10-11-12 - International Day Of The Girl Child

Today is the United Nations International Day of the Girl Child, a small step in the right direction toward mobilizing human potential for the improvement of peoples' lives on a global scale. It is well-known by international relief agencies that oppression of girls and women perpetuates cycles of poverty and misery while education and even slight empowerment of girls and women increases community health and prosperity even in the most challenging parts of the world.

Most North Americans give little thought to the problems of girls in third world countries, dismissing their anguish as the cultural or religious problems of others. Girls sold into "marriage", beaten and killed for infractions of religious laws - whether real or imagined - and girls and women treated as the less-than-human property of their male relatives or husbands are all things that we like to imagine can only happen far away from here. Yet, the patriarchal cultures which oppress girls and women so viciously and openly in southeast Asia and in Africa are only slightly removed from the patriarchal culture which still dominates the relatively affluent and "free" western world.

Until well into the 20th century, European and North American women were also regarded as chattel in the eyes of the law. They were oppressed and denied basic human rights in almost exactly the same manner as girls and women in the third world continue to be today. Until well past the middle of the 20th century, women in the west were denied access to female-controlled contraception - it was not until 1972 that American women won the legal right to use contraception without a husband's permission - thus enduring multiple unplanned and forced pregnancies or risking dangerous illegal abortions. Cultural misogyny combined with legally enshrined inequality and discrimination ensured that girls and women lagged far behind their male counterparts in educational, economic, creative and intellectual opportunities.

That situation began to change very rapidly with the legalization of contraception and the eventual legalization of women's freedom to gain access to female-controlled contraception enabling them to plan and space pregnancies, or to choose not to become pregnant at all. Women entered the workplace in record numbers and entered the halls of higher education, business and professions in unprecedented numbers as well. The feminist revolution of the 1970's was probably the swiftest and most sweeping era of improved opportunities and quality of life for women in human history, but it also brought the kind of cultural angst which rapid change always brings to societies. The social and reproductive emancipation of women frightened conservatives - both men and women - who were thoroughly inculcated in the cultural misogyny which perceives women as untrustworthy, amoral and even not quite fully human. The idea of more freedom for women - and most of all, reproductive power within female control - was seen as an attack on the very foundations of society by religious conservatives whose Biblical perspective saw the repression and subjugation of women as not only morally defensible but righteous and good.

The social changes in the west during the latter half of the 20th century posed exactly the same visceral threat to the dominance and privilege of western, (usually religious) men that the push for education and empowerment of girls and women poses to conservative men in the third world today. And just as conservative hardliners in southeast Asia and Africa are viciously pushing back against attempts to increase female equality in the third world through violent intimidation, so conservative hardliners in the west launched an almost immediate campaign to roll back the reproductive rights laws as well as to stem the tide of equal-rights legislation that was so long overdue and which, for the first time in human history, enjoyed majority support from both men and women in the late 1970's.

The tool which conservative hardliners used to reverse this popular support for women's equality and human rights was religion. The rise of evangelical Christian fundamentalism, the establishment of the (mostly Christian) homeschooling movement and the explosion of Christian megachurches and "colleges" dotting the landscape in the decade immediately following the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 1972 (legalizing contraception for both married and unmarried adults) and 1973 (legalizing abortion) were not mere coincidences. A relentlessly thorough campaign to radicalize a generation of Americans in ultra-conservative Bible-based Christianity was the one way that conservative hardliners - determined to push women back into social and sexual subjugation - knew they might succeed even in a nation renowned for its commitment to "liberty and justice for all" its citizens.

The anti-woman, anti-social justice movement was launched in the USA, but Christian fundamentalism has risen throughout the west, thanks in large measure to the efforts of US Christian dominionist "missions" - another facet of the ultra-conservative strategy which was developed as a reaction to the civil rights movement in the 1960's and, more urgently, to the feminist revolution in the 1970's. Religious fundamentalists see women's rights as unBiblical and therefore evil, so they oppose them with all the vigor they can muster. The threat to women's human rights will continue to spread throughout the western world, where issues such as freedom from reproductive slavery and access to education for girls and women had long been thought to be settled, even as progressives in Canada, Australia and Europe continue to believe (erroneously) that they are safe from religious extremism.

The terrible truth is that the War on Women in the west is very real and it is a religious war, just as it is in south Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The open violence against women and the ruthless intimidation of entire societies to ensure the almost total repression of women (and of people who might support women's rights) which we have witnessed in theocratic countries controlled by hard line religious zealots has not yet resurfaced in the west. But it will come back if western societies do not wake up and take action soon. Subjugation of women is the inescapably logical next step in a Bible-based culture.

The other terrible truth is that hidden violence against girls and women in the west and the constant, entrenched physical and psychological intimidation of girls and women has never actually ceased to be a factor in western society, either. In the latter half of the 20th century, legal protections were finally put in place to offer some protection - a moral commitment to justice in theory, at least, even though it was rarely carried through in practice - and just that theoretical equality before the law was enough to strengthen the resolve of women (and men who support women's equality) enough to allow them to go forward into universities and the workforce and larger society intent on claiming the right to a complete life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in spite of the reality of the still-dismal record of crimes against women that our society continues to accept.

However, with the rise to power of conservative Christianity in the USA nearly every one of the hard-won rights and meagre "protections" for women that were so recently gained have been challenged, chipped away or lost. As in third world societies where religious zealots viciously oppress girls and women while their families either support the oppression or are intimidated into acquiescence by the ruthlessly misogynistic culture, the apparatus for a similar system of female repression is gradually being reassembled in the west.

