Category: feminism

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feminism

No. No you did not misspeak.

In case you missed the news flash, Todd Akin, congressman and candidate for Senate in Missouri, is a despicable shitbag who lacks even basic understanding of human biology:

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy from rape) is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in a clip posted to YouTube by the Democratic super PAC American Bridge. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
(from WaPo)

Of course, having called down the fury of every human being on the planet with even a shred of decency on his head, he immediately backpedaled:

“In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year…”
(same article)

No, Todd Akin. You did not misspeak. Unless by “misspoke” you mean “Whoops I told everyone what I actually think and now you’re all mad so I guess I’d better lie my ass off.” Misspeaking means you said pineapple instead of papaya when you were talking about what you had in your fruit salad. It means you had a brain fart and forgot the word ostracod in the middle of a presentation. You don’t get to pretend it was just a little verbal flub (teehee!) when you flaunted not only your jaw-dropping ignorance but your complete lack of empathy as well.

Don’t you dare, for shame, speak of empathy. If you had a single speck of empathy in your being, you wouldn’t be attacking the suffering and trauma of countless women and men by implying there is even such an animal as a rape that doesn’t count.

And no, this does not come out of the blue. Justine Larbalestier has a nice summary on her blog about just how pathetically ancient this “legitimate rape” line is. Guess it’s nice to know he’s getting his knowledge of reproductive mechanisms from the eighteenth century, along with presumably his understanding of biology in general as well. He’s not alone in this backward clinging to long-debunked ideas. However, for bonus laugh-and-cry-simultaneously fuckery, I will note that Akin is on the House Science Committee. Awesome!

Even better, Akin has since clarified his position even more on Mike Huckabee’s radio show:

Huckabee asked Akin whether he was talking about “forcible rape” when he used the term “legitimate rape.”
“I was talking about forcible rape, and it was absolutely the wrong word,” Akin said.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this. Remember last year? Remember when the Republicans tried to pass a bill prevented Medicaid funding of abortions except in cases of “forcible rape,” only backing off when it called down a veritable firestorm on their heads? Todd Akin was in on that too. A hell of a lot of Republicans in the House were, including Paul Ryan. Akin didn’t misspeak now, and it was no mistake when he supported that “forcible rape” language either; he hasn’t changed his mind, he’s just taken another reminder that he shouldn’t say those things out loud where people of conscience can hear.

I have seen a lot of conservatives attacking Akin and distancing themselves from him. Good for them, and I surely do appreciate it. But this “legitimate rape” thing is just the same as the despicable “forcible rape” language of last year – Akin himself has confirmed that. This is an attempt to redefine the very idea of rape to the detriment of victims and the benefit of predators. And now one of the supporters of that gem could be the next Vice President.

The eighteenth century called. They want their science and their values back.

Categories
feminism rants writing

You know what else is part of the beautiful spectrum of human experience?

Not having kids.

Articles like this one seem designed to piss me off and make me pound out ranty things on my keyboard.

Yet putting yourself last is one of the best things that can happen to a writer. I make no moral claims for motherhood ­— which can bring out the worst in a person, in the form of vicarious rivalry, bitchiness, envy and even mental illness — but going through the ring of fire does change you and bring about a deeper understanding of human nature.

Well, Mrs. Craig, I’d argue it hasn’t given you a deeper understanding of the human nature of people who aren’t particularly interested in having kids.

I arrived at the essay by way of one of Amanda Marcotte‘s tweets. She made the very excellent point that you don’t see concern trolling of this sort going on about Gore Vidal or any other male author that dies. I would hope that children are a similarly transformational experience for the men who are invested in them, and that does seem to be the case from my own personal observations. A little unfair to the men, hey?

Really, it’s unfair to everyone. From start to finish, once I got past the sound of blood rushing in my ears, the essay reads like a personal justification. Sure, Mrs. Craig has less time to write, but she’s traded it for a deeper understanding of human nature and therefore that choice is superior! Or something! Everyone should do it! Have babies, it makes you more awesome and a better writer!

I am not here to make fun of the choice to have children. It’s obviously been very meaningful for Mrs. Craig, as it is for many people who go that route in their lives. But I am going to challenge this implication of inherent superiority. Having children is one branch in the path a human life can take, a major direction. It leads to one set of unique experiences and feelings.

