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Brain Trauma inducing thought of the day: By trusting women and giving them control of their reproductive future, less unplanned pregnancies and less abortions will occur. [tick tick tick….head asplodes….]
I know, how crazy is that? Women…you know the ones that have children…are in the best position to decide whether the conditions are right to have a child. (whoops, that’s two brain frying statements in the same post – apologies).
Offering women affordable healthcare (really, it should be universal and free; come join the rest of the civilized world America) makes for a more egalitarian, healthier, happier society. Making it easier for people to access reproductive health services? What is this sorcery? The Guttmacher Institute summarizes the case nicely.
[read the whole report from the Guttmacher Institute here]
“A recent national survey of publicly funded facilities that provide family planning services found that facilities with a reproductive health focus were better able to meet the contraceptive needs of their younger clients—by incorporating youth-friendly service delivery, being accessible and ensuring confidentiality—than were primary care-focused facilities. Additionally, facilities with more youth-friendly services offered more long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), including the IUD and implant.”
[…]
“These juxtaposed concerns highlight the importance of offering women of all ages a broad range of contraceptive methods to choose from in the context of comprehensive, patient-focused counseling. The authors suggest that counselors manage expectations around LARC methods, highlighting both the reversible nature of these methods and that they are “set and forget,” making them highly effective. They also suggest that misconceptions about LARC methods that persist among both providers and patients be addressed through better education and counseling. Additionally, improved training on LARC methods for staff at all levels, not just clinical staff, will help facilities move toward a more comprehensive package of contraceptive services for young women, integrating IUDs and implants into the range of methods offered, which will ultimately help young women avoid unintended pregnancy and meet their reproductive goals. However, all of this requires financial support.
“Expanding insurance coverage that includes the full range of contraceptive methods is key to giving women access to the most highly effective—and often most expensive—methods,” said Adam Sonfield, senior policy associate with the Guttmacher Institute. “Implementation of the Affordable Care Act may go a long way toward easing cost issues related to LARC methods for U.S. women. In particular, it will make it easier for providers to offer these highly effective methods to younger clients, and provide the counseling they need to understand their options and choose the method that best meets their needs.”
Remember who was/is throwing a craptacular shit fit over healthcare? Oh ya, the republicans and the church. Women should keep that tidy little non-coincidence in mind.
Not ever.
“The way women dress and conduct themselves is constantly under scrutiny – particularly in the context of sexual assault. The notion that particular styles or clothes choices can be factors that contribute to sexual assault are ludicrous and damaging to women – as well as being insulting to men.
It is not short skirts or high heels that cause rape – it is rapists. Choices in dress are expressions of no more than personal style – they are NEVER incitements to sexual violence. In addressing women’s personal safety we need to think less about changing rooms and more about changing attitudes.”
“Unless we accept that women are biologically programmed to engage in beauty practices, then they need to be understood as cultural practices that are required of women. All practices required of one sex class rather than the other should be examined for their political role in maintaining male dominance. ”
-From Beauty and Misogyny:Harmful Cultural Practices in the West by Sheila Jeffreys. (p. 30)
Reading this text now… by golly there are so many ideas that are clarified; and this only in the first two chapters.
I have done a few ‘Hero of the Day’ posts and I have a few more on the way. The recipients have done great work spreading important information, rallying against injustice, educating us masses, and have been generally awesome. But today’s hero is special. On top of those usual achievements, she’s done it all while personally facing off against one of the leading threats to civilization as we know it. Oh, and she’s only 15.
The Taliban, with its “all powerful god”, is threatened by literate females. So much so, it will use brutal violence, murder, torture, and arson to enforce its view that girls should not be allowed in schools. What else would you expect from the “religion of peace”?
Malala Yousafzai, from the Swat district of Pakistan, however, does not agree. With aspirations of becoming a doctor or a politician, Malala is a strong advocate for gender equality, especially for equal access to education. Like many other girls in Swat, Malala has risked her life to attend classes against the wishes of the Taliban. At the same time, she was also doing something extraordinary. Malala, using a pseudonym, started blogging for the BBC, reporting to the world what it was like to be an ordinary child under the Taliban as it destroyed schools and forbade girls from attending the ones they hadn’t destroyed yet.
