Re: Women's Rights/Issues

American Zombie Thu Oct 23, 2014 11:28 pm

jennierock wrote:
CauseItsReal wrote:Some girl on YouTube made a video to refute that, but when I seen it, I had no idea what she was referring to( she was dressed up like a princess).
What is there to refute? Facts? Or is she upset about the little girls saying fuck?

I'll just post it. Tell me what you think.

Guest Thu Oct 23, 2014 11:49 pm

CauseItsReal wrote:
jennierock wrote:
CauseItsReal wrote:Some girl on YouTube made a video to refute that, but when I seen it, I had no idea what she was referring to( she was dressed up like a princess).
What is there to refute? Facts? Or is she upset about the little girls saying fuck?
I'll just post it. Tell me what you think.

She is one of those people. I don't even know where to start.
She is making fun of the little girls mannerisms and that's FUCKED up.
Let's speak on that for a second. FUCK, that is not lady like to say that. Only men use harsh words. Just a start.
Her sources are the patriarchy and the media which is dominated by the state and the patriarch.
She wants to cite statistics that say 1 in 5 when on college campuses have not been sexually assaulted, however, she does not, nor does the article she sites understands how statistics work. I can count the 5 women closes to me, 1,2,3,4,5 and ALL have been sexually assaulted. So it really isn't bull shit.
There are pay gaps still for men and women. Not to mention benefits and work environment.
By definition, a radical feminist would want nothing to do with the state. So, huge discredit with that statement. A radical feminist associates the state with the patriarchy so they would in no way want help or solutions from them.
"Carry a gun"...Yes, dumb FUCK because the solution to violence is more violence. That's like firing a nuke at another nuke. SENSELESS! No one should have to have a gun to feel safe. That is promoting rape culture and violence.
Overall, I am blinded by the stupid statements and the dumb FUCKARY that is in this.
Again, her points are baseless, rooted in the patriarchy (state) and violence should be met with more violence to solve the issue.
FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

American Zombie Fri Oct 24, 2014 12:11 am

It was my understanding that many self proclaimed feminists are statists and Marxists or at least leftists?. Is that not true? I'm not saying they should be, I just thought they were. I don't think the state will do women any favors in the long run..of course.
But maybe that's what she was referring to in some parts, but I remember thinking that it wasn't fair to throw all feminists into that category because I know they in it.

I would agree though, that women should be able to carry guns to defend themselves. Why not?

Cursing, using the word fuck, to me is fine In The right context. I don't think women should be held to a different standard than men in that regard, but I'd say for everyone , time and place is everything. Using certain words at the wrong time comes off rude and inappropriate when used by either sex.

Guest Fri Oct 24, 2014 12:22 am

CauseItsReal wrote:It was my understanding that many self proclaimed feminists are statists and Marxists or at least leftists?. Is that not true? I'm not saying they should be, I just thought they were. I don't think the state will do women any favors in the long run..of course.
But maybe that's what she was referring to in some parts, but I remember thinking that it wasn't fair to throw all feminists into that category because I know they in it.

I would agree though, that women should be able to carry guns to defend themselves. Why not?

Cursing, using the word fuck, to me is fine In The right context. I don't think women should be held to a different standard than men in that regard, but I'd say for everyone , time and place is everything. Using certain words at the wrong time comes off rude and inappropriate when used by either sex.

There are many types of feminist. It would be easier to describe them in waves. 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. First are feminist from the beginning of the patriarchy. 2nd wave are the "bra burners" of the '70s. That is where a lot of stereotypes about feminism came from because they were so radical. 3rd wavers are more about independence, but do not speak about it. They work hard and earn their own, quite feminist, if you will. 4th wave is what those women are and what I am. They have moved back into the radical feminist days. However, the difference is 4th wavers are inclusive of all ethnic groups, genders and sexes. During the '70s, it was the black women and the white women and the fought for their own kind while ignoring other ethnic groups. So a divide. Now it is radical and inclusive to all. Of course, not all adhere and this is a hasty generalization.

It isn't that they should not be able to carry guns, they SHOULD NOT HAVE to IN ORDER TO FEEL SAFE. Does that make sense?

The point is using the word to be vulgar, it is be allowed to use the word without being a social pariah.

Guest Fri Oct 24, 2014 3:01 am

[size=31]Trick or Treat: Why Not Dress Like a 'Sexy Mom' This Year?[/size]

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Guest Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:47 pm

On Our Radar: Feminist News Round-Up

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Guest Thu Oct 30, 2014 10:08 pm

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Guest Sun Nov 02, 2014 11:38 pm

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Guest Sun Nov 02, 2014 11:48 pm

A woman who protested a ban on women attending sports matches by attending volleyball match in a stadium back in June has been sentenced to one year in jail after being found guilty of "spreading propaganda against the ruling system."