Not having children is just as major of a path, and diverges from itself even when you consider the question of if it was by choice or not. That leads to a whole different sort of life, a different array of feelings and experiences.

Neither is superior.

The whole point of art, whether it’s painting or writing or interpretive dance or covering yourself with pudding and being an installment piece on the sidewalk for an afternoon is that you are trying to communicate and imagine through the lens of human experience. Frankly, if we all had the same experiences, I think it’d be pretty goddamn dull. It’s about getting out there and living your life to the fullest extent you can and then sharing what you’ve learned and felt and loved and lost and hated with everyone else.

Because none of us are immortal. We can’t feel every feeling and experience everything that there is in this constantly expanding world of ours. It’s not possible. That’s why there’s art, because it’s one way to share, to help people taste a life they will never otherwise know.

For some of us, living life to the fullest is having children and watching them grow, feeling all that love and pain. For some of us, it’s using the extra time and money to ride a bike along the Great Wall of China and dance until three in the morning and kiss a stranger and then have the worst hangover ever. What matters is that we’re living and creating. Unless the person you’re squaring off with does nothing but pick their belly button and watch Real Housewives, your life path isn’t inherently superior. It’s just different.

And different is good, right? Because I don’t want to live your life, as fulfilling as you find it. I want to live mine.

Categories
feminism olympics

But don’t do *too* well.

One of the Chinese swimmers has been accused of doping because she swam too well, beating her personal best by seven seconds. Like a “superwoman.” This is the bit out of the article that really bugs me:

Ye stunned world swimming on Saturday by winning gold in the 400m individual medley in a world-record time. It was her final 100m of freestyle, in which she recorded a split time of 58.68sec, that aroused Leonard’s suspicion. Over the last 50m she was quicker than the American Ryan Lochte, who won the men’s 400m individual medley in the second-fastest time in history.

I can’t really say one way or the other what’s going on. Maybe there’s doping, maybe there’s not. It’ll come out eventually. But some of the way this is being framed reminds me a lot of Caster Semenya in 2008; she was accused of being a man and got treated shamefully because she ran too well. It was total bullshit and I’m incredibly glad she’s back for 2012 so I can cheer for her some more. I suppose I should feel relieved that so far no one’s accused Ye Shiwen of not being a woman. But when one of the major warning signs is that a woman out swam a man, yeah. Gives me that super uncomfortable feeling.

Of course, men get accused of doping just as much, and it is a major problem in sports. Though it seems to me that it’s this insane game of pressure on athletes. Perform like a superhuman, but if you’re too superhuman, prepare to be regarded with chilling suspicion. With added nasty implications from the opposing team, because making it to the Olympics doesn’t mean one can take being skunked with sportsmanlike grace. It also feels like there’s an extra side of shit for this deluxe combo shit meal for female athletes, since there seems to be an expectation that they will perform at peak while still being feminine enough, whatever the hell that even means.

I sincerely hope that Ye Shiwen is cleared of the allegations of doping, and that she is just such a giant badass she got a better time than a guy. That would be amazing. Almost as amazing as Caster Semenya.

I’d much rather read about the badminton scandal, since just combining those two words makes it automatically hilarious.

Categories
feminism lgbt

To Space and Back

When I was ten, this was one of my favorite books. To be honest, at that point it was a little below my reading level. But I didn’t care. It was about Sally Ride. I’d just recently seen The Right Stuff and I remember being so disappointed that there were no girls among the astronauts in that movie. But what could you do, it was history. And as far as I could tell, where history was concerned women only rarely got to do cool things. 
Well, Sally Ride was also part of history. Much more recent history, but she was in there nonetheless. She’d been to space on the shuttle. She’d proven for America what Valentina Tershkova had shown in the USSR twenty years before. Women could go into space.
I didn’t have any designs on being an astronaut. My big brother was the astronomy enthusiast of the family. He had a telescope and built models of the space shuttle and space station. For me, the importance of Sally Ride wasn’t that I thought I could follow directly in her footsteps.
It was that she proved that not even the sky was the limit. Girls could do anything. We just had to keep fighting against anyone that tried to hold us back. 
I also really loved her hair. 
It was the 80s, okay?
Her obituary told the world something else new: she was a lesbian. I wish I had known that. I wish a lot of kids had known that. Not because we have some kind of puerile right to delve into her private life. But rather  because it would have been one more thing for younger me to hold close. Girls can go to space. Girls who like girls can go to space, and write books, and have amazing lives and love. And screw the haters, because Sally Ride got to look down on the Earth from orbit and see something so beautiful that some call it God. 
My heart goes out to her partner, and it makes me so angry to think that she’ll be denied the benefits that should be hers. Maybe that will change, soon. Women went to space. In time, we can do anything.
Thank you, Sally Ride. Ten-year-old me thanks you, and says she loves you. We all come from the ashes of stars. Some just get closer to returning than the rest of us. 
Categories
feminism

