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I think when society goes from "girls can't do math" to "girls average out with boys in math" (except with more Einsteins at the high end and more Einstein the Juniors at the low end to average out to all the Plain Janes in the middle on the XX side of the equation) we can look forward to a study down the road with boys still playing the high and low odds and girls averaging out higher than they did in this study.
Call me a mathematical genius, but I'd say girls seem to be curving upwards - on average - and there's no reason why they can't take that average up to the boy genius level.
Then, some day, maybe we'll figure out how to conduct a mathematical study comparing boys to girls instead of girls to boys.
Gee, maybe Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage hear voices in their heads telling them to tell Americans to kill Liberals. Or maybe it's like it was in Rwanda and Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage are deliberately telling psychotics to kill Liberals because they're jealous of their status in American society and they plan to keep doing it until all the Liberals in America are dead. And, you know, it's easy for the psychotics to tell who the Liberals are in America because they're the Americans who aren't drooling morons.
But speaking of drooling morons, where are all our (Canada's) free speech nutters and religious rights fanatics to bemoan the killings of a couple of American Unitarians by a Terrorist who wanted to take away Liberal freedoms? Oh yeah - wrong speech, wrong religion, wrong freedoms.
I never understood why spinster was such a reviled word. I know how spinsters were always portrayed by Hollywood, but personally, I found their lives so much more fulfilling than the lives of their married sisters, who were supposedly happier because they got to live out their lives as Mrs. John Smith.
So, although I can't technically call myself a spinster, I've decided to reclaim the word, anyway. In fact, I think all words deemed derogatory by society should be reclaimed by the people they were meant to demean.
You grrl, spinster!
There's a lot of fingerwagging reaction to the interview in the Globe with the father of the 17 year old recently killed by Winnipeg police, but to me it was as if his no bullshit honesty about life at the bottom for him and his son came straight out of a David Adams Richards novel.
Honesty is almost unrecognizable as the truth, these days, isn't it. I was particularly struck by his tacked on bravado in saying he was going to sue police over the death of his son. So now my fondest desire for this Year of Our Lord 2008 is that a Canadian Atticus Finch will stride forth from the life sustaining prairie to take his hopeless case to court.
We need something to happen here, something civilized.
... As a step up from what we have now... The New Conservative Government of Canada has created a deficit. Way to go, Rightwing voters! But it's really too funny. Imagine voting for a bunch of assholes campaigning to form the government by saying government is bad, bad, bad. Too bad we all get what Rightwing voters deserve. In any case, having stripped government ministries of big chunks of their operating budgets AND created a deficit, the New Conservatives have actually realized their election theme - government now IS bad. So watch out for a big ol' clampdown coming up by Revenue Canada, Canadians. The New Conservatives created a revenue crisis and now they need cash.
Brought to you by Taser International and the New Conservative Party of Canada. Meanwhile, down south, cops in Memphis managed to track down the IP of someone who was talking shit about them so they could, well, you know "shut him up real good". So next time there's a knock at the door and you ask, "who's there?" and the answer is "police", don't open the door because it could be - a Tasergram!
... Would be New Conservatives, wouldn't they? I mean, they both hate Feminists and Feminism, the defining political movement of western society (our "signature"), and want a return to Scripture and Patriarchy.
So when the Right speaks of "useful idiots", I can't help but think back, "well, you're idiots, but useful is a bit grandiose".
Sigh. Like fish in a barrel... Ezra'sOppositeWhirld
You know, often ignored in the Pro-Life stampede to a future in which abortion is a criminal act and the State has control over female reproduction, is the fact that Feminists, while fighting for abortion rights, deserve all the credit for also removing the stigma of childbirth out of wedlock. Not Pro-Lifers, Feminists. A handful of Feminists have done more to enable women who want to bring a pregnancy to term to do so, than have all the Pro-Lifers across the country. So there, other side. That's double plus squared for women's rights - thanks to Feminists.
I haven't been following the Omar Khadr case (so I'm pretty much on a par with Stephen Harper, I guess) but shouldn't he be free on bail for time served or something?