In June, Iranian-British Ghoncheh Ghavami (in Iran volunteering to help street kids) other women attempting to enter a stadium for a volleyball match between Iran and Italy's mens teams, protesting the ban on women attending male-only matches. The protesters were arrested and released after a few hours after allegedly being beaten, but Ghavami was arrested again a few days later. According to her brother, she was not able to contact her lawyer until her court hearing. She has been held in Evin Prison for 126 days, and has spent time in solitary confinement according to Amnesty International. Last month she went on a hunger strike.
According to her lawyer the court has yet to officially release the details of the verdict, but he was shown the text of the verdict stating she was found guilting of "propagating against the ruling system." Via AP:

"I was told at the court today that my client's case has been referred back to the prosecutor because Ghavami is facing new charges. So, the verdict was not given to me," he said.
Tabatabaei didn't elaborate what the new charges are or why fresh charges have been raised against his client now.

Ghavami holds both British and Iranian citizenship. Britain's Foreign Office has expressed concern regarding the grounds for the prosecution, but Iran does not recognize dual citizenship, treating those with it as Iranians. Ghavami's brother believes she was targeted due to her dual citizenship
The Free Ghoncheh Ghavami Facebook page points out that the "legal deadline to issue the verdict according to the section 212 of criminal law is 7 days at most, today marks the 28th day since Ghoncheh's court hearing and we have not heard any word." They also note "Ghoncheh has been in temporary detention for the past 126 days and her temporary detention expired 6 days ago and it is not clear to her family and lawyer as to what the current legal basis of her detention is."
There are clearly several different instances of miscarriage of justice going on right now, and it is uncertain when the court will actually announce their verdict

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Guest Sun Nov 02, 2014 11:51 pm

The Austin Police Department has launched an internal investigation after dash cam footage showed two police officers joking with each other about raping a woman. Sigh.
In the footage from May 24, the two officers are shooting the shit about their day, discussing a fender bender they had just handled and how "shit would get real for the bad guys." Then, a woman walked by their cruiser, and their response? Blowing a whistle. And then, via The Free Thought Project (at about the 1:00 mark in the video above):

Officer 1: Look at that girl over there.
Officer 2: (blows whistle) Go ahead and call the cops. They can't unrape you. (laughter)
Officer 1: You didn't turn your camera off, did you?
Officer 2: They can't unrape you.

The video was found by a lawyer investigating the same fender bender the two cops handled. Raw Story reports:

"The Carlson Law Firm obtained this video as a part of our standard investigation of a motor vehicle collision," Gibbs said in a statement. "The comments on the video struck me as inappropriate and I chose to allow the court of public opinion to decide if they agreed."

The Austin Police Department has since verified the video and released a statement, saying:

The Austin Police Department has validated the video/audio publicly released pursuant to the Texas Open Records Act. The officers in the video/audio have been identified as Austin Police officers. Upon learning of the video's contents, the Department immediately launched an internal investigation. The investigation will include a comprehensive audit of the involved officers' contacts with victims of sexual assault to ensure the actions taken during the contacts meet the expectations of the Department, the public and most importantly, the victims. Upon conclusion of the investigation, the Department will take appropriate corrective action.

Both the officers in the video are still on duty. Let the excuses begin: It was just a joke. It was a personal conversation (as Officer 2 suggests). That's just one bad example of cops. THIS IS ALL JUST PART OF THE FAMINAST CONSPIRACY.
No. Obviously I don't think all cops would make such a comment. But the comment itself is fucking gross and awful, and the fact that the person was a police officer who holds authority and joked about taking advantage of that authority to sexually assault someone is absolutely disgusting, particularly in light of cases like that of Officer Daniel Holtzclaw, currently being held at $5 million bail for the sexual assault of eight women. Or Officer Sean Harrington whostole nude photos from DUI arrestees' phones and shared it with their colleagues. Or Officer Geoffry Graves who raped a woman he escorted to a hotel after she called 911 over a domestic disturbance. Or the family court marshal Ron Fox who ordered a woman in court for a divorce case into a waiting room for a random drug search and assaulted her. Or the LAPD officers Luis Valenzuela and James Nichols who raped women they had previously arrested or used as informants, threatening jail time if they did not comply.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
OK Cop Charged with Sexual Assault of 8 Women Gets to Go Home
Daniel Ken Holtzclaw, the Oklahoma City police officer who has been charged with sexually…Read more

The officer who said that the cops "can't un-rape you" did not sexually assault the woman who walked by the cruiser—not that she should have to be thankful that a cop did not attack her, a citizen. But his comment shows he also enjoys the benefits of such a perversion of power that allows women to be sexually assaulted at the hands of legal authority figures. And maybe nothing will come of the investigation, but launching it in the first place goes to show that the Austin Police Department takes the matter pretty seriously.