Adam B. Ellick from the New York Times made a documentary called Class Dismissed profiling Malala, her activism, and the difficulties and dangers for girls wanting to go to school.
Since the documentary, Malala’s has kept on advocating for girl’s education, growing in influence and visibility. This earned her and her father numerous death threats from the Taliban. Undeterred, Malala kept working for equal education opportunities.
On October 9th, 2012, the Taliban tried to make good on its threats. To preserve the glory of Islam an Allah, Malala was shot in the head.
Now recovering in a UK hospital, Malala isn’t done yet. Her message and story are spreading and the world is taking note.
Tarek Fatah, from Toronto, started a petition on change.org to nominate Malala for a Nobel Peace Prize. The response has been tremendous. The Prime Minister and the leaders of all of our major parties have unanimously endorsed this petition. If you haven’t done so already, please sign as well.
In the west we’ve had huge media organizations cower and retreat when islamist extremists raised their hate filled voices. In Swat, a 15 year old girl stood directly against the guns, bombs, soldiers, and machetes wielded by the worst of brutal zealots, just outside her door.
It is interesting to watch the mainstream media wrestle with feminism and the backlash from the perceived violations of cultural norms. The Guardian blogged a piece called Why is ‘feminism’ such a tough badge to wear?‘ Then the Blogsphere reacted and some thoughtful writing took place and was captured by Slendermeans and thus appeared in my wordpress reader and is now coming to you here and now.
Echidne of the Snakes has broken down the arguments and responded quite succinctly to each in kind, however I think she does a particularly marvellous job of ferreting out some of the reasons why feminists are often negatively identified in our society. I’ve added italics in the quoted material.
“This is the argument that the piece itself mentions:
As Siobhan Garrigan, who studies English at the University of Lincoln, puts it: “Young people don’t want to identify as feminists because there is this man-hating, frumpy, lesbian image forced on us.”
[…]
[…], those three accusations don’t have anything to do with each other. The first one states that anyone wanting gender equality must hate men. That’s pretty weird. The second one argues, that women who want gender equality cannot be attractive enough to get men in a system where women are second-class citizens. Only unattractive women would want equality!
That’s illogical, too. Finally, one’s sexuality has nothing to do with one’s desire for a gender-equal society. All illogical, says Echidne.
But squint your eyes a bit, and you see the underlying pattern, what all three of these things share: These women do not try to please men. Or that’s the suspicion of anyone using those accusations. Wanting equality means not wanting to please men. Therefore, women who want equality must hate men, be unattractive or prefer women in their sexuality.”
I’m thinking that the not pleasing men angle is the interesting notion brought up by Echidne (as I think more I realize she’s precisely on target – her observations parallel what I’ve read in Beauty and Misogyny by Sheila Jeffreys so far. Oh, go read B&M asap!). What comes into play is the interference feminism brings to the cultural norms of society. Women are supposed to perform to the expectations of men, those are the expectations in our society. Feminists explicitly do not conform to what is expected of them, thus opprobrium results. Hence we get the homosexual, ugly and frumpy characterizations.
Here lies the danger of letting ones opponents define who you are – women are beset by the misogyny implicit in society, like running a race with and just because of your two XX chromosomes you get a extra forty pound backpack to wear for the duration of the race. Who would want to add to their already onerously full backpack by self identifying as a feminist? The price of perofrming femininity is already so high and it is rewarded, such as it is, in the patriarchy for complying. Choosing to go against patriarchal expectations (not to mention the social conditioning of being passive and accepting) is huge; not playing by the rules disqualifies one from the limited benefits afforded to women within the patriarchal system and exposes women to damaging patriarchal animadversion as mentioned in the quoted material.
Knowing and understanding the insidious effects of patriarchy is half the battle; then one can choose the battleground and know when to take to the field. Unfortunately, patriarchy once seen, cannot be unseen. We shouldn’t fault those who have struck their patriarchal bargain, but should know what it entails.
Tough choice to make, but I do agree with Socrates – “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Project Unbreakable is well worth your eyeball time.
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