Avon called and I didn’t answer.

Someone leaves Avon catalogs in the ladies’ restroom that’s nearest my office. I have no idea who. Sometimes I look at them, because, you know. Anyone who claims they’ve never wanted a little reading material in the bathroom is lying, or possibly just made of plastic.

The Avon catalog is something I manifestly Do Not Get. Its contents are a complete mystery to me, with the possible exception of the nail polish. At the age of thirty-one, I still have no idea how to put on makeup as anything more than an abstract. I have two sets of makeup, both of which were bought for weddings with the help of friends (one for mine, one for my friend Marie’s) and they sit in a little bag in the corner of the linen closet, exiled for all time. For both those sets of makeup, I had to have someone actually apply it to my face, because I’m utterly incompetent at it.

As far as I can remember, my mother never wore makeup when I was growing up. (And still doesn’t now.) Perhaps that’s why it was never a thing that was on my radar. A friend I had in grade school had one of those awful play makeup sets, and I recall spending one afternoon messing with it before the charm was completely lost. Maybe I had more overtly feminine [coded] moments when I was even younger, but if so I can’t remember them any longer.

I have this weird, occasional pang where I wonder if I ought to make it my business to learn how to wear makeup properly, build up a little stock, actually do the thing occasionally. Considering it’s not something I actually want, that fleeting thought never experiences any kind of follow-up. It could be that I’m just that lazy. It could also be that I don’t like how makeup feels on my face, and I don’t really like how it makes me look not myself – that can’t be Rachael, she doesn’t wear lipstick.

It’s not just the makeup that I don’t get. It’s the jewelry. I have eight earrings which cannot be removed without using pliers, and I never get around to wearing anything in my earlobes, the only place earrings can be easily changed. The only other jewelry I ever wear is my wedding band and my Thor’s Hammer necklace, because that’s like an automatic tic where I roll out of bed, turn off the alarm and slip the leather string over my head. A catalog full of cheap but cute jewelry, little bits of shiny that are meant to be combined with specific outfits leaves me utterly mystified. I want my shiny utilitarian, daily wear, and by preference not all that shiny.

It’s also the dresses, the obviously disposable shoes that are very pretty but would functionally be horrific to wear. I don’t want to think about running stairs in those things. And don’t the fake flowers glued on to the sandal straps make your feet itch? Every now and then when I’m at Lane Bryant, desperately trying to find a shirt I can wear for work that doesn’t make me feel ridiculous because it has ruffles on it, I try on a dress and feel utterly silly.

All of these things, I just don’t understand. My happy place is a tank top, jeans, and Pumas. Or bike shorts and an Arrogant Bastard jersey. So why is it that every now and then, I have this weird, almost guilty pang, as if something awful in the back of my brain is whispering, you’re a girl, you should get this stuff.

It’s total bullshit, of course. It’s just fine if there are people who like shiny and makeup and brightly colored things. It should be just as fine for there to be people who don’t. And it should be fine that I’m one of those people. So where does this thought even come from? Alien mind control slug? It doesn’t even feel like something I’d think, and it never goes further than me trying on a dress, looking in the mirror, and going Oh hell no.

Sometimes I like to imagine that maybe there’s a boy out there who got my societally mandated portion of shiny and makeup. I hope he looks utterly gorgeous. And I hope all of his friends are as understanding of him as mine are of me and my complete inability to even want to wear eye shadow.

Categories
feminism someone is wrong on the internet

Don’t Use This Argument Because OMG Children Are Starving in Africa

Raise your hand if this is a familiar source of tooth-grinding frustration: “Shame on you for being concerned/upset/worried about thing X, because thing Y is way worse.”

