Spring in Alabama?

Here is a piece of good news. Out of the winter of horrors for people who care about reproductive rights and the personhood of women, there comes this:

Spring in Alabama

And the blogger Whatever (Still Running Against the Wind) has posted an open letter from an anonymous ob/gyn who calls for doctors to defy the dehumanizing anti-woman bills (particularly the transvaginal ultrasound bills).

There is something very chilling about the fact that a doctor who is standing up for human rights - who wants to speak out against draconian legislation which is skating shockingly close to reducing women to sexual enslavement - must remain anonymous for his own professional and possibly personal safety.

I'm on vacation right now - spring break for the last chicks in the nest - so I have to soak up the time while I still have kids at home.  But I am going on a mission in my downtime to dig up as many of these sorts of stories as I can find and I will post links.

I'd like to believe the tide is turning,  but I'd like to do whatever I can to keep that momentum going.

Isn't That Just Ducky!

I am on a road trip!

I am rollin' on down the road.  I am sailing, flying, ramblin' like a rolling stone.

I am on a road trip!

Isn't that just Ducky!

Watch This!

This is a documentary about atheists and it looks really good from the trailer.  I am not sure when it will be coming out (heh) but as soon as I do know I will post about it!

Several of the people featured in this trailer write blogs on freethoughtblogs.com and they are excellent blogs.  There are links to some of them in my sidebar. -->

Seriously, watch this.

Blarney At The Reason Rally?

I have a ton of work to do today (writing is my work of choice, but today it is physical work away from the computer which must be done!),  but reading P.Z. Myers' post this morning made it imperative that I post a "Heck, yeah!" post.

The Reason Rally is set for next week in Washington DC.  It has been the source of great excitement for people who care about science, justice and equality in this country.  Many of us have been thrilled to know that voices will be raised in defense of scientific rigor,  including medical science.  Further, many people expect that the rally is also meant to be a signal to right-wing hardliners that their anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-humanity agenda does not enjoy total, unopposed support in this country.

Best of all,  there is the fervent hope that closeted atheists, social moderates and people everywhere who have been cowed by the apparently overwhelming power of fundamentalist religion will take heart - and hopefully take action - when they see that there is a movement out there full of people of courage who will speak out for social justice, equal rights and protection from religiously-motivated oppression.

It turns out though that, in an apparent effort to attract a larger audience to the Rally, organizers have included some speakers whose credentials as "freethinkers"  are problematic at best and totally dishonest at worst. I don't think it will completely ruin the Rally, and I hope this strategy brings the event more attention than it alienates. But still, I agree with P.Z.:  There ought to be higher standards!

As a woman, I am appalled that Bill Maher - who routinely disrespects women -  is going to be a prominent speaker at the Rally.  Simply being atheist is not, in my opinion, an adequate credential to speak at an event which is meant to promote support for accurate science as well as social justice - reasonable goals, if you will.   Maher is known for pointing out the silliness of religion - poorly, in my opinion, and not effectively - but he is also known for being a shameless promoter of alternative medicine woo and anti-vaccinations.

Then, there is that little problem he has with women. -->

Even more troubling, the Rally has welcomed a video speech from Senator Tom Harkin.  I can understand that Reason Rally organizers would be pleased to have some voices of reason from within the federal government willing to speak at this event, but perhaps Senator Harkin is not the best choice for that.  P.Z.:

"This is a man who takes pride in being affiliated with a patriarchal, hierarchical, medieval institution that oppresses women, celebrates poverty, wallows in its own wealth and privilege, and has actively disseminated pedophiles into communities all around the world…and has worked hard to protect and defend these child rapists. This is an organization that is currently fighting for the right to refuse life-saving care to women, that even opposes making contraception available to men and women, thatendorses discrimination against gay couples.This is a man who pushed through the formation of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative ‘Medicine’, a gigantic boondoggle that sucks federal research dollars out of the hands of qualified scientists studying real phenomena and into the hands of quacks and con artists peddling bogus therapies. This is a man who so poorly understands science that, when his pet quackeries all failed when examined,declared his disappointment because he said NCCAM was supposed to “validate alternative approaches”, and instead was “disproving things rather than seeking out and approving things.”

Yeah. That Tom Harkin."

Interestingly, I was about to defend Sen. Harkin as perhaps a cultural Catholic (I can understand that!) but a Democrat who, like Kennedy, surely keeps his religion out of his office - and could even be, perhaps, a social moderate.

The source which made me want to say "Hang on a sec, there..." was this story in the Iowa paper, Quad City Times. According to the QCTimes, Harkin voted against the so-called "conscience clause"!

