This week, BlogHer's parent company, SheKnows Media, partnered with Public Radio International on the #womenslives media initiative. Basically, we want people talking about women.

We need to do this because only about 24% of all news subjects talk about women in any way, and only six percent of news stories highlight gender in/equality.

So, basically, we're ignoring half the population of the earth. Daily.

You can take a step toward changing that. We're going to talk about gender and womanhood and equality and inequality and stigma and women's health using the #womenslives hashtag.

Did you know JLaw got the paycheck shaft on American Hustle compared to her male co-stars?

Did you know heart disease is the number one killer of women and the symptoms can be different for women?

Did you know young women are harassed online three times as much as young men?

Did you know that people used to believe only boys were dyslexic because only boys were studied?

Would you stay in an abusive relationship? Why this blogger did.

That there are so many posts about surviving and witnessing domestic violence is heartbreaking, such as this one from Beauty School Scarlet, this one from Brown Girl From Boston, this one from Living Off Love and Coffee, this one from Loving Ryan (her mother's boyfriend starting their acquaintance by killing her kitten), this one from Heart of Michelle, this one from Not a Stepford Life, and this one from Transparency.

That Super Bowl domestic violence ad was a real 911 call.

I'm a feminist, and I catch myself accepting inequality all the time because it's always been that way. The whole women's paycheck thing hasn't changed, it hasn't changed! Women get charged more for everything from hair products to shoes even though that paycheck thing exists. We still don't have a female president. Women hold 4.6% of CEO positions at Fortune 500 companies despite the fact more women than men graduate from college.

Change takes more than just conversation, but it gets harder to ignore or cover up things people are talking about. If you're the Facebook type, please join our Facebook group, where we'll be sharing information and talking about #womenslives every week.  Because all you need to do is believe in yourself. Like a girl.

No, like a woman.

I spent last night at the Lawrence watch event for Paul Davis/Jill Docking's Kansas governor's run. I've known Paul since he married my best friend, and their daughter is my girl's unofficial little sister. So of course I wanted him to win. Beyond that, Paul's politics mirror my own almost exactly, only he is calm under pressure and I am not. He would've been a great governor. Kansas, I'm sorry. You're missing out.

I probably offended a room full of people when I said after the call had been made and the speech presented that I felt like I did when the Royals lost the World Series last month. That I would compare baseball to politics is probably uncool, but what I meant is this: Both were underdogs, both had worked very hard for years to get to the big stage, the nation was focused on both events, and I had spent months emotionally engaged in the events that unfolded before the big event. And in both scenarios, it was really close. There was no blowout. It got called late.

As I drove back to my hotel, I felt shell-shocked, amazed that he could've possibly lost. This morning, though, I spent the hour-long drive back home thinking about how dangerous and how satisfying it is to care, to hope.

I know what it's like to come really close with something and have it denied you. THE OBVIOUS GAME came thisclose to being picked up by a big publisher. In the immediate aftermath, it felt so awful I asked myself over and over why I was doing it to myself. Why bother trying to make a mark, share yourself in some way other than a Facebook status update? Why try when so many people live happy, productive, meaningful lives without putting themselves through such capacity for rejection? Why work so hard when there is absolutely no guarantee it will pay off?

Why do I start over every time I finish a book? Why do I get back on that horse that keeps bucking me off?

For the same reason I'm really glad I was at that event last night and for the same reason I'm glad I chewed my knuckles until the very last run of game seven of the 2014 World Series. Because it's good to care. It's good to have things you really believe in. Caring about things other than yourself make life worth living, force us to connect with other humans, be proud of who we are and with whom we align ourselves. 

Caring puts you at a much greater risk of heartache, but it's worth it, every time. 

After I get above eight miles, my mind starts to wander. 

