You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2015.
If you ask someone why they support homeopathy, they will give you reasons. Maybe that it worked for a friend of a friend, or perhaps their naturalpath gives them a warm fuzzy feeling that they just don’t get from real doctors. Whatever it might be, they will give you a reason.
If you ask someone why they want to legislate against abortions, they will give you reasons. Maybe they think blastocysts are people, or perhaps that a woman’s right to rule her own body goes on hiatus during pregnancy. Again, they have reasons.
If you ask someone why they want anti-blasphemy laws, they will give you reasons. Maybe they think that the whole purpose of humankind is to revere a deity, or perhaps they’re worried about a wrathful god smiting indiscriminately if it gets too pissed off. They have reasons too.
All those positions have reasons behind them. Sure, they are all horrible reasons, but at least the reasons are there.
If you ask someone why they oppose gay marriage, however, no reasons are ever provided. At most, they insinuate that they have a reason, but they never actually say what that reason is. It’s a very irritating thing to deal with. In the other cases mentioned, a well thought out response can show why all those reasons are terrible and should be discarded. There is something to work with. However, opponents to gay marriage don’t provide anything to refute. The position is worse than wrong. It provides nothing other than nonsensical, incoherent, non-arguments. Read the rest of this entry »
Shocking I say! SHOCKING!!!!
Those commie pinko bastards!
“Pregnant woman” is not an identity. It is a social reality. A pregnant woman’s ever-contracting rights – whether she can choose to end this pregnancy, whether she will risk imprisonment for drinking too much, whether she will lose her job, whether she will be murdered by her partner – can only be seen through the filter of her inferior social status: that of woman. She neither chooses nor identifies with this status and it matters that the restrictions it places on her and others be fully acknowledged. Hundreds of women died today because of the way in which pregnancy intersects with their political and social status as women. The term “pregnant people” denies them the specificity of their deaths and masks the cause.
What gender-neutral pregnancy campaigning has achieved is wholly negative, making it impossible to articulate why there exists a class of people who are not granted full sovereignty over what lies beneath their own skin. It has located the abortion debate (which should not be a debate at all) back where conservatives want it: on the status of the foetus, not that of the gravida. It has allowed the misogynist left to consolidate their definition of woman as “passive fantasy girl with tits” as opposed to “person with independent physical functions, emotions and needs.” Above all, it has created the illusion of an opt-out to being placed in the inferior sex class. Well, there isn’t, at least not until you can be bothered to challenge the fundamental idea that half the human race is inferior (oh, but that’s so much harder than messing about with words!).
There seems to be considerable speculation why Stephen Harper would call on Toronto’s (is it still alleged?) crackhead ex-mayor Rob Ford and his bully brother Doug for support – particularly considering the Prime Minister’s stance on drugs.
The answer, to me, is pretty simple. When you boil down Conservative ideology to its essence, it’s basically:
1. I’ve got mine so fuck you
2. Also fuck anybody different from me
In other words, it’s the Asshole Party. And that explains everything. Rob and Doug Ford are assholes. People who still think they’re great – and there is a surprising number of them – are also assholes, and therefor more likely to vote Conservative.
Harper is simply trying to mobilize the asshole vote.
The singing year has started for me as well as the Arbourist. My teacher and I have set two goals for this year:
- That I will develop good practicing habits
- That I will finally let my big voice out at its full size
In furtherance of these goals, she’s assigned me big, challenging repertoire that there’s no way I’ll be able to manage without practicing my butt off. Which, it turns out, means All the Wagner.
Since the theme for this semester is Art Song, I’m working on three of his five Wesendonck Lieder. Two (“Traume” and “Der Engel”) I’ve tried before and found I’d bitten off more than I could chew but maybe I’ll be ready for them now; new into the mix this year is “Stehe Still”. It is an absolute privilege to be challenged with such gorgeous music. Here’s Jessye Norman, my vocal hero, singing “Stehe Still”:
Is it an amazing piece of music or what? All those weird intervals, and completely unexpected chord changes, and yet it just completely works!
Richard Wagner wrote the Wesendonck Lieder while he was staying at the estate of Otto and Mathilde Wesendonck. There’s controversy over exactly what may or may not have transpired between Richard and Mathilde, but there’s little doubt that they were intensely infatuated with one another. Wagner put aside his work on the Ring Cycle during his time at the Wesendonck’s, and wrote his Wesendonck Lieder – settings of Mathilde Wesendonck’s poetry – and Tristan und Isolde during this period. Wikipedia entry
Well, it is picture and story time. Here is the picture –
And here is the artful rejoinder provided by “blackswallowtailbutterfly” (I think, tracing tumblr sources can be tricky at times).
“Was…was that it? Was that the “valid point against sex-based oppression” you wanted witwitch to see? Because, um, fail.
Females have ovaries that produce ova and a uterus that sheds its lining once a month. Because of the ova production and a uterus with the potential to support a foetus, our reproductive rights are restricted. Because of the monthly shedding, we are mocked, bullied, and in some countries actively ostracized until the bleeding stops. If we become pregnant, we are considered murderers if we abort, defective if we miscarry, abandoning our child if we adopt, milking the system if we’re poor and we keep the child, unable to properly raise a child if we’re a single mother, etc..
Having vaginas ensure that we are expected to serve males sexually, even if some of us are completely repulsed by males. Although the vagina can tear if we aren’t aroused or natural lubrication isn’t sufficient, we are expected to take it until the man is satisfied. Our vaginas are considered icky, our natural smells wrong. Males who are perceived too feminine are often compared to our vaginas (“pussy”, “mangina”).
We also have clitori and labia, and depending where we’re born we may have our clitoris and/or our labia cut off. Even if we live in places where that’s not legal or condoned, porn ensures a good number of women will be dissatisfied with the size or shape or colour of the labia, and may be ashamed if their clitoris is “too big”. Only recently was it discovered that the clitoris is far more than the visible glans, that most of it is internal, and yet the inner working of the penis and testes has been fairly common knowledge for decades.
We lack a prostate, but males expect us to simply give in to anal sex because they want to try it. We are expected to do this even at the risk of pain and tearing.
Our bladders are tipped, which makes us much more likely to get bladder infections, yet we are not given extra bathroom breaks.
Males are seen as the default humans. Symptoms listed for various conditions are those that males experience, but not females. Female symptoms go completely ignored unless a women’s health organization covers it.
We also have breasts, which are treated as sexual objects for male pleasure, which overrides their actual function, and even the lives of the women. Breastfeeding in public is considered inappropriate, but full frontal nudity of females is commonplace in multiple media. Campaigns against breast cancer are called “Save The Tatas” and the like.
Females on average are weaker than males, having less muscle mass and lesser bone density. Males use this difference to intimidate, terrorize, beat, rape, and even murder females.
tl;dr If you think acknowledging sex-based oppression is seeing women are “walking vaginas”, you are actively ignoring the myriad ways our bodies are used against us under patriarchy. Also, no radfem belief will ever reduce women to our parts more than “vagina-haver”, “uterus-bearer”, “clitoris-owner”, “pregnant person”, “person with a vulva”, etc..”
And thus endeth the lesson on what (a small fragment of) sex-based oppression is like.
Quite an effective argument.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…