The video can be seen from the link.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Guest Wed Nov 05, 2014 1:10 am

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Guest Thu Nov 06, 2014 12:07 am

There’s a Margaret Atwood quote that I can’t get out of my head these days: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

Last Friday, a young man from Washington state walked into his high school cafeteria and shot five people, killing one young woman. Early reports from other students indicate that the shooter, who reportedly shot himself, was upset over a girl. In early October, Mary Spears was shot to death in Detroit, allegedly by a man whose advances she rejected at a social club. In April, a Connecticut teen stabbed his classmate to death when she rejected his prom invitation. Turning men down is a risky business.

But the madness doesn’t stop there. From Gamergate to mass shootings to domestic violence and the NFL – the common denominator is male rage. Women are not committing most acts of mass and individual violence, nor are women lobbing out most death threats online or raping most college students. Violence – and the threat of it – remains a decidedly male domain.

But why are men so violently angry?

According to Harvard researcher Ronald Kessler, explosive anger – defined as a response “grossly out of proportion to the situation” – is two to three times more likely to occur in male teens, and twice as likely in adult men. Men are more likely to kill and be killed than women, and more likely to commit suicide: men’s anger hurts men, too.

Jackson Katz, author of The Macho Paradox, wrote that for men, “anger is much less treacherous emotional terrain than other emotions – and much more socially acceptable.”

[C]ountless men deal with their vulnerability by transferring vulnerable feelings to feelings of anger. The anger then serves to ‘prove’ that they are not, in fact, vulnerable, which would imply they are not man enough to take the pressure.

Women do get angry, but experts say we just handle the emotion differently. Psychologist Sandra Thomas, who conducted a large-scale study on women’s anger in 1993, told the American Psychological Association 10 years later, “Men have been encouraged to be more overt with their anger,” while women direct it inwards. Little has changed since then: we’ve still taught to be “nice”, that lying is often preferable to open conflict and that anger is unattractive and unfeminine.

But it’s hard to look at the continued violence and violent speech directed at women by men and not wonder: what is it about women that makes some men so angry?

Is it the fear that women’s progress means a loss of all that shiny male privilege? That our society is a zero sum game and power can’t be shared? Maybe some men’s anger stems from good old-fashioned misogyny, which is then stoked by political, social and cultural forces that say there’s nothing lower in this world than a woman so how dare she ... well, anything. Or perhaps that anger at women comes from straight-up entitlement: the men who believe that women are meant to be there for them, whether it’s to wash their toilets or warm their beds, and that denying them access to us is an unthinkable affront.

But it’s no coincidence that anti-feminist backlash happens most often when women’s rights are on an upswing. And male anger towards women isn’t going anywhere – if anything, it’s gaining steam. Online forums that provide anonymity are creating spaces for men to say the things they no longer can in “real life”, police and courts that disbelieve and blame women for the violence done to them give men the impression their bad behavior is acceptable and a conservative movement that refuses to let go of traditional gender roles teaches our children that being a man is synonymous with being “tough”, having guns and, yes, being violent.

If we want to put a dent in male anger and the chaos it creates, we need to stop looking at problems like sexual assault, harassment, domestic violence and even violent threats online and assigning their solutions to feminists. We need to stop calling them “just women’s issues”. We have to address men and men’s behavior together - not just their direct violence against women, but their propensity to protect their own. Not the outcomes of their rage, but the causes. Because, until we do, we’ll continue to be afraid. All of us.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

American Zombie Thu Nov 06, 2014 3:14 am

I found that article very interesting, and it makes a lot of valid points and raises valid issues.

Interestly though, I grew up around a lot of violent women..so I sort of see both sides.

The vast majority of violence coming from women that I've witnessed in my life was less life threatening or physically dangerous..I seen a lot of smacks, slaps, punches, scratching, shoe throwing etc.
while it usually didn't result it serious bodily injury, the point was to hurt, not just physically but emotionally.

But when men blow up and rage, yeah things could get dangerous. Men kill men, men kill women.

