feminism

“Freedom and Democracy Can’t be Donated”

08/02/2009 by Debra

Title from RAWA’s website. “RAWA believes that freedom and democracy can’t be donated; it is the duty of the people of a country to fight and achieve these values.”

Both the US and Canada have stated among that high among their purpose for being in Afghanistan is to win freedom for the women there. The Feminist Majority Foundation in the States supports this. However, RAWA an organization of women who risk their very lives to fight for women’s rights, and who being women in the country in question would know best what they need, are very much against further war action.

Waging war does not lead to the liberation of women anywhere. Women always disproportionately suffer the effects of war, and to think that women’s rights can be won with bullets and bloodshed is a position dangerous in its naïveté. The Feminist Majority should know this instinctively.
Here are the facts: After the invasion, Americans received reports that newly liberated women had cast off their burquas and gone back to work. Those reports were mythmaking and propaganda. Aside from a small number of women in Kabul, life for Afghan women since the fall of the Taliban has remained the same or become much worse.
Under the Taliban, women were confined to their homes. They were not allowed to work or attend school. They were poor and without rights. They had no access to clean water or medical care, and they were forced into marriages, often as children.
Today, women in the vast majority of Afghanistan live in precisely the same conditions, with one notable difference: they are surrounded by war. The conflict outside their doorsteps endangers their lives and those of their families. It does not bring them rights in the household or in public, and it confines them even further to the prison of their own homes. Military escalation is just going to bring more tragedy to the women of Afghanistan.

Source

As feminists we know that war hurts women the most and that any thought of it being for the betterment of women is usually at best naive [witness the treatment of women in Nicaragua]. So while it saddens and sickens us to see the way women are being abused and denied their humanity, we must not make the mistake of thinking that bringing war and more violence is going to make things any better. Instead of telling the women of Afghanistan what they need, instead of worsening their living conditions and killing their friends, neighbours and children, why don’t we ask them what they need?

This is What a Feminist Looks Like

07/08/2009 by Debra

Julie Zeilinger, is a 16-year-old high school sophomore from Pepper Pike, Ohio and the owner of theFBomb.org

In this case the “F Bomb” stands for “feminist.” However, the fact that the “F Bomb” usually refers to a certain swear word in popular culture is not coincidental. TheFBomb.org is for girls who have enough social awareness to be angry and who want to verbalize that anger. TheFBomb.org is loud, proud, aggressive, sarcastic…everything teenage feminists are today.

Never let it be said that feminism is dead!

Congratulations and good luck with your blog.

Charges dropped against Kopp

05/28/2009 by Debra

I was surprised to read in yesterdays spectator that charges against the radical anti-abortion extremist James Charles Kopp had been dropped. I wondered at the time if it had to do with the fact that he is currently serving a life sentence in the States. Today’s article would seem to indicate that that is the case.

The announcement said Kopp remains a “person of interest” and the “investigations remain open.” That technically leaves the door open to future work on the cases, although Kopp — the only person ever identified as a suspect — is locked away for good, and U.S. officials say he will never be released.
Task force spokesperson Sergeant John Burchill with Winnipeg police said that with the announcement, the task force no longer exists other than in name, but would receive any new information.
He said the main reason for the timing of dropping the charges is that all of Kopp’s appeals in the U.S. have been exhausted.

Dr. Hugh Short had his elbow blown apart by Kopp in 1995 because he chose to help women with a fully legal and necessary medical procedure.

He never practised medicine again, and never said a word about it publicly for nearly 14 years. But yesterday Short spoke to The Spectator, his voice clear and crisp on the phone.
“I’m doing all right,” he said.

While it is unfortunate that Kopp will not have these crimes officially added to his record, it would only be seen as further cause for celeb to his fellow extremists and serve no purpose sentence wise as he is already serving actual life.

Source

Danger, Will Rogers! Danger!

03/26/2009 by Debra

Lorne Gunter and the National Post issue this warning after diagnosing the issue behind the young and troubled “M.T.” counselling her boyfriend to commit murder.

You see it wasn’t a matter of low self esteem, feeling that her worth came from a mans’ attention, or simple psychological problems, no sir “M. T.” is a DIRECT result of the EVIL feminism.

So when you tell girls for four generations that they are weak and should demand the kind of power boys and men have, and when you — through the pill and abortion — signal to them that sex is nothing more than a consequence-free, pleasurable act and when, finally, you remove faith-based morality from the mix, too, you should not be surprised to wake up one morning and find that you have created an M.T.

WOW I’m surprised I’m not out on a killing spree right now! I like to have sex, like it very much. And I don’t even think I need to have another baby as a result. I figure I have the same rights and responsibilities as my male counterparts and I’m an atheist. Sheesh, the killer trifecta in Gunter’s book.

I also resent the implication in the piece that my husband, sons and male friends are nothing but amoral ticking time bombs waiting to go off at any second.

There’s one thing you can say about right wingers, they are consistent. Of course consistently wrong, but consistent.

