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My Profile
Because I can't bear to eulogize Doug - 2008-08-19
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9:13 a.m. - 2004-06-17
I have spent most of my life as a ‘liberated woman’. However, all has not been smooth sailing on the way to empowerment. Nor do I believe the work of equality between the sexes is finished yet. In fact, under Bush the struggle for self-determination and equal rights under the law has been set back decades. In my post the other day I spoke of childhood sexual abuse. Many people have objected to my tying the Conservative agenda to the culture of abuse. I did not claim those from other political camps are saints and only members of the GOP prey on children. What I was speaking of was a mindset. A way of shifting the balance of power so women have less say. If a woman does not have the right to decide what happens to her body, if a woman does not have economic opportunity, if a girl is not taught about her sexuality, if she is not encouraged through sports and a broad education to respect her body and brain for the amazing things they can do, then is it really such a stretch to say those women and girls are just so much meat waiting to be feasted upon? Why was it illegal to teach a slave to read? Because education is one of the surest ways to self-realization and empowerment. Bush has made attacks on Title 9, the amendment to the Civil Rights Act which decreed equality in education. Gutting Title 9 would slam the door in women’s faces. The checks and balances which ensure equal opportunity for all would crumble away and women would be back to where they started. In the 1971 edition of my alma mater’s yearbook women’s sports had one page. It is a nice picture of the cheerleaders flashing some leg. Girls show up on the clubs and extracurricular activities pages in 4 places, the drama club, the Future Nurses, the Future Teachers, and the Future Homemakers. Alex’s 2003 yearbook tells a much different story. EVERY sport had a girls team and a boys team. There were girls in student government. There were girls in the chess club, the science club, the Math-letes. It was only because of the drive and determination of those first female pioneers backed by the law in the shape of Title 9 which made this bigger world for the women who followed. And Bush would, if he could, turn back the clock and shut all this ‘equality nonsense’ right down. Keep ‘em stupid. Keep ‘em weak. Keep ‘em home. Bush has approved a measure which denies funding for emergency contraception for rape victims. Hospitals are not even required to TELL a rape victim emergency contraception exists. To me this says, “Tough noogs, chica. We feel it’s far more important that you carry your rapist’s baby to term than any safety and security you can rebuild for yourself after being sexually assaulted. You do not matter anywhere near as much as the sperm left behind in your violated vagina.” Women are incubators. That’s all. Bush would deny a woman the opportunity to not conceive and is determined to quash Roe v Wade just to be extra sure that if a woman does get pregnant (no matter HOW she got that way) she has no way of getting rid of it. If this is not hostile toward women, if this is not just another way of saying men have rights to women’s bodies that the women themselves are denied, I don’t know what does. So again, doesn’t it seem as though the Bush agenda is all about turning women back into victims? That their status as a whole person is ignored and men may do what they will to women? Including rape? That the seed of a rapist has more rights than a woman? Many of the people who left comments spoke of power, how sexual abuse is about power. No kidding. It’s ALL about power. And whenever power is unbalanced there will be abuse of that power. The Conservative view of women is all about the inequality of power. Again and again the Bush camp has attacked those very things which make women self-determining and owners of their own power. In this muddle of messages about women and their ‘lesser’ status does it not follow that there will be men who take that as ‘permission’ to abuse? To run with the idea that females don’t matter and follow it to its most awful and horrifying extreme? If there were no speed limit and no law on the road, law guaranteeing each driver has responsibilities toward other drivers, don’t you think there’d be a free-for-all on the freeway? Too bad for those who are slower, whose engines aren’t powerful, they are road pizza. Mashed flat by the hemis and the semis. If women don’t count, then neither does what happens to them. If what happens to women doesn’t count, will there not be rampant abuse? If the mindset, the culture, the law says men have more rights than women and women themselves are not educated or encouraged to think of themselves as whole beings then the balance of power is lopsided. Weighted toward men and against women. And as our sad stories of abuse have proved, not all men are nice guys. I stand by my original assertion. All of this blather about ‘Traditional values’ is no more than a smokescreen for abuse. ~LA
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