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It doesn’t matter who you are. You gave your best, your worst and everything in between. Congratulate yourself for making it to here, prevailing or failing with your challenges. It doesn’t matter who you are. You are a worthy person and deserve to celebrate this one time, this one milestone of a thousand milestones.
Celebrate with me. For jocundity, for exultation, for the sheer epic magnitude of emotion expressed in the music of Beethoven. Prepare happily for Cry, Rinse and Repeat. Feel what unbounded joy is like through his music. Know that we are insignificant specks in a vast universe and yet, despite this fact, we create such works of unfettered jubilance.
It doesn’t matter who you are – Happy New Year – Thank you everyone who contributes to this blog and takes the time to read and comment here at DWR, may this year be kind to you and those you love.
Best Wishes,
The Arbourist
Hey folks, by now I think you are aware of my positions on pretty much every contentious issue that comes down the pipe. We here at DWR regularly lay waste to the shitty anti-choice arguments that cross our path. We take the time to deconstruct the bullcookery and show people how wrong our opponents are for the edification for all that bother to visit this little corner of the blogosphere.
I want you to go to Everysaturdaymorning’s blog, it is the experiences of people who escort women to a reproductive health centre in Louisville Kentucky. These are the people you want to emulate, these are the people who are putting it on the line everyday in defense of women. These are the people who shelter women in the face of insults, preaching and the threat of physical violence every day.
We talk and discuss here at DWR, but they DO over there at ESM. Add them to your blog roll, add them to your reader, follow their stories. The narratives at ESM are important and give us insight into what it is like in the trenches, fighting for women against those who would make them second class citizens.
For the New Year, I want to be (and you should too) a little more like the people who write ESM blog, to have the courage to stand fast to my convictions, as they do, and make a difference.
Happy New Year everyone and an special Happy New Year to the escorts down at ESM, thank you for doing what so many cannot.
I’m not much for advertising, but given that it is a good cause I’ll add my small voice to the ever growing atheist chorus and help promote this event. Good heavens, I might even go to this event as its in my country and only one province away.
Anyhow, if you need a little anti-religious pep talk to steel yourself for the next year, this vid will help.
The fear women live with everyday manifested itself in one of the most horrific ways in New Dehli.
“The woman and a male friend, who have not been identified, were on a bus in New Delhi after watching a film on the evening of Dec. 16 when they were attacked by six men who raped her. The men beat the couple and inserted an iron rod into the woman’s body, resulting in severe organ damage. Both were then stripped and thrown off the bus, according to police.”
Their culture, like our culture, is a rape culture. Women are deemed sexual objects for use and abuse by men.
“Despite all efforts by a team of eight specialists in Mount Elizabeth hospital to keep her stable, her condition continued to deteriorate over these two days,” Loh said. “She had suffered from severe organ failure following serious injuries to her body and brain. She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the odds, but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome.”
She is unnamed, she is dead. The existing (patriarchal) system tries to justify what happened:
“The tragedy has forced India to confront the reality that sexually assaulted women are often blamed for the crime, which forces them to keep quiet and not report it to authorities for fear of exposing their families to ridicule. Also, police often refuse to accept complaints from those who are courageous enough to report the rapes, and the rare prosecutions that reach courts drag on for years.
Indian attitudes toward rape are so entrenched that even politicians and opinion makers have often suggested that women should not go out at night or wear clothes that might be seen as provocative.”
Victim blaming is on the first page of the rapist’s playbook. It happens in India, and it happens here in North America. One in four women experience sexual assault/rape in our society – the same barriers in India are present here in North America that deny women justice and protect and promote rape culture. They are working on the problem in India:
“Nehra Kaul Mehra, a young Indian studying urban and gender policing at Colombia University in the United States, said, “We come from a feudal and patriarchal set-up where we value men more than women.
“We kill daughters before they are born. Those who live are fed less, educated less and segregated from boys,” she said with a black band of protest around her mouth.
Sonia Gandhi, the governing Congress party chief, assured the protesters in a statement that the rape victim’s death “deepens our determination to battle the pervasive, the shameful social attitudes and mindset that allow men to rape and molest women and girls with such an impunity.”
What needs to happen is like the following statement.
“The outrage now should lead to law reform that criminalizes all forms of sexual assault, strengthens mechanisms for implementation and accountability, so that the victims are not blamed and humiliated,” Ganguly said.
Amen to that.
To our WBC friends, some sage advice from Betty Bowers.
Ah, christians and their fairy tales. Consider a world without sin – I’m pretty sure god didn’t.
bleatmop
The Intransigent One
Mystro
The Arbourist
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