I've discovered while training for half marathons how much your mind can disconnect from what your body is doing. There are times when it's too hot and my legs are too heavy and my lungs are bursting and I feel my mind slamming on the brakes, ready to override my desires with heat exhaustion, if necessary, to make this crazy 40-year-old woman stop running in the heat.

There are times when my legs are fine and the euphoria sets in and the air is so awesome to breathe I want to stop and tell other people do you taste this air? Isn't this air unbelievable?

Lately the temperature's been dropping. My vision no longer gets swimmy on big hills. I don't have to press pause on Runkeeper and pant like a dog in the shade after a big uphill. And above eight miles, I have all sorts of crazy thoughts.

I just read THE INFINITE SEA by Richard Yancy. It's the second in a dystopian end-of-the-world series that does a particularly nice job of being a dystopian end-of-the-world series, in a similar way to Dexter doing a particularly nice job of being a good serial killer. Really entertaining and well paced plot but also gets the job done showing the uglier side of humanity: how we make choices, how we weigh one life against another.

Ever since I read UNDER THE DOME by Stephen King, I've been having trouble swatting flies. The metaphors have invaded Missouri.

As I run, all the latest books swim together in my head along with the plotlines of my own writing and my own life. I think (in my running-induced euphoria that can sometimes beget delusions of grandeur) that if only I could somehow write and run at the same time I could solve some proof of humanity simply by analyzing various forms of pop culture and running them against current events divided by the number of times the Gaza Strip has been bombed and squared by the population of China. 

That would be it: The answer to why we are the way we are.

It was probably around mile nine when I noticed a large bug ambling across the sidewalk in front of me. I wasn't sure exactly what kind of bug it was, probably a beetle of some sort, but it smacked of warm-weather bug. Not-gonna-survive-the-frost kind of bug. 

And it was really cold that day. 

I started stirring all the end-of-the-world dystopian plotlines and honestly wondered if the bug was contemplating whether or not this would be his last day on earth. Could the bug know about dewpoints? Frost?

I skirted around the bug, because if he was going to die, I didn't want to be the cause of it.

I wondered how high the oceans would have to rise to flood Kansas City.

The air tasted amazing.

And I ran on. 

I have only an extremely marginal understanding of relational databases. I remember being introduced to the concept of a foreign key, which basically controls all the values that reference it.

I understand foreign keys like this: If humans are the most intelligent species on the planet, then X, Y, Z.

What if elephants are smarter? The whole string falls apart. (Again, I may be butchering the true definition, but stay with me.)

So. White privilege is kind of a foreign key. I think the reason so many white people have denied white privilege is because they are afraid of what that would mean if their whole worldview has been with or without their knowledge predicated on an invalid foreign key.

What if rap music is no more dangerous than blasting Brahms?

What if a resting expression is just a resting expression, no matter what color the face?

What if tall is just a genetic trait and doesn't have a inherent relation to aggression?

What if people are only dangerous or stupid because they really are dangerous or stupid?

What if there is no way to tell from looking at a person if he or she is friend or foe? What if you couldn't be scared by a hoodie?

What if we've been fooled by selective history?

What if the foreign key is invalid?

The whole system collapses. And only then can we rewrite the logic to represent all possibilities, and not just the prevalent one.

Question everything.

I had some hard conversations at BlogHer '14 with white women who thought the women of color at Voices of the Year were exaggerating their feelings of otherness. It's true, world: White people still think people of color are making this stuff up.

The events of this week in Ferguson, Missouri, once again magnify the truth: My friends of color are not exaggerating. White people may not see it because we are not treated this way, but stigma/skepticism/suspicion is still their reality in 2014. 

We can wish it weren't true. 

We can pretend it isn't true.

Or we can amplify what is true.

We can continue to insist on the education of our white colleagues and friends and strangers about how we intentionally or unintentionally are contributing to the racism problem we have boiling in this country. We can continue to insist on change. If you're confused about what I'm talking about, click here. It's time to share what's being said.

Here are some posts written about race this week that I believe are worth reading. Please amplify them.