Just as third-world parents fearfully urge their daughters to obey strict wardrobe rules and suffocating restrictions to their freedom because to go out "improperly dressed" or without a "protector" would almost certainly "invite" rape or other violence from which families are helpless to protect their women because laws forbid it, so western parents may soon be forcing restrictions on their own daughters as the flimsy legal protections of their freedom and right to enjoy life are destroyed through various conservative-backed legislative measures. The legal redefinition of rape to exclude the most common types of sexual assault, the push for "personhood" laws which elevate the status of single-celled blastocysts - and would give rapists the right to force pregnancy on any woman - over the rights and humanity of girls and women, the legislative attacks on women's healthcare and contraception rights and the increasing pressure to force women and girls into more "modest" Biblically-approved dress and lifestyles are all early warning signs that the brief, hopeful interlude in the west when women thought they were marching toward true equality is very much in jeopardy.

So, today, let us think of the millions of girls and women in southern Asia and Africa on the International Day of the Girl Child. Their struggles continue to be epic, as they fight not only for human dignity, social justice and the right to fully human status, but for their very survival. Every day, girls as young as 11 and 12 are forced into marriage - a respectable-sounding word for what is too often actually sexual slavery, domestic servitude and forced, too-early child-bearing - and every day, thousands of them are permanently damaged or even die trying to give birth.

But let us also remember that girls and women in the west have only very recently escaped very similar status. Until very recently, western women had no right to vote, no right to own property and no rights or voice in domestic affairs or affairs of state. Women were the property of fathers and husbands, considered less than men in the eyes of the law as well as in the opinion of the patriarchal culture. Many people in today's culture still view women as lesser beings placed on earth by God so that men could use them to reproduce, and many of these conservatives are actively working to return western women to the days before feminism helped to launch the long and painful fight for equality.

On this International Day of the Girl,  let's wake up, America. Wake up, western world! The veneer of civilization and social equality which has been so recently laid over centuries of deeply-entrenched, religiously-fueled misogyny is dangerously vulnerable. Western girls are in grave danger. Wake up!

Strongly recommended reading:

Are Your Birth Control Rights Endangered? Gretchen Voss, Women's Health, September, 2012.
Maybe it's daily pills or monthly shots or some other form of pregnancy prevention. Maybe you already have all the kids you want, or you're waiting until you're ready to have a baby, or you've decided you'll never be ready. And perhaps your contraceptive of choice also eases a medical problem—whether it's painful endometriosis or scary ovarian cysts or disabling pelvic cramps—or helps stave off a new one, such as ovarian or uterine cancer. When it comes to controlling your reproductive health and destiny, birth control has always been there for you and always will be, right?
In a word, no. Because today, there's a national discourse raging around access to birth control—40 years after the Supreme Court legalized contraception for all women, irrespective of marital status, and five decades after the birth-control pill's introduction. And while fringy far-right extremists have always blasted away at contraceptive use, they have now infiltrated the mainstream—in the form of Tea Party Republicans and GOP presidential candidates. "It is shocking to see the vehemence of the attacks on contraception that we are facing these days," says Marcia Greenberger, copresident of the National Women's Law Center.
Are Your Birth Control Rights Endangered? Gretchen Voss, Women's Health, September, 2012.

While the oppression of girls perpetuates a cycle of poverty, the empowerment of girls has a ripple effect that strengthens families, communities, countries, and ultimately the world. If a girl stays in school, remains healthy, and gains skills, she will likely marry later, have fewer and healthier children, and earn an income that she'll invest back into her family. This promotes more productive and stable countries -- enhancing global prosperity and security and benefiting us all.
Most importantly, what happens to adolescent girls should matter because human rights matter. Girls deserve the same opportunities to pursue their hopes and dreams no matter where they live.
An Idea to Change the World: Empower Girls, Kathy Bushkin Calvin, CEO United Nations Foundation, HuffPost Impact Blog, October 11, 2012.

This is a day to celebrate the fact that it is girls who will change the world; that the empowerment of girls holds the key to development and security for families, communities and societies worldwide. It also recognizes the discrimination and violence that girls disproportionately endure -- and it is especially important that one of the cruelest hardships to befall girls, child marriage, should be the UN's chosen theme for this inaugural day.
A Promise to Girls, Desmond Tutu and Ela Bhatt, HuffPost Impact Blog, October 11, 2012.

The competition for the mark of shame is hard fought, but the title goes to the men who approached a van carrying girls home from school in Pakistan on Tuesday and asked for one very special 14-year-old. Then shot her in the head.
Girl's Courage, Taliban's Cowardice, Frida Ghitis, CNN, October 10, 2012.

Violence keeps girls out of school. Globally, nearly half of all sexual assaults are committed against girls who are 15 and younger. Fear of this type of violence restricts where girls are allowed to go and when they are allowed to be out of the home. Often, parents do not send their daughters to school for this reason.
Make Schools Safe For Girls Everywhere, Jennifer Buffett, CNN, October 11, 2012.

Twice the Taliban threw warning letters into the home of Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old Pakistani girl who is one of the world’s most persuasive advocates for girls’ education. They told her to stop her advocacy — or else.
She refused to back down, stepped up her campaign and even started a fund to help impoverished Pakistani girls get an education. So, on Tuesday, masked gunmen approached her school bus and asked for her by name. Then they shot her in the head and neck.
“Let this be a lesson,” a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said afterward. He added that if she survives, the Taliban would again try to kill her.
Malala's "Crime" Was Loving Schools, Nicholas D. Kristoff, New York Times, October 10, 2012.