In my experience though, men will rage and cause damage, beat or kill In the moment and its a wrap.
Women, on the other hand, are more likely to kill you softly, slowly, methodically over a long period of time. A women can crush a mans mind and spirit over time if she chooses to and it's not something to underestimate.

Generalizations of course, but that's my perspective.

But even more interesting is the mention of vulnerability and being "macho" and the idea of being violent and angry being tough and macho.

When you think about this, not just from a man on woman violence perspective, but just on a male violence perspective, you realize that allowing yourself to be vulnerable in some cases is strength.

As is NOT acting out on impulse and seeking self knowledge in order to discover why you're experiencing the emotions that bring about those violent impulses in the first place. Then you realize that those violent impulses are really your weakness.

Guest Thu Nov 06, 2014 11:25 am

CauseItsReal wrote:
In my experience though, men will rage and cause damage, beat or kill In the moment and its a wrap.
Women, on the other hand, are more likely to kill you softly, slowly, methodically over a long period of time. A women can crush a mans mind and spirit over time if she chooses to and it's not something to underestimate.

I'm glad you brought this up. According to In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan, it relates to how men and women think.

Men are like waffles, linear in thought and compartmentalize events. So for a man, an event happens, it's over and doesn't need to be discussed.

Women are more like a plate of spaghetti. Every memory and event is intertwined with right now. 12 years ago, you said she looked fat in that dress and her hair looked bad, well, that just happened. Women kill slowly because all of our past is in our present. We even see it in the future.

This does not account for highly traumatic events for both sexes. The study was also done before transgender acceptance (what little there is) was around. In addition, this is a generalization. However, it does explain why men and women have so many different memories of the same situation. Men's memory recall is not as good as women's because of this.

My paternal family had an abuse mother and three of the boys turned watching their mother beat their father into beating their wives. Almost as a reversal of roles because they didn't want to be abused. Rather then ending the violence, they rile reversed it. Two other boys reversed it and the sister is her mother. Ultimately, it is within the person to determine how they will handle situations and gauge when violence or agression would be needed.

American Zombie Fri Nov 07, 2014 5:05 pm

Another video I came across today addressed to feminists.

Guest Mon Nov 10, 2014 1:12 am

CauseItsReal wrote:Another video I came across today addressed to feminists.

I really liked this video, thank you.

A couple of things.
The fat acceptance movement, wow, this is a big issue with a lot of deep seeds buried. The main reason(s) are equalization of body acceptance and denial of acceptable body images. Now, it is generally seen as acceptable for men to be not fit/fat, whereas women are held to a higher standard. The other main reason is because of the standard women are held to a higher standard and it is not that women are fat, they just are not the waifs the media portrays. Yes, he is right about all the health related issues. However, radical people do radical things in an attempt to make change happen. I am not fully on board with his lifting heavy weights as empowering, but that is personal. If that is a woman's personal goal and she reaches it, of course she will feel empowered, as any person would.
Lastly, the biggest issue with weight is socioeconomic status. As anyone that goes shopping knows, the less expensive food is, the worse it is for your body. A giant jug of cheese puffs at Target is $3.99. Two shelves up are pita chips for $5.99. What will a pay check to pay check person/family buy? In addition, many lower socioeconomic people do not have the time or means to focus intently of weight training or gym memberships. Obviously the more for less option. I know this is not feminist related, but it is a serious issue.
Lastly, feminist are focused are women's health in the healthcare arena right now. When the issue of women's clinics or medical centers is discussed, both sides of the state focus on abortion. However, much more than abortions is offered at those places. Basic medical needs are offered that include birth control that can prevent abortions. So, as far as women's health, there is a bigger battle being waged.
He makes a lot of really good points and I agree that health and fitness are empowering. He needs to consider that fat acceptance movement more as a fat acceptance equalization. It is on the radical side, in my opinion because it can physically harm you.

American Zombie Mon Nov 10, 2014 1:43 am

I don't accept the argument of poor only being able to afford bad foods. ( I believe he made a video on that too).

Eating too much food( too much calories) leads to weight gain. Buying less food, saves money. Sure, you may not be able to buy grass fed beef, organic vegtables and fruits, etc, but you can still buy whole foods and save money by staying away from fast food and bags of hot Cheetos.

To me the obesity epidemic has more to do with lack of basic education on nutrition and in many cases is, I dare say, a mental health issue. As people consume too much calories when they become stressed, depressed and bored, plus the lack of self respect for the body.

Guest Mon Nov 10, 2014 1:54 am

CauseItsReal wrote:I don't accept the argument of poor only being able to afford bad foods. ( I believe he made a video on that too).

