I missed this in the news, but fortunately Twisty was on the job: the Borg Minister of Japan has referred to women as “birth-giving machines” and called on them to do their best “per head”:
“Because the number of birth-giving machines and devices is fixed, all we can ask for is for them to do their best per head,” he said. He added: “Although it may not be so appropriate to call them machines.”
Salon has also reported on the story, and I note with interest that 2 of the 6 commenters (that’s about 33% for you girls out there, since math is hard) not only agreed with the Borg Minister, but offered the further intelligence that a) everything is women’s fault, and b) feminism is a mental disease.
Patriarchy? What patriarchy?
Posted by Violet under Gender Issues on January 30, 2007, 12:56 am EST
Today is Blog for Choice day, and the good folks sponsoring the event have asked us bloggers to write about why we’re pro-choice. It’s a terrific idea, and I expect the intertubes will be flooded today with excellent posts listing all the reasons to support women’s reproductive freedom.
I, however, am going to be a contrarian asshole.
I’m tired of giving the reasons why I’m pro-choice. I’ve been giving the reasons why I’m pro-choice for 30 goddamn years, and the thing is, reasons don’t matter. Not to the people on the other side, the weepy irrational twit-headed godbags who want to extend full citizenship rights to 8-celled clumps and herd women into forced-incubation camps. They don’t even understand reasons.
Listen: 30 years ago I took the pro-choice side in a high school debate on abortion. I gave a good solid presentation, listing all the reasons why it was right and necessary for women to have the right to an abortion: because it’s a matter of fundamental bodily integrity, because the decision to bear a child belongs solely to the person doing the bearing, because women will seek abortions no matter what and if they’re illegal then thousands of women will suffer or die from back-alley hack jobs, etc., etc. When I sat down, I was genuinely curious to see how my debate opponent would answer my arguments.
She didn’t even try. She didn’t address a single point, didn’t discuss a single question of law or rights or statistics. Instead, she pulled out a piece of paper and started reading: “Mommy, I’m 8 inches long and I have all my organs! I love the sound of your voice…” It was the Talking Fetus pamphlet! Yes, that thing. It was making the rounds 30 years ago and it’s still out there today. It’s like the Christmas fruitcake that won’t die.
Anyway, my debate opponent read this thing with a trembling voice, her eyes welling with tears as the wee diary-keeping embryo drew ever closer to its destiny with Jesus. By the end she and the whole class were sobbing — snot dripping out, the whole bit. I leaned my head against the wall and wished our teacher would schedule a lesson on propaganda.
I don’t remember if, when I got up to respond, I actually said, “You do realize that this wasn’t really written by a baby, right?”, but I was certainly thinking it. It wouldn’t have mattered though. At that point my classmates would have sooner voted for roasting live kittens than for abortion, and in fact in their minds it was pretty much the same thing.
And that’s still how the anti-choice people think, which is to say, they don’t really think. They just fantasize about talking fetuses and cry. So, instead of trying to fight them with reasons, maybe we should just circulate some really, really sappy pamphlets. I know: we could do one written from the point of view of a woman bleeding to death on the floor of a motel bathroom as the illegal abortionist hightails it out of there
with the cash and the coathanger in his pocket. It could end with the dead woman in Jesus’s arms, asking “Whatever happened to Roe v. Wade?”
Courtney Martin has an article at American Prospect arguing that abstinence-only sex education helps to generate the date-rape culture on modern college campuses. I believe it, if only because the abstinence-only crap completely shuts down any real education about sexuality and personal boundaries, leaving young people with very muddled ideas about what constitutes normal sexual behavior. There are some feminist connections I wish Martin had spelled out, but Amanda filled in the blanks admirably. There’s also some great commentary from Jill, Sheelzebub, Echidne, Ann Bartow, Punkass Marc, and Mamacita.
I decided to dig a little deeper to see just what’s in these abstinence-only programs, and what I found is appalling. I knew this stuff was funded by godbags and the same people behind those phony Crisis Pregnancy Centers, so I expected there to be some problems with what those of us in the reality-based community refer to as “the truth,” but I actually had no idea just how propagandistic and blatantly anti-feminist these programs were. A report compiled for Congressman Henry Waxman in 2004 catalogues the misinformation, lies, and propaganda that we are paying to have taught to our young people — to the tune of 170 million dollars a year — and it’s enough to make your teeth implode from grinding.
Here are some of the lies I culled from the Waxman report, organized by topic:
Patriarchal gender bullshit that I cannot fucking believe is in a public school curriculum
Women gauge their happiness and success by their relationships; men’s happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments.
Men plan for the future more than women. Women are focused on the present, which is why they are not as concerned about planning for retirement as men are.
Men’s “top five needs” include “domestic support,” “sexual fulfillment,” and “physical attractiveness” (in a mate, presumably). None of these are women’s top needs.