In light of what happened in Pakistan yesterday, we don't need to tell you that in some places it's really, really bad for girls. And even in the places where it's not bad, girls face double standards, fewer opportunities, and a future in which they'll earn less for the same or more work.
We don't need to tell you that child marriage is bad for girls, that not educating girls is bad for girls, and that not supporting girls to become leaders is bad for girls.
You're already convinced about that...
But on this day when we're all coming together to talk about The Girl, we at Catapult challenge you.
Not just to talk about her. But to fund her.
In addition to talking, why not fund one of the amazing organizations working to support girls? Why not fund organizations working to end the injustice -- extreme or subtle -- that girls encounter every day?
So that girls can achieve equality.
Don't Just Talk About The Girl. Fund Her, Maz Kessler, HuffPost Impact Blogs, October 11, 2012.

International Day of the Girl website.

Abebe had hoped to become a doctor, a dream extinguished by forced child marriage and early motherhood.
(Photo slideshow and Abebe's story by Stephanie Sinclair, Vll Photo Agency, via CNN photoblogs)

Emancipation Proclamation - 150th Anniversary

Yesterday, September 22, was the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

A turning point for freedom in America, 150 years later, Donna Brazile, CNN, September 22, 2012.

This fall, the descendants of slaves, millions of ethnic and religious minorities from other lands, African-Americans and immigrants -- Latinos, Asians, Europeans -- and women, as well as working- and middle-class Americans, will decide whether to claim their future. We are all in this together.
All Americans will have a chance to move Lincoln's vision forward to help close the opportunity gap, to end the economic inequality resulting from government policies that favor a handful over the many who work equally hard. Abraham Lincoln would be proud to see the progress we have made. But he also would understand that there is still more work to do. Together.
Claim it.

President Obama's Emancipation Proclamation,  Ray Errol Fox and Jacopo della Quercia, Huffington Post, September 22, 2012.

Not for the first time in our nation's fractious history of presidential elections, we are debating what it means to be free in The United States of America. Not for the first time, a U.S. President is arguably staking his mandate to lead the country on the body politic interpretation of the freedom of the individual. And, not for the first time, but presumably for the last time, "We the People" are coming to grips with Thomas Jefferson's seemingly unassailable dictum that "all men are created equal."

By becoming the first U.S. President to come out in support of same-sex marriage, President Obama has boldly illuminated bone-deep and often ugly differences of opinion dividing Americans, and exposed them to open civil discussion. Comparisons to Abraham Lincoln and his stand on slavery a century and a half ago are ample and inescapable.

Lincoln's Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, and the course of US History, Stanley Harrold, The Times and Democrat, September 22, 2012.
Critics at the time and since have pointed out that the Final Proclamation did not affect slavery in the border slave states, or in portions of the Confederacy occupied by Union troops. Yet, with the Final Proclamation, slavery could not survive in the Border South. More important, from Jan. 1, 1863, onward, Northern troops fought for black freedom as well as preservation of the Union. Slaves became free immediately as Union armies advanced into Confederate territory. The war to restore the Union as it had been before December 1860 ended on Jan. 1, 1863. An old U.S. Constitution that recognized slavery died; a new Constitution that recognized black freedom stirred to life. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments formalized this change. Black freedom suffered a terrible setback as Reconstruction ended in failure. It took the mid-20th-century’s civil rights movement to revive that freedom and extend it.

Still, without the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the path to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 may have been much different and more difficult.

Lincoln's Great Gamble, Richard Striner, New York Times Opinionator, September 21, 2012.

Lincoln’s gamble was dangerous indeed. But he did what he believed he had to do. It was not, in the end, a political calculation. According to the diary of Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, Lincoln told his cabinet on Sept. 22 he had made a promise to God. “He had made a vow, a covenant,” Welles recounted, “that if God gave us the victory in the approaching battle, he would . . . move forward in the cause of emancipation.”

And so the stakes of the war would be raised to a level commensurate with all of the carnage and all of the sacrifice. The meaning of the war would be changed — forever changed — by Lincoln’s proclamation.

Freedom and Restraint, John Fabian Witt, The Opinion Pages, New York Times, September 21, 2012.

The pocket-size pamphlet quickly became the blueprint for a new generation of treaties, up to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Strong nations like Prussia and France had long suspected that law-of-war initiatives were little more than maneuvering by weaker countries and closet pacifists hoping to make war more difficult. Lincoln’s code broke that diplomatic logjam: It contained no hidden European agenda, and no one could accuse the Lincoln administration of trying to hold back strong armies.

Ann Romney Stumps For CHIC Position - ChillGirl-In-Chief!

Hey girls! Ann Romney is A-OK with the war on women!  But, then, she is rich, protected and post-menopausal.
Unlike you people.

And if you listen carefully, you'll hear the women sighing a little bit more than the men. It's how it is, isn't it?

It's how it is, girls, so 
take a chill pill and learn
to appreciate subservience!

Ann Romney's speech at the Republican convention on Tuesday night should forever put to rest any ideas anyone had that this is a woman who just doesn't get it. Mrs. Romney gets it all right. She knows exactly how disrespected and disempowered women still are in our society, but she is fine with that. And she wants other women to be fine with it, too. In fact, her speech last night signalled that she expects all of you moms out there (other women need not be considered, being non-existent) to take a chill pill. Patriarchy is. the way. it. is. and if you don't already like it, just follow Ann's lead. She is stumping for ChillGirl-in-Chief. She knows that most women are treated as barely human, but she is going to show us all how to pin on a pretty smile, remind ourselves of our mom-power (which totally is better than actual power) and - whenever the inevitable disrespect and abuse of cultural misogyny is directed our way - how to lie back and enjoy it. Ooh lå lå!  Ann, is trés CHIC!

