Showing posts with label womens rights. Show all posts
    Showing posts with label womens rights. Show all posts

  • For the longest time, I wondered why conservatives, more specifically the hardcore "pro-lifers" that comprise a significant portion of the current GOP, were so hell-bent on eliminating abortion and along with it the right for a woman to have agency over her own body. I actually had a longer, more drawn out post for this one, but then I thought, "the issue might not be as complicated as I thought." As much as I hated to trash that post, I'm glad I did.

    It started out with paying attention to who exactly was calling for "the right to life" and the end of abortions. The more I listened to and read about the klaxon calls, the more I saw something that was rather disturbing, but something I shouldn't have been surprised about.

    I noticed the calls for respecting the sanctity of life started no sooner than the act of copulation was done but abruptly ended as soon as the baby was finally born. Then the child goes from being a blessing to being a burden and a drain or just plain forgotten about. If conservatives had this much respect for a child when it was in the womb, you'd think they'd have that same level of respect for a child out of it, or for all life, for that matter. As you can see by current GOP goals to crumble up the social safety net like so many used Dixie cups, that's not the case.

    I caught the vibe the pro-life movement seemed to be specifically aimed at white Americans. There were furtive efforts to bring black Americans and Hispanics into the pro-life tent, but the movement took on a sort of urgency I couldn't put my finger on.

    Then I read the demographics.

    Look at the latest U.S. Census figures and U.S. population projections for 2050 and beyond. The numbers don't lie. The U.S. is getting browner and browner by the minute, and that disturbs a lot of people. That would have been the end of it if it wasn't for a black man becoming a U.S. president, signaling the crumbling of another barrier and a slow end to Anglo-Saxon hegemony when it came to positions of power. You'd be surprised at how many people were comforted over the fact that a "colored" would never become president.

    The GOP's worried about demographics being the party's downfall. With few Hispanics and nearly zero black Americans backing the GOP, the party has only a certain, dwindling pool of people to rely on. It's not just the crazy 27-percent - it's the relatively uninformed swing voters who'd vote for the most convincing personality if convinced hard enough into a certain direction. 2012 is the GOP's last chance. If they don't win this now, chances are they won't be able to win for the foreseeable future.

    The alarm over abortion transforms into a silent worry that too many white women are choosing not to be fruitful and fulfill their destined duty while the wrong types of people are allowed to reproduce like crazy. The underlying story is "too many blacks and browns being born and not enough whites." Racial hegemony and political posturing swaddled in a blanket of faux concern for womens' prenatal health.

    I also read about the Stolen Generation, about how the Australian government took scores of aboriginal children and attempted to reshape them into something more "respectable" to Anglo-Saxon standards. The ultimate aim was to simply breed the "abo" out of them, eventually leaving people with little to no trace of their original heritage and a culture that would be inevitably distilled to monuments, trinkets and rituals performed by people who haven't a clue about the actual people who were behind it all or their culture.

    The native Americans were largely slaughtered into irrelevance and attempts to breed the Negro out of Negros only succeeded in adding a dollop of "Negro blood" into the white American gene pool. Eugenics was tried but that went out of fashion, eventually. I see much of the pro-life movement as a last gasp for retaining "demographic balance" while enforcing socio-religious mores at the same time.

    Finally, I read this. This is powerful. This is something that everyone should read, comments and all.

    One thing the author addresses is how the "bad" women who do decide to go ahead with having their child are expected to give their children up without a second thought - no guilt, no pain, no mourning. It's assumed that these women were callous enough to not want to keep their baby in the first place - henceforth, letting go wouldn't be any problem. It would be like leaving a Dixie cup on a counter and walking away:

    And why the fuck are actual babies so disposable that you're expected to get over it after a suitable period of mourning (i.e., till you get a good Christian husband) in the case of adoption? It's odd how this does not apply in the case of aborting a blastocyst, when you're expected to wall yourself into a tomb away from decent society and gnaw on the bitter bones of your own despicable evil. Bad woman. BAD.

    A certain morally vindictive set of folks see pregnancy as just desserts for promiscuity. Dealing with nine months of pregnancy and childbirth is supposed to be the punishment.

    Babies as punishment, at least until they're given up to a proper, respectable "Christian" family who will raise them up in the proper "Christian" way until they grow up to be mirror images of what proper society deems to be a proper, respectable person. I always thought babies were a blessing...
  • The Handmaid's Tale is set in the near future in the Republic of Gilead, a country formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America. It was founded by a racist, homophobic, male chauvinist, nativist, theocratic-organized military coup as an ideologically driven response to the pervasive ecological, physical and social degradation of the country.
    Beginning with a staged terrorist attack (blamed on Islamic extremist terrorists) that kills the President and most of Congress, a movement calling itself the "Sons of Jacob" launch a revolution and suspend the United States Constitution under the pretext of restoring order.

