April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

feminism

Our Glorious Dead

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In times of war we are called upon to honour our glorious dead. Our Glorious Dead

Indeed the memory of the fallen is used to raise our collective patriotic ire at anyone who does not support any military action. This has become known colloquially as “not supporting the troops.”

It does not matter if the cause they were fighting is just. If the people they killed were innocent. If the war they fought a sham. Honour must be paid.

Compare this to the all too common occurrence of women being killed by partners or strangers. Too often in both courts of justice and courts of opinion these women’s memories are not honoured but desecrated.

Excuses are made, she provoked him, she was dressed or acted provocatively or was a sex worker, she was out alone at night, she was the violent one. [Read more…] about Our Glorious Dead

“Well, you’re not going to solve the problem if you even refuse to say what it is.”

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War on WomenThe Star carried this article yesterday about The War on Women: Elly Armour, Jane Hursham, and Criminal Domestic Violence in Canadian Homes, by Brian Vallée.

Stephen Lewis wrote an impassioned foreword for the book, urging the creation of a fully funded United Nations international agency for women that would provide “a tremendous force for advocacy and intervention” and would “inevitably move toward the recognition that domestic violence is its own holocaust….We’re not just fighting for women’s human rights; we’re fighting for women’s lives.”

[Read more…] about “Well, you’re not going to solve the problem if you even refuse to say what it is.”

How Harper celebrated Women’s History Month

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As we near the end of Women’s History Month it is time to pause and reflect on the way our ignoble PM celebrated with us.

Red Jenny tells us of a new bill

The Harper government yesterday introduced legislation requiring all voters – including veiled Muslim women – to show their faces before being allowed to cast ballots in federal elections.

A Creative Revolution informs us of his support for women in the north

The Status of Women cuts that the UnReal women of Canada so lauded and cheered about like a bunch of mindless maroons, the ones that killed NAWL funding, have had an even harsher effect in the real great white north.

Women in the Yukon are 2.9 times more likely to experience sexual abuse, or be killed by a spouse than women in other parts of Canada. The Organizations that seek to help them are being forced to scramble for alternate funds through bake sales and garage sales.

Mere days before WHM we saw the passing of National Association of Women and the Law

Close Harper friend and advisor Tom Flanagan speaks;

Flanagan calls funding cuts to Status of Women Canada and the elimination of the Court Challenges Program a “nice step,” asserting without equivocation that Conservatives will “defund” all equality-seeking groups – with feminists at the top of the list. He goes further, clarifying that Conservatives also plan to choke-off these groups’ supposedly privileged access to government by, for example, denying “meetings with ministers.” But for strategic reasons, Flanagan notes, this will all happen incrementally. To avoid the perception of mean-spirited retribution, he says, “incrementalism is the way to go.”

Avoid the perception yet not the reality.

And the PM Statement section? Still reads, “forthcoming”.

Of course Harper is proving that actions do speak louder than words.

That’s ok Stevie we’re not waiting for your call…we’re just not that into you.

Please Try to Remember the First of Octember

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If you are, or were, a Dr. Suess fan you may remember this book. Written about the glorious things you could do on the First of Octember such as stay up all night to drink “66 six packs of Doodle Delight.”

October is Women’s History month. A current look at the SWC site shows this statement from our Prime Minister;

“forthcoming”

Mid way through October Canada’s New Government™ has yet to issue a statement. Perhaps the script from Gwen was delayed….indefinitely?

One imagines that Harper et al would far rather Women’s History month, and indeed all matters pertaining to women’s equality, be relegated to the First of Octember.

Think of the glorious things he could do like ignore the child care issue, roll back programs that most especially help women, place tax cuts above health care, child poverty, employment issues….mmm seems he is already doing that.

Perhaps our ignoble PM lives in the land of Octember.

October 18th is Person’s Day. This is a day to commemorate the Person’s Case.

On October 18, 1929, the five Lords of the Judicial Committee came to the unanimous conclusion that “the word ‘persons’ in Section 24 includes both the male and female sex.…” According to them, the exclusion of women from public office was “a relic of days more barbarous than ours.