There are at least two flavors of ChillGirl - I'm thinking of icily-angry and coolly-collected right now - and both flavors feature misogyny with a spicy little drop of misandry. Both of them are unpleasant and both undermine feminist causes, but the recklessly immature individuals who pop up occasionally to hang out with MRAs and sneer at other women are far less dangerous than the disciplined ranks of the second kind of ChillGirls.

The important thing about 
this ChillGirl is that she can 
feel superior to everyone!

Popping up more often in these roiling times is the icily furious misanthropic ChillGirl - the woman who thinks she's achieved independent success simply through her own hard work and initiative. She refuses to acknowledge that her current (though limited) freedom to pursue her own interests is largely thanks to a century of hard work by feminists who paved the way before her. She sees that gender equality is unlikely to be achieved in her lifetime, so she is uninterested in working toward that goal for future girls who matter not a whit to her. What matters is what she can personally get out of a cruelly discriminatory culture, and she feels perfectly justified in throwing other women under the bus to get it: life is unfair, she reasons, so other women had better get used to it. She gleefully slams feminists who work for positive social change while she, ever so cool and chill, hangs out with and entertains misogynist men with ChillGirl stories about how lame and weak other women are. She dresses how she wants, she speaks how she wants, she does what she wants and she intends to get what she wants. She runs with the misogynist guys, because she is cool like that, unlike those pathetic losers who call themselves feminists.

This kind of ChillGirl is an equal-opportunity hater: she is also contemptuous of men, whom she sees also as her inferiors and she is proud that she is slyly laughing at them as she pretends to laugh with them while they disrespect other members of her gender. The coldly angry ChillGirl hates men for believing that she women are less than they are, but she hates women more for what she sees as their weakness and failure to have overcome the cultural oppression of women to make the world a safer, better place for her. She is furious that she has to put up with sexist bullshit when she is clearly smarter and stronger than both men and women, and she hates both genders equally for their part in making life more difficult for her.

We've seen a number of women like this in recent years - attacking other women, undermining feminism and generally expressing the suppressed rage that growing up female in an oppressive patriarchal culture causes.

It's how it is, isn't it? 
Invisible, dehumanized - a thing
inhabiting the role of "mom"
and it had better be wrapped
 up in a pretty package,  if
it knows what's good for it.

Then, there is the second kind of ChillGirl; conservative, anti-feminist women whose numbers have swelled fantastically with the rise of fundamentalist religiosity in the USA. These are the outwardly calm, coolly-collected, playing-the-patriarchy game ChillGirls. These are the women like CHIC hopeful, Ann Romney.

I am not sure if men really understand this, but I don't think there is a woman in America who really expects her life to be easy. In our own ways, we all know better. You know what, and that's fine. 

This ChillGirl believes - probably correctly - that gender equality will not be achieved in her lifetime, and she assumes - probably incorrectly - that gender equality will never be achieved. Not in her lifetime, not in her daughters' lifetimes, nor in her granddaughters' lifetimes either. But, you know what? That's fine. Fighting for equal rights is hard and there is no personal payoff likely. Going along to get along is easier. And much more rational. Why fight for a better future that she will never get to enjoy? Why fight to change things for the better for all women, when she can play the game, master the system and quietly enjoy all of the personal comfort and security - and yes, a measure of power, though derived from the men in her life, and only enjoyed at their pleasure (but she thinks she knows how to manipulate them, the sly minx!) - that her good, Christian heart desires?

The calm, cool ChillGirl may or may not have had a brief period of believing that she could pursue hopes and dreams like the boys all around her before she grew up and learned "the truth". She may or may not have briefly resisted the vicious misogyny of our patriarchal culture and tried to pursue those dreams, until the constant, exhausting, emotionally-draining effort of dealing with daily attacks simply wore her down. She may or may not have experienced the soul-killing realization that although she knows she is equal, though she knows she has talents, abilities, even brilliance to offer the world, she will be forever less than men in society and may never be allowed the chance to develop those abilities, especially if she is ugly, poor, or not white.

Whatever her earlier hopes and dreams may have been, the coolly collected ChillGirl is a pragmatist. She has figured out a winning strategy: accept the humiliation of degradation and undeserved inferior status, lie to the men in your life about how much you admire and respect them and only want to defer to them, keep yourself attractive because that is your only stock in trade - and in return, enjoy some measure of comfort and security - as long as you are pleasing to your man. You know that even that paltry benefit for selling yourself short is denied to nearly all poor women and many women of color and even to any white, middle-class woman who will not bow to patriarchy, so read the writing on the wall and get yours - whatever it takes! To be a coolly collected ChillGirl - to have a choice between suffering the indignities and deprivations of a misogynist culture publicly and daily, or suffering the indignities and deprivations privately while outwardly enjoying a comfortable life -  is a luxury reserved for a select minority of women. And, you know what? Ann says that's a good enough choice for women. She's so CHIC!

Listen to Ann, ladies: It's how it is...

... Don't try to change society; that is too exhausting. More important, it just isn't smart. Fighting against misogyny can be dangerous. Challenging the status quo will make men - and women like Ann who benefit from pleasing men - very angry and cause social discord. Do you want to be responsible for causing a gender war? If you do that, don't say you were never warned; any harm that comes your way will be totally your own fault. Demanding to be treated as a respected, adult human being can get you harassed, attacked and even raped and it definitely reduces your chances of finding a rich husband. Amirite, fellas?

Let's face it: patriarchy isn't going anywhere - not while so many are committed to preserving it. But women can use patriarchy, too! You just need to learn to play the game. Forget about your intellectual needs: channel that energy into your children and home! Forget about your emotional needs - how can you be so selfish when there are men and children who need you to look after their needs? Forget about your physical well-being and autonomy: you possess a uterus and you are the property of men until it can no longer be used for its god-given purpose. Every woman is on her own unless she accepts that this is how it is. Got that, gals? Either you join the congregation with outward enthusiasm, or you will be ejected from the congregation and then the devil take you. You can't beat this system, so you may as well join it. And you know what? Ann says it will be fine!

