Reproductive Slavery

My email has been bursting with amazing stuff this week. The latest offering is a web ad by WAMP - Women Against McCain-Palin and titled "Rape Victim".

"I was raped. Then I got pregnant. Sarah Palin believes the government should force me to take the pregnancy to term."

And with those words start an incredibly powerful and courageous 35 seconds.

Skepticism about Palin has been growing and for a good reason.

I've watched the segment where Sarah Palin talks about Roe vs. Wade and I have to tell you, I think it is one of the most insightful commentaries to come out of her mouth. I think she did a really good job at sounding level headed.

Yet listen to it very closely and what you can hear is an extremist taking her political views for a little mainstream spin and, fortunately for us, coming short.

So let me back track here a bit and go back to and issue that popped up a few weeks ago : Under then Mayor Palin, Wassilla was one of a handful of cities in Alaska that charged victims for rape kits. And what has been most astounding about this policy is Palin's response to the allegations : She claims to have not know about the practice. This from a woman that was voted into office in Wassilla by less than 7,000 votes.

In a released statement by Planned Parenthood congratulated Sen. Hillary Clinton in her efforts to get Plan B approved for over-the-counter use. NARAL, PFAW and the ACLU have been swift to point out that it's a half-win : underage women and fertile children have no free access to emergency contraception. Which is why at culturekitchen Lorraine Berry is taking the pledge to start a PlanB Underground and buy the damn thing to anybody under 18 who needs it.

There is no need to force underage women and fertile little girls down the path of an abortion or unwanted pregnancy for unrational health reasons having all to do with religious extremists obsession over parental rights. Hoorah for New York State Senator Liz Krueger to tackling the issue head on:

KRUEGER CALLS FDA "MORNING AFTER" MOVE A "HALF-VICTORY"; CALLS UPON STATE SENATE TO PASS S.6686 WHICH WOULD MAKE EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION AVAILABLE FOR ALL AGES AT NEW YORK PHARMACIES

New York—Describing today's Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) move to make emergency contraception available over-the-counter to women over 18 as "a half-victory", New York State Senator Liz Krueger called upon the state Senate to review S.6686.

When I was in fifth grade, the Equal Rights Amendment was making its rounds about the states, looking for confirmation from the legislatures. It was a hot topic in our classroom. On the television at night, we saw the images of war and destruction in Viet Nam, saw the colour images of soldiers being carried off the battlefields. Saw the sawgrass whipping in the wind of the helicoptor rotors. We saw the dead Vietnamese, too. The little kids, our age, covered with napalm, or the men in their black pyjamas. It was our nightly dinner companion, the war, and for many of us, it was the conversation at the dinner table, too.

My parents didn't believe in the Domino Theory. They believed the war was bullshit, a waste, and the images would enrage my father. Shortly before the November, 1972 election, Henry Kissinger stood in front of microphones and promised that "peace was at hand." I begged my father to vote for Richard Nixon over George McGovern because I honestly believed that Nixon was going to end the war. I wanted to take off the bracelet I wore, the one that bore the name of an American POW who had been captured in 1965, and who still sat in a Hanoi jail. I thought about his family, his children, and wondered how they coped with their father gone.

So, when the teacher in our class suggested that we should debate the ERA in our classroom, it was those images that filled our heads and coloured our debate. The boys found our Achilles' heel, and they shot at it. "If the ERA passes, girls will be drafted, too," they taunted. We caved. I didn't want to go to war. I didn't want to get shot. I didn't want to be one of those people laid out on a gurney dying a horrible death in the maelstrom of the chopper blades.

To a girl, we voted down the ERA in our classroom. And to a boy, they voted for it.

A Tisket, A Tasket

A Condom or A CasketI remember this sing-song back from days waiting tables in Seattle. It was the mid-1980s, most of the men I worked with were gay, and HIV stalked us all. They were frightening times. Rumours flew of who had it, who didn't. And the person who came in for the most agita from the men I worked with was an insufferable new waiter who claimed to be straight, but who, according to those who were out, was definitely a closet case. It was he who they sang the ditty to. I didn't quite understand it at the time, but I get it now. It requires an acknowledgement of one's sexual persona to take precautions--contraceptives or condoms--and my friends had determined that a closeted gay man was dangerous to himself and others. Harsh. But perhaps true.

This all came back to me last night, while watching the second part of the PBS Frontline special, "The Age of AIDS."

Shame kills. And watching the four hours of excellent television, I was reminded of that fact over and over again. If only someone in the Bush administration was willing to learn that lesson.
As part of the series, Frontline interviewed Noerine Kaleeba, whose husband, a Ugandan, died of AIDS. Mobilized by his death, and by the disaster that AIDS was creating in Uganda, Kaleeba founded TASO, an organization that seeks to educate and bring hope to those afflicted.

Uganda created an "ABC" program: Abstain, Be faithful, or Wear a Condom. As Kaleeba explains:

J.A.S. Collin de Plancy. Dictionnaire Infernal. Paris : E. Plon, 1863. Page 71.