(This post started as a comment over at a post Jen wrote about comments Richard Dawkins made. But this annoys me enough, I want to just make it a post all its own. And also, I want to detach it from GettingHitOnInAnElevator-gate. Because really, it’s a more general complaint and what Richard Dawkins said is just one example.)

Now, I’ve run across this faux-argument mostly when I bring up an issue as a feminist, but I’m sure that it happens on other topics1. In one instance (among many), a couple of years ago I got in to the middle of a dogpile on the World of Warcraft forums because several of us female type humans had the audacity to say that we thought there was a particular thing in the game that was probably intended to be cute, but we found it sexist, creepy, and insulting. And immediately, that argument got pulled on us. We’re not allowed to complain that something in the game sexist and insulting because women in less socially liberal countries are under the thumb of some really horrible misogynists.

There are a multitude of reasons that this “argument” is a steaming pile of bullshit:

1) We are capable of being concerned with more than one thing at a time. And we can be concerned about an array of both large and small issues and speak out about them. Feminist women and our feminist male allies are – and this comes as a shock, I know – capable of multitasking.

2) You (directed at the general “you” that uses this ridiculous argument) do not have any way of knowing what I have and have not done toward the cause of women in less privileged countries. And further, it does not matter because you have no right to dictate to me what I can and can’t be concerned about.

3) You may think that thing X is less important than thing Y, but you must also acknowledge that I am directly affected by thing X, and that potentially gives me more power to do something about it. There is a limit to what one of us can do on our own about a giant issue in a far away place; we can donate money, we can volunteer, we can work to raise awareness. A “smaller” issue that affects you personally is something that you can act much more directly on. So you know what? I cannot personally end the practice of female genital mutilation. But I can personally try to change something that affects me directly – to use the WoW example, as a paying customer of the company that’s doing something offensive, I can make a stink about “Hey, I think this is BS.”

4) EVERYONE performs this sort of mutlitasking and issue triage. Everyone. Trying to tell someone they shouldn’t is frankly hypocritical.

5) Also, if you are that concerned about thing Y, why the hell are you wasting your valuable time and energy arguing with silly wrong-headed feminazis on the internet instead of combating thing Y?

6) Every time I hear this argument, this is what I hear: “The issue you have chosen to speak about is one that I dislike or makes me uncomfortable, and I don’t really have a good answer to it. Therefore I will try to shame you with my powers of sarcasm in to shutting up because OMG children are starving in Africa.”

Ultimately, it comes across as almost less insulting if your “argument” is just a baldly stated “go make me a sandwich,” because at least then it doesn’t sound like you’re pretending to be on our side.

Please, just let this argument go; it’s not going to convince anyone, and is frankly going to fan the flames of anger because it sounds so damn condescending. There are a lot of other ways to deal with something you think is turning in to a tempest in a teapot. Ignoring it could be one course of action, since for some reason basically telling people to shut the hell up on the internet doesn’t work unless you have the power to simultaneously kill everyone’s broadband and melt their smart phones. Maybe just saying “I don’t consider this an issue so I’m going to go do something else” would come out as more positive, and you can have a smug little thrill that you’re totally the only adult in the room as you go flouncing away.

Or hey, maybe trying to understand why people are freaking the hell out about something you consider to be a non-issue could be worth a shot. You never know.

1 – Hm, maybe along the lines of “You shouldn’t whine about ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance because there are countries where being an atheist will just get you executed!” And so on.

Categories
feminism movie

Of Fishnets and Fully Automatic Weapons

ETA on 11.9.14 to note that wow I basically disagree with everything I said in this. WTF, self. Well, other than the fact that this movie is super, super pretty.

I saw Sucker Punch yesterday.

And I really liked it.

Which actually came as something of a surprise to me, since I generally tend to agree with the reviews over at io9 when it comes to saying mean things about movies, and Sucker Punch got a solid thumbs down there.

Now, part of it might be that I went into the movie with extremely low expectations. I’d already read a couple of reviews which, to summarize with nice words, characterized the movie as completely vacuous. And boring. I actually felt more than a little shocked that I found it neither boring, nor vacuous.

Now, to be clear, I am in no way claiming that Sucker Punch is a great movie. It’s no Inception. But as Zack Snyder movies go, this one was – as expected – extremely pretty, and much, much better than, say, 300. If you like that sort of eye candy, I think it’s worth spending the money to see it. If you don’t like that kind of movie, don’t waste your time.