It is a sad and sobering thought that there are those who would joyously lead us back to those “barbaric” times. Those who see women not as persons in their own right but simply as wombs from which issue the cannon fodder needed to perpetuate war. War against other countries and war against the marginalized.

As we reflect upon Women’s History let us not forget the struggles that we are free not to face. The struggle for education, for our own name, for our own property, to not be included as property, the right to be paid a decent wage, to fight against sexual impropriety in the workplace, the right to control our reproduction, the right to say no in marriage and so much more.

Our fight to keep our rights, to move forward in our struggle, to ensure our daughters’ never have to fight to be recognized as persons in their own right, is one that must not be relegated to the First of Octember.

( cross posted @ Rose’s Place )

Motherhood–hold the apple pie

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Apple Pie
A society will sentimenalize and moralize about the things it wishes it cared about. Pregnancy and motherhood being no exception.

Plenty of moralizing, lots of cooing over womb contents like children oohing over puppies in the pet shop window, but little actually being done to support pregnant women and mothers.

We begin with the moralizing over what you may or may not eat/drink while pregnant.

You say you just can’t help super sizing. You look at the that hamburger and all you can think is more bacon!!!!!!!!!! You have started getting slushies by the garbage pail.

No need to take responsibility folks. Good news it’s your mom’s fault!!

Our study has shown that eating large quantities of junk food when pregnant and breastfeeding could impair the normal control of appetite and promote an exacerbated taste for junk food in offspring,’ she said Dr Stephanie Bayol.

‘This could send offspring on the road to obesity and make the task of teaching healthy eating habits in children even more challenging.’

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Now don’t you feel better? Have a cookie.

In an effort to prove two can live as cheaply as one pregnant women are now being told they must keep weight gain to 10lbs less than the current guidelines.

According to current guidelines, which IOM announced in 1990, women with low body mass indexes should gain up to 40 pounds during pregnancy, women with normal BMIs should gain 25 to 35 pounds, and most obese women should gain about 15 pounds. In 2003, about 25% of pregnant women in the U.S. gained more than 40 pounds during pregnancy, compared with 20% in 1990, according to the AP/Standard-Times.

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Now some of that weight is increased uterine size, breast size, placenta and amniotic fluid. All of which on their own can add up to 15lbs. Considering that ‘obese’ women are now to only gain 5lbs, one can only assume that doctors are recommending calorie restriction (ie dieting) during pregnancy. Seems like a bad idea. In fact the current guidelines were set because doctors were recommending restricted weight gain before and it wasn’t shown to have good results for the babies.

I suppose the retro fad has hit the medical community now.

Not only that but you’ll grow hair on your chest and talk funny.

Lobby groups in Ireland are calling for regulations on anti abortion ‘counselling services’.

Niav Keating of Choice Ireland said: ‘When our activists attended one agency, they were told that having an abortion would increase their risk of developing breast cancer, becoming an alcoholic and abusing children. These are blatant lies designed to scare vulnerable women in a crisis pregnancy situation.’

Choice Ireland said it was calling on the government to bring forward statutory regulation for all pregnancy counselling services. Minimum codes of practices and standards should be imposed to ensure that misleading and incorrect information is not given to
vulnerable women.

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You would think that groups that invoke the gord as their witness wouldn’t be playing so fast and loose with the truth….something about bearing false witness.

Adoptive parents showing appreciation for the trials gone through to create the children they want are in court complaining about birth mothers getting benefits they don’t.

adoption advocates contend that 15 weeks is far more time than the average mother needs to recover from the physical stresses of childbirth and that much of it is actually spent bonding with a new child.

But some maternity experts disagree, saying that the birthing process puts physiological stresses on a woman’s body that adoptive parents may not recognize.

‘Maternity benefits exist to recognize the unique experience of pregnancy,’ says Amy Mullin, a University of Toronto sociologist and author of Reconceiving Pregnancy and Childcare: Ethics, Experience and Reproductive Labor. ‘During pregnancy, a woman can undergo hypertension, nausea, heartburn and a number of other things. It’s not the norm for pregnancy to be completely easy. The government has recognized that embodied experience and I hope they continue to do so.’

Ms. Mullin stressed that the 15-week leave can start up to eight weeks before pregnancy, addressing any pre-birth health concerns.