    Taking advantage of electronic banking, they were quickly able to freeze the assets of all women and other "undesirables" in the country, stripping them of their rights. The new theocratic military dictatorship, styled "The Republic of Gilead", moved quickly to consolidate its power and reorganize society along a new militarized, hierarchical, compulsorily Christian regime of Old Testament-inspired social and religious orthodoxy among its newly created social classes. In this society, almost all women are forbidden to read.

    The story is presented from the point of view of a woman called Offred (a patronymic name that means "Of Fred", referring to the man she serves). The character is one of a class of individuals kept as concubines ("handmaids") for reproductive purposes by the ruling class in an era of declining births. The book is told in the first person by Offred, who describes her life during her third assignment as a handmaid, in this case to Fred (referred to as "The Commander"). If Offred fails to become pregnant on this, her third attempt, she will be declared an "unwoman" and discarded.

    Interspersed in flashbacks are portions of her life from before and during the beginning of the revolution, when she finds she has lost all autonomy to her husband, through her failed attempt to escape with her husband and daughter to Canada, to her indoctrination into life as a handmaid. Through her eyes, the structure of Gilead's society is described, including the several different categories of women and their circumscribed lives in the new theocracy.

    I wonder if, when Canadian author Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid's Tale back in 1985, she knew that fundamentalists would actually try to set up something similar to the theocratic hell that was the Republic of Gilead. Today, her classic dystopian novel is considered an unofficial rough draft of the kind of society today's staunch conservative Republicans would very much like to see.

    The Handmaid's Tale paints an ugly picture of a nation in which the anti-abortion and anti-birth control "pro-life" movement comes to an odious, yet logical conclusion. Instead of attempting to explain in my own words the odiousness of a Gileadian existence, here's an excerpt from "Giving Birth to a 'Rapist's Child': A Discussion and Analysis of the Limited Legal Protections Afforded to Women Who Become Mothers Through Rape," written for the Georgetown Law Journal by Shauna R. Prewitt, a lawyer and a survivor of rape who - get this - had to fight off her rapist's legal attempts to obtain custody and visitation rights for the child she bore due to the rape:

    Like the stranger-rape prototype, the pregnant-raped-woman prototype may have emerged and continues to persist because it reinforces social hierarchies. For example, by describing the unborn children in terms that suggest the children are exclusively extensions of the rapist fathers, proponents of the pregnant-raped-woman prototype—underpinned by the rape-product justification—reify many sexist and patriarchal ideas. Sandra Mahkorn argues that rhetoric which portrays the unborn child as “being the property of the rapist” derives from a “sexist mentality.” It is the mentality that views a woman as “merchandise to which a man can claim ownership,” such that any offspring of that relationship are viewed as “the property of the owner, the father.” As a result, through use of the pregnant-raped-woman prototype, “chauvinistic predispositions are tolerated and succumbed to.” This “property” view not only allows for the illogic that a child conceived through rape is exclusively a genetic product of the rapist father, but also “de-legitimiz[es] [the] maternal genetic link,” and thereby, “erase[s] all identity characteristics of the mother other than that as a sexual container.” In doing so, it “reifies the patriarchal notion of patrilineal descent,” as well as the sexist ideology that “promote[s] the concept that a woman is a mere receptacle.” Finally, the depiction of an unborn child as being “‘worthless’ or ‘valueless’” derives from the notion that pregnancy from rape is “symbolic of ‘damage’ to male property.”

    The world of The Handmaid's Tale effectively reduces female existence to mere property and such property is utilized as tools for sexual gratification or tools for procreation and lineage continuation. To insure both functions are always available, barriers to both are brought down under religious and moral pretexts with assistance from legal and judicial avenues. Therefore, abortion, birth control and the very idea of sovereignty over one's own body are barriers that are to be brought down. Once that happens, society's menfolk, or at least those who wield considerable amounts of power, will have their theoretical pick of the female litter.

    Notice how the commanders have their pick of wives, "Marthas," handmaids and of course, "Jezebels" for relief and entertainment. Women who can't serve one or the other purpose are deemed "unwomen" and essentially sent away to die. Meanwhile, the common man only has an "econowife" to look forward to. Gileadian society's "big men" get to benefit from the spoils while the foot soldiers contend with the crumbs, along with proud accolades for their service under said big men and promises of more crumbs being thrown their way in due time.

