April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

equality

The Handmaids Tale Dystopia Meets Reality

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This story is both a horrific example of the human trafficking going on in the world and a warning as to what could happen to women should the womb police get their way.

Anyone familiar with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale will recognize this type of scenario;

In its promotional material, the Asia-based operation makes pregnancy sound like an illness. Its symptoms include “loss of intimacy,” growing “out of shape” and, of course, “birth pangs.”

The solution? Fertilize a foreign stranger who will be fed nutritious meals, housed in a Bangkok suburb, monitored around the clock and kept to a precise sleep-wake schedule. “It is quite suitable,” says the agency’s broken-English pitch, “for the women who desire to have kids but no time for pregnancy.”

Sadly this lives not in the pages of a dystopian warning but is a profitable business in Asia. Recent developments of the GOP war on women in the States has many bloggers and tweeters asking if the GOP and their supporters see women as breeding stock, anti abortionists have even caused women to be investigated and arrested simply for thinking about abortion. Some lawmakers are considering investigating women for miscarriages. How long before laws are enforced that require pregnant or pre-pregnant women to adhere to specific types of behaviour very much like this;

This high degree of scrutiny is actually promoted by the company on the Chinese-language portion of its site. Surrogates are “accompanied by hand” while walking around the community, according to the site, which also promises they’ll be woken at 7 a.m., fed at specific times each day and put to bed at 10 p.m.

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.

Mothers

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An interesting article at Women’s Enews on mothering and the value placed on it. While much lip service is given to the undertaking, little is done to actually support those choosing to have children.

(WOMENSENEWS)–The news media loves stories about highly educated mothers opting out of rewarding careers to stay at home with their young children.

Anecdotal evidence unsupported by serious research is also constantly drumming home the idea that women consider themselves the best providers of child care. For example, a 2006 Salary.com survey of what mothers do “on the job” leads with the headline “Dream Job: Stay at Home Mom.” Although the survey claims that equal numbers of working and stay-at-home mothers participated, quotes from the happy, at-home mothers dominate the report.

For instance, working mothers are “horrified” at the thought of hiring strangers to care for their children, they believe that mother’s care is “priceless” and that motherhood is the “greatest job in the world.” It’s easy to stay on message: Women must choose between work and family.

But the opposite message is sent to low-income mothers.

The recent debate over the welfare-to-work provisions of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families–or welfare–captures this difference. Congress did not debate the best means to provide even minimally adequate day care to the children of single parents. Instead they wondered whether or not the required hours of paid work should be increased!

Why does popular sentiment portray some mothers as virtuous when they drop out of the labor force to care for their families, while others are responsible only if they work for pay outside the home?

With Mothers Day coming up and the usual platitudes running rampant trying to get you to spend spend spend to show mom how much you love her, and with the forced pregnancy folks all creamed up about Bushie and company and their anti choice stance, I thought it might be interesting to see just how much mothers are valued once those sacred womb contents are born. [Read more…] about Mothers

Rights for the Rich only

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The Star has an article on the Charter today,

A quarter-century later, the Charter is at a crossroads. While there may be much to celebrate, the process of using it to establish rights is time-consuming and expensive, almost entirely dependent on government subsidies and the benevolence of lawyers to bankroll cases, sometimes costing millions of dollars.

Restrictions on legal aid and a decision last fall by the Conservative government to kill the Court Challenges Program, which helped fund individuals and citizen groups fighting for constitutional protections, have made the Charter more inaccessible than ever.

Today, many experts are pessimistic about its future as a tool in battling for equality and fending off unwarranted government intrusions into people’s lives. Like fine champagne, the Charter is in danger of becoming a luxury many never taste.

Interesting quotes from a conservative on rights for the average Canadian.

Rainer Knopff, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, said the program was “a biased boondoggle that had gone well past its `best before’ date.”

The program only funded groups on “one side” of the political spectrum while “socially conservative groups never got any money. Not a penny, as far as I know,” said Knopff.
He also echoed then-Treasury Board president John Baird’s suggestion, made in defending the decision to kill the program, that it made no sense for Ottawa to spend public money helping groups challenge its own legislation.
“I don’t want to pay for surrogate litigants,” said Knopff, arguing public interest groups should raise their own money for Charter cases. “If they can’t raise the money – tough.”

Apparently conservatives feel rights are for those that can afford them. Not that this is surprising, however, it is nice to have it so neatly laid out.

One can only hope that during an election campaign these words along with those of Harper saying that ordinary Canadians aren’t protesting complete with scenes of farmers and seniors and youth out protesting, find major play in party ads.

Politics and Religion

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Rules of etiquette commonly call for the avoidance of certain topics. Chief among those are politics and religion.

It is worth noting that these are treated as two separate items, and rightly so.

When religion is factored into politics neither can work appropriately.

Religion deals with spirituality, with ones belief in being part of a specific god’s community and the leaders therein are charged with representing a specific community of belief.

Politics deals with issues specific to secular communities. An elected representative is charged with representing everyone, not just those who subscribe to a certain belief system. Though some governments tend to forget this. [Read more…] about Politics and Religion

The Optics of abortion

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In recent years, support for legal abortion has waned, which Lord attributes to the growing power of Christian fundamentalists: “We, like the good citizens of Iran, live in what amounts to a theocracy.”

A great article from Womens’ Enews showing how the media on abortion has been skewed to promote the anti choice agenda.

“Not one op-ed discussing abortion on the op-ed page of the most powerful liberal paper in the nation was written by a reproductive-rights advocate, a pro-choice service-provider or a representative of a women’s group,” reported the Prospect. “Instead, the officially pro-choice New York Times has hosted a conversation about abortion on its op-ed page that consisted almost entirely of the views of pro-life or abortion-ambivalent men, male scholars of the right and men with strong, usually Catholic, religious affiliations. In fact, a stunning 83 percent of the pieces appearing on the page that discussed abortion were written by men.”

Well isn’t that special! Nothing like equal time. [Read more…] about The Optics of abortion