Pat McKittie posted on my forum today that, according to some newsguy, the word "jihad" has lots of meanings.
Which reminded me of something blogworthy - I've never heard a muslim use the word "jihad". The only time I've ever heard the word "jihad" used in a sentence is when some newsguy (i.e. non-muslim) is telling us what it means and why muslims are crazy for it and how we'd better all look out because muslims take their jihad very seriously.
Gee, if all I had to be proud of was the colour of my skin, I really don't think I'd hold a rally to advertise it.
I dunno. I'm kind of with McCain on the whole "stay in Iraq until we win" thing. I mean, how the hell is it even remotely fair to Iraqis if Americans pull out now? You can't just go into a country, wreck it, and then scram when it looks like you're going to be stuck there forever with your debt spiralling into the trillions and your domestic economy collapsing in chunks - especially when you had the chance to vote the perpetrator of all that carnage out of office and didn't. Not until there's a Shantytown on every corner and a gun in every pot and movies celebrating the Iraqi way should Americans leave Iraq.
Nope. I say McCain in '08. Besides, Obama wants to pull out of Iraq just to deploy more American troops to Afghanistan and I don't think having to dodge friendly fire would be fair to the exhausted troops there.
According to B.C. Premier, Gordon Campbell, everyone responsible for it is wishing the death by Taser of Robert Dziekanski had never happened. Really? Why aren't they suing these thugs, then, instead of ordering more Tasers from them as if it won't happen all over again:
TaserInternationalPressReleaseToShareholders
Gee, I wonder who the shareholders of Taser International are...
The Globe has an interesting article on the taboo subject of abortion in polite society, whatever and wherever that is, and the fact that this is really just because women are made to feel they should be ashamed as opposed to relieved for having had one.
Well, choice doesn't mean easy, but it does mean a lot of other good things, so - such is life. Speak up, ladies. Get it done and let 'em howl. Which brings me to P.E.I. where there is no choice and New Brunswick where choice is dependent on the approval of TWO doctors. Gee, why two? Why not twenty? I mean, you're as likely to have TWO doctors at your disposal as you are to get a free trip to the moon, so I'd say that is a denial of choice to the women of New Brunswick and a violation of their legal and civil rights as Canadian citizens.
Meanwhile, in Ottawa, the Premier's home town, there is a six week wait time for an abortion. That's a problem and the province should be doing something to address it. Otherwise, women in Ottawa will also have to conclude that male dominated religious politics is strategically being allowed to trump their legal and civil rights, too.
Don't make us start demonstrating in the streets again, fellas - especially during election campaigns. Because if we have to make the next federal election ALL about abortion - we will.
Why can't we all acknowledge, at the very least, the essential unfairness of a Canadian citizen being out-of-pocket - at all - in defending himself against a complaint brought against him to a Canadian Human Rights Commission?
Today in David Warren World, David Warren tells us who's psychotic:
RedemptionsAreForSuckers
Here's long David Warren referring to Israel's decision to trade five Hezbollah POWs (to use a never used term when referring to Arab prisoners of war) for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in battle (which is to say, "murdered by terrorists") - with which he disagrees because it "costs" too much:
It is right to recover the bodies. But at what cost? This is something the postmodern mind, which I find increasingly unhinged, is incapable of processing. (...blahdittyblahblah...) Whether we are dealing with indifferent small purchases -- when, as the Yorkshireman says, "You can't have [both] the penny and the bun" -- or with huge political transactions touching everyone -- the cost of what we propose must be calculated.
Now here's shorter David Warren:
(Postmodern minds in David Warren's head talking) "You cannot put a price on [insert pipedream here]!" (Pipedream in this case being Israel's recovery of the bodies of two soldiers) - To which David Warren responds: Yes you can. In this world, you can put a price on anything.
Okayyyyy. Now here's one of the traded POWs of the "savage and uncivilized polity" Hezbollah:
"To tell you the truth, we envy our enemies -- the way they care for a body and will go to the end of the world in order to get it back." He added that, reading in jail, he had come to feel, by comparison, the "disregard for human beings' value in Arab countries," mentioning specifically Egypt's indifferent attitude towards its own soldiers, missing in action.
Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger...
...Christmas in the New World. There's just too damn much of it.
In another case of baby boomers not remembering their youth, I just have to ask - how come there weren't any fat kids from poor families when I was growing up - just lots of skinny ones who grew into husky adults with thyroid conditions?
Clearly, it's the cheap bad food what's causing the seemingly genetic change in weight. Hm... genetic change, eh... Gee, maybe Monsanto isn't just poisoning us, it's making us fat, too. Anyway, we really should figure out what to so about this because if the skinny kids of my youth could grow into husky adults who love their Whoppers, imagine what the fat kids of today will be after eating in 2030.
Ah, where's Mrs. Watson of Grade 7 home-ec class when you need her to teach everybody how to make a good ratatouille? For that matter, where's home-ec class, the most useful part of my entire education until the intensive Intermediate week-long French course I took last winter?
Jason Kenney, MP, papered centertown in Ottawa, presumably on the duly allotted House of Commons dime, with a householder featuring Dion in his famous shrugging pose and a caption reading "DION'S TAX ON EVERYTHING - WILL YOU BE TRICKED INTO PAYING MORE?"
Well, we've been tricked into paying for shite like this, so - yes?
We should send Team Canada over to India to get our jahbs!jahbs!jahbs! back. Or insist, at least, that the people doing them, do them from here - where we can at least argue with them over the phone in good conscience, instead of biting our tongues over bad service because we picture them chained to telecommunications towers...
Personally, I find Obama to be a bit of a humourless prig (which is a lot like being an Al Queda terrorist, when you really stop and think about it) while McCain is truly, madly, deeply insane - so it's interesting that both the Democrats and the Republicans are running on the personalities of their leaders.
Interesting in an end-of-irony way, I mean. How is it that the democracies of which we in the New World are so boastful hither and yon seem to come down to such cartoonish mano a mano contests here at home?
It's pretty clear that Stephen Harper and his New Conservative followers have an agenda to discredit government in the eyes of Canadians in order that we will ultimately support their ideological belief that contracting out public services to the private sector is economic gold.
Gold Baby!!
It's not, for taxpayers, anyway, so we need to know - who actually is benefitting from the largesse of this government with our money?
DavidWarren"OhWoeIsMe"AKA"WhitherYeCanadaofAuld"
It takes only a few years to throw them over, and the task of Sisyphus must begin again.
Oh. That explains it. His sisyphus must be in the tertiary stage.
What if the New Yorker cartoon wasn't meant to be satire or even funny and it's only because people acted so negatively to the news that Obama is a Terrorist and Michelle is a Black Panther (until Black Panther is politically correctified to Tawn Fawn) that the New Yorker decided it was being satirical and not trying to send out a coded yellow alert through one of its normally inoffensive and/or incomprehensible cartoons with a baseball-bat-over-the-head drawing.
Of course, it'd be really funny if it turned out to be true and Obama is just running for President so he can bring on a Holy Reign of Terrorism and shout at his swearing in, "At last, the Terrorists have won!" Funnier still if he made RevRend Wright his Defense Secretary in Charge of Rooting Out Infidels, Ike Turner his Minister of Sharia Law and Louis Farrakhan his Ambassador to the Middle East.
Gawd, but the funniest would be if he won a second term...
I hope all the anti-choice Order of Canada recipients give back their Orders of Canada so that we can start fresh with members who respect women's human rights. Then we can NOT make the mistake of giving the award to Canadians who don't. Again.
It's interesting to me how the media frames the debate about developing the TarSands as if non-Albertans don't want Albertans to be richrichrich, when in fact our concern is that the money is temporary while the development is just a really bad trade off for the loss of a beautiful natural landscape. And I'm not sure at what point we all didn't have a say in what happens to our country, but clearly - we don't. Money talks, not citizens.
And that's what really divides us because nowadays, being a Canadian citizen means less than being a provincial consumer which means less than being a corporate well of greed.
OsamaHusseinBarrack&MichelleX
But the cartoon could still damage Senator Obama's campaign for the White House.
