August 11, 2007 • 11:52 pm
I’ve been quiet today because I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the great feminist DOS attacks of the moment and the long long long threads discussing them: who’s responsible, what they were reacting to, whether what they claim actually occurred, who’s right, who’s wrong etc etc etc. One of those threads is currently running at 1000+ comments.
Short summary:
Filed under: cyberbullying, netgeek, reproductive freedoms, sexuality
August 6, 2007 • 11:30 am
An attack has been made on the Australian media from the front page of Life Decisions International (LDI), whose domain name is the far more accurate fightpp.org (PP being the USA’s Planned Parenthood, the family planning organisation that offers comprehensive sex education and pregnancy services including abortion for those who choose it). The LDI are upset that somebody noticed an association between them and serial ministerial bungler Kevin Andrews.
Australian Media Shows No Regard For The Truth
It is not unusual for pro-abortion activists to use their allies in the media to attack pro-life leaders and lawmakers. But some in the Australian media are taking the practice to a whole new level. LDI has issued a response to an attack on an Australian lawmaker.
When we go to the response, the target of our media’s attack is made more explicit (the weird hyphenation of some words is in the original):
Australia Media Shows No Regard For Truth In Attack On Pro-Life Minister
8.6.2007
WASHINGTON, D.C.–It’s nothing new. Pro-abortion activ-ists work with their allies in the media to attack pro-life leaders and lawmakers. The most recent vociferous attack is against the Honorable Kevin Andrews, a Member of the Australian Parliament and Minister for Immigration and Citizenship.
“It is obvious that some pro-abortion zealot was in the United States or was searching the Internet in an effort to find something that could be used to attack Mr. Andrews,” said Douglas R. Scott, president of Life Decisions Interna-tional (LDI). “They eventually discovered that Mr. Andrews and his wife, Margaret, are members of our Board of Advi-sors. To pro-abortion activists, one may as well be a mem-ber of the Ku Klux Klan.”
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Filed under: Politics, culture wars, ethics, religion, sexuality
August 5, 2007 • 10:21 am
Politicians around the world are gingerly using YouTube to make policy statements, or maybe just to get their soundbites out there while avoiding having to have a press conference.
Now some Catholic seminarians have parodied the Mac vs PC ads (which I already loathed anyway) to convey the Vatican’s doctrine on Natural Family Planning vs Contraception.
They’ve got three videos up now, with more planned.
Now I disagree with the practicality of Natural Family Planning, although I applaud much of the sentiment: avoiding excessive chemical intervention with bodily functions, increased communication and intimacy between partners about avoiding unplanned pregnancies etc. Increased communication about sex before it actually happens can only be a good thing.
Unfortunately, NFP requires abstention during ovulation, which is the woman’s peak time of sexual desire, thus NFP involves a lifetime of women acquiescing to sex outside their peak period of desire and being forbidden from other forms of attaining orgasm during the peak period of sexual desire. Sounds like a recipe for frustration and resentment for me.
I notice that these videos simply don’t mention at all that NFP works (as far as it does work) only for people who are in monogamous committed relationships, which of course to the Church means marriage. So they’re simply not addressing the rather large population of adults who are not yet married but who are interested in sexual intercourse anyway. The unsaid only option for unmarried adults is abstinence. I’m not surprised that they’re not addressing that.
Anyway, it’s a very interesting exercise in propogating a set of policy soundbites. I await the replies that will surely multiply in the next few weeks with great interest. I also wonder when various lobbying groups on various social issues are going to fully embrace the viral aspect of YouTube etc for getting their soundbites more effectively out into the social consciousness. Let’s face it – I’m blogging about the videos above because they were put together with a modicum of wit about a controversial issue. Other people will do the same. If other groups do similiar things, those videos will be viraled and generate discussion. Get your issues out there, folks.
crossposted at LP
Filed under: Media, activism/charity, culture wars, netgeek, performance, religion, reproductive freedoms, technology
Carey Roberts, a withered geriatrarch of the he-man-she-haters club, is once again complaining that women are meanyheads: in Misandry in the least likely of places Roberts clutches his pearls over the lyrics of a Country song about a revenge scenario on an untrusted lover.
But it’s the title — Before He Cheats — that turns this song into a bitter gender tirade. Just imagine a male star reaching platinum for crooning, Before She Aborts.
Country songs about Cheatin’, oh my, Carey Roberts! Such razor-sharp insight! Who’s ever heard of such a thing! Why, it’s not as if it’s such a trope in country music that there’s actually songs about cheating songs or anything.
Cause she just started liking cheatin’ songs
And what’s bothering me
I don’t know if its the cheatin’ she likes
Or just the melody
As various commentors over at Sadly, No!’s excellent fisking of Roberts have observed, it’s hard to see how just the title makes this particular country song an outstandingly bitter gender tirade in comparison to such shining lights of relationship modelling as “Momma’s in the Graveyard (Poppa’s in the Pen)” or “He hit me (and it felt like a kiss)”.
You’d think drawing such a long bow would have tuckered Carey out, but no – he’s only warming up for the Hyperbole Steeplechase:
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Filed under: moral panics, religion, reproductive freedoms
Two contrasting examples, one using the broadest of brushes and the other dissecting stereotypes instead.
