Speak your mind even if your voice shakes
by Debra
I can see it now.
Women the world over smiling from ear to ear, gleefully singing while cleaning house, with rubber gloves stamped with little pink ribbons, pink ribbon stamped dust clothes, pink handled scrub brushes, happy in the knowledge they are saving their health.
Yes ladies break out the pumps and the pearls and the “mommy’s little helpers” cause it turns out that housework is good for you! [Read more…] about But honey..housework is good for you!
by Debra
I was thinking more of the interest lately some “progressives” have been showing in the disingenuous remarks made by Elizabeth May. The responses made to those who reject the notion that anyone has the right to take a “nuanced” approach to their reproductive rights has been interesting to say the least.
We have been accused of being Green bashers, dinosaurs, radical, reactionary, Stalinist, unable to see shades of grey ( I love that one. As if there are shades to human rights. )
These same defenders of Ms Mays’ right to call women frivolous, have no qualms about trying to shut down discussion when women — remember us guys? we’re the ones with the wombs — express their discomfort and displeasure with the fact that those so willing to score political points and street cred with their reputed support of feminism and feminists are unwilling to show actual support of so fundamental an idea as reproductive freedom.
This even as they claim that their voices are being silenced.
We are allowed to be feminists just as long as we are nice little feminists who listen when the boys tell us what feminism means, how feminists should act and what issues we should see as meaningful.
Our anger is being used against us in ways that must have even the nastiest of misogynists gaping.
As if anger is an inappropriate response when ones rights are seen as fodder for debate. As if anger is inappropriate when one is asked to repeat a tour of duty. As if anger is inappropriate when the speaker of the words cozies up to the friends of the people who do this.
Anger is neither inappropriate nor enough. It is not time for nuances nor debates.
It is time to choose up sides, you believe that women have the right to live as autonomous human beings or you do not. You believe our society is better served when all people are free and equal or you do not. You believe that women’s voices are important or you do not.
You believe the behaviour shown in the shirt above is an appropriate response to women defending what has been shown to be important not only to women’s health but also to society as a whole, or you do not.
by Debra
The turkey was brought to the table with care
To banish the hunger of those gathered there.
However and what ever you celebrate I hope you had a wonderful day.
The holiest of holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
by Debra
Christmas Eve many focus on a birth of long ago, and so I give you a story of birth.
From the Independent
In two days, a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem – but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked-down town is trying not to howl.
Fadia Jemal is a gap-toothed 27-year-old with a weary, watery smile. “What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today? She would endure what I have endured,” she says.
Fadia clutches a set of keys tightly, digging hard into her skin as she describes in broken, jagged sentences what happened. “It was 5pm when I started to feel the contractions coming on,” she says. She was already nervous about the birth – her first, and twins – so she told her husband to grab her hospital bag and get her straight into the car.
They stopped to collect her sister and mother and set out for the Hussein Hospital, 20 minutes away. But the road had been blocked by Israeli soldiers, who said nobody was allowed to pass until morning. “Obviously, we told them we couldn’t wait until the morning. I was bleeding very heavily on the back seat. One of the soldiers looked down at the blood and laughed. I still wake up in the night hearing that laugh. It was such a shock to me. I couldn’t understand.”
Her family begged the soldiers to let them through, but they would not relent. So at 1am, on the back seat next to a chilly checkpoint with no doctors and no nurses, Fadia delivered a tiny boy called Mahmoud and a tiny girl called Mariam. “I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital,” she says now. For two days, her family hid it from her that Mahmoud had died, and doctors said they could “certainly” have saved his life by getting him to an incubator.
by Debra
Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon
My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.
‘Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, “Now listen up, me boys!” each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
“He’s singing bloody well, you know!” my partner says to me
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war
As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was “Stille Nacht.” “Tis ‘Silent Night’,” says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky
“There’s someone coming toward us!” the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one long figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright
As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night
Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man’s Land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave ’em hell
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of menSoon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
“Whose family have I fixed within my sights?”
‘Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they’d kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone forevermoreMy name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I’ve learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we’re the same
by Debra
I’m sure when foodbanks first started popping up they were considered a stop gap. A temporary fix to a major problem.
I’m sure there was an assumption that advocacy and research would be done to target the reasons for and solutions to most of the underlying causes.
Of course capitalism itself requires a certain level of poverty and unemployment to continue, it therefore, owes something to those upon whom the illusion is built.
Of course we know that despite the studies and proposed solutions the Liberal and Conservative governments have seen fit to reward corporations with tax cuts, and creating class warfare upon the poor.
The Conservative government has now taken the same approach to women’s issues. [Read more…] about Foodbanking Women’s Issues
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