Also, the soundtrack is excellent.

I’ve got a few thoughts about it, so there are going to be SPOILERS all over the place. You have been warned.

In General
I don’t regret spending $8.50 or two hours of my afternoon to see this movie. In fact, I really enjoyed it, and found most of the action sequences quite exciting. A lot of the movie – and not just the action sequences – really did make me think of anime. While the action, especially the first sequence with the huge samurai robots, obviously owe a lot to the tropes of anime, a lot of the narrative logic put me in mind of anime as well. And since I have a record of really liking anime, I think I was a lot more willing to to just accept certain things about the story and the way it went. I also most definitely did not find the non-action sequences boring.

So, About That Whorehouse Thing
I’ve seen a lot of snippy commentary about Babydoll “escaping” into a bordello as her first layer of fantasy. I would agree that it doesn’t make sense for that fantasy to be an escape. However, it also really didn’t strike me as an actual mental escape for a character, but rather a fantasy in which she was attempting to make sense of the way she and the other women were being treated in the mental institution.

It’s made very clear at the end of the movie that Blue Jones, the super creepy orderly that sports a sad little pornstache in Babydoll’s bordello fantasy, has been sexually abusing Babydoll in the real world. Which I think also heavily implies that the other girls who are shown being abused or used by men in the bordello fantasy were also being abused by those same men in reality. I think that in light of the story, it’s reasonable for Babydoll to make sense of that real-world sexual abuse by transforming the hospital into a bordello – because while the bordello is still a prison, it’s at least a prison environment where it makes some kind of twisted sense for the men to be using the women in that way.

Blue Pornstache was incredibly creepy. Beyond his basic concept as an orderly that abuses powerless mental patients, he had some excellently evil dialog in his guise as the bordello’s owner. In a scene near the end, he scares the hell out of the women (and then murders two of them) while going off on a classic abuser rant that left me squirming in my seat – not because it was badly done, but because the character was just such a horrific person. He verbally sets up a false situation where the women are somehow in a “partnership” with him (instead of being his victims) and not keeping up their end of the “bargain,” which means they’re forcing his hand and giving him no choice but to, you know, shoot them.

Ugh. The actor did a good job. It’s a wonder he could stand to be in the same room as himself.

I also think it’s interesting that we don’t actually ever hear Babydoll speak outside of the fantasy bordello world. (At least not that I recall after a single viewing.) I think that’s partially because in her own fantasy, she has more strength and control. While obviously she and the other girls are still very much abused prisoners within the pretend bordello, turning them from mental patients in to whores at least allows them to use their sexuality as a weapon. Because in most [patriarchy-owned] narratives, the only women who get to make use of their sexuality in any way are whores.

So with the bordello as the coping-fantasy, then the action sequences become the actual escape-fantasy. I suppose it’s where Babydoll mentally runs off to when she’s doing something so personally destructive that she can’t even handle it in the context of bordello. And that’s the place where the women are all a kick-ass, elite team that are accomplishing their goals in a way that they can perhaps feel some pride in.

Though I Will Say One Thing About the Sexy Costumes
In the action sequences, there were sexy costumes. But what struck me was how… unsexy everything but the sexy costumes were. Which I actually really, really appreciated. The sexy costumes just sort of became the idea of a uniform for each of the girls. I found that very interesting… because it made the thing feel stylized rather than titillating.

Empowerment
All that said, I think that anyone who claims that this movie is somehow about female empowerment needs to have their head examined. Or possibly needs to get sent to a remedial women’s studies class. Or maybe both.

The basic argument seems to be that there is female empowerment in the movie because:
a) Women with guns
b) Women take control of their own sexuality by the end (NOTE: they don’t.)
c) In the end, the women win because Sweet Pea escapes and survives.

In Sucker Punch, we have Sweet Pea escaping, triumphing over abuse by surviving, and Babydoll also gets her own sort of revenge by being released from the bonds of the real world via lobotomy and sets off a series of events that get her abuser brought to justice. Neither of these things ultimately help out the other women, who all get murdered.

