that he is a bigger, better man and isn't afraid. Look, the far left isn't voting for Mitt Romney. (not until the far right votes for Obama at least, and also pigs fly)

Those are obviously all jokes, but seriously, everyone is getting in on the speculation action. 

So, why oh why IS Mitt hiding his tax returns? Because he doesn't want to alienate his base. You know, the tea party voters, the evangelical christians, the catholics, the rich white men in suits. It's no secret that Mitt Romney is the biggest flip-flopper on the block today. First he was against privatizing social security, now he is for it; first he wanted to defend a woman's right to choose, now he thinks Roe V Wade has gone to far; first he thought don't ask don't tell was silly, now he thinks it worked well; first he supported the assault rifle ban, now he is against all gun control laws. This is common knowledge to the democrat voters. Those are voters who won't be voting for him anyways. This is not really a heavily discussed topic within his base, and I'm sure he would like to keep it that way. 

I read this really good article about reasons why Mitt won't release his tax returns. Abby Huntsman says the following:

"Could he actually be worth more than is being estimated under federal disclosure filings (currently ~$190-250 million)? Has putting money in offshore accounts in some way lowered the amount of taxes he's had to pay (according to his campaign, the answer is no)? Or, is there significant income from Bain that was earned after his departure in 1999 (when Romney claims to have not been involved in Bain's investment decisions)? And lastly, was a deal stuck with fellow Bain partners that Romney could never disclose certain information about the firm and its income (since Bain remains a private company)?" (click the link above and read the rest of her article)

All of those are possible. But who would care if he was worth $250 million or $500 million? That's more money than any of his voters can even fathom. Whatever his tax bracket the right will defend it. And more importantly if it was something as simple as a privacy agreement with Bain, don't you think he would have come out and said it? He hasn't, he won't.

 If Mitt releases his tax returns, we will see he paid somewhere between 0 and 13% taxes. But we will also see the charities he is donating to. Has he given money to planned parenthood back when he supported that? Does he really want to make public how much money he gives to the Mormon church? Where else did Romney's charity money go that would cause him to lose votes on the right? Did his dollars go to stem cell research? Who knows. Right now, we don't know. And it is better that way. Romney will lose more votes within his base (where it matters) if he makes it clear how not conservative he really is, than he will lose from the left wing voters who aren't voting for him anyways, by not releasing them at all. If Romney alienates his socially conservative base, he will lose a HUGE chunk of voters.

But in 2002 he pledged to support planned parenthood.

Mitt Romney needs to be the pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-religious freedom candidate. But he is only kinda pro-life, he doesn't seem to actually care that much about traditional marriage (MA issues marriage licences to same-sex couples, and Romney didn't really do anything about it and nobody has asked him why), and he is Mormon. Which nobody wants to remember, it's not a bad thing, but they seem to want it to be on the back burner. Probably because of all the connotations of polygamy around Mormonism, and then he would have to face speculation about that (though I'm sure Romney is not polygamous).

Remember, John McCain saw Romney's taxes and decided to go with Palin as his VP. How bad must those taxes have been for McCain to think Palin was his best option? Not paying enough taxes is easy to get through, so what, he did it legally, the end. That's how it would go. Donating to the wrong charities? That could literally stop somebody from voting for you. It's why people stopped eating at Chick-Fil-A.

If it were just about the fact that he is rich, has offshore money, and doesn't pay his fair share of taxes he would release them just so people would stop speculating. There is something really really really bad in those. Something that would cause him to lose the white house. Something that he and his campaign figured they will take the risk of losing a few votes, over the actual reality of releasing those taxes. For that, if I was going to vote republican and really couldn't ever vote for Obama, I would want to see those taxes even more so I knew who it was I was voting to run my country. 

How "LGBT" (even adding Q) isn't really inclusive. And what we can do to change it.

So I read, the other day, this great article about a Texas congresswoman who was elected as an “out” lesbian. She recently came out that she is, in fact, pansexual which opened up a whole world of issues and discussions amongst my friends and I. Now, most of my friends are open and welcoming people so there wasn’t any of the arguments about how she shouldn’t be allowed to be in Congress or any of that. We got to discussing the number of people who are excluded from acceptance all too often even in circles where being who you are is more than OK.  