Tough nuts. What, no satire until Obama's President?
"A problem is there's no caption on the cover to ensure that everyone gets the ha-ha-we've-collected-almost-every-cliched-rumor-about-Obama-in-one-place-in-order-to--make-fun-of-them punchline," Malcom writes.
I dunno. I think they captured Michelle's essence quite nicely, even sans satire. But magazine covers like this will only make Obama supporters more humorless and McCain supporters point their fingers harder, so the net result will be Hillary laughing her ass off and having another margarita.
I mean, really. I say go for broke in humorless and/or stupid and elect McCain, America. War on, Dudes.
Well, that's it. I've read enough. Arrest me for treason because I'm no longer even going to pretend I'm on the side of the Americans..
It's pretty depressing reading about the effects of Agent Orange on Vietnam, as I did in the Globe this weekend, but it makes sense that the American government would be so conscious of weapons of mass destruction and their potential, that's for sure. What's bizarre is its failure to recognize its own guilt in their use.
I mean, call me anti-American, but how can Americans see themselves as good guys when we all know what we all know (and I cringe at what we don't - yet...). You'd think, at the very least, the American government would own up to the human and environmental devastation it caused with Agent Orange, a weapon of mass destruction, and offer up reparations to the victims in Vietnam, if only to give the appearance of being better than... well... say... Saddam Hussein who so famously gassed the Kurds. (Tell me Monsanto didn't manufacture THAT gas, too...).
The war is over, afterall, and money is just money, not honour.
I wonder if other countries make movies about foreigners with thick yankee accents storming into sovereign countries to kill their leaders and take over their countries? I mean, I watched Air Force One the other night (Director: "C'mon people - I want a tense facial expression - terrorists, er, hijackers with unidentifiable accents have just hijacked Air Force One and are threatening the First Lady and Child!") and it occurred to me that, other than the United States, what country is always sending their assassins or troops (I know, I know - there's a difference - the assassins are attached to the government, the troops are just citizens) to other parts of the world in a dramatic and ongoing attempt to take it over and Americanize it?
And I'm not even counting the moon, but, let's face it - Americans make a lot of movies about alien invasions of the United States, too, and yet - they're the only ones I see trying to conquer space. I dunno. Maybe there are a bunch of Martians sitting around on Saturday night yucking it up watching a bunch of earthlings with crazed expressions and thick yankee accents (oh Gawd I hope they aren't lumping the rest of us in with Americans - although I guess we pretty much think of all Martians as little green men...) get picked off one by one by the President of Mars as he (I guess the President of Mars would have to be a he since Martians are all little green men...) wages guerilla warfare from the bowels of Space Ship One to save his First Martian and Child (whatever tthe procreation details are of little green men...) from a bunch of Gawd-fearin' Yankee Spaceists.
I've been cruising around the Internet checking out male blogger opinion on what leadership means to them in the Harper vs Dion vein (Layton not fitting the template, having an equally political partner and no kids, I guess) and I have to say, it's no wonder we're nowhere near having a female leader of the Liberal or New Conservative parties. Now, I'm not one to think men and women want different things in life, necessarily, but I do think we have different ways of going about things and having worked for both men and women, I'd have to say I'd rather work for women because regardless of what she's in charge of, her priority is getting everyone on board to work together to the same end.
With female politicians, that end is generally to make everything work better for more people. And that crosses the floor around the world, too, from Left to Maggie Thatcher. So, aside from a generic sexism, there's no reason for any political party to not want female leaders all the time.
Now, men don't necessarily appreciate that consensual teamwork approach, but - tough nuts. An office is no place for rugged individuality, quite frankly. Although it does work well for the rugged individualist, who is generally left alone to pursue his goal of indulging his private passions on the job and staying clear of any actual office-related work load. And certainly politics, home of the prima donna if you're male, is the last place women are successful because pretty much the last thing backroom boys et al want is a change in routine.
I mean, think about it. Why would any voter take seriously any male politician who talks about family values except that voters have been conditioned to think male politicians care about family values? There's no profession in which fathers have less contact with their families than politics. Wives and children are props, the voter is all, and since we know that the more a male politician talks about family values the more likely he is to be having a homosexual affair with a prostitute, why do we take the family values speechifying seriously?