Firstly, one of the run-of-the-mill “raunch culture is all the fault of feminists who talked up the sexual revolution” op-eds that are becoming soooo familiar:Feminism’s legacy: YouTube catfights
Secondly, an op-ed about Muslim feminists in Turkey who prefer to wear the veil, and how that challenges the laws dating back to Ataturk banning the wearing of headscarves at university, in Parliament or by employees of the public service: The veils that cover up a strong feminist streak.
Filed under: gender & feminism
[Image credit: The Age, "Charlotte Makes a Meal of Question Time"]
Cheers to the ACT parliament for becoming the first parliament in Australia to get Australian Breastfeeding Association accreditation as a breastfeeding-friendly workplace, as reported in IBN News.
The ABA accreditation standards can be found here. What this means is that now ACT parliamentary members and staff will have access to flexible breaks to breastfeed or express milk, clean and appropriate facilities to express and store milk, and information on these facilities provided to female employees. They may also have access to the “optional criteria” of flexi-time/job-sharing options, on-site childcare, parking for carers to bring children to the workplace, and further information and referrals.
I find it rather strange that the criteria don’t include processes to educate other employees about breastfeeding, and procedures to deal with those who create a hostile environment breastfeeding mothers, be the mothers employees or guests in the workplace. These issues are (somewhat inadequately) covered elsewhere, but I hoped that specific inclusion in a breastfeeding-friendly workplace standard might bring them to the fore.
Several parliaments, including the ACT Legislative Assembly, decided in 2003 to begin allowing breastfeeding in the Parliamentary chamber. This change occurred after the incident in which ALP MP Kirstie Marshall was ejected from the Victorian State parliament floor for breastfeeding her daughter. Twelve-day-old Charlotte was considered a “stranger in the house” under standing orders at the time. At the time, Liberal minister Amanda Vanstone had a dig at Marshall, saying that she pitied her baby for being fed in “a noisy and testosterone-filled televised parliamentary debate”. As always, women are expected to confine themselves, to avoid public life dominated by aggressive men, rather than men being expected to act like decent human beings – regardless of whether there is or isn’t an infant present!
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Filed under: Politics, breastfeeding, food/drink, reproductive freedoms
A while back, I wrote about the effects of the passive voice and agent deletion in media reporting of sexual violence, in Passive Aggression: Foregrounding the Object.
An article in the UK Telegraph hit me between the eyes today: Four out of 10 rape victims intoxicated.
Nearly four out of 10 female rape victims had been drinking before the assault, Home Office research revealed yesterday.
[...]
Alcohol appeared to be most significant in assaults by strangers.
[...]
The overall conviction rate for rape among a total of 676 cases across the eight areas was six per cent – the same as the figure for England and Wales.
Some police forces were more successful at reducing the likelihood that a victim would withdraw their complaint, the research found.
I thought I’d have a go at re-activising it:
“Forty percent of rapists target women and girls who have been drinking before they sexually assault them, Home Office research revealed yesterday.
[...]
Men who raped women and girls they didn’t know were particularly likely to rape drunk victims.
[...]
Some police forces were more successful at increasing the likelihood that a victim would withdraw her complaint, the research found.”
Does it have a different effect, to you?
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Filed under: language, obstreperation, peeves, sexual violence
A new World Bank report warns that poor countries, wealthy donors, and aid agencies are losing sight of the value of contraception, family planning, and other reproductive health programmes in helping to boost economic growth.
The report – Population Issues in the 21st Century: The Role of the World Bank – stresses the urgency of reducing high birth rates which are strongly linked with endemic poverty, poor education, and high numbers of maternal and infant deaths.
This is what the anti-contraceptionists hiding behind “pro-life” rhetoric aren’t telling us all as they bleat about beautiful, precious babies. The result of their programs is beautiful, precious babies dying in infancy or growing up in hopeless squalor to bring more beautiful, precious babies into poverty in their turn. Generation upon generation of misery and despair.
There’s a lot to digest in the article, let alone the full report. I’ll just highlight a few snippets:
of the estimated 210 million women who become pregnant every year worldwide, more than 500,000 women die during pregnancy and childbirth, and about one in five of them resorts to abortion because of poor access to contraception.
The report says that some 68,000 women die each year as a result of unsafe abortion, 5.3 million suffer temporary or permanent disability, and many end up being ostracized within their own communities.
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Filed under: Politics, reproductive freedoms
SMH:
Vic MP to introduce abortion bill
Former Victorian frontbencher Candy Broad will introduce a private members bill into state parliament this week to decriminalise abortion.
The Upper House Labor MP announced her intentions to remove abortion from the Crimes Act.
Ms Broad said the legislation would safeguard women and doctors against the threat of prosecution.
“Most Victorians believe that abortion services are lawful in this state,” she said.
“The fact is, however, that these outdated provisions remain in the Crimes Act and because of these provisions the threat of prosecution and the stigma … is an ongoing source of concern for health professionals, for women (and) for their partners,” she said.
Ms Broad is expected to introduce the bill into parliament on Wednesday.
About time.
Edited to Add: There’s such a huge difference between a retrogressive govt deciding just to start prosecuting again and that same govt actually getting a new law passed. That’s why the laws need to be off the books, otherwise our current expectations of controlling our own fertility can be taken away without even the stroke of a pen.
So who amongst the Parliamentarians in other states are going to sort out decriminalisation for their women voters as well?
Filed under: reproductive freedoms