Potential new freedoms often first become visible in practices within the ruling group itself. Since existing prohibitions are imposed by this group, its members are the first to violate those prohibitions when it suits them. That is one of the few freedoms reserved to a group whose relationship to other people is inherently perverse; it is marked by dominance just as are gender relations within the ruling group itself. Any freedoms appropriated by the ruling group must necessarily become perverse—to that extent, at least, its members remain human.

(Theweleit, op cit)

I know I'm supposed to be happy that the New York Times finally noticed that the Republicrats are not just against abortion, they actually hate sex, but the happiness is bittersweet. I feel like the crackpot who's been marching around the public square with the big sign that says, "The End is Near." And now, the fucking world is caving in and I'm proven right.

Or maybe I'm just taking myself way too damn seriously.

We've all heard, "hate the sin, love the sinner." But what happens when you hate the sinner, and the sinner is the self? Where does that hatred go? Enmity spills outward. When I imagine the souls of such people, I see clouds of toxic coal dust, leaking from their pores. But I also see wounded children cowering, waiting to be rescued from the darkness. It makes me sad and angry. It makes me wish that I could reach out and have a discussion with that person in which peace would be the result.

But it has ever been so. It has taken me many of my almost 43 years on this planet to quit trying to rescue people. I can feel for them, sympathize with them, but I cannot nurture the proverbial viper in my bosom.
I spend a lot of time thinking about self-hatred. My own, of course, which I cop to on a regular basis. Although I must say, I've done more to learn to love myself in the past five years than I had done previously. I think that it's about a 80/20 split these days (which makes me a good candidate for the Church of 80% Sincerity. That other 20 percent, well, that quasimodal part, she shows up on some days, and I just try to love her. What else can I do? She's part of me. I remember that this is her, too.

All right, some of you may be wondering. When is she going to get to the fucking point? I do have one. It's about self-hating women, especially those who inhabit the conservative think tank known as "Concerned Women for America." I know that I should just stay away from the place. It gives me the heebie-jeebies when I'm there, sort of like wandering around inside those catacombs where the walls are made of bones. A reminder of human frailty, but just macabre and perverse and something faintly sinister about all of it.

My co-worker suggest's I re-name this one "Great Job, Doily."

Here's the latest from my Target the Corrupt Republican blog:

The so-called "moral" Republican party has been beset by so many corruption charges that it is hard to take their claims of morality seriously anymore. With Jack Abramoff and Randy Cunningham in jail and with Tom DeLay facing impending corruption charges, the Republicans are looking might immoral these days. But there is another aspect to the "Immoral Republican Party"--sex.

Now I have nothing against sex. Unlike so many Republicans, I believe what people do on their own time in their own house is none of my business as long as all participants are consenting. Consenting adults are free to play scrabble, engage in homosexual sex or even watch Fox News and it is none of my business. Republicans feel that they have the right to dictate to you and me what we are allowed to do in private. But they are often so hypocritical about this that once again one wonders how anyone believes the myth of Republican morality.

Awhile back I covered the story of the extreme right wing, anti-gay Republican mayor of Spokane, WA who was caught soliciting homosexual sex over the internet in exchange for city jobs. The fact that he was publicly anti-gay but privately a practicing homosexual is merely hypocritical. We are used to Republican hypocrisy. Doing it over the internet when he had something to hide was outright stupid. Well, with Bush as our "president" we are used to Republicans being stupid. But to offer city jobs in exchange for homosexual sex is criminal. So, the Republican mayor of Spokane displayed extreme stupidity, criminality and hypocrisy all at once. To their credit, the voters of Spokane ousted him from office.

So while dozens of countries around the world are passing laws recognizing and protecting women's reproductive rights, the United States takes another step toward reproductive enslavement of their citizens witht the state of Tennessee. Proving that the issue of abortion is not one of saving lives but using the law to create a the new Confederate States of America, Tennessee is looking to amend the state constitution to deny women their right to reproductive autonomy :

[via Tenn. Senate Backs Anti-Abortion Step - Yahoo! News]

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The state Senate on Thursday passed a proposal to amend the Tennessee Constitution so that it doesn't guarantee a woman's right to an abortion.

The 24-9 vote was the first step of many toward officially amending the state constitution. The measure would go before voters if the General Assembly approves it twice over the next two years.

March 8 is International Women's Day, and the Leader of the Free World has declared an end to sexual exploitation of women, free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, it's a miracle. And if he can't change the whole world by executive order, today he's at least making a stern example of those South Dakota sex traffickers and exploiters of women and young girls?

Off to tell my teen-aged daughter the great news that it's morning in America and starting today, she'll be judged on the content of her character, not her uterus. . .

From the festive Voice of America holiday story:

"America will help women stand up for their freedom no matter where they live."

The president says his administration is working with other nations to end sexual exploitation and the human trafficking of women and young girls . . .