And yet we do. Or the media does, anyway. So with regards to leadership, why are we pretending Harper OR Dion are leaders when all they did was win the leadership of their own political parties, neither of which are models of anything except manipulation and deceit, and teamwork is nowhere to be seen?
Because political leadership is still viewed through a male lens and since women aren't men, they won't ever be seen as having the qualities necessary to lead. And we'll continue to elect people who don't really make things better for anybody because it's all about being seen to lead a political party as opposed to actually leading the country by bringing everybody on board.
Sex selection is a telling canard in the pro-life argument since it's clear that the better the quality of life for a girl, the more valued she is and the more she is wanted. Certainly when pro-lifers argue about the sex discrimination of abortion against females here, they aren't talking about any people I know and they definitely aren't talking about Feminists. I know lots of new parents at the moment (the last woman I knew to have an abortion was back in university - and she had to go to New York for it), several of whom are happy with two girls and don't plan to have any more children. It's not about boy/girl with any of them, actually, so I have to wonder if that's something unique to the pro-life crowd, that males are preferable to females, or rather that God prefers a male soul over a female soul because the female soul is worth less.
SOMEOBODY, afterall, is adopting a goodly number of unwanted Chinese girls.
But, since pro-lifers value males over females, maybe that's why they assume the rest of us do, too. And if they're saying it's a cultural thing, well, so what? These people will learn when their son has to marry outside his culture, unless he's gay and can easily find a cultural match within it, and when they must take second place to the parents of their son's wife when she has children, that Canada is quite unlike the old country. Besides, since when do we adapt our way of life to suit the sexism of new immigrants?
Oh yeah, we've got a New Conservative government running things now.
I don't argue about abortion anymore because if you don't understand that it is/was/always will be a woman's legal/moral/human right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy - in spite of political attempts to re-criminalize abortion - you're as absurd as New Conservative Cabinet Ministers who have sex out of wedlock.
Besides, until we have a law to castrate any future causers of unwanted pregnancies, we shouldn't have any kind of abortion law. I mean, it would be outrageously sexist to enact any such legislation re-criminalizing abortion when there's no equivalent law criminalizing unwanted impregnation. So you see, anti-choice Canadians are being grossly discriminatory to women in their argument for an abortion law because they don't also argue for the surefire prevention of unwanted pregnancies - all of which are caused by men - with any kind of Bill restricting men's impregnation rights.
Face it. Their argument has nothing to do with anything other than that they, Canada's Anti-Choice Lobby, want to force women to carry pregnancies to term on behalf of men, good, bad and ugly.
I guess if you loved Mike Harris having two majority governments to completely strip Ontario of public safety services so he could parcel them off to his private drinking buddies, you must really love what Stephen Harper has been able to do to Canadian public safety services with just one minority:
CanadiansNotConsideredStakeholdersByTheirOwnGovernment
The document records the results of a November 2007 Treasury Board meeting where ministers approved the proposed cuts for the upcoming February budget. The changes will affect the inspection of animal feed mills, the certification of commercial seed, and eliminate mandatory label registration of meat and processed products. It also calls for consolidating three import service centres into one central facility and proposed spending cuts on equipment for the Avian Influenza Preparedness Program. In this case, the document was still confidential because the agency hasn't completed its consultations with the industry and other stakeholders on the changes, said St. Amand.
Something tells me that by "other stakeholders", they don't mean us.
LiberalPoliticianHasBalls!
He appears to be the first premier to address the issue publicly, and his stance falls in opposition to that of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has said he would have preferred to have seen the award bestowed on someone who unifies Canadians.
"I know that Dr. Morgentaler's been seen as a controversial figure, but I believe in a woman's right to make a very difficult decision," McGuinty said.
"And if she makes that difficult decision and chooses to have an abortion, I want her to be able to do that in a way that's safe, in a way that's publicly funded. So I know it's divisive, but I think it's important."