I think that there is something very valid to the narrative of triumph over one’s abusers by surviving them. I think there’s also a lot to be said for revenge fantasies – the desire to take vengeance on one’s abuser is a powerful one, whether the victim is male or female, and no matter what sort of abuse is occurring. But I also think that it’s very sloppy to equate those things with empowerment because it still presupposes a world where abuse is the norm and the victims defenseless.

So, what would the for reals female empowerment version of Sucker Punch look like? Honestly, I have not clue one. Considering the basic premise of the movie – women trapped in a mental institution where they are abused by their male caretakers – I don’t know if it would be possible to write that into a narrative of true female empowerment. At the very least, I don’t think you can call it empowerment if the woman who survives is the exception, rather than the rule.

But the thing is, I also think that’s just fine… as long as it’s actually understood that this isn’t what empowerment looks like.

It’s a pretty movie where women shoot and stab things. Occasionally at the same time. It’s got an interesting concept and a great soundtrack. I specifically bought a small popcorn so I could munch along with the movie, because that’s just the sort of film it is. There’s really no need to make it out as more than that, is there?

Categories
feminism geology pictures

What I’ve been doing lately…

It’s been a busy week… couple of weeks… month… well, from about January on. But I’ve been doing things with my time, at least.

For example, today I went to Denver, CO’s Rally for the American Dream. With 3000 of my fellow Coloradoans – including my husband and my parents – I was in good company indeed.

We did a lot of cheering, a lot of chanting. There were maybe ten or twenty “Tea Party” counter protesters. One of whom wandered around in the crowd and tried to start trouble with his bizarre “Can’t get a taxi? Blame the Dems” and “Shame on Colorado Dems for Voting for an African” signs. He was completely ignored by the crowd, and then the cops chased him off.

The IAFF was out in force, as were a lot of other union people – and ordinary citizens. At the end of the rally, the Walk for Choice took off. A lot of us joined in, since it’s another important thing to support. We walked from the capital to Writer Square and back, shouting chants like, “Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate!”

At the end of the Walk for Choice, there were maybe ten crazy anti-choice people waiting at the capital, on the other side of the street. It was standard “OMG THE BABEEZ” bullshit. It was also the most surreal moment of the afternoon – there was a very odd old guy with the anti-choicers, holding a very standard sign in one hand. His other hand was raised in a fist and covered with – I swear I am not making this up – a sagging latex mask of Ronald Reagan. Overcome by just how bizarre it was, I shouted across the street, “Dude, you’ve got a severed head on your hand!”

So yeah. The disembodied zombie head of Ronald Reagan doesn’t want you to have an abortion. Or something. Weird. Eerie.

I have also been putting a lot of time in at the core lab. If you want to see what’s been eating up most of my spare time, here are some pictures from our current core, which is from a meandering river deposit. I’ve tried to add some description to the photos, and hopefully it’s not too technical.

Busy busy!

Categories
colorado feminism

A child should be a choice

Today I hung my No On 62 sign on my patio door. I don’t actually have a yard, so yard signs aren’t really possible. I also got my Blue Book today, which I tore in to immediately. Mostly because I was curious about what the Blue Book had to say about Amendment 62, since the proponents of the measure tried to sue over it a couple weeks ago.

“They have not included a single word — not a single word — of our arguments,” Garcia-Jones said.

Likely because the arguments of the proponents are either filled with emotionally charged language, which has no place in the exceptionally dry and matter-of-fact style of the Blue Book, or because the arguments were patently untrue.

Garcia-Jones said that the Blue Book’s arguments against Amendment 62 are false because it could never, as the booklet states, cause women to be denied medical treatment for a miscarriage. The amendment could not, he said, put doctors and other health professionals at risk of legal action for providing medical care to women of childbearing age.

I will Give Garcia-Jones the benefit of the doubt and not accuse him of lying in this case. I think he simply does not understand the unintended consequences of banning abortion absolutely. Take a look at what’s happened in El Salvador; doctors become reluctant to give care for miscarriages, since they may be afraid that they will be accused of causing the miscarriage, or the miscarriage itself might be the result of an illegal abortion. And frankly, I think if abortion were made absolutely illegal, doctors might very well not want to treat women of childbearing age because they may become pregnant at any time and not necessarily realize it. If you want to define a fertilized egg as a person, well, last I checked even if you accidentally kill a person, you don’t just get a pat on the head and a wave to go on your merry way.