• The Ferguson Shooting Has Me Scared for My Son by Janene Davis
• Affected by Karen Walrond
• #IfTheyGunnedMeDown Hashtag Calls Out Media's Portrayal of Black People by Betty Fokker
• Racial Bias, Police Brutality and the Dangerous Act of Being Black by Kristen Howerton

Tonight my friend and colleague Feminista Jones has organized a 90-city National Moment of Silence for Mike Brown. Details are here. The gathering for Kansas City is at the Plaza fountain. Gather at 6 Central, moment of silence is 6:20. Wear red. I would be there but we are headed to a preplanned family reunion tonight. If you can't see things on Facebook, here are the details:

Peaceful vigils honoring the innocent lives lost and pay respect to those whose lives have been affected by police brutality will gather on August 14, 2014 at 7pm EST/4pm PT. Moment of silence will start at the: 20 minute mark.

To identify each other and show solidarity, wear a red ribbon/cloth/bandana on your right arm at the vigils. Do not wear red if in areas where doing so can cause conflict.

This google doc is so we can have a clear view of which states don’t have any vigils already established.

If you have any questions about the event, please ask them at the official facebook page or in the #NMOS14 tag on twitter.

 If you can't be there, share. Onward.

I'm not a big flag-waver. Sometimes I think it's because the flag of the United States of America has been waved from a bully pulpit so many times I've grown weary of it. Sometimes I think it's because it's so often pictured next to oh, say, a gun or a tea bag or someone shouting 'MERICA! while disagreeing with something political that I believe in, as though having an opposing opinion made me less 'MERICAN! than he or she were. 

Late last week, I skimmed an article in The Atlantic that nailed my ambivalence pretty well, and I flagged it (you know I had to go there) for further pondering:

It is one thing to believe that America's history and founding principles are exceptional, and another thing — deluded and profoundly unconservative — to believe that the U.S. is inoculated against acting badly, or is justified in doing things that Americans would condemn if anyone else did them. 

That's it, precisely. I love my country. I was born here, I grew up in its breadbasket and I was raised quite unironically. I believe in a voluntary military, in the three branches of our executive government and even in the checks and balances that have our government temporarily shut down. I believe in the need for freedom of speech even when that freedom gives a voice to someone I deem an idiot. But man. The last few presidential election cycles have been so ugly. The attack ads get worse every time. I didn't agree with the last few military maneuvers. I'm still mad about Guantanomo Bay. The older I get, the more I realize how incredibly ambivalent I am about my country. I love it, but I question its people all the time. I'm very grateful for the right to vote and freedom of speech and really all of my freedoms, and I think the framers of the Constitution were really brilliant in ways they probably didn't even realize.

There just haven't been very many times since we invaded Iraq that I felt like waving a flag. I felt like linking arms with my neighbors. I felt like praying for the health and safe return of our soldiers. I was excited when the guy I voted for got elected, but that's the guy I voted for, not the country itself. There is a difference between one man or one party or even one idea and an entire country, which is where the flag-waving confusion sets in for me. 

Still, deep inside my thirty-nine-year-old self is the six-year-old who believed that America was perfect. That little girl loved the state of Iowa and didn't realize it was considered a fly-over state by some. She earnestly waved her flag for her country and her pom poms for her town's high school and didn't realize how complex the world is. I miss her sometimes. Last Friday, I got to be her again for a few hours because of soccer.

For Beloved's 40th birthday, I got us tickets to the U.S. vs. Jamaica soccer game at Sporting Park in Kansas City, Kansas. I have nothing against Jamaica and neither did anyone there. There just weren't very many Jamaican fans in the stadium, so everyone in the crowd was kind of on the same team, just cheering and happy and ... earnestly and unironically flag-waving. 

And I loved every minute of it. It turns out the soccer was awesome (2-0, US) but the flag-waving was worth the wait. 

USA!