Eating too much food( too much calories) leads to weight gain. Buying less food, saves money. Sure, you may not be able to buy grass fed beef, organic vegtables and fruits, etc, but you can still buy whole foods and save money by staying away from fast food and bags of hot Cheetos.

To me the obesity epidemic has more to do with lack of basic education on nutrition and in many cases is, I dare say, a mental health issue. As people consume too much calories when they become stressed, depressed and bored, plus the lack of self respect for the body.

Fast food is more cost effective than cooking. Many people do not account for the cost of gas, prep time, cooking time, utilities and clean up. I gave a good example of a time with unhealthy does cost less money.

Guest Mon Nov 10, 2014 6:59 pm

As of 2010, there were around 205,000 women in prison in the United States, and a million more under some kind of criminal justice supervision, counting those on probation and parole. But would the country benefit from not incarcerating women? At all? Ever?
That argument, while it's sure to drive men's rights activists and fans of the penal system into a crimson-faced rage, was put forth with surprising persuasiveness in the Washington Post today by Patricia O'Brien, an associate professor at the Jane Addams College of Social Work at University of Illinois at Chicago.
O'Brien writes that some members of Britan's House of Lords are advocating that the U.K. do just that: stop imprisoning women, full stop. It's a move mainly supported by the House's female members, including Baroness Jean Corston, who in 2007 put out a report on the ways that English women are made especially vulnerable by the penal system. She didn't exactly argue that no woman should be in prison, but pointed out that in a system designed by and mostly stocked with men, women's needs weren't really being considered.
"We must find better ways to keep out of prison those women who pose no threat to society and to improve the prison experience for those who do," Corston wrote in her executive summary. "One example is the regular, repetitive, unnecessary overuse of strip-searching in women's prisons which is humiliating, degrading and undignified and a dreadful invasion of privacy. For women who have suffered past abuse, particularly sexual abuse, it is an appalling introduction to prison life and an unwelcome reminder of previous victimisation."
This summer, another House of Lords "peer," Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill, took up the cry,arguing in a June floor debate that women make up only 5 percent of the prison population, and serve, generally, very short terms for largely non-violent crimes. "It is now accepted that short sentences have the worst reoffending outcomes," she said in her written remarks. "More than half of all women leaving prison are reconvicted within 12 months. Of those serving sentences of less than 12 months, the reconviction rate rises to 62%." She argued that fewer custodial sentences—the kind where you get locked up—and more community-based rehabilitation would save money as well as allow women to make their amends to society without disrupting the lives of the families: six out of 10 women in prison in the U.K. have dependent children.
Let's pause right here to acknowledge that—although many of the issues are the same for women in U.S. prisons—this will never, ever happen here. The U.S. penal system, combined with the parole and probation industries, is an enormous cash cow, tripling in size since 1980and making up much of the $200 billion we spend annually on public safety. The extent to which the prison-industrial complex has its hands jammed in the pockets of our nation's lawmakers is profound: the three major prison corporations—Corrections Corporation of America, The GEO Group, and Management and Training Corp.—have spent $45 million on lobbying in the last decade, a report by the Associated Press found.
And yet, if we were ready to have a clearer, less greed- and fear-driven conversation about prison's grip on society, there are any number of reasons to think harder about the way we lock up women, because something—or more like many things—are seriously wrong. For one, as a study from the Sentencing Project found, women's incarceration rates have risen by 646 percent between 1980 and 2010, suggesting not an increase in the number of lady criminals, but the criminalization of things like drug addiction and the new imposition of mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. Latino and black women are imprisoned at higher rates than white women. And women are much less likely to be in prison for violent crimes than men, as the Sentencing Project study found, and more likely to be there for drug and property crimes.
There's also the fact that three quarters of sexual misconduct reported in prison involves women being assaulted by correctional officers. (And that's just what's reported.) All that's without even touching the especially serious problems that transgender people, especially trans women, face in prison: increased risk of sexual assault, for starters, lack of appropriate housing settings, ill-informed prison staff, and, too often, a lack of appropriate medical care.
So yes, in a saner country, we'd be talking about ways to keep more women—and men with non-violent offenses—out of prison and in the community. In her op-ed in the Post, O'Brien has a lot of suggestions for how that might look: better diversion programs and community sentences, or, at the very least, slowing the expansion of women's prisons. But here in America, where we're still fighting about whether it's okay to shackle incarcerated women in labor by their hands and feet, that conversation is still probably, and sadly, a long way off.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Guest Mon Nov 10, 2014 7:04 pm