Of course, I’m naughty for even using the phrase “fertilized egg.” One of the proponents said:

“I think it’s important to note with the term fertilized egg, that’s the same thing as using the N word for an African American,” said Mason. “Because it’s a dehumanizing term and it’s not based in science. The term would be a zygote, or an embryo, speaking of a unique individual.”

A fertilized egg is a zygote is a fertilized egg. ACOG certainly uses the term “fertilized egg” without blushing. I think it’s really an attempt by the 62 proponents to up the emotional charge on the language, because they know that they can’t win with either logic or science. I’m actually quite surprised Mason isn’t insisting on calling it a baby from the instant of conception onward, but that’s probably a little too extreme.

I’d like to throw one more quote at you, where the proponents try to squirm out of the fact that the amendment would ban many extremely popular forms of birth control, including my favorite, the pill:

True contraception prevents fertilization and personhood for pre-born babies will legally protect every baby from the beginning of his or her biological development,” said Hanks in an e-mail. “Only those forms of “birth control” that extinguish a life that has already begun will be impacted. Many of the oral “contraceptives” have an action that makes the womb inhospitable to a developing embryo and hence, the new living, growing baby is prevented from residing where his or her Creator intended until birth.”

This quote characterizes everything that is wrong with the position of the Amendment 62 proponents – and delineates why I don’t just think they’re idiots, I actively hate them.

To begin with, Hanks brings up the “Creator” and the Creator’s intentions as a means to justify banning birth control. For those of us that don’t believe in gods, this is an argument that holds no water. It makes the point very clear that Amendment 62 is about making a personal religious belief into a law that would control the lives of all women that live in Colorado.

But even more to the point, everything in that quote is about the baby. The woman is reduced to a womb, to “where his or her Creator” intends the baby to reside. In their efforts to grant “personhood” to a fertilized egg, they simultaneously remove “personhood” from the woman involved.

That is what makes me angry, and filled with hate, and very afraid. Since I first became aware of the abortion debate, I honed in immediately on the fact that efforts to ban abortion reduce women to less than full citizens, chattel who do not truly own and control their own bodies and can be forced by the state to complete a pregnancy. I don’t appreciate my rights, my life, my existence being reduced to the state of one organ within my body.

And perhaps that’s the cruelest joke of this horrible debate. These people have made me resent the very idea of being pregnant, have made me resent babies. Because I can’t help but resent anything and anyone that would reduce my life from a glorious adventure that I (mostly) direct to an existence that is wholly outside of my own control.

I often see bumper stickers around here, that say: “It’s a child, not a choice.” I could not disagree more. It is a choice. It should be a choice. It must be a choice.

I have several friends that have children, who they love very much. Each and every one of these amazing women, whether the pregnancy was intentional or not, ultimately chose to change the course of her life and become a mother. That choice made the baby a cherished and loved member of the family, rather than a burden forced on the mother by the state.

I don’t want to be a mother right now. I may never want to be. But I want that chance, to decide for myself. I want that choice. I want all women to have that choice. In the future, I want my niece to have that choice.

No on 62.

Categories
feminism skepticism

PZ wants opinions from us womens

At Pharyngula: the Woman Problem

It’s actually very refreshing to see someone from the male half of the species asking this question and requesting opinions. From a feminist standpoint, I’ve long considered PZ to be an ally to the cause (and a feminist himself) so he hasn’t disappointed me here.

I already voiced my opinion in the comments, but since this is my blog and I can say whatever the hell I want, I’m going to repeat myself here and expand it a bit.

So, how can we get more women involved in atheism and/or skepticism? I’m looking at this from more the viewpoint of skepticism, mostly because I don’t even have a passing handshake with organized atheism.