But then, knowing that journalistic rigor in news media these days is often subpar, I decided to look for other sources to cite before I let P.Z. have it with my puny outrage.  I found this, but who knows if that source had a liberal bias? heh.  So I went straight to the horse's mouth, so to speak and found this. Well, damn.  Looks like P.Z. Myers is right (again! damn you, P.Z.!).  Although Sen. Harkin did vote to repeal DADT,  there is a whole raft of other legislation that he was on board with which is really only a problem if you are for equal rights for women, and not for privileging religion with the right to deny human beings in this country basic civil rights.

That is a problem when you are organizing a rally to promote separation of church and state, rational approaches to medicine and science and social justice.  To tell the truth, it makes me wonder if these actually are the goals of Dave Silverman, et al.  Or could it be that, contrary to what this post of mine (and P.Z.s and a few others') seem to be assuming,  the goal isn't that the rally was meant to stand up for reason?

It is hard to figure out what is going on, but it seems that we are meant to believe that the organizers of the Reason Rally think getting some fuzzy-thinkers to appear to support this rally will be good for science, reason and social justice.  My blarney-radar is pinging, though.  Could it be that, on the contrary, it is the voices of reason who have been sucked into participating in a rally which may only promote some of the organizers while giving undeserved validatation to supporters of misogyny, homophobia and woo?

I still hope the Reason Rally is a huge success.  But, like others,  I worry that the message is getting fuzzier with the addition of people like this to the roster.  I get that the organizers want to attract a wide audience -  and people sure know who Bill Maher is, after all - but damn it is frustrating that even a Rally for Reason has to be watered down with connections to people who are known proponents of stupid anti-scientific woo and misogynistic / homophobic ideology.

Update: UGH!  Niftyfailure. I have been stuck on the computer trying to understand these confusing bills for an hour. It appears that the Iowa paper may have been correct, but the wording is deucedly difficult to understand.  It appears that Harkin did vote against the Blunt amendment,  but he did it by voting "Yes" to tabling the bill. So the news story says he voted against a conscience-clause -  which threw me when I saw that he had voted YEA on March 1.  Bloody obfuscating congressional launguage.

Now I have to update my post,  but the point remains that Harkin did vote for a whole raft of other anti-choice legislation and privileging of religion.  This quote in the Iowa paper makes me not think quite so badly of him, however:

Sen. Harkin said the measure would undermine the whole health care law. Here's what he had to say this morning, courtesy of Radio Iowa:
“It would allow any employer or any health plan to deny women access to contraception, mammograms, prenatal screenings, cervical cancer screenings and much more,” Harkin says. “It would allow employers and health insurance companies to deny coverage of any health services they find morally objectionable.”
Read more: http://www.qctimes.com/blogs/campaign-trail/religious-freedom-and-women-s-reproductive-rights/article_b98c966c-63f2-11e1-91ca-001871e3ce6c.html#ixzz1pUlByB9q</blockquote>

I still agree that he is hardly a poster boy for Reason,  but at least he is not quite as bad as I first thought.
But the question remains: why are these people speaking at a REASON Rally at all?

St. Patrick's Day

Gaiety Dance Team

In celebration of dining, dancing and song.  Happy St. Patrick's Day to All

Isn't That Just Ducky! - St Patrick's Day

Take an invigorating bath.  Have hair all trimmed and fluffy and soft.  Race twice around the room then hop up on the couch.  Preen for the camera.

"See how pretty I am in my fresh green bow?"

This little pup is all ready for March festivities!  Bring on the shamrocks and pass the green beer!

Isn't that just Ducky!

Four Excellent Things

Here are four excellent things to listen to on this St. Patrick's eve:

Mount Everest still holds mysteries for scientists. 

Why are some countries rich and others poor?  (You knew it!!)

My idol, Meryl Streep, introducing Hillary Clinton at the Women in the World Summit:



My other idol, Hillary Clinton at the same conference:

Triggers

I have had a hard time functioning normally these past few months thanks to the cluster of shockingly misogynistic bills that have come before some state legislatures and the even more viciously misogynistic rationale, propaganda and political strategy which spawned them.  I have about a dozen posts in various stages of production,  but right now I seem to be incapable of sorting through it all calmly enough to write coherently on any one of them.

There is a term for this logjam of emotion, this mind-choking wad of confusion, rage, pain, misery and almost nihilistic despair which is triggered by events which stir up horrible memories of past trauma: post traumatic stress disorder.