One of my friends said (and I’m paraphrasing): It’s dumb that anyone isn’t ok with this since everyone is on the Kinsey Scale anyways. Of course the conversation spun off into some pretty cool points but I couldn’t help but think about that fact that while she was being “progressive” by even mentioning the Kinsey Scale, she was actually kind of wrong. I mean, where on the Kinsey Scale does pansexual even fall? That’s impossible to plot.

photo credit

In fact, where does pansexual fall in the “LGBTQ” system? That system is, at its core, binary, and human gender and sexuality is not. The Kinsey Scale is also a binary system on which most people can’t fit. In defense of the Kinsey Scale it is old and doesn’t seek to define a whole person, but it is referenced an awful lot even not by name.

Why not? Why are you attacking the LGBTQ community, its name, and its unity? I’m not. I’m defending it, protecting it, and seeking to make it more inclusive. If you have already passed your judgment on me and my thoughts, then you can stop reading here. Since reaching an opinion and understanding is the end, if you want to at least see what I have to say, even if you hate it, keep reading.  If you take issue with something that I say, awesome I think disagreement breeds knowledge but before you disagree read the whole thing. 

I like to joke with my friends that gay men and lesbians have nothing in common. It’s in jest of course, but the point is that gay men are always going to be attracted to men and lesbians are always going to be attracted to women (by definition, not identity).  But when we first start to open our minds from the hetero-normative culture we live in the first encounter we are likely to have is with homosexuality. It’s the most accepted, the most shown on TV shows, and the most able to be given some form of “equality” even with the lack of equality currently in this country. That is what gay men and lesbians have in common, they are both homosexual.  By definition they are attracted to their same gender or sex.

Sadly, for most of society it stops there. I think it’s because it’s easier for people to have two things to think about than an infinite number of things to think about. Either/or is easier than any/all. This is where the Kinsey Scale comes in. If you didn’t click on the link above and don’t know what that is, it is basically a scale that says everyone falls somewhere between straight and gay. You might be 100% straight or gay or you might be 60/40, 20/80, 95/5, etc. You choose either/or. You are either straight or you are gay.  Maybe you are somewhere in between these two choices, but you are definitely not something else.  Even bisexuality at its core doesn’t take issue with the scale because you can be attracted to both men and women.

Bisexuality. Just that word alone will bring out some interesting thoughts from people. “why won’t he just choose”, “she’s just on the train to gay-town”, “he’s straight but trying to be progressive”, “she’s just trying to justify being promiscuous”. Whoa. Some of these comments will even come from gay/lesbian people. We have broken down the thought process behind attraction. It is no longer either/or but rather any/all. It is a big concept to grasp, especially if you yourself are only attracted to one sex, and even more so if you have only ever been exposed to single-sex attraction. So what is bisexuality? Why does it get a coveted spot in the initialing of non-heterosexual attraction?

Bisexuality is the third branch of hetero/homosexuality. Hetero, which more or less means “other” and homo which means “same”, bi just means “two”. Bisexuality is attraction to two genders, men and women.  It is a pretty basic concept, it does not mean a need to sleep with everyone all the time. And while it is true that some people may identify as bisexual while they are still figuring it all out, not all bisexual people are on their way to “gay-town”.

Bisexuality got it’s lucky spot because it falls so perfectly into the two-sided system of attraction. Quick recap: L-women attracted to women, G-men attracted to men, B-people attracted to both men and women. 3/5ths of the way through the letters and we haven’t even left the very basic concept of binary gender attraction. And TQ doesn’t really cover the rest.