Blog for Choice 2009

01/22/2009 by Debra

Fear often causes people who can only see black and white to further insulate themselves against those things they cannot fathom.

The fearful wrap themselves in cloaks of rules and theologies which offer no variation, brook no deviation and punish those who see beyond the blinders of a forced faith.

So it is with those who wish to enforce pregnancy at any cost. The concept of people, women in particular, living a life of personal autonomy and freedom is foreign to them and therefore scary. There are those who feel that their religion speaks this to them, and indeed many pulpits preach this. And there are those who see power as their god given right and therefore use those blinded by faith to further their power grab.

This scenario has played out politically across America for some years now with many in the political sphere echoing the sentiments of the extremists for political gain. After all they will do as they are told and if told from the pulpit to go vote for a certain person because they will support and enact their religious tenets they will show up and vote. A boon to any politicos career.

The incrementalist approach to enacting fundamentalist religious ideals as laws by which all must live started with the issue of abortion. As any good advertiser knows it is easier to sell something that resonates on an emotional level, can be reduced down to misleading sound bites and visuals and/or that can be framed as a moral absolute. Abortion fit the bill perfectly.

Women’s rights are a battle not yet won in America and in the grand scheme of things abortion rights are relatively new and certainly not affirmed in any constitutional way. As long as there are people willing to see human rights as a subject for debate there will be those ready and willing to take them away.

The fight to remove women’s rights started with abortion. Debating limits, reasons, whether or not a woman has actually thought about hence the waiting periods and forced ultrasounds and the move to declare eggs persons.

When two persons inhabit the same body whose rights prevail? If a foetus is a person endowed with the rights and responsibilities of a person and the state judges that a woman cannot have an abortion to save her life and subsequently dies and somehow the foetus is saved is the foetus guilty of manslaughter? Is the state an accessory to the fact? Or is the taking of women’s lives somehow ok? Apparently in the view of the extremists women are empty vessels for men to fill with seed and if that vessel breaks is easily replaced with another. The reality is that abortion is but the first right they want to revoke. Contraception is already on the hit list. And no they do not support programs to help support the children resulting nor even to pay for the maternity bills.

Debating Feminism

12/23/2008 by Debra

This years CBA’s have again given rise to controversy. Last year the inclusion of a feminist category was considered unnecessary and this year it was included but was a complete farce. Commencing with the nomination of avowed feminist haters, continuing with a mysterious masked women’s studies minor slicing and dicing the nominiations dumping a true feminist (JJ) and including REAL women follower C4C and further continuing with Sask dumping again on women’s issues. So much of this devolves down to simplistic and erroneous assumptions of feminists being anti-child and anti-family. Which is anti-reality. The simple fact is that not everyone can or wants to stay home. In fact when it comes to the poor much is made about expecting single mothers or both parents to get out there and work. No mention is made of the lack of decent, licensed, affordable child care. Cutesy little scenarios of childcare choices while making terrific sappy little greeting cards do nothing to solve the issues for real families. I stayed home and raised 6 children and live in poverty because of it. Will receive no pension because of it. Many glurgy, gloppy sugary sweet fables are told of our love of family and children but this is simply not the case. dumbass Those who identify as Cons do not support daycare which is necessary for many families to survive. They do not support good strong social foundations that would allow women to stay home and raise their children should they so choose and not have to do so in a way that compromises their ability to clothe, house and feed said children or their ability to feed, clothe and house themselves in their senior years. They do not support maternity leave or father’s leave or any of a number of things which would show true support of family. They rave on about women taking time off to have children and thereby inconveniencing employers and making it less likely they are as up to date as their male counterparts and in the same breath deride women who do not want to have children, or who choose daycare for their children. The real message then is that women ought not to work at all, but should have children and then magically fart out the monies required to raise them. They don’t believe in abortion but also don’t believe they have any responsibility to the children they are feel are illegitimate.

Do not look to the Cons or con apologists for family friendly legislation. It is the feminists who fight for good quality daycare affordable to all. It is feminists who fight for maternity benefits. It is feminists who fight for children to be recognized as equal regardless of circumstances of birth.

Courtesans were well trained to provide their benefactors with a feeling of power, they stroked egos, manipulated and always appeared subservient even when leading the way. These are attributes that many con women have refined to an even higher art. And sadly many men still fall for it. And while they repeat the mantra of feminists as man haters the worst man haters I have known have been conservative religious women. The things they say about men would curl your hair, and the ways in which they undermine men is scary in it’s Machiavellianism, yet in conversation or relationship with them they are as sweet as cherry cheesecake. Similarly some of the worst mothers I have known as those that say that women belong in the home raising their children. The reason for this is that they do not even necessarily like children, they are merely responding to an ideology and expectation and when they find themselves trapped in a life they hate they respond with a misery loves company mentality trying to ensure that everyone is forced to be as unhappy as themselves.

Ultimately, debating feminism is like debating any other human rights, there are those that find a masturbatory satisfaction is doing so, however rights are not and should not be the subject of debate.