    This world is one men like Rep. Todd Akin and VP candidate Paul Ryan advocate for bringing into fruition, even if they themselves don't quite know it. Many others are unwilling to just come out and admit that the bedroom and kitchen are the only places they believe women should be. Others have religious and moral objections to abortion and birth control; some people are more than willing to hitchhike their way to achieving an abortion/birth control ban, even at the cost of reducing women to living Fleshlights and incubators in the long run. Akin and other politicians are definitely willing to use the conservative pro-life movement as a slingshot to political career advancement, regardless of the consequences.

    As for conservatives bent on slighting their liberal counterparts by ushering in odious legislation that further turns women into the aforementioned "handmaids," they're shooting themselves in the foot in the long run, too. And just as pro-lifers seem to cease caring about the new lives they claim to protect once they're out of the womb, the Gileadian society in The Handmaid's Tale is quick to quietly dispose of newborns born with defects and shuffle "undesirables" out of the way. Even the women who've outlived their procreative and sexual usefulness are exiled to the novel's wasteland colonies. I'm sure pro-lifers would say they would never act that way in similar circumstances, but the lack of concern for life outside of the womb tends to make their concern for life within it seem...hollow.

    Unlike the novel, there's no natural disaster or crisis needed to start slouching towards Gilead. All it takes is a few people convinced that women would have better lives as property than they would as full-fledged human beings, and scores of people who are just following their moral convictions without knowing exactly who they're following.

  • "Rape is rape. And the idea that we should be parsing, qualifying and slicing what qualifies as rape doesn’t make sense to me and doesn’t make sense to the American people. What I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldnt have a bunch of pols, the majority of whom are men, making health-care decisions on behalf of women."

    The above quoted comes from the president, poignantly articulating the inherent stupidity of not only dictating how women govern their own faculties, but also narrowly defining the act of rape, to the point of which women are automatically deemed "sluts" unless it happens in an exact way that fits some sort of moral template.
  • The following is Missouri Senate candidate and current Representative Todd Akin shoving a size 12 patent leather shoe down his own throat:


    There's not much anyone with any common sense can say about this, except that this is perhaps the unmitigated height of stupidity and insensitivity.

    I don't think anyone knows exactly what a "legitimate rape" is. It's probably the same thing as Whoopi Goldberg's "rape rape." The fact that there's an established threshold before anyone takes rape seriously should make just about anyone throw up.

    I've heard of theories about how the stress and trauma of rape supposedly cuts off the chemical and hormonal processes needed to facilitate pregnancy. The underlying implication here is that if you were really raped, your body wouldn't allow the fertilization process to continue. Therefore, if you become pregnant after you were raped, then you really weren't raped, were you? And if you want an abortion, that would make you some sort of slut, right? "Good girls" don't get themselves into those typ...*pauses to throw up*..es of situations.

    I hope you had a barf bag on you. That stuff's hell to clean off a keyboard.

    It's not just Akin who thinks this way. The GOP has successfully cultivated a legion of politicians who are absolutely retrograde when it comes to matters that affect women most. These people are stuck in the mindset that declares female autonomy over their own destinies and biological functions to be the greatest societal sin imaginable. To them, it just ain't right that women can make their own decisions about bringing new life into this world and protecting themselves from predatory assholes who not only mistake a woman's vagina for a 24-hour convenience store, but feel that if women didn't want their registers robbed, they shouldn't have been open in the first place. No, I don't understand that line of thinking, either.

    And people wonder why rape remains one of the most under-reported crimes out there.

    The GOP is insistent using the power of the federal government to lock down women's reproductive rights at the same time it's equally insistent on the power of the federal government to be vanquished in just about every other matter save for the country's ability to go to war. That definitely speaks to the rather fucked up priorities of conservatives nowadays.

    It's not just Todd Akin who's busy refining rape to fit retrograde sensibilities. It's definitely worth mentioning that GOP vice-president candidate Paul Ryan was Akin's partner in crime when penning the infamous "forcible rape" language in the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." Ryan himself believes that abortion should be illegal everywhere, under any circumstance. If you need an abortion to keep yourself alive due to pregnancy complications or if you don't want to carry a child conceived in rape to term, then you're all out of luck.* If you think you'll at least have birth control, don't. Ryan's against that, too.