All weekend I've been torn over Syria. 

The little angel caught some headlines as we were out and about and asked a bunch of questions. They were hard ones to answer. 

I don't know why people would hurt children.

I don't know whether we'll do anything about it.

I don't know know if we should do anything about it.

I agree, the whole situation is just terrible.

When it comes to policing the world, I'm ambivalent. Of course I'd love for a strong country like America to be able to help the world's wronged, but what if there are too many wrongs in the world for one military that's already so spread out? What if we have children who are hurting here? Is it our responsibility to attack if we were not attacked? Is this really about our fear they will use those weapons on us and not really about the children at all? And if so, is that a game-changer?

I started to educate myself better on the subject, then I realized that no one was going to come to me and ask me what to do. I am not in any way in charge of how the United States responds to Syria.

Sometimes the Internet brings the rest of the world too close to the window and demands I pay attention when I know in truth that to pay attention to something I can do so little about will only make me miserable, as it did every time I thought about it over the weekend.

I really don't want us to attack anybody else. I really wish we could bring all our troops home from everywhere and focus domestically. I wish we could fix healthcare and subsidize childcare and change funding so we don't have to buy our schools' copy paper anymore and improve care for mental health and beef up our infrastructure and and and ... do a million things with our energy that don't involve starting wars.

And so I close the window, on my laptop and in my mind's eye, and I stop thinking about Syria.

Kelly said she's leaning in, waiting to hear. She might not have been talking straight to me, but since Kelly is my race red pill, I heard her, anyway. I didn't want to. It's a week from BlogHer '13 and I had trouble with my daughter today and I have a million other excuses for why I don't want to talk about Trayvon Martin, but I hear you, Kelly, sometimes you have to talk about things that just piss you off because they are important.

I had just left a soccer match on Saturday night and was standing in line for the shuttle when I heard about the Trayvon Martin verdict. The older couple behind me were clearly trial junkies, as the woman started in on everyone from O.J. to Casey Anthony, and apparently she'd been following Trayvon, too. "Not enough evidence," she said. "I knew they wouldn't convict him."

I felt my color rising. I wished I'd watched the trial so I could speak intelligently, but I've felt this entire time like I didn't have to watch the trial to be pissed off. Trayvon Martin was walking home unarmed with candy and a nonalcoholic drink. George Zimmerman was packing heat and disregarded 911 telling him to stay away. The fact that he called 911 on a kid carrying candy is troubling enough. That he followed Trayvon with a gun? Where did this all go so badly off the rails?

With the law. 

I've thought and thought about this since it all went down, and the problem is with the culture that writes the laws. The laws are too vague. The laws may ignore common sense and ethics. And the laws and the court of public opinion have always been against the black man. (I am aware that George Zimmerman isn't white. Don't care.)

Think I'm wrong? Watch the local news in any city for five nights and tell me how many times an assailant or thief was described as a black man, then tell me how many black men actually live in that city. I don't watch the Kansas City news that often, but every damn time I SWEAR that I watch the news, a black man has gotten away with something! How many black PEOPLE are there in Kansas City?

White alone, percent, 2010 (a)	59.2%	82.8%
	Black or African American alone, percent, 2010 (a)	29.9%	11.6%
	American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent, 2010 (a)	0.5%	0.5%
	Asian alone, percent, 2010 (a)	2.5%	1.6%
	Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent, 2010 (a)	0.2%	0.1%
	Two or More Races, percent, 2010	3.2%	2.1%
	Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2010 (b)	10.0%	3.5%
	White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2010	54.9%	81.0%

I'm guessing about half of those black people are female. Those black people sure are busy!

Or are we just more worried about what they are doing than what all the other people are doing when it comes to crime? Other people commit crimes -- they just don't get covered as often on the news. 

Now, on the flip side, how often do we hear about white people who have been kidnapped versus black people? 