It makes perfect sense to keep the
 "smarter" people in domestic servitude!
Amirite, ladies?

There are compensations for utterly denying your own humanity and that of your daughters and nieces and granddaughters. There will be rewards in heaven. Invisible, intellectually-unverifiable afterlife rewards for invisible, intellectually-erased living women - what perfect symmetry! While men naturally should enjoy rewards both while living and after death, women suffer now to be rewarded later because we are smarter than those goofy men. Amirite ladies? This nonsensical little crumb is thrown out to traditional women everywhere: being "smarter", yet subservient, is obviously way better and far more satisfying than actual status, respect or personal power. Can I get an "Amen", sisters?

Just look! Even the most powerful men out there listening to Ann's speech chuckle tolerantly and cheerfully agree. Everyone agrees that women are the truly smart ones - even our men will let us say so! That is totes not an empty bubble of "feel good" blown to obscure our view of the blackhole of self-denial that all of us ChillGirls must force ourselves down. Sure, any society that truly believed that one gender is "smarter" would rationally have that group well-represented in every avenue of power in the culture, not marginalized, diminished and condemned to a lifetime of domestic servitude, but thinking like that would be just looking for reasons to attack traditional values. Ann coyly points out that women are the smart ones, Republican men tolerantly let her say it as long as they can still control women, and everyone is happy. It's how it is, isn't it? And you know what? That's fine.

Ann has it all figured out: Moms, revel in your subordination! (other women don't exist) Learn to love the uncertainty and insecurity of living a life entirely dependent on whether a man continues to think keeping you around to cook, clean and raise his children is worth his time and pocketbook, because that is what the future of women under Republican rule will be. It's just how it is! Why fight what is biologically, culturally and Biblically mandated?  Sure, humankind could be better than that, but why should we be? This is working - for the wealthy, the protected, the godly and the wise...

The only role for women in a
Republican USA:  Mom

Ann's stump speech was apparently directed only at mothers married to men of means, since nearly everything she said is far outside the experience of poor women, single mothers, women of color or any other women who are not white, Christian, middle-class mothers married to men. The unspoken message was clear though: You people who are not wealthy and protected are clearly not godly or wise so you deserve all the trouble you get. Ann tells it like it is!  They don't come any more CHIC than that!

FYI, Amanda Marcotte summed the speech up nicely:

"Last night the RNC made its appeal to female voters, and Ann Romney's speech really was an exemplar of the form, putting a sorority girl grin on a description of women's lives that, stripped of sentimentality, reads like a laundry list of the daily injustices women face for no other reason than being women...In sum, she offered up a description of what feminists call "systemic sexism," a list of the very injustices feminists have worked, with some success, to eliminate. "

And if you listen carefully, you'll hear the women sighing a little bit more than the men. It's how it is, isn't it?

"So how does Ann Romney get away with this? Because she framed it not as a problem to be fixed, but a trial that women have to endure. She put a positive spin on it, claiming that these extra struggles make us women extra good. Instead of demanding equality, she encouraged her female audience instead to take their payment in martyrdom."  Amanda Marcotte, Ann Romney Acknowledges, Embraces Sexism, Slate.com.

One question, Ann. If the Republicans succeed in gaining control of the country, which Christian sect gets to rule?

Why Can't A Woman...Be More Like A Man?

Good question, Professor!

Individual freedom and the right to bodily autonomy - the principles behind our understanding of consent - were the principles upon which many of us assume the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade decision was based, although the case itself was focused on a citizen's right to privacy around making decisions concerning her bodily autonomy and medical care.  Laws which deny a woman the right to bodily autonomy - including laws that deny a woman the right to control what happens to her own body in favor of giving any potential fetus the "right" to use her body against her will or without her consent - are an unconstitutional denial of individual freedom because they relegate a woman to a legal status that is less than human. The legal precedent that a woman actually has the right to consent to the risks and responsibilities of pregnancy, and an equal right to decline consent to those risks and responsibilities was thought to be finally established by Roe v Wade. But since it was argued as a case for privacy, Roe v Wade has never been a guarantee of women's reproductive rights. It has always been vulnerable to attack, either through court challenges or through legislation which has chipped away at it.

One way or another, the
Republican Party will find
a way to control those sluts!

From the moment Roe v Wade was decided, the religious right began working to overturn it. Outraged that women had at last been granted the right to choose if and when to be pregnant -  a right which conflicted with the patriarchal order which demands that men have complete authority over women - the "moral majority" began a campaign of slut-shaming, raising the specter- never far beneath the surface in any misogynist culture - that uncontrolled women would engage in wildly promiscuous and "irresponsible" sex and darkly warning that the new law would bring about the downfall of American civil society  However, when this tactic initially only gained traction within the most conservative and misogynistic segments of society, conservatives realized that the problem was that a majority of Americans in the late 1970's actually respected a woman's right to choose - and that most Americans believed that the consensual sexual activity of women was no more society's business than the consensual sexual activity of men. Conservatives began to cast around for a way to undermine that public perception that women should be entitled to civil rights equal to men.