  • Make events more kid-friendly/provide some sort of childcare – In his post, PZ links to a post by Skeptifem that is well worth the read. One of her major points is that women are often very busy, and that how busy we are often goes unacknowledged. I think one of the really pertinent things here is child care. Now, a lot of skeptical households might be all manner of progressive and enlightened, but women still tend to bear the burden of housework. (One example here.) That likely makes it a lot more difficult for a woman to make it to an all-weekend event, for example, because she would have to either put off that work (the vacuuming can wait) or arrange for someone else to take over (the kids probably need someone to feed them). Making major events/conferences child friendly to the extent that there’s either activities for the kids to engage in while mom’s listening to lectures or providing on-site babysitting (I’d daresay even for an extra, reasonable fee) would probably enable a lot more attendance from women. And I’m saying this as a woman who doesn’t have kids and isn’t planning to in the near future – I just don’t think that people in my situation make up the bulk of women that might want to be involved in organized skepticism.
  • Make an effort to include more women from the top down
    Oh noes, not affirmative action! What the fuck ever. I don’t think all women are shrinking violets that would shy away from attending a giant sausage fest of events. I’ve gone to a great many events (for various organizations) where women were very much in the minority. But I also know that I was not entirely comfortable in doing so – and would often seek out other women if my discomfort level got out of control – and this even though I don’t have a problem being confrontational and I’m reasonably intimidating when I want to be. The more women you have at your event, the more welcome other women will generally feel there. And the way you advertise your event as a safe and interesting place for (feminist) women is by having having female speakers – or in a pinch, outspoken male allies. So go out of your way to find more woman.

    I think the dearth of female speakers/presenters at events may be produced by a sort of negative feedback loop. Women are sometimes treated as if we don’t have anything interesting to say, therefore we are not given opportunities to speak, therefore anything interesting we might have to say is not heard by a broader audience. There aren’t many women who are “big names” within the skeptical movement, compared to men. A lot of that fame within the movement feeds on itself. If you’ve got a little fame as a skeptic, you get asked to speak at an event, and thus you are more famous and get asked to more events. Unless you’re given a platform to pontificate upon, it doesn’t matter how interesting and erudite you are. You won’t be heard.

  • Continue working to make skepticism mainstream for women
    Someone in PZ’s comments pointed out that there’s plenty of female attendance at woo events. I’d lay good money that those sort of events are strongly aimed at women, because it’s very socially acceptable for women to be into all sorts of unscientific shit. Encourage women to shy away from the hard rationalism of science and then give them somewhere that their socially acceptable “intuition” can have free reign and be praised, you’re damn right they’re going to feel comfortable and happy going to those kind of events. So what can we do about that? Prominently advertise the women who are involved in skepticism and do our part to making rationality and intellect laudable female traits. Continue the general work of science cheerleading and promotion of skepticism, but make certain that women are involved in that as well. Promoting skepticism with an all (or almost all) male face unfortunately just contributes to the image that skepticism is male territory and women have no place there.
  • Make the environment safer/more welcoming
    We have varying degrees of comfort about sexist jokes. Personally, I know I am completely unbothered at times, and at other times I’m as offended as hell. Not all women are like me. Some are more sensitive or less sensitive. But if you foster an environment where it’s okay to make sexist comments or jokes, and the only male reaction to it is either laughter or a dismissal of female complaints, you can’t really blame some of the women for just checking out entirely. This even comes down to individual responsibility of attendees. If you want to see more women at conferences, then when one of your fellow men gets creepy at some poor woman whose only mistake was being in his presence while in possession of breasts, you’d damnwell better tell him to knock it the hell off. If you really want more women at these events, then you’d better want us there for our contributions, and not just because you want someone that you can hit on.
  • Don’t insult our intelligence
    Enough with mansplaining. Seriously. And the next person to claim that my pitiful ladybrain just can’t handle math is getting punched in the face. I mean it.
    •

    There are probably other barriers to female attendance. If you look for the comments on PZ’s post from someone with the nick Cerberus, she makes some really good points as well – like how often libertarianism is given a free ride, and how that may really put some people off. (I tend to tune out the libertarian stuff, since I am so, so very done with it.) The big thing is that there are barriers, and acknowledging them is the first step to taking them down.

    And is this a problem that actually does need to be addressed? If we’re just in this for show and to pat ourselves on the back, well, in that case it’s fine to dismiss the potential contributions of a great many people because getting them involved is too much effort. If we’re just in this so we can feel superior to all those poor schmucks who just aren’t rational enough, then it’s a nice ego boost to shake our heads and cluck our tongues about all those sad women, who just can’t do skepticism because they’re wired to be “intuitive” and “feeling,” whatever the fuck that means.

    If we’re serious about our cause and our mission, however, then we’ve already waited too long. It’s a problem and a sad waste that we’re missing out on so many people that could otherwise be contributing. It’s a problem and a base hypocrisy that some are not casting a skeptical eye at our own social institutions. And it’s long past time things changed.