T is kind of the younger brother of L, G, and B. L, G, and B like to play 3 player games, and T is usually left out. A lot of times L, G, and B get all the way to the party and realize they left T at home.  It’s a sad life for T. I’ve seen protest signs that say “the T is not silenT”. There are a couple reasons I think this happens, but let’s start with a quick introduction to our little friend. T stands for transgendered. It’s weird sort of that it’s even really grouped in with Lesbian, gay, and bisexual because it is not the same. Being that it is not the same it is easy to exclude it, even accidentally. Think of 4 ball players hanging out together: 3 of them play football and one of them plays water polo.  Even if they are all great athletes the water polo player is going to get left out, he does not play football. (I may have just lost half of the gay men readers with that reference…just kidding, sort of)
photo credit

Transgendered refers to a person who was born one gender but identifies as the other.  So if a boy goes his whole life feeling like girl, he is transgendered. Yes, it is more complicated than that (I can hear the shrieks) but for the sake of time, I’m boiling it down.  I’m sure I could (and will) write a whole thing just on transgenderedness.  What is important here is what transgender is NOT. Transgender does not refer to a person’s attraction to other people. L,G, and B do.  The even bigger problem is when you realize that “transgender” doesn’t really include very many identities that don’t fit into our gender binary society. For example, the boy we talked about earlier: if he goes his whole life feeling like a girl does that automatically make him transgendered? No. He may feel like a girl but still identify as a boy. Or, he may identify as both or neither genders. But these folks are not included in “transgendered”.

Often times they may identify as gender-queer, two-gendered, or non-gendered. The term transgendered pretty quickly implies that the person has TRANSitioned. You can see, probably, where this implication comes from, being that the prefix “trans” is in both words. Transitioning being switching to  the gender they identify as, either with surgery or with other non-surgical methods. (again, this is very basic and boiled down and I can imagine the number of people twitching in their seats). The point is, the T is LGBT does not include any kind of non-binary gender identities.

Pansexual, which we mentioned earlier, does not get a spot. This is the attraction to people regardless of gender or sex, including transgendered people. What is the difference between this and bisexual?  Pan means all. Of course they are similar and there may be people who identify as bisexual who by definition are more pansexual and the same goes for identifying as pansexual. The difference is that bisexual implies attraction to two genders, while pansexual implies attraction to people without reference to gender.

There are also androphilia and gynephilia.  Androphilia being the attraction to men/masculinity without regard to the gender of the person feeling the attraction and gynephilia being the same concept but attracted to women/femininity.   But we already have “attracted to men and attracted to women” in the initials with lesbian and gay. That is true, but lesbian has an implication of gender and so goes gay. Since they imply you are attracted to your same sex, it automatically implies you are that sex.

There are lots of other identities, some with official labels and some without, I could spend hours listing them. Go to google and type in “sexual orientation” or “gender identity”.  The important point is that only 4 of them are definitively noted. Somebody somewhere noticed that, because they added “Q” to the mix. Q, which stands for Queer, is a pretty encompassing concept.  Queer means “deviating from the expected or normal”.  Of course we could argue for days about what is normal ,and why is anybody deviating, and that is too close to deviant, which is negative. Plus queer used to be used as a negative and mean word. But either 1) everything is normal in which case we need not even have an “LGBTQ” community or groups and their must already be equality for everyone everywhere or 2) we live in a hetero-normative society and people who are not cisgendered and straight need to identify themselves. Unfortunately, it’s still #2 for now. And so queer, by definition, includes L, G, B, T, and everyone that never got tossed in the mix in the first place, and everyone we haven’t even met yet.

All we are doing by saying LGBTQ is elevating the “normal” (LGBT) and lowering those that are outside the outside. If LGB is already being made to be second class citizens and T is being ignored and thus becoming a strange version of third class citizen how far down are the people who don’t fit any of those categories falling?

If the LGBTQ and A for allies community really wants equality, shouldn’t it start with equality by example? I say get rid of the old school LGBT, who needs it? It’s implied in the word queer that you might be cis/gay or lesbian. Everybody gets on equal footing because everybody, not just those outside the already outside, has to define their identity if it comes up. Yeah, it’s harder that way. But it’s one step closer to equality.

Queer pride parade. Queer allies. Queer bar. So much more inclusive!

*This does happen in some inclusive parts of the world (and also some mean parts of the world), that queer is used as an encompassing term. To those who are already doing it inclusively: GO YOU! When you know people who don't fall in the simple categories its easy to use queer just out of necessity