I have never been diagnosed with PTSD and I probably never will be.  I doubt I will ever trust a medical professional enough to ever go for assessment. The worst traumas in my life were visited upon me by the very professions upon which society depends to protect people from criminal assaults or to treat them for medical emergencies.  Like many women, I have learned the hard, painful way that neither police nor doctors can be trusted to care about what happens to me. Worse, I have learned, as most women do, that these professionals can even do me harm in the service of the ideologies they hold: their sincerely held belief systems which render someone like me sub-human in their eyes.

Like most women in the western world - and possibly every woman in the developing world - I have endured regular, casual, culturally-approved gender-based mistreatment from my young girlhood to the present day.  Like most women, I have been sexually assaulted - not just once but several times - ranging from the clumsy grabs at breasts and crotch which are a regular occurrence on any school playground or neighborhood backyard to the intimidation of catcalls and threats from strangers in passing cars or in nightclubs, to unwanted sexual advances after a date from which I barely escaped, to a violent daytime stranger assault that left me bruised and terrorized. To the nonchalant amusement of the police, my attacker was a teenager a little younger than I was, already known to the authorities from having committed this type of assault before, and I was informed that no charges would be laid, because it might "ruin the kid's life". Had I been a man, brutally attacked and beaten at midday as he was on his way to work, the perpetrator would have been charged with aggravated assault at least. But I was a young woman, still a teenager, and the perp also sexually assaulted me. For that, the potential for his reputation to be ruined by a charge of attempted rape was considered much worse than the fact that my life would never be the same again, even after I recovered from my injuries.

Unlike most women, but probably like many more than women themselves realize, I have been denied information about a life-threatening condition in order to limit my choices in my own healthcare.  A doctor placed his religious ideology above my life and decided that I was not to be trusted with information which might have resulted in my choosing a legal abortion in order to safeguard my own health and possibly my life.  There is no doubt that my choice would have been to try to save that very much-wanted pregnancy anyway, but the knowledge that a person with power so dehumanized me that he felt he had the right - no, the god-given duty - to take away my right to make my own healthcare decisions by concealing the facts from me - even at the risk of my dying because of it - is an emotional trauma from which I may never recover.

Women in the west are constantly chastising themselves for failing to be happy in our modern, post-feminist world. Men who love us cannot understand why we can't just be happy, and we ask ourselves the same question. We wonder why, with all of our alleged equality in the modern world, we cannot seem to feel equal or respected or safe. The answer is simple: we know, through constant lived experience, that in every human culture we are not equal, not respected and never safe.

Women in the west have been force-fed a sickening glut of lies and misogyny that has, I believe, left too many of us paralyzed. Reality does not match the story our culture tells us, and we have daily proof that our rights as "equal" human beings are a myth. We are paralyzed with fear and we are paralyzed with the knowledge of just how degraded and dehumanized we remain in a world that is still overwhelmingly dominated by misogynist, religiously-fueled patriarchy. We are humiliated by the daily barrage of hateful messages directed at ourselves, our daughters, our sisters, our friends, and we are doubly humiliated because we are jeered at and intimidated into silence if we dare to try to talk about it. We try to play the game, try to figure out how to navigate the world without falling victim to the constant threats to our minds, bodies and livelihoods, and we try to suck up the inevitable attacks every female human being endures in her life - simply because she is female - to keep on living as joyfully as we can.

I have lived the life of a relatively-privileged and protected white woman in the western world:  raised in a society which pays lip service to equality for all human beings, but which systematically privileges a few dominant groups. Like all average western women, I have endured a lifetime of fear of assault, shame for the fact of my femaleness, humiliation at the hands of men, betrayal by men and by other women (who have joined the patriarchy in beating other women down to save themselves further pain) and doctor-mandated rape as punishment for having the audacity to seek medical care to which I was legally entitled.

"Many women find Pap smears embarrassing, 
and they would avoid getting them if they could get away with it 
and still get the other gynecological care they need...Is it paternalistic to require a Pap smear in order to get contraceptive pills? One could argue that. But it's also effective. Sometimes doctor really does know best."

Elizabeth Boskey, PhD*

The recent rash of horrors from state legislatures mandating - among other horrors - state-sponsored rape of women seeking abortions is nothing more than the logical extension of a 50-year policy of subjugating women to doctor-mandated rape for seeking female controlled birth control.  The rationale that women need "information" forced upon them before choosing a legal abortion to end an unplanned or forced pregnancy is no more dishonest than the rationale that forced "screening for cervical cancer" is a necessary prerequisite before oral contraceptives can be safely prescribed. Both rationales come from the same root belief: a woman seeking birth control/abortion is a slut who deserves to be punished for having sex. Both rationales are lies. 