Religious conservatives soon zeroed in on "consent" as a potentially malleable concept that they might be able to use to drive a wedge between women and their human rights, thereby setting the stage to put women back in their traditional place.  In order to overcome the legal issue of consent, religious and political conservatives began working tirelessly - using tactics including slut-shaming, inserting abstinence-only purity campaigns into public schools, and falsely equating microscopic blastocysts with full term babies - to entrench the notion that recreational sex involving the conscious avoidance of pregnancy is shameful and that only marital sex which welcomes the prospect of conception should be recognized and supported by society. Their aim was to increase public acceptance of explicitly Christian sexual mores in order to garner voter support for their social agenda. The ultimate goal was to get this explicitly Christian theology enshrined into law: that whenever a woman has consented to sex, she has automatically consented to pregnancy, too.

That's right, ladies, when you consent to sex, you consent to
pregnancy. And when you don't consent to sex, you
consent to pregnancy, too! You and your uteri are in a perpetual
state of consent to pregnancy! Ain't patriarchy grand?

Eventually, extreme conservatives began to worry that exceptions for rape and incest could possibly become a loophole through which some lying women could escape unwanted pregnancy, leading to the push for the elimination of exceptions for rape and incest as legal justifications for abortion. Building on the false premise that a conceptus is equal to a full-term baby, conservatives argued that a fertilized egg, no matter how it came into existence, is an innocent life deserving of protection. Completely ignoring the question of whether a woman who has been raped is deserving of society's protection and adroitly sidestepping Roe v Wade, forced-birth groups wrote bills denying abortion rights to women even in the case of rape or incest which their political arm, the Republican party, sponsored in state legislatures. In one giant leap of cruel imagination, conservatives managed to establish as a serious idea that even when a woman does not consent to sex, her consent to pregnancy should be automatic in the eyes of the law.

Lest there be any doubt about the intentions of the religious conservatives and their hired guns in the state and federal legislatures to render the legal notion of female consent completely irrelevant and completely powerless, forced-birth organizations created "personhood bills" which they instructed their Republican lackeys to sponsor and pass in various states. "Personhood" bills, if signed into law, would confer the full rights of a "person" - a deliberately vague term, but generally considered to be equal to a live-born child - to all fertilized ova. Such laws would criminalize most forms of female-controlled contraception, emergency contraception, assisted reproduction and, of course, all abortions. They would also open the door to state-sponsored invasion of women's privacy and health care rights since legally protected "persons" could potentially be "murdered" before a conception is discovered to have taken place. Furthermore, such laws would criminalize anyone who attempted to help a woman abort the conceptus "person" either by performing a surgical procedure, providing medical abortifacents, or driving a woman across state lines to obtain an abortion in a non-"Personhood" state.

Got that, gals?

"Personhood" laws are the holy grail of the forced-birth movement and the ultimate goal of religious conservatives. If passed, such laws would strip women of all bodily autonomy in matters of reproduction. Women would be denied effective female-controlled birth control, they would be denied emergency birth control if their partner's birth control fails or he refuses to use it and they would be denied abortions - even if they are impregnated by rape and even if their health or lives are endangered by a pregnancy. In short, thanks to the twisted culture of "life" pushed so ruthlessly onto them by religious conservatives, a woman would be compelled to sacrifice her happiness, risk her health and even lose her life because a single-celled conceptus has been granted a right to occupy her body which supersedes all of her rights including her humanity, her dignity and her right to life.

In essence, the goal of "personhood" laws is to elevate a cluster of cells to the full status of a man - and actually even to exceed that status because in no other situation can one person's needs compel another person to give up bodily autonomy, physical resources, health and safety (no American citizen is compelled to give so little as a pint of blood for another person, even if a life depends on it) - while reducing a pregnant woman to the status of a gestational vessel whose human rights have been totally subjugated for the purpose of reproduction, whether she has chosen to reproduce or not. These laws do not recognize "equally competing rights" of human beings who have equal status before the law. The woman's rights are erased while the blastocyst's "rights" become supreme.

Keep that contraception out
of those sluts' hands!

The Republican Party, which has degenerated to little more than the political arm of the conservative religious right, has been striving relentlessly to ensure that women will be legally forced to bear all of the negative physical, social and most of the financial repercussions for any unplanned pregnancy, while the churches themselves underline and enforce the subordinate and inferior position of women in the culture. Through tireless efforts to withhold access to contraception from women, the religious right ensures that reproductive control remains primarily in the hands of men. Thanks to ideologically-driven appointments to the FDA and the business interests of both drug companies and the medical establishment, only male-controlled methods of reliable contraception are available without a prescription, forcing women to navigate (and pay for) "care" from layers of medical and pharmacy gatekeepers before they are permitted to obtain reliable female-controlled contraception.

Religious patriarchy allows society to label unplanned pregnancy a "women's issue" in spite of the fact that it takes both a man and a woman - both failing to use effective contraception - to create an unplanned pregnancy. The fact that society allows unplanned pregnancy to be framed as a women's issue reveals the depth of the unconscious misogyny which lays the responsibility for - and the consequences of - an unplanned pregnancy squarely in the woman's lap, while little thought - and almost no censure - is directed toward the "guilt", the "promiscuity" or the "irresponsibility" of the man involved.

You know the old joke about keeping 
women barefoot and pregnant?
Not so funny anymore.

More insidiously, when pregnancy and the laws restricting women's rights over when and if they will become pregnant is framed as a women's issue, conservatives ensure that half the population at least may ignore the very real danger to women's health and safety. Few men pay attention when women's rights are being stripped away because the phrase "women's issue" is unconsciously received as a signal that the subject is unimportant and less than men's other concerns. Even men who love the women in their lives are lulled into a false sense of "nothing to worry about" as their wives, their sisters and their daughters are slowly but surely reduced to the legal status of walking wombs compelled under threat of criminal prosecution to gestate the offspring of any man who succeeds in impregnating them - whether by mutual and loving consent, by accidental failure of birth control or by force.