Just for a moment, imagine what a society in which women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term would actually look like, given the fact that abortion is currently a legal medical procedure. For instance, it would entail such a step backwards in terms of women's rights that Feminists would, by necessity, devote all of our efforts to re-securing the right to safe and legal abortions for all women, which would in turn require a massive police deployment by the State to enforce the new law re-criminalizing abortion. And how would the State go about forcing women to bring unwanted pregnancies to term? Would it lock up women who wanted abortions, strapping them to gurneys in birthing prisons, until they gave birth? Who would then "own" the born? Speaking of free speech, would expressing regret over a pregnancy be enough to have the State step in and take over ownership of the unborn by expropriating the body of the woman until she gives birth? What if the woman was impregnated against her will? What would her rights be then?
I mean, not to sound naive, but surely pro-lifers are not suggesting we live in a fascist police state in order to prevent women from having the right to safe and legal abortion services. Or are they...
Herrrrre'sEzra!
I don't think the State (or even Children's Services...) should seize the children of parents who hold political views considered abhorrent by "decent" society (heheh - or all Rightwingers would have their children seized...) but I was under the impression that the girl's step-father drew the swastika on her arm and sent her to school.
Now, I suppose the school could have ignored that act of bodily vandalism, but... I'm not sure why it would. If I was a teacher at the school, I'd bring it to the attention of the principal, too - and it would then, by law, have to be reported to Children's Services. Should Children's Services have seized the children? Well, the girl's mom is married to her step-dad and clearly wasn't protecting her daughter from what I would say was a boundary cross.
The fact is, and lots of Rightwingers don't like it, kids have rights recognized in law nowadays. That's a good thing because it means parents no longer have the absolute right of control and ownership over their children they once had simply because they're their children. And that's a good thing because anyone can have children and as a society, we have to ensure that those children are protected under the same laws that protect the rest of us. I mean, imagine some other kid's dad drawing a swastika on the little girl's arm on her way to school. Would that be okay with Rightwingers so keen on protecting what they see as parental rights?
I read Timothy Findley say in an interview once that we are our memories, which intrigues me whenever I read middle-aged people, boomers essentially, glorifying the Canada they think they remember in their youth. I mean, I was there and even as a smart middle-class white girl and fourth or fifth generation Canadian (one surefire way of staking claim on Canada was to completely blow off the old countries, in my family's humble opinion) growing up in Northern Ontario, I recall a sexist, racist society hellbent on maintaining a sexist, racist status quo.
We really are so much better now in terms of fairness - for everybody - that I have to wonder if these piners for a simpler time are simply pining for their privileged boy and girlhoods, because life, even for me, a smart middle-class white girl was a lot tougher than it should have been if society had been even remotely fair and not stacked in favour of a privileged male few. Femaleness was so discriminated against that it sticks in my craw to this day and is why I am an unrepentent Feminist who will have no truck nor trade with the politics of the Right, organized religion, or any other such patriarchal-related old guard.
I was an angry little girl, let me tell you, because injustice was everywhere. Kids from low income families were systematically discriminated against in school - because they were from low income families, Christian religious education was mandatory for everybody - even if you were Jewish, girls couldn't wear pants because that was considered unladylike - even in the deep of winter, women lost their jobs if they became pregnant - including teaching jobs, girls were prevented from pursuing dreams reserved for boys and encouraged to dumb it down for their futures as housewives, sexual abuse was endemic and not reported because reporting it caused little girls (and boys) even more trouble (and nothing was done about it, anyway), abused kids were stigmatized by schools, churches, parents, adults and abusers always got away with it, sexual assault was the fault of the victim and something that wouldn't have happened if you weren't asking for it, women couldn't make financial arrangements without their husband's signature, husbands had all the rights of the family, pharmacists and doctors could prevent you from having even the limited birth control available because their views didn't cotton to it, and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc.
That's the past the memory of which the piners have clearly suppressed - or worse, want us all to go back to living.