Many women have been following recent events with growing terror, and that is the longterm goal of this strategy:  to keep women in a perpetual state of fear so that we will not dare to organize again and speak out to defend our human rights.  We are publicly worried about losing what few rights we had managed to win in the last century,  and we are privately frightened every day by the intimidation of a patriarchal society which threatens to strip a woman of everything she cherishes - the love of her family and friends, her ability to earn a living, her very life - unless she conforms to its impossible norms and restrictions.

Most women keep trying to play the game. Most women hope that if they try hard enough to please, try hard enough not to be too pushy, try hard enough not to be too demanding or too insistent on being treated as the equal of men, then somehow they will avoid attack. They play along to get along.

United, we can stand up to misogyny.

But, here is the thing, my sisters:

Playing along to get along isn't working.

It has never worked.


It is time to be courageous and stand up.

It is time to do what is right and speak out.

We can face down the fear together.




It may take me a while to be able to finish that dozen or so posts.  But, I will get there.  I hope you will be there with me.

* In November, 2010, Dr. Boskey added the following postscript to her unedited original post on Ask.com. :

Update 11/10: Since writing this article, I've read many women's stories of their experiences getting Pap smears, and I'm no longer in favor of using birth control pills as a way to encourage Pap screening. I still think that regular, although not yearly, screening is important; however, I think that it would be better to recruit women through education than through mechanisms that are perceived as highly coercive. Your stories have changed my mind. Thank you.

While this postscript is called an "update", it sits at the bottom of the page well after the article is concluded. The original article has not been updated: the language and message remains unchanged from the original including the quotes above.

Isn't That Just Ducky!

I make people smile!

I am a traveling dog.  I am a companion, a precious pet, a best friend.

And I make people smile!

Isn't that just Ducky!

Paralysis

I can hardly write at all lately on any of the topics that really must be written about, talked about and fought over.  The veritable tsunami of misogynist legislation which has been plowing its way through state legislatures all across the United States has left me feeling paralyzed, speechless and powerless.
There was a time not so long ago when it would have been unthinkable for anyone, let alone an elected official in a state legislature, to directly compare women to farm livestock and to say without fear of censure that women - adult female human beings - do not deserve as much, and certainly not more, consideration or health care protection than cows and pigs.

I'd like to think that the Georgia horror must surely be the lowest point possible in this nightmare,  but in this new world order,  I am no longer confident that there is any level of vindictive cruelty too low to which those who wish to strip women of their humanity will sink.

Too bad she's not a fetus

The reality is that women are quite literally under an all-out attack right now. This is not the work of just a few "fringe" people with a religious agenda.  This is the final stage in a long, deliberate strategy by the religious right and its political wing, the Republican party, to roll back the rights gained so painfully by women in the last century. The strategy was to evangelize and mobilize a voting force to bring these Christian extremists to power,  and it has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Not only did they create a "base" of determined and loyal religious fanatics, but they gained the unstinting support of self-described "moderates" who were - and remain - only too happy to clasp hands with the fanatical fringe as long as their own privileged position in society appears to be protected.

In his book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Chris Hedges gives a chilling and detailed account of just how that strategy was implemented. Read it. The author was able to interview many of the principals. Their strategy has been so successful that by the time Hedges wrote the book, their success was so great that they did not attempt to hide the agenda any longer.  In fact, they took great pleasure and pride in telling the story of how they have managed to bring the country to its knees and have forced the United States into a Christian theocracy in every important sense.

One of the most potent weapons they used to win voters' support was women's reproductive rights. Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter with Kansas? describes in chilling detail how the religious right and the Republican party reframed the issue of abortion to their mutual benefit, and started (in earnest) the war on women which we are seeing approaching a starkly hateful climax this year.  The lie of calling most abortions the "killing" of "unborn babies" instead of the removal of blastocysts, embryos or zygotes (which is what abortion is in nearly 90% of cases) was the beginning of a campaign of fear, violent imagery and emotional manipulation of potential voters which has reaped a devastating toll on women's rights everywhere.

Back in 1998, Hillary Rodham Clinton was roundly ridiculed for saying that there was a "vast right-wing conspiracy".  She was correct then and she continues to be correct today.  In her opinion piece for the New York Times today, Maureen Dowd talks about the former presidential candidate's renewed vigor in the fight for protection of the rights and dignity of women.  It gives me some comfort to read an article like this.  Allison Yarrow  also has an excellent piece today on the rash of bills tabled by women representatives (and one man - Ted Celeste of Ohio - if only I still lived in Ohio, he would have my vote!) to highlight the absurdity and dangers of these anti-woman pieces of legislation.

I am going to work on further posts on this. For today, though, this is about all I have in me.