Women’s “top five needs” include “financial support,” “affection,” “conversation,” “honesty and openness,” and “family commitment.” None of these are men’s top needs.
A woman needs to feel a man’s devotion, while a man’s primary need is to feel a woman’s admiration.
Guys are better at focusing than girls, who are more emotional.
Men lack deep emotions.
A woman should not give a man advice or suggestions, since it will lesson his confidence and may turn him away from her.
Men need little or no preparation for sex, while women often need hours and hours of mental and emotional preparation.
Sex only within a monogamous marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity.
A bride price is an honor to the bride, showing that she is valuable enough to pay for.
The father gives away the bride because he is the man who has had responsibility for protecting her, and now he is giving her away to the only other man who can take over the protective role.
Abortion propaganada
Life begins when the sperm unites with the egg.
A 43-day-old fetus is a thinking person.
A 10- to 12-week-old fetus can see and hear.
5% to 10% of women who have legal abortions will become sterile.
Having an abortion once increases the later likelihood of having a premature, mentally retarded baby.
Women who have had an abortion are more prone to suicide.
Misinformation about contraception and AIDS that is on such a pre-Kinseyan level of ignorance, I’m surprised they don’t teach that you can get pregnant from a toilet seat
Even when people use condoms correctly and scrupulously there is a 15% chance of getting pregnant.
Touching other people’s genitals can result in pregnancy.
Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission 31% of the time in heterosexual sex.
The HIV virus can pass through a latex condom.
HIV can be communicated through tears and sweat.
That’s what our tax dollars are going for. Nice, eh?
Writing in Salon about Obama’s presidential chances, Walter Shapiro predicts that “the color of his skin [will be] close to an irrelevancy. “
Heh.
True story: After reading the Salon piece I went to Technorati and searched on ‘Obama’. The very first result was “How can we prevent a black President??” from Stormfront. (And no, I’m not going to link to it).
Posted by Violet under Politics on January 17, 2007, 7:15 am EST
UPDATE, Thursday, 1/14/07: Paul has won in a landslide. I don’t know how to shut off voting so we might still see some returns from Guam trickle in, but I’m calling the election now. Paul’s in.
Old Lady Chloe asks, “Can you ban that idiot?”
I certainly can; but should I? I’m nothing if not a slave to my readership, so I’ve decided to put the question to a vote.
In truth I have wondered for some time if there might be an inverse relationship between Paul’s commentarian presence and the participation by other readers of this humble blog, who perhaps refrain from commenting because they’d rather not expose themselves to Tergeistian feces-flinging. But I’m not sure. For all I know people are out there laughing hysterically and thinking Paul’s the highlight of the blog.
So, people, what do you think? Is it time to vote Paul off the island?
I usually count on the British papers to provide more accurate news coverage than you can get from the U.S. media, most of which is dictated by GOP scriptwriters. But this time they’ve let me down. Today the Times reported:
The suggestion that Condoleezza Rice is incapable of understanding the anguish caused by American losses in Iraq because she has never had children has triggered a feminist firestorm.
Except that no one suggested such a thing and there is no feminist firestorm. There’s simply the GOP noise machine trying to distract attention from the real issue at hand. I know the Times is fairly conservative, but even the distinctly not-conservative Guardian reported the story in much the same way.
Here’s what Barbara Boxer said:
Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families. And I just want to bring us back to that fact.
Simple and clear, right? The politicians making the life-and-death decisions on this war aren’t the ones whose lives or whose families’ lives are on the line. It’s an obvious point but an extremely uncomfortable one for this administration, when 70% of Americans oppose the war and everybody knows that Barb and Jenna sure as hell aren’t gonna be among the 21,500 new troops sent over there to take a bullet for Dubya.
So the wingnuts are in frenzy mode to pretend that Boxer’s statement was about something else. Rush Limbaugh says it was about race, Tony Snow says it was a setback for feminism, and there’s a general murmur among the right-wingers that Boxer was implying that Condi is a lesbian.
None of this even remotely makes sense: Boxer’s statement was self-evidently not about race, feminism, or homosexuality. But the wingnut wurlitzer isn’t about making sense and never has been. It’s about cooking up some phony mess to divert attention away from the real mess.
For wingnut purposes, it doesn’t even matter that the people suddenly claiming to be offended are themselves notoriously racist, anti-feminist, and homophobic. Rush Limbaugh taking a principled stand against racism? The White House concerned about possible setbacks to feminism? Hey, not a problem if you’re a wingnut. Once you cut loose from that annoying obligation to make any kind of fucking sense at all, your rhetoric can soar free.
Usually the Brits seem relatively aware of this dynamic, which is why I’m surprised that this time they’ve lost the plot. They’re reporting the story exactly the way the wingnuts want them to. A “feminist firestorm”? Hardly. Feminists are not in a firestorm about the exchange between Boxer and Rice any more than African-Americans are lining up behind Rush Limbaugh in outrage at the attempted lynching of Condi Rice, or the GLBTQ crowd are demanding that Boxer apologize for calling Condi a dyke. The so-called firestorm is being generated entirely by wingnuts, who are doing their best to fill the airwaves and intertubes with faux outrage on Condi’s behalf.
