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A pox on you Game of Thrones for pushing my summer reading to the margins. Just look at the great stuff that has been gathering dust in my book-pile. This is an excerpt from Susan Brownmiller’s work titled “Femininity”.
“Nancy Henley, psychologist and author of Body Politics, has written, “In a way so accepted and so subtle as to be unnoticed even by its practitioners and recipients, males in couples will often literally push a woman everywhere she is to go – the arm from behind, steering around corners, through doorways, into elevators, onto escalators … crossing the street. It is not necessarily heavy and pushy or physical in an ugly way; it is light and gentle but firm, in the way of the most confident equestrians with the best-trained horses.”
In this familiar pas de deux, a woman must either consent to be led with a gracious display of good manners or else she must buck and bristle at the touch of the reins. Femininity encourages the romance of compliance, a willing exchange of motor autonomy and physical balance for the protocols of masculine protection. Steering and leading are prerogatives of those in command. Observational studies of who touches whom in a given situation show that superiors feel free to lay an intimate, guiding hand on those with inferior status, but not the reverse. “The politics of touch,” a concept of Henley’s operates instructively in masculine-feminine relations.”
-Susan Brownmiller, Femininity. p. 200
Sociological experiment time ladies and gents. Let’s test the politics of touch in real life and be aware of how your partner interacts with you on the street. Is the gentle steering there? The quote mentions that this is close to being an imperceptible phenomena, so hike up your conscious awareness to 11 and observe what happens.
For extra fun why not try and lead your partner, or be lead to see how the role reversal works out?
A troubling situation for women around the world. No thanks to religion. :P Go here for a bigger version, thank you NeuroNotes.
Susan Brownmiller has a remarkable talent for framing slippery sociological concepts. This quote is from the introduction to her book “Femininity” and it lucidly describes the nature of the viscous catch-22 women experience for the crime of being born female.
“Femininity always demands more.
It must constantly reassures its audience by a willing demonstration of difference, even when one does not exist in nature, or it must seize and embrace a natural variation and compose a rhapsodic symphony upon the notes. Suppose one doesn’t care to, has other things on her mind, is clumsy or tone-deaf despite the best instruction and training? To fail at the feminine difference is to appear not to care about men, and to risk the loss of their attention and approval. To be insufficiently feminine is viewed as a failure in core sexual identify, or as a failure to care sufficiently about oneself, for a woman found wanting will be appraised (and will appraise herself) as mannish or neutered or simply unattractive, as men have defined these terms.
We are talking, admittedly, about an exquisite esthetic [sic]. Enormous pleasure can be extracted from feminine pursuits as a creative outlet or purely as relaxation; indeed, indulgence for the sake of fun, or art, or attention, is among femininity’s great joys. But the chief attraction (and the central paradox, as well) is the competitive edge that femininty seems to promise in the unending struggle to survive, and perhaps to triumph. The world smiles favorably on the feminine woman: it extends little courtesies and minor privilege. Yet the nature of the competitive edge is ironic, as beset, for one works at femininity by accepting restrictions, by limiting one’s sights, by choosing an indirect route, by scattering concentration and not giving one’s all as a man would to his own, certifiably masculine, interests. It does not require a great deal of imagination for a woman to understand the feminine principle as a grand collection of compromises, large and small, that she simply must make in order to render herself a successful woman. If she has difficulty in satisfying femininity’s demands, if its illusions go against her grain, or if she is criticized for her shortcomings and imperfections, the more she will see femininity as a desperate strategy of appeasement, a strategy she may noe have the wish of the courage to abandon, for failure looms in either direction.”
-Susan Brownmiller. Femininity p. 15-16
Because Magic, taught as fact, in the curriculum is AWESOME!
Further breaking news: The Edmonton Public School Board will also remove Soylent Green Recipe Book from the Foods curriculum.
How does feculence like this happen in my school system?
“An Edmonton teen and her mother have filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission over a high school sex education class delivered by a religious-based group. Last year, Emily Dawson, 18, took part in a two-day class delivered as part of the Career and Life Management course at McNally High School. The teenager says she was shocked by what she heard.
“Basically shaming the girls and making them gatekeepers and meanwhile making it sound like the boys had no impulse control,” she said.
The Edmonton Public School Board used the Pregnancy Care Centre to conduct the course. The centre is affiliated with Care-Net, an American based anti-abortion movement. Both groups focus on advocating abstinence from sex.
How many other little “whoopsies” does the EPSB have up its sleeve? The NRA about the value of gun control and firearm safety? Exxon on Environmental Stewardship?
What the crap?
First, lets establish what our Experts in Christian Misogyny are advocating. From Care.net –
“Care Net promotes and supports sexual abstinence until marriage among youth through its LifeWise Program. LifeWise services are available free of charge to churches, schools, and any youth-serving organizations. Care Net will also partner with parents to provide neighborhood programs in homes or at Care Net’s facility on the east side of Madison.
Care Net works to end abortion, not primarily through political action but by building a culture where every woman receives all the support she needs to welcome her child and create her own success story. By empowering women and men to make courageous, life-affirming choices, Care Net and our affiliate pregnancy centers end abortions every single day.”
