Picking your battles.

Its interesting, the battles I pick. Power in some places, powerlessness in others. Duh.

I can pick a mean fight with people in the travel industry. Delta airlines screwing you over? Can't get the "view room" you specifically asked for, six months ago? I'm your gal, unleash me on those poor unsuspecting customer service professionals and they're toast. By the time I'm done with them, you'll likely get not only an apology, but upgraded to a suite with a free mini bar. And, c'mon, who doesn't love a mini bar?

You might mistake me for someone who regularly stands up for myself and, as they say, "takes no guff." In fact, I have near-crippling anxiety about confrontation of almost any (non-travel related) sort. Many, many years on the couch and this one still eludes me. When the topic of assertiveness comes up and I reveal my inability to grow a pair, the person(s) with whom I'm conversing always looks sort of puzzled, or laughs, sure that I must be kidding? "You? But you're so strong-willed. Lord knows you have no shortage of opinions..." Yes, I know. I know. But confrontation? No thanks, I'll be hiding under this coffee table, thanks.

There is a difference in standing up for something, and confrontation. I'll ask your forgiveness that I'm not able to draw such a clear line in the sand as I wander down this road which may or may not...eventually...arrive at a point.

A recent battle: I was writing a follow-up note to a phone interview I had for I job I didn't get. I looked for a word that was more interesting and dynamic than the plain old white bread of "after."

So here I am, minding my own cranky business on Thesaurus.com/Dictionary.com and just three listings below "after" is the listing for the morning-after pill which reads as such:

"morning-after pill

Part of Speech: noun

Definition: birth-control pill

Synonyms: abortion pill, Brompton, Brompton's mixture, RU-486"


RU-486? Really? In the definition offered by Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus?

This is how our side is losing. Losing the battle of language and branding.

I wrote them a note and asked that the definition be amended.

"Please remove RU-486 from the definition. RU-486 is the drug used in medical abortions, something entirely different from the morning-after pill, often known by its brand name "Plan B." RU486 is Mifeprex (Mifepristone) commonly called "The Abortion Pill.""

(Plan B® is not RU-486 (the abortion pill). Because Plan B® is used to prevent an unplanned pregnancy, it will not work if you’re already pregnant. If you take Plan B® and are already pregnant, it will not affect your existing pregnancy. See http://www.go2planb.com/ForConsumers/Index.aspx.)

I once wrote a short well-worded note to a journalist? blogger? I can't remember now, but they referred to "partial birth abortion," a loaded and contentious term. The terms is one coined by the other--winning--team for the medical procedure "dilation and extraction," (or "D&X" or "intact D&E"). "Partial birth abortion" is an extension of an astonishingly successful branding campaign. "Partial birth abortion" isn't a medically accurate term, but because it's graphic, incendiary and disgusting and most people are intellectually lazy, the term stuck. Of course people want to ban it, I would too if the things that the right wing Christian team says were medically accurate and not just a clever urban legend meant to weaken the pro-choice majority. To further illustrate, just try using "anti-choice" instead of "pro-life." We're all pro-life. As a rule, we don't drown kittens or kick old ladies as they wheel their cart slowly down the aisles at QFC. The people who do are known as sociopaths. Those in the anti-choice movement have been so successful at branding that those of us who are firmly in the pro-choice camp have been using "their language" for a very long time. We lost that battle.

Waking up to your own language can be something of a revelation, even a revolution. Where did it come from? Who owns it? Did she really just say that? WTF.

This is apparently one of the only battles for which I can muster any ammunition. Its usually the case that my indignation, frustration and disgust do not line up with an action plan.* Its a particular impotence that's got hold of us all, it seems. It's why I'm not lying down in traffic to protest the war in Iraq, or sending my discretionary money to a left-leaning political entity in order to assure that another asshat republican doesn't end up dragging our country further into the mud. See, here I am again with my myriad opinions, and what revolutionary steps am I taking? Writing in my blog. How risky and envelop pushing! Everyone has a blog. At least when we all relegated our squishy feelings and self-righteous opinions to the dog-eared, tear-soaked pages of a cloth-bound actual paper journal, we spared the rest of the world our deepest, self-indulgent thoughts. I apologize again for adding more traffic to the navel-gazing nets.

Thanks for reading, I need to go to sleep. But not before I drown some kittens. That's how my people are. That's how we roll.

*"action plan"? Thanks IMAC. Next thing you know, I'll be integrating terms like "deliverables" or "scoping study." But then again...