In 1987, hospital administrators at George Washington University Hospital in D.C. went to court to force 27-year-old Angela Carder, six months pregnant and ill with a rapidlymetastasizing tumor in her lung, to undergo a C-section against her will. The goal was to "rescue" her fetus, they argued in court filings, despite the fact that the baby was extremely premature and Carder's own obstetricians didn't think it was appropriate to intervene on the baby's behalf until at least 28 weeks of pregnancy.
Carder's family tried desperately to stop the surgery, fearing that she was too sick to survive the procedure. She'd had cancer almost continuously since she was 13, and had already lost her left leg and hip to the disease. Nor did Carder herself want the C-section: when her doctor explained the risks, she said, repeatedly, "I don't want it done."
Nonetheless, despite her lawyer's frantic last-minute calls to the judge for an emergency stay, Carder was wheeled into the operating room. Her fetus died two hours later. Carder held on for two days before she, too, died.
The Carder case is the most infamous example in U.S. history of a woman's most basic civil rights being ignored simply because she was pregnant. This weekend, in an infuriating, terrifying editorial in the New York Times, Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin of Advocates for Pregnant Women showed that her case isn't an isolated one. In a growing number of states, anti-abortion laws, whether they're "personhood" amendments or backdoor efforts to ban abortion through nuisance TRAP laws, are contributing to a climate where pregnant people's rights are ignored.
"Such laws are increasingly being used as the basis for arresting women who have no intention of ending a pregnancy," Paltrow and Flavin write. "And for preventing women from making their own decisions about how they will give birth."
Skeptics will argue that Carder's death was nearly 30 years ago. But the Iowa woman mentioned in Paltrow and Flavin's article, who was arrested for "attempted fetal homicide" after falling down a flight of stairs? That was Christine Taylor, and it happened in 2010. The charges against her were only dropped, according to a Nation article about her case, "when prosecutors discovered that Taylor was in her second trimester, not her third, when criminal penalties could apply." A pregnant woman named Bei Bei Shuai was jailed on fetal homicide charges in 2011after she tried to commit suicide. Her baby, born by emergency C-section, died three days later. Shuai, had eaten rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her, but went to the hospital soon after, and, in the words of her attorneys, consented "to every test and every procedure that she was told would ensure the safety of her baby."
Doctors and hospital administrators in many states don't hesitate to call the cops even in instances where the pregnant person's wishes just differ from their own. When Lisa Epsteen of Tampa tried to give birth at home in 2013, her obstetrician threatened to call the police unless she reported to the hospital for a C-section. Just this past July, a Florida woman was forced by a hospital ethics panel to give birth by C-section, despite going to court to try to win the right to a VBAC (vaginal birth after C-section).
Paltrow and Flavin[url=http://jhppl.dukejournals.org/content/38/2/299.full.pdf+html?sid=b0811f36-d4e4-4b51-a830-e175e6eee40c For those cases that are not mentioned in the article -what do you need?] released a study last year [/url]showing hundreds more examples, from 1973 to 2005. They found over 400 cases in 44 states, with low-income women and women of color especially vulnerable to forced legal and surgical intervention from the state.
"We should be able to work across the spectrum of opinion about abortion to unite in the defense of one basic principle," they write. "That at no point in her pregnancy should a woman lose her civil and human rights."
It's a completely non-controversial opinion, one that we shouldn't have to make a case for in the op-ed pages of the nation's newspapers. It's enough to make you nostalgic for a time when theHandmaid's Tale was a grim dystopian fantasy, and not some kind of how-to manual.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Guest Mon Nov 10, 2014 8:06 pm