Well, isn’t this just a “Grade-A” glistening block of bullshit on display. They also run Pregnancy centres to hoodwink traumatized women and baffle them with religious bullshit and obstruct them while they attempt to obtain a legal medical procedure.
What a charming bunch of folks, god bless their hearts, we are dealing with here.
So, let’s take a look at the facts of the matter just to show exactly how full of shit our christian care.net friends are and the poisonous message they brought into the Edmonton public school system.
From:
The Failure of Abstinence-only Education: minors have a right to honest talk about sex. – Published in: Sexuality and the Law Symposium, Columbia Journal of Gender and Law Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 12-62, 2006.
“Abstinence-only sex education is anything but educational. At best, it deprives students of the knowledge necessary to manage their own sexual health. At worst, it is dangerous to minors and to the public health. As the Waxman Report concluded, “[s]erious and pervasive problems with the accuracy of abstinence-only curricula may help explain why these programs have not been shown to protect adolescents from sexually transmitted diseases and why youth who pledge abstinence are significantly less likely to make informed choices about precautions when they do have sex.”18 In a society that purports to value children, the state should foster healthy, informed minors who are equipped to manage their sexual health responsibly. At the very least, the state should not encourage or support educators and programs in misleading children and promoting false, dangerous, and potentially injurious practices.”
~~~~
“In light of the potential health risks associated with these curricula, abstinence-only education cannot be justified as intending to serve any significant state interest. While the government may have an interest in encouraging abstinence in unmarried youth, its current policy is being pursued at the expense both of truth and public health. Importantly, there is no evidence that providing comprehensive sex education promotes increased sexual behavior or dilutes the message that abstinence is a preferable choice, as proponents assert.250 Furthermore, the government’s singular focus on abstinence represents an educational policy that is inconsistent with the democratic educational objective of preparing adolescents to make responsible, informed choices.”
More on efficacy of Abstinence only versus comprehensive sex education.
“Using figures from 1995-2000, Advocates for Youth (www.advocatesforyouth.org) reports that the HIV rate for Americans 15-24 is five times that of German youth of the age. The U.S. teen syphilis rate is six times higher than the Dutch; the chlamydia rate is 20 times that of French teens; and our teen gonorrhea rate is a whopping 74 times higher than the Dutch.
European programs that provide uncensored sex education and promote condom use are the reasons for this success. Contrary to what one might expect, European youth have fewer sex partners than Americans do and begin sex slightly later than Americans. What is alarming, however, is that America has the largest percentage of girls who have sex by age 15.
The U.S. also has the highest teen birth rate among 28 developed countries. According to a UNICEF study, less than 10 per 100,000 teenage girls in Korea, Japan, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Sweden gave birth in 2001, whereas 52 American teens per 100,000 did.”
More on the failure of Abstinence Only Education – Here, Here, Here, here… Let us conclude then that our dear Christian Misogynists are the engineers of the fail-train; happily throwing more coal into the fire as they move full speed ahead and with Jesus and Ignorance at their side, they are unstoppable.
We should get back to Kelly and Emily and their experience with these professional dispensers of mendacity.
Kathy Dawson says she tried to pull her daughter Emily out of the class for the second day. But she says the school informed her that Emily had to take the class in order to pass her course. So she joined her daughter in the classroom. A single mother, Dawson said she was shocked what students were told about families like hers.
“Well, that our children are prone to depression, suicide, juvenile delinquency,” she said.
The remarks also surprised her daughter. “It’s not something that you hear every day where you’re getting bashed for being in a single-parent home.”
Kathy Dawson was also upset the class appeared to focus on values instead of science.”
See. Seeeeeeeeee?!? This is what happens when you let this sort of religious malevolent altiloquence into the secular classroom. Shaming single parent families, fuck-ya god hates you – and lets not forget about the eternally burning homosexuals…
“I have a friend that is a lesbian and she was asking what would happen if she didn’t want to stay abstinent and then the educator said, ‘We’re not here to talk about that,’” Dawson said.
Yes, telling young children that they’ll burn seems a little out of place in Canada (and the norm for secular societies), so we’ll just ignore your question instead. The nice people at Care Net are so full of love, tolerance, and compassion.
Full marks to Kathy Dawson for taking action to get these people out of the school system.
The Alberta Human Rights Commission has now accepted the Dawsons’ complaint.
“I’m training up my kids to respect science and demand science in their education,” Kathy Dawson said. “So this is a long haul, and I’m fully prepared to take it all the way.”
This is pretty much a slam dunk. Is religious bunk allowed in the classroom? Yes/No If the answer is yes, then the leaders of secular school board will have some explaining to do.
The EPSB took action –
the EPSB wrote that it had a registered nurse observe one of the presentations unannounced and found the information “met our standards and expectations on every level” but that it would still look for new presenters for the next year.
“Having said that, we’ve heard a lot of concerns expressed from the public over the last several days about guest speakers invited to present on the topic of sexual health education,” the board wrote.
“We are asking our schools in the fall to use different presenters so that we can continue this conversation, and focus on meeting the needs of students and parents.”
Well the school board doesn’t have its head entirely up its ass. Woo!
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A little push-back at the more toxic prescriptions of our society.
Ah, friendly readers, behold the surreal world of MRA ‘reality’ compared to what, in fact, is reality.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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