In this way, the religious patriarchy ensures both that women cannot control their own reproduction completely (since women - even abstinent women - can be, and often are, the victims of forced impregnation) and that no man - not even a rapist - must accept the decision of a mere woman on the question of whether or not he can use her body to reproduce. That is because the "right to life" of a conceptus is, in fact, really just an extension of men's rights. A conceptus is always some man's potential offspring, and at its core, religious teaching is all about enshrining the right of every man to reproduce. If women are allowed the freedom to choose, some men would almost certainly have difficulty finding a willing mate with whom to procreate. Religions which enforce the authority of men over women and which restrict the freedom and choices of women therefore speak to the root of cultural misogyny - men's fear of the potential power of women to control their (men's) ability to reproduce. "Right to life" is actually the trojan horse by which male rights over women are being inserted directly into women's uteri. That's right, ladies. It's a great big Biblically-condoned 'fuck you'!

Make no mistake. God's Own Party is
determined to restore Christian patriarchy
at the cost of women's human rights.

While religions pay lip service to condemning male brutality, merely offering verbal assurances on how a "godly man" ought to behave (while doing nothing to ensure that he does so, and even less to punish him if he does not, thus making aggressive or coercive male behavior toward women virtually riskfree for men), they strenuously resist efforts to enact laws which could increase rape prosecutions or extend protections for women against sexual assault, citing concerns about - you can guess - men's rights. This is apparent in the narrowing definition of rape - and the continuing insistence by men that women lie, women falsely accuse of rape and most of all that many, if not most, rapes are not really rape at all.

The ultimate social priority for religion is to assert and enforce the patriarchal ideal of total authority of men over women, and to that end, religious conservatives - and their men in government - are willing to grant even rapists and abusers privileges over women, to safeguard the authority of "godly" men. In short, in order to protect the privilege of all men, themselves included of course, even "godly" men who profess to abhor rape willingly award rapists and abusers the right to reproduce using women's bodies against their will. As always, there is no thought spared for the humanity of the women who would be sacrificed to this Christian ideology. If they are mentioned at all, involuntarily pregnant women's physical and emotional violation is dismissed as a "blessing": a "gift from God".

Restrictive "purity" codes for girls 
- demanding that they bear the 
responsibility for men's sexual urges 
- is already a real thing in the
 conservative Christian world - 
This is shockingly similar to
  Islamic sharia dress codes.

In the Republican vision of the future - as in the past it idealizes - "freedom" and "rights" will only fully belong to men and to the potential offspring of men, while women will be, at best, reduced once again to second-class citizenship, and, at worst, returned to sexual and reproductive slavery. Political, financial and social oppression of women, reproductive slavery and viciously misogynistic church-mandated rules of correct behavior and dress (for women only) are the unceasing reality for millions of women in theocracies around the world.  All of these forms of oppression of women are rooted in the desire of these conservative societies to control the sexuality and reproductive freedom of their women. Almost without exception, societies based upon religious laws which both deny women fully human status and hold them accountable for the sexual activity of both genders strictly limit female freedom and impose exaggerated requirements for modest dress on their women and girls.  If a Christian theocracy is successfully installed by conservatives in the United States, ever-deepening oppression will become the inevitable future for women and girls here.

Religious conservatives want Roe v Wade overturned because they oppose the principles of individual freedom and the right to bodily autonomy for women upon which the decision was based.  That denial of those rights would relegate women to less than human status is exactly the point. Second-class status for women would be a feature, not a bug, for Christian conservatives since the Bible commands that women are not equal but subordinate to men. Bible-based religion asserts that man is the original human and woman, taken from man, is less than human. This is the reality of Bible-based governance. It seems like a nightmare from the dark ages, or some dystopian futuristic novel, but this is really happening right now in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Al Stefanelli's post on this subject is a must-read.  And please watch this brief, powerful video and share it with everyone you know. This is not just a possible vision of future life for women in the USA - it will be the inevitable outcome of a Bible-based US government. Women's civil rights, our freedom, our dignity and our humanity are literally on the line.

via newleftmedia

This Is My Body

This Is My Body from Jason Stefaniak on Vimeo.


Share. Share. Share.

In an earlier post, I tried to explain how women in the USA are in grave danger from the religious right.

"The Republican Party, which has degenerated to little more than the political arm of the conservative religious right, has been striving relentlessly to ensure that women will be legally forced to bear all of the negative physical, social and most of the financial repercussions for any unplanned pregnancy, while the churches themselves underline and enforce the subordinate and inferior position of women in the culture. Through tireless efforts to withhold access to contraception from women, the religious right ensures that reproductive control remains primarily in the hands of men. Thanks to ideologically-driven appointments to the FDA and the business interests of both drug companies and the medical establishment, only male-controlled methods of reliable contraception are available without a prescription, forcing women to navigate (and pay for) "care" from layers of medical and pharmacy gatekeepers before they are permitted to obtain reliable female-controlled contraception...

In the Republican vision of the future - as in the past it idealizes - "freedom" and "rights" will only fully belong to men and to the potential offspring of men, while women will be, at best, reduced once again to second-class citizenship, and, at worst, returned to sexual and reproductive slavery. Political, financial and social oppression of women, reproductive slavery and viciously misogynistic church-mandated rules of correct behavior and dress (for women only) are the unceasing reality for millions of women in theocracies around the world.  All of these forms of oppression of women are rooted in the desire of these conservative societies to control the sexuality and reproductive freedom of their women. Almost without exception, societies based upon religious laws which both deny women fully human status and hold them accountable for the sexual activity of both genders strictly limit female freedom and impose exaggerated requirements for modest dress on their women and girls.  If a Christian theocracy is successfully installed by conservatives in the United States, ever-deepening oppression will become the inevitable future for women and girls here." Wait, Consent Means What?