And of course the U.S. media obediently reports it all as if it’s a real controversy, as if Boxer really said something wrong, because they’ve been trained to do that for years. They just wait for the GOP talking points to come over the fax machine, slap a byline on the top and they’re good to go. But the Brits?
Don’t get me wrong: the British papers are still approximately 17 zillion times better than the American papers. I’m just disappointed at this lapse. Really a more accurate title for this post would be, “I’m disappointed in the British media because I gave up on the American media years ago and the U.K. is where we go for real news and seeing a story like this feels like being Veronica Cartwright at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers when Donald Sutherland opens his mouth to scream.” But that’s a really, really long post title.
Leon Panetta says that “no president can conduct a war without the support of the American people and without the support of the Congress. That’s the lesson of history.”
Bush struck a defiant note in an interview to be televised tomorrow by CBS on 60 Minutes. Asked if he believes he has the authority to send additional troops to Iraq no matter what Congress wants to do, Bush said: “I think I’ve got - in this situation, I do, yeah. And I fully understand they will … they could try to stop me from doing it, but I’ve made my decision, and we’re going forward.”
I think we need to consider the possibility that Bush actually wants to be impeached. It’s possible that the man’s inexorable drive to fail will not let him rest until he has achieved the nadir of presidential fortunes. That means not just impeachment — it’s been done, twice now — but impeachment with a guilty verdict. Given Bush’s record in office, it’s likely that he’s had his eye on this goal for some time.
But that probably won’t be enough to satisfy him, either; if there’s anything this president is known for, it’s a completely over-the-top approach to failure. Most aspirants to presidential disaster would be happy with just a handful of Bush’s achievements — say, bankrupting the treasury and destroying America’s standing in the world and trashing the Bill of Rights. But on top of that we’ve got illegal invasions, war crimes, torture, spying on citizens, signing statements, graft, corruption, environmental destruction, reversals on women’s rights, blocks on scientific and medical progress, the Katrina clusterfuck, and on and on and on.
This is why I think it’s almost a given that Bush is going to start a nuclear war. It would be the perfect capper to his administration and give him a permanent lock on Worst President Ever. In fact, future linguists will have to come up with new terms just to describe the Bush presidency: “worst” won’t be enough. Entire new classes of nouns and adjectives will have to be devised just to express the maximum worstfullness of All Things Bush. That could actually be a nice activity for us while we’re living in the underground caves eating canned food and watching our skin fall off.
Increasingly the world media is reporting this as a back-door declaration of war; note the two lead grafs from the Independent this morning:
American forces stormed Iranian government offices in northern Iraq, hours after President George Bush issued a warning to Tehran that was described as a “declaration of war”.
The soldiers detained six people, including diplomats, according to the Iranians, and seized documents and computers in the pre-dawn raid which was condemned by Iran. A leading UK-based Iran specialist, Ali Ansari, said the incident was an “extreme provocation”. Dr Ansari said that Mr Bush’s speech on future Iraq strategy amounted to “a declaration of war” on Iran.
There were indications yesterday that Congress would push back on this, but how much can they do? El Comandante controls the military, his administration has shown no reluctance to raid the rest of the federal budget for funds (so much for the power of the purse), and impeachment is too slow.
What do you do when the world’s scariest rogue dictator is the president of your own country?
At this point you’re probably thinking, “Well, I don’t know, Violet, but this is a pretty half-assed post. No analysis, hardly any commentary; just some links, a blockquote, and question marks. Geez.”
But see, that’s because you’re in the reality-based community. I, on the other hand, am one of history’s actors. I create my own reality. And my reality says this isn’t a half-assed post; it’s an open thread.
Have at it.
P.S. I’ve just seen that our embassy in Greece has been attacked, so hey, maybe Armageddon will come early this year.
I’ve just been reminded by the once brilliant but now sadly delusional Chris Clarke that it’s Delurking Week. You know how to delurk, don’t you? You just put your lips together and type a comment!
I am deeply grateful for the many regular commenters whose presence already enriches this blog immensely, but my demands are insatiable. See this map? I want to hear from every one of these pins or Things Are Going To Get Ugly around here.
Don’t be shy! Say as much or as little as you like, here or on another thread. No harm will befall you. Unless of course you’re a sexist/racist twit, in which case I will simply delete your comment and send a bomb to destroy your house.
Delurk button image courtesy of Sheryl at Paper Napkin, who also invented Delurking Week.
Posted by Violet under Reclusive Leftist on January 11, 2007, 5:02 am EST
I’ve just been reminded by the once brilliant but now sadly 
