April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

women

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 )

“Working Girls” and the Media

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One might have hoped that after the Ipswich murders the media would have learned a thing or two about treating sex workers as different, disposable, and authors of their own misfortune.

Sadly reading the CTV report on the death of an Edmonton sex worker it would seem no lesson has been learned at all.

We begin by reading;

Police have identified a missing woman as a dead Edmonton sex trade worker and have launched a homicide investigation.

Really?! So if we were all to get together and purchase a head stone it should say dead Edmonton sex trade worker?

At least in the next paragraph they deign to identify Leanne Lori Benwell, by name. [Read more…] about “Working Girls” and the Media

Define choice

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Scrolling through Facebook groups I came across one called End Abortion Now!!! Your Mom Made A Choice!

What an interesting thought. My birth mother didn’t in fact make a choice. I am sure at fifteen years of age in a time when “unwed mothers” were sent “away” she may well have made the choice to abort.

Does that make me weep and moan and gnash my teeth? No! I do regret for her sake that there were people who made the choice to deny her the right to choose motherhood or not. [Read more…] about Define choice

Unchained Melody

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Full wording of the 1967 Abortion Act follows

How the church views women“Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.“.. Emma Goldman

Cardinal Keith O’Brien believes the 1967 Abortion Act is full of lies. As it is a document dealing with a woman’s legal right to seek medical treatment. One can only assume that to the Cardinal it is a lie that a woman has a right to seek medical treatment, that anyone has the right to save her life or that any woman catholic or not, has the right to “defy” the father church. [Read more…] about Unchained Melody

Freedom from Religion

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True story: man kills wife, stabbing her in the neck 19 times with a steak knife, is convicted of first-degree murder and appeals on basis that she was unfaithful and, as a devout Muslim, he was protecting family honour.

Nice try, and maybe elsewhere in the world Adi Abdul Humaid might have been acquitted. But the United Arab Emirates citizen made the mistake of murdering Aysar Abbas in Ottawa in 1999 and, ultimately, the Ontario Court of Appeal rejected his appeal.

Superior Court Justice J.A. Doherty said that had Humaid killed his wife for religious beliefs, that alone would have been “a motive for murder.” But it was a moot point because Doherty didn’t buy Humaid’s new religious devotion and, in his 2006 ruling, concluded the story lacked credibility.

Nevertheless, the judge was concerned enough about the nature of the defence argument to write: “The alleged beliefs are premised on the notion that women are inferior to men and that violence against women is in some circumstances accepted, if not encouraged. These beliefs are antithetical to fundamental Canadian values, including gender equality.”

[Read more…] about Freedom from Religion

Cosmetic surgery or Genital Mutilation?

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orchid

Patients who sought genitoplasty “uniformly” wanted their vulvas to be flat and with no protrusion, similar to the prepubescent look of girls in Western fashion ads, pornography and on genitoplasty web sites.

LINK

Wonderful, what adult woman doesn’t want to help fulfil her partners daddy fantasy by looking like a little girl in her “special area”?

*excuse me while I go throw up

Here is a site that offers these procedures, and here is some of what they offer

Labiaplasty (labia reduction & beautification) and other female cosmetic surgical procedures including Vaginoplasty (rejuvenation or tightening of the vagina) and Clitoral Unhooding (Hoodectomy)

Here is the WHO fact sheet on Female Genital Mutalition
Type III – excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching/narrowing of the vaginal opening (infibulation);

Hmm kind of hard to spot the difference.

Oh wait I see the difference the first is FGS while the second is FGM. So I guess all they really need to do is change one letter and hey presto they aren’t committing an indignity they are providing her with low cost plastic surgery. Maybe they could open shop invite a few North Americans over and in one swell foop become respected surgeons.

Female Genital Surgery (FGS)—of which Vaginal Plastic Surgery is part—is a demanding surgical field

According to a Swedish study;

RESULTS:47 women had been operated, more than 50% had been operated at two or more occasions. 11 patients had only vaginoplasty done and in the remaining women it was combined with clitoroplasty. The cosmetic appearance as well as the function of clitoris and vagina are often not optimal. There is also a need from these patients to be able to discuss former surgery, especially since it was common in this group to state that the functional result has influenced their sexual life negatively.

From the surgical site;

8. Could labiaplasty cause insensitivity?

There is no physiological association for sensory pleasure with the labia—that function is served by the clitoris. The only sensation elicited from labia is pain upon tearing or stretching. Labiaplasty can’t cause a loss of sensitivity when done correctly.

There is no sensation for pleasure in the labia??? Obviously spoken by someone who doesn’t have any.

and this assertion is repeated in CAPS just in case you didn’t believe it the first time. But it is ever so much more believable now that it is in bigger letters

14. I have read that after labiaplasty a woman can experience lifelong sexual arousal problems. Is this true?

No!! This is a common fallacy and it is completely wrong. The media, which at times misinterprets accurate medical information, commonly helps propagates this rumor as a means of creating controversy or sensationalism. It is well known MEDICAL FACT that the labia have sensory nerve fibers that ONLY transmit pain sensation, when stretched or torn. There is NO SEXUAL STIMULATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE LABIA MINORA.

The surgery to shorten the vagina boggles my mind. Really this surgery can surely be done for one reason only, to make him feel like he’s bigger than he is. And I suppose too it harkens back to the doing it with a prepubescent. I was just sick a little again.

In short ladies love your lips whatever size and shape they may be. Each and every vulva is a unique and beautiful thing and does not deserve to be sliced and diced.

If you are unfortunate enough to be saddled with someone who expects you to look like someone else cut him out of your life not your labia.

In Solidarity Sisters