I enjoy now so much more than then that I can't imagine where these people who want to go back to those days are coming from, unless it's money. A friend in the investment industry told me that the wealthy have essentially set up Canada so that only they will ever be wealthy, the middle-class will always be middle-class, the poor will most likely always be poor, etc. But nowadays, because we are a more democratic society, politicians must pay attention to the needs of the poor and middle-class since we vastly out-number the wealthy and we vote.
Also, the wealthy are no longer looked upon as deserving of special status. Inheritance doesn't cut you status with the middle-class, anymore. We see it for what it is - easy money and aren't you lucky to have been born into it while the rest of us have to work for a living.
Of course, politicians, being dependent on that easy money, are a little out of step with the times, but there's just no stopping progress. And for some reason, progress in an increasingly egalitarian society really terrifies some Canadians. It's as if they're afraid that other people having rights will diminish their rights instead of secure them - regardless of money and, really, that's just pathetic, isn't it?
Okay. Go ahead, rightwing pundits and pundettes (and I mean you, Margaret Wente). Blame Feminists for advancing human rights in the west - we can take it.
Indeed, it's interesting in these new millennium days how desperately even rightwing pundits and pundettes who may claim to believe in limited (which we essentially have, in medical terms) abortion rights (although never for themselves, personally, oh God no) are driven to make the point, however false it may be, that there are plenty of bad women out there using abortion as a method of birth control.
Which sounds to me like they don't really believe women should have abortion rights at all, or, at least, SOME women shouldn't...
Still, I suppose if you think women are essentially bad, you would believe that about us (conflict of interest/full disclosure - I am a Feminist) wouldn't you. In any case, asking them if they think such bad women should have babies instead, they really don't have a consistent answer. Some say, "yes", some say, "no", some say, "maybe". So really, I get the impression they just don't think there should be a choice at all, in spite of what they claim - that government (big bad government, which, in areas NOT involving women's rights they believe shouldn't be reaching into our, I mean, their lives at all) should take away the choice. Or, at least, take it away from all those bad women out there.
Because choice is hard and it's even harder if everybody has it - especially for rightwing pundits and pundettes. And it's xtra hard for rightwing pundettes where all those bad women out there are concerned because bad women make choices that hurt good men on the right - and ALL men on the right are good if you're a rightwing pundette because every "women bad" argument must have an equal and opposite "men good" argument to balance it.
But don't take my word for it - it's all in the rightwing pundit and pundette Bible, Atlas Shrugged, the harlequin romance of the philosophy known as Objectifyism.
Hey, all you kids out there, the Order of Canada has never been something that unites us rather than divides us. It's usually just a nod to members of the wealthy elite in this country. Awarding it to Dr. Morgenthaler is overdue, but it's still nice to know that real political activism can sometimes, if rarely, make a difference in this country.
Power to the people.
I dunno, after reading an absolutely crazy piece in the National Post lamenting Dr. Henry Morgenthaler's Order of Canada I just have to say - isn't it amazing how fundamentally religious our media actually is - still - in 2008?
Which is ironic because it's also incredibly and unrelentingly sexist, I find, and I was just thinking today how much better off women would be if organized religion had absolutely no say in the politics of our country - instead of more, as it does with this New Conservative Government of Canada. Meanwhile, in our media, a woman's right to reproductive control over her own body is news, but Christian fundamentalists running the government from behind the scenes - isn't. Colour me nostalgic, but didn't our media used to be more secular back in those '70s days?
So, while I'm here with this article: WhatAboutTheUnborn?! let me just lament that Dr. Morgenthaler, a hero to many Canadians, but also a hero by any definition, must share being awarded the Order of Canada with so many recipients who have been named solely for serving the mythical god of their brand name religion while actively campaigning to restrict the human rights of Canadians. So there, Ian Hunter. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on who our heroes are in this life.
Say, since all the doctors and engineers who immigrate to Canada from overseas end up working as taxi drivers and pizza delivery guys (except all the female doctors and engineers, who apparently can't even get jobs as taxi drivers or pizza delivery guys) why don't we just cut to the chase and only allow taxi drivers and pizza delivery guys to immigrate to Canada.
I mean, c'mon - if those are the employment gaps we need filled, why are we filling them doctors and engineers? Who is the charade for, anyway?
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