I’m not, in any way, a Noam Chomsky fan. However, I couldn’t help be struck by his description of anarchism in a recent interview.
Primarily it is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified.
First of all, yes, exactly, brilliant.
But second, “patriarchal families” is something I’d generally skip over. The pithiness of the entire statement, plus me going through and deciding where and when to cut off the part I wanted to quote, had me pass over it again, and notice it.
Anarchy asks whether patriarchal families are justified.
After years of thought, beginning while I was still embroiled in Evangelical Christianity, on through self-identifying as a non-practicing deist Christian anarcho-capitalist, is, essentially, sometimes.
First we’ve got to decide what we mean by justified. I don’t know Chomsky’s moral system, but from the fact that he’s an anarcho-syndicalist I’d guess that maximizing human prosperity isn’t the aim of his ethics.
It is mine.
And what I have decided, after looking at the evidence, is that patriarchal families are not conducive to maximizing human prosperity. So to me, they are not justified.
Part of why I broke up with the Evangelical church is that I lost faith in its moral system. I overgeneralize and hyperbolize here, I realize, but, for the sake of clarity, I’ll summarize the Evangelical moral philosophy as,
We think Jesus or Paul said this activity is right or wrong, so that makes it right or wrong.
The idea that it is morally wrong for women to teach men, or that premarital sex is wrong, is justified on the exact same grounds that one could use to justify requiring that women must cover their heads in church in order to be right with God. That they don’t cover their heads is clearly a matter of practicality, but pointing that out made my fellow churchgoers hella uncomfortable.
Similarly, I overgeneralize and hyperbolize when I describe the moral system of social conservatism to be,
This activity is different than the activity I’m comfortable with and that has a long track record so it’s wrong.
Though my social conservatism was inextricably linked with Evangelical Christianity, and fell away as I dumped it, I similarly reject its premise. Accepting or rejecting an activity as moral requires more, for me, than approval by a person or persons or a long track record. Cab companies have a long track record. Uber is better.
I get, intellectually, the idea that humans are incomplete and fallible in our intellect, information and understanding. The idea is that because we are not omniscient, we need a supernatural power to tell us how to act. How interesting that faith in the supernatural (but not church membership or attendance) negatively correlates with education and intelligence. It’s almost like the more faith one has in one’s own intellect, information and understanding, the less able one is to buy into this particular moral system.
Because when you look at it, the Evangelical moral system is actually opposed to intellect, information and understanding. God loves us, right? So surely he’d set up a moral system which would maximize our self-interest. Surely being a devout Christian would make us wealthier, happier, more fulfilled and living longer, healthier lives. But, no, it says in the New Testament pretty clearly that following Jesus will lead to alienation, persecution and suffering.
I don’t know, man. I’m just not sure I’m into that. I really mean that. I don’t know. Maybe I should be proclaiming the Gospel and being shunned and sacrificing my worldly happiness for eternal glory. But I do know that the moral code I preached when I was Evangelical, a path to heaven which consisted of renouncing homosexuality and saving yourself for marriage and eschewing drugs, was wrong. And worse, incredibly alienating and hurtful. So since following that moral code brought me to a place I shudder to remember, hurting people and making their lives more difficult, I’ve rejected and replaced it.
As well, I intellectually understand the socially conservative idea that because institutions like marriage and monogamy have “worked” over millennia, they should be protected and enshrined, and that deviation from them threatens the entire working system, and should be punished accordingly. But worked for whom? Yes, marriage and monogamy and insisting women maintain modesty and sexual purity has in the past helped establish and maintain stable, two-parent households in which children could grow up relatively unscathed. However, at what cost to the women involved? And, are we mistaking cause and effect here? Stable marriages, marriage at all, really, has always been most easily and readily available to the wealthiest, the most educated, the most intelligent and the most emotionally strong among us. Is it possible that it’s all those factors which make for the best parenting among the married, and not the marriage itself?
Furthermore, is it possible that what we’re actually seeing is a vicious cycle, in which our ideas about a woman’s proper place help keep her from being able to be economically independent, which then makes her solo parenting marred by grinding poverty, which helps bolster support for the idea that she should be parenting within a marriage?
And even beyond that, is it possible that a man as head of the household, which is what I believe Chomsky was referring to when he said “patriarchal families” only makes sense when women are poorly educated? Now that women are earning more degrees than are men, why relegate decision making to the less-informed of the two?
Another data point which challenges the justification for “patriarchal families” is whether it makes sense for men to head households when their wives outearn them. Since single, childless women in cities outearn their male counterparts, insisting that a family be headed by a man will lead to women eschewing marriage entirely, for lack of a suitable partner.
No, I find both moral systems irredeemably flawed. That’s not to say either get everything wrong. It’s to say that I reject the foundations upon which they are built. No, it’s not enough for me to accept something as moral that Jesus or Paul reportedly said it is. I’ll wear my head fully uncovered should I go to church, thankyouverymuch. And no, that people have always done it and it’s worked okay is not reason enough for me to accept that in the here and now, it’s something worth doing. You can take your admonition for me to submit to my husband and shove it where the sun don’t shine.
My moral system is essentially this: Something is moral if the empirical evidence indicates it makes people happier, more connected or wealthier. Is this arbitrary? Arbitrary as hell. I could have as easily said that something is moral if it increases equality. And I do enjoy equality, but I justify it by the evidence that equality of opportunity, and equality before the law is generally conducive to happiness, connectedness and prosperity.
So, basically, all that is part of why I’m an anarcha-feminist.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Guest Wed Nov 12, 2014 1:04 am

Guest Wed Nov 12, 2014 1:44 am

Guest Fri Nov 14, 2014 4:34 pm

It sounds like a radical idea: Stop incarcerating women, and close down women’s prisons. But in Britain, there is a growing movement, sponsored by a peer in the House of Lords, to do just that.