This is not alarmist rhetoric; it is a fact.  Extreme religion induces people to behave in ways which they never would do if they were not under the pernicious influence of terrible supernatural belief.  Women themselves are complicit in their own oppression and the oppression of other women. Please wake up, American women!!!

Public Education - Public Enemy #1? Business Says Yes, Too!

Note: This is the second post in a series on public education. The first post in the series can be found here.

(Noah) Webster echoes the belief that proper education is the first defense against tyranny. “In despotic governments, the people should have little or no education, except what tends to inspire them with a servile fear. Information is fatal to despotism . . . In our American republics, where [government] is in the hands of the people, knowledge should be universally diffused by means of public schools.” He believed that “the more generally knowledge is diffused among the substantial yeomanry, the more perfect will be the laws of a republican state.” Minneapolis News Blog, September, 2011.

Public education levels 
the social playing field.

The ultimate result of good public education is a population which will not willingly allow itself to be subjugated and oppressed. Educated people are empowered people. Those who can not only read and write but have access to history, math, science and technology, are better able to think independently, to face challenges without the fearfulness that ignorance brings, and to come up with innovative ideas built on their education which can potentially elevate any person to a position of leadership in a society. 

Education increases opportunities for the common people while it pushes aside the veil of ignorance which has always been used to hide the agenda of the elites who have historically controlled society. The American public school system, imperfect though it is, has managed to foster an astonishing and prolonged era of unprecedented national intellectual growth, creative and scientific innovation and technological progress.

“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”  John Adams, 1785.

" ...the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not
 more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to 
kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us
if we leave the people in ignorance." Thomas Jefferson

The ultimate goal of good public education is a society where the self-interest of millions of well-educated citizens will provide an effective counter-balancing effect against the potential tyranny of powerful religious and wealthy elites. The great American experiment was the attempt to build a society where liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness by the common people would be made possible for the first time in human history because an informed and educated population would have at its disposal the tools for success which were formerly reserved for the privileged few.

In short: the ultimate goal of good public education is to create the conditions wherein the American Dream might actually become a reality.

At first blush, it would seem logical then, that business and industry would welcome and support a system of public education which has become the engine for innovative ideas and economic growth. But, they do not. They favor limited public access to education, preferably privatized for greater control by special interests, and never subsidized by public taxation.

There are at least three good reasons why the business sector, like the church, hates and fears public education: 1.Educated people can see through false, manipulative ideologies which have long been used to control and abuse them. 2. Educated people are more cognizant of their human worth and will insist on the personal respect to which they are entitled as citizens in a putatively egalitarian society. 3. Educated people know how to organize themselves to fight for a political voice, for better arrangements to encourage more social equality and for fair pay for their labor as the producers of the goods and services that provide the growth and wealth which drives the economy.

...and we can't have that!

The truth is that the American Dream - and especially the attempts to provide people with the means to fulfill it through public education - has always been more of a nightmare to wealthy and religious elites, even though they use this language today to convince their supporters that what is good for the elites will be good for everyone. Business and industry want a pool of uneducated or poorly educated workers whose cheap labor can produce the goods that create wealth for the elite. When public education reduced the number of Americans who were willing to work like serfs, Big Business simply took its production jobs offshore, where - wait for it - there are large pools of uneducated or poorly educated people whose cheap labor can produce the goods that create wealth for the elite.

“Learned Institutions . . . throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.” James Madison, 1822.

The power, influence and wealth of elites depends upon a large population of ignorant, dependent and obedient poor workers and a small, well-controlled pool of talented staff who have been given a narrowly targeted indoctrination "education" in only the highly-focused areas cherry-picked for maximum utility to Big Business. People who are lifted out of the cycle of poverty and ignorance by freely accessible education will be none of these things. Graduates of a classical, broad, liberal college education are inclined to think too much and want to make the world a better place - lofty ideals which are in direct opposition to the ideal corporate environment. It is not for nothing that colleges all over the country are being "gifted" with attractive, brand spanking new business schools underwritten and overseen by wealthy donors.

What does a college degree
mean today?

A good, liberal, free public education system is inimical to the ambitions of wealthy elites, and therefore has always been the target of attacks from business and industry. Like religion, Big Business cannot realize its ambitions for power and wealth unless there is a large, permanent underclass of uneducated people to use as producers and consumers of their products and services. Like religion, Big Business favors a private (expensive) education model which will ensure that access to real education is limited to the privileged few, while the majority will receive just enough education to be of use to wealthy business and religious elites.

Thus was born an unlikely and unholy alliance between profit-driven, amoral Big Business and the elite upper echelons of the church of the most radical liberal of them all - the Christ who preached the moral virtues of poverty, humility and tolerance - the Christian right.

Recommended Reading (Did I merely say recommended?  Read these!)

Articles:

Founding Fathers: On the Importance of Public Education, Minneapolis Newsvine, September, 2011.

The Assault on Public Education, Noam Chomsky, readersupportednews.org

ALEC & Battle Over Public vs. Private Education, Bob Sloan, dailykos.com

Education and technology: Supply, demand and income inequality, Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz.

Prolonged Attack on Public Education and Unions Leaves Teaching Profession Woeful,  commondreams.org

The Price of a Free Society, Paul Starr, The American Prospect, May 2005

Which MBA? Paying the Piper, The Economist, July 2012

Books:

Righteous, Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, Lauren Sandler, 2007.

What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Thomas Frank, 2005.

American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, Kevin Phillips, 2007.

God's Politics, Jim Wallis, 2005

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond, 1999 (Pulitzer Prize winner).