‘That gives a mother six weeks to recover after her pregnancy,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t say that’s out of line.’

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Bleeding hearts. Why in my day women dropped ’em while doing the laundry and went right back at it.

Here are some of the realities of pregnancy

A dairy farmer is accused of giving a cattle hormone to a woman he got pregnant in hopes of inducing a miscarriage.

Police said 25-year-old William Stanley Sutton III added ProstaMate last week to a soda he gave to Lauren Ashley Tucker, 21.

Tucker felt sick to her stomach and vomited after drinking a 20-ounce soda Sutton gave her that ‘tasted nasty and burnt her throat,’ according to court records. She went to the hospital Aug. 9, and the hospital reported a possible poisoning to police.
The unborn child survived. Tucker, who was treated and released, is now 15 weeks pregnant.

ProstaMate is a hormone given to cows in the breeding process to bring all cows in heat at the same time. It can also be used to stimulate an early-term abortion in a heifer that gets pregnant too young or a cow that mates with an undesired bull.

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A Perth man who bashed, kicked and stabbed his pregnant, wheelchair-bound de facto wife has been remanded in custody.

Graham Leslie Garraway, 24, appeared in the Fremantle Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday charged over the alleged attack on Wednesday on his 21-year-old partner at their Langford home.

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DARTMOUTH, N.S. – A pregnant woman is in hospital with life-threatening injuries after being stabbed repeatedly with a sword in a domestic dispute.

A 43-year-old man who lives with the woman has been charged with attempted murder. Police wanted to charge him with trying to kill her unborn child, as well, but that was overruled by the Public Prosecution Service.

The stabbing happened in a ground floor apartment in Dartmouth just after midnight Tuesday. The woman was discovered by a passerby who heard her call for help from an open window. When she looked inside she saw the injured woman and ran for help.

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A pregnant woman with a chronic heart condition pleaded for doctors to abort her baby so she could live – but both she and her newborn son died.

Her ‘tragic’ story resulted in a year-long investigation by Health and Disability Commissioner Ron Paterson after her family complained about how she was treated. His report, released yesterday, criticizes poor communication between clinicians during the woman’s pregnancy and a 15-week delay in assessment for a heart condition – 15 times longer than recommended.

The family of the woman and her son did not want them named.

Paterson refused to say which hospital provided ‘suboptimal’ care but the Sunday Star-Times understands Wellington Hospital, one of two hospitals involved, was found to have twice breached the patient code of conduct.

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Protecting life

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What springs to your mind when you hear this phrase?

Perhaps programs which allow people access to the essentials for living– homes, food access to health care.

Perhaps you think of the bike helmet you bought your child, or your resolve to never drive drunk or tired or otherwise occupied.

Maybe you think of the aid you send to a foster child, or women’s shelter or other hands on charity.

I wonder in your deliberations if you ever consider refusing to fund abortions for poor women.

There has been much ado amongst the “I’m alright jack” and the “woo hoo lets legislate the hoo hoo” over this;

A clause was added to the Hamilton County indigent care levy contract 10 years ago to block the money from being spent on abortions for poor people.

Recently, that change almost was reversed.

Oh dear the horror!! That women would have the choice not to bring more children they can’t afford into the world!

Of course lets not forget that as poor women they shouldn’t be having sex at all. Nope no way, no pleasure for you lady. And that “sweet precious wonderful protected life” in your womb, well don’t get too attached to having it thought of that way because as soon as it’s born it becomes “another goddamn miserable drain on society that my tax dollars have to go to support“.

Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati had sent word of the clause deletion to more than 1,000 people on its e-mail list. It has since sent a follow up e-mail on the reinstatement.

Executive Director Paula Westwood said she was pleased that the clause is back in.

“Our foremost goal is to make sure that life is protected,” she said. “It looks like the language will remain on this, and that is a good thing.”

One can only hope that Ms. Westwood will put as much effort into ensuring that the resulting children are fed and clothed and babysat while their mothers try to support them. Perhaps she can also direct them to counselling for the depression, anger and terror they feel at being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. No doubt that would not fall under Ms. Westwood’s umbrella of protecting “life”.