The argument is actually quite straightforward: There are far fewer women in prison than men to start with — women make up just 7 percent of the prison population. This means that these women are disproportionately affected by a system designed for men.

But could women’s prisons actually be eliminated in the United States, where the rate of women’s incarceration has risen by 646 percent in the past 30 years? The context is different, but many of the arguments are the same.

Essentially, the case for closing women’s prisons is the same as the case for imprisoning fewer men. It is the case against the prison industrial complex and for community-based treatment where it works better than incarceration. But there is evidence that prison harms women more than men, so why not start there?

Any examination of the women who are in U.S. prisons reveals that the majority are nonviolent offenders with poor education, little employment experience and multiple histories of abuse from childhood through adulthood. Women are also more likely than men to have children who rely on them for support — 147,000 American children have mothers in prison.

Prison nation

The United States is a prison nation. More than 1.5 million people are incarcerated in the country. And this obsession with punishment is expensive. Cumulatively, states spend more than $52 billion a year on their prison systems. The federal government also spends tens of billions to police, prosecute and imprison people, though research demonstrates that incarceration harms individual well-being and does not improve public safety.

What purpose is served by subjecting the most disempowered, abused and nonviolent women to the perpetually negative environment of prisons?

Efforts to make prison “work” for women have only perpetuated the growth of the prison industrial complex. These putative reforms have helped some individuals, and possibly brought the nature of mass warehousing of poor, black and brown bodies more into focus, but the number of incarcerated people still continues to rise.

Community interventions work

So what is the alternative to jailing women at the rate we do? In Britain, advocates propose community sentences for nonviolent offenders and housing violent offenders in small custodial centers near their families.

There is evidence that these approaches can work in the United States. Opportunities to test alternatives to prison are increasing across the states, and some have demonstrated beneficial results for the women who participated.

For example, state-funded Project Redeploy in Illinois has built upon the evidence that nonviolent offenders are more effectively treated in their communities by diverting 1,376 nonviolent offenders from prison since January 2011, when the program began, through the end of 2013.

Oklahoma is currently ranked No. 1 for female incarceration per capita in the country. Nearly 80 percent of Oklahoma’s incarcerated women are nonviolent offenders, their presence in prison largely attributed to drug abuse, distribution of controlled substances, prostitution and property crimes.

A program that began five years ago, Women in Recovery, provides an alternative to prison for women who are sentenced for felony crimes linked to alcohol or drug addiction. The program includes comprehensive treatment and services such as employment services, housing assistance and family reunification. Women with small children are given the highest priority for admission to the program. Women who complete the program, averaging about 18 months, have a high degree of success after release.

The program coordinator has told me that 68 percent of the women who completed the program had no further involvement with the criminal justice system.

Starting with women

Even as we learn about promising diversion programs for women, are we really ready to shut down women’s prisons? If we think of abolition as a citizens’ effort and believe that women should be allowed to jump the queue for transport along the path of recovery and healing, there are steps that must be taken from a feminist perspective.

We need to understand the harm embedded in the current prison system and explore what alternative responses already exist. For example, Susan Burton, the founder of A New Way of Life, a group of transition homes for women exiting prison in Los Angeles, indicates that an abolitionist perspective transforms the lives of former prisoners. Direct assistance from this program reconnects women to their families, communities and citizenship. Circle processes used by indigenous communities in the United States, Canada and New Zealand provide models for these practices.

The systemic production of mass incarceration cannot be solved simply by assisting troubled and troubling individual women. Another step to abolition requires taking the discussion beyond the individuals and communities most directly harmed, controlled and erased by the prison industrial complex to the public sphere that has passively accepted it. Put simply, we need to stop seeing prisons as an inevitable part of life.

Another way

If we can’t close down women’s prisons, we can at least slow down their expansion. Efforts to isolate women from their communities must be identified and opposed.

In Denver, for example, the Fail the Jail campaign helped defeat the addition of new jail beds. Instead, the director of the state’s community reentry project told me that alternatives have proven to help individual women and change community attitudes.

The case for closing women’s prisons is built on the experiences of formerly incarcerated women and activists who recognize that women who are mothers and community builders can find their way forward when they respected and supported. It is possible to imagine a future without women’s prisons; whether it’s achievable will require a bigger shift in thinking.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Guest Wed Nov 19, 2014 12:05 am

Sponsored content

Women's Rights/Issues