In all my reading, the person who has summed up my malcontent best is Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic:

We have spent much of this year outlining the ways in which American policy has placed black people outside of the law. We are now being told that after having pursued such policies for 200 years, after codifying violence in slavery, after a people conceived in mass rape, after permitting the disenfranchisement of black people through violence, after Draft riots, after white-lines, white leagues, and red shirts, after terrorism, after standing aside for the better reduction of Rosewoodand the improvement of Tulsa, after the coup d'etat in Wilmington, after Airport Homes and Cicero, after Ossian Sweet, after Arthur Lee McDuffie, after Anthony Baez, Amadou Diallo and Eleanor Bumpers, after Kathryn Johnston and the Danziger Bridge, that there are no ill effects, that we are pure, that we are just, that we are clean. Our sense of self is incredible. We believe ourselves to have inherited all of Jefferson's love of freedom, but none of his affection for white supremacy.

You should not be troubled that George Zimmerman "got away" with the killing of Trayvon Martin, you should be troubled that you live in a country that ensures that Trayvon Martin will happen. 

And, so, Kelly, that's where this white lady stands. Am I pissed at George Zimmerman? Yeah, I am. But I'm more pissed that anyone could feel comfortable stalking an unarmed minor because he was black and wearing a hoodie.  (Emphasis mine)

Zimmerman

He's got his hand in his waistband. And he's a black male.

Dispatcher

How old would you say he looks?

Zimmerman

He's got button on his shirt, late teens.

Dispatcher

Late teens. Ok.

Zimmerman

Somethings wrong with him. Yup, he's coming to check me out, he's got something in his hands, I don't know what his deal is.

Dispatcher

Just let me know if he does anything, ok?

Zimmerman

(unclear) See if you can get an officer over here.

Dispatcher

Yeah we've got someone on the way, just let me know if this guy does anything else.

Zimmerman

Okay. These (expletive) they always get away. Yep. When you come to the clubhouse you come straight in and make a left. Actually you would go past the clubhouse.

To me that "and he's a black male" sounds a lot like Paula Deen's "of course" when asked if she'd ever used the n-word before. "And he's a black male" -- as though that's all it takes to be a criminal. "Of course" -- as though using a racial epithet is a normal and acceptable thing to do. "It doesn't violate the law" -- once covered slavery. Listen, the law is just what's written down at the time. People write the laws, and society dictates whether those laws are left to stand or rewritten. 

Clearly there's a huge gap between the law and right/wrong in the Trayvon Martin case, and that really sucks. It's a problem so huge I don't know where to start. Unlike women's health rights, there's no concrete one law to point to, to say "change this and we'll be safe." The overarching climate that made it defensible somehow in a Florida court of law to clearly single out a kid because he's a black male who's staring is the thing that needs to change, and it's so nebulous it's hard to know where to start. 

So I start in my neighborhood. I start with my daughter. I start with the people I know. I started with the older couple in line behind me at the soccer match. I told them I thought the law and what was right were two completely different things. The older couple didn't see the forest for the trees, or maybe it wasn't a Saturday-night conversation. But I'll keep trying. I don't know how much influence I have on my blog or my social media, but I'll keep trying. I'm not ignoring it. I'm trying to figure out where the fuck to start.

But I'm leaning in. And you know what? I think the fact the Trayvon Martin case got as covered as it did in the media is maybe a good thing. How many trials do we see on the national news for black kids getting shot? Let's keep the conversation going.

Occupational hazard: I read a zillion articles and posts and tweets and emails and pitches every day, and sometimes these things synthesize into unnecessary navel-gazing in the evening hours. This makes my head hurt.

Information bias – the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action

Yesterday I read this New York Times article about the cost of raising a child. (Newflash: They're expensive!) The writer had already decided not to have kids, and she justified that decision by talking about financial responsibility. When she mentioned this to other mothers, they told her nothing really matters once you decide YOU WANNNNTT A BABBBBEEEEEEEEEE!

I tried to glean some insight from my discussions with women who arepersonal finance and parenting experts. I hoped they would help mereconcile the knowable and unknowable advantages and disadvantages ofhaving children. Instead I was assured that a cost-benefit analysis wasneither necessary nor helpful, and that one day I would feel the urge toprocreate, and so I would.

If you read the comment section, your eyes will bleed. People get really pumped about a complete stranger's decision to procreate -- or not.

False-consensus effect - the tendency of a person to overestimate how much other people agree with him or her.

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A few hours later, I was doing my #morningstumble on Twitter and I came across the Wikipedia list of cognitive biases. IT IS LONG. I stared at it, then I bookmarked it, then I came back to it and every political ad I've ever seen in my life flashed before my eyes.

Hostile media effect – the tendency to see a media report as being biased, owing to one's own strong partisan views.

I've read all the Malcolm Gladwell books and minored in human relations. My undergraduate degree is in communications. This is not to say I know anything at all about communicating or decision-making, but I like to study it, and the older I get, the more I'm inferring from myself and my surroundings: It is debatable whether or not it will help you to understand how other people make their decisions, but it is incredibly valuable to your mental health to understand and accept how YOU make decisions.

Curse of knowledge – when knowledge of a topic diminishes one's ability to think about it from a less-informed perspective.

Every super-stressful experience to date in my life has arisen from my belief that whatever decision I made at that moment was it, the end, no second chances. Until about age 35 I thought every decision I made -- from my choice of university to the number of children I would have to the house I would buy to the career trajectory I would take to the weight I was at in that moment was as important as the decision whether or not to push the red button and blow up the world.

Illusion of control – the tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events

And, shocker, I was wrong.

Now I think there are better decisions and less good decisions, but ultimately, life is a series of decisions and -- except in life-and-death matters, of which there are not that many unless you are a professional soldier -- the bad ones are only truly horrific if you don't change your tack after making them and head in a safer direction.

Irrational escalation – the phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong.

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I also used to hem and haw for weeks and months over a decision, resting assured the minute I made it, I would never have to think about it again. Also not true.

Ambiguity effect – the tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem "unknown."

Just because you made a decision that didn't work out doesn't mean there isn't a chance to course-correct ... and just because you made a smart choice doesn't mean the universe won't reach down and throw you a disease/lay-off/car accident. There are no safe places or unsafe places, there are just places.

Just-world hypothesis –the tendency for people to want to believe that the world isfundamentally just, causing them to rationalize an otherwiseinexplicable injustice as deserved by the victim(s).

So now I try to think through all the possible outcomes of my decisions and then go with my gut, even when it isn't the most fiscally prudent way or the most societaly acceptable way or even the way that would make my family the happiest in every instance. Ultimately, we all have to live with our own decisions, and sometimes the decision that will bring you the most money means you won't have a kid or the decision that makes your daughter cry for joy makes you want to stick a fork in your eye every Saturday morning.

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I used to think decision-making was a skill and that I was good at this skill, because some things in my life turned out super-awesome. Then I thought I must be very bad at that skill, because of the eating disorder and the depression and the anxiety and the hurt feelings and stupid jobs and not-recession-proof houses. Then I looked at this list and realized I am neither good nor bad at decision-making: I am human.

Outcome bias – the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

Why do all those commenters care whether or not that writer has children? Why do I care? I think we all care how other people make decisions because we need proof we're good at it, that we can gauge from our armchairs how the shit is going to go down.

Bias blind spot – the tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.

The longer I stare at this list, the more I realize we are all just lucky we haven't all killed each other yet. And also that I really need to stop worrying about how I make my decisions, because they are never, ever, ever going to be completely rational. And I probably wouldn't want them to be. I understand how my heart pumps blood through my body, but even if I concentrate really hard, I can't stop pumping. Self-preservation vs. rational thinking -- that's the human condition smackdown, isn't it?