    None of this is about maintaining the well-being of women everywhere. If that were the case, this post wouldn't exist and neither would these attitudes. It's about maintaining control over women, a two-pronged process that involves shrinking women's autonomy over their own being via legislation while sanctioning society's shaming of women who remain determined to exercise their rights. The hoped result for many is a return to a society where women are seen (and fucked), but not heard. The menfolk are no longer threatened  by women who are not only not impressed with their success and trappings, but are more than capable of creating their own. In this rather fucked-up scenario, women remain property passed on from father to husband (and if said husband or father dies, from uncle to brother-in-law).

    Akin later issued out a boilerplate tweet that expressed regret over being excoriated over his comments:


    Meanwhile, Dana Loesch thinks people, namely the Democrats, are making too much of a fuss over this issue. Loesch managed to write the book on abject stupidity on countless occasions, so there's no new ground being broken here. You'd think that even a conservative woman would recognize how wrong Akin's comments were. *sigh*

    *Unless you travel to another country that's more than happy to get that done, but who's wealthy enough to make that happen?
  • Emily L. Hauser has an interesting blog post up on progressives, or namely how male progressives who are self-proclaimed feminists or at least claim to be supportive of feminism should not practice misogyny just because the target of such happens to be from the other team. This comes from Fox News talking head S.E. Cupp being featured in a recent issue of Hustler Magazine with a certain male member Photoshopped in her mouth. The underlying message is that moderately attractive women like Cupp should shut the fuck up and keep being eye candy and fantasy wank material for legions of ogling male viewers.

    As Hauser and commentator Darth Thulhu both mention, Hustler founder Larry Flynt fancies himself as a progressive, despite building an empire mostly on pushing women and female sexuality as consumer goods for a vast and never-ending male market. Hauser's main issue is how progressives should not fall prey to "othering" conservative women by dint of being conservative. All women deserve equal respect and the common courtesy of not being dismissed and devalued into walking, talking Fleshlight status.

    I've been trying to figure out why people are still driven to do these things, despite information and evidence that points to why they, well, shouldn't. Despite all efforts of enlightenment, it seems that some people steadfastly believe women to be beneath them, either by biblical decree, physical dominance or commonly held convention. Efforts to maintain the second-class status of womenfolk continues to produce the same sort of corrosive effects that efforts to maintain the second-class status of minorities produced.

    Pointing out errors in progressive representation does not excuse conservative thoughts on women and their roles within society. Many of these people still hold the shopworn belief that if women only reduced themselves to reproducing sex receptacles, then they would be truly happy. Many are actively working on removing women's options towards a happier and more independent lifestyle. The War on Women™ continues unabated, aided by those intent on nullifying sociopolitical power hard-won by women and others.

    And yes, I realize today's blog post title is also the title of a Good Housekeeping article written back in 1960 by Betty Friedan.
  • “If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend. “It’s a fiction.”

    The above is current RNC Chairman Ranch Prius Rinse Proboscis Reince Priebus letting everyone know that the GOP's "War on Women" is fiction. Nevermind declaration after declaration of Republican warfare with that dangerous Axis of Evil, the Uterus, Ovaries and Clitorus. Priebus is doing his best impersonation of Baghdad Bob right about now. "No, there is no war with your vagina, ladies." *cue latest bill mandating transvaginal ultrasounds prior to abortion*

    If the War on Women is fiction, then so are the concerns of women everywhere when it comes to their reproductive health. That suits the GOP just fine, as women apparently don't exist unless conjured up for sex, dinner, laundry or beatings. That said, it's little wonder women's support of the GOP will be as nonexistent as Ranch Dressing's "War on Caterpillars".

    At least a caterpillar transforms into something beautiful over time. Baring a miracle, Reince will remain as ugly as ever, inside and out.

  • Most people know the story of how Jesus, the Son of God, came into being. One of the more interesting aspects of the story (and one that's also a big part of the Catholic faith) is the immaculate conception of Mary, precipitated by the appearance of the angel Gabriel, his message of Jesus' impending birth through Mary and the intervention of the Holy Spirit afterwards. Considering Joseph was a husband-to-be and the lovely couple didn't subscribe to the whole concept of sex before marriage, this event of immaculate conception remains one of the most intriguing episodes throughout Jesus' life, death and resurrection:*

    29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

    34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

    35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[b] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”

    38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
    Since then, the laws of physics and biology have put the kibosh on any future acts of immaculate conception. But the Arizona state legislature stumbled up on a way to rekindle that long-lost act through the power of bill-making:

    Arizona’s HB 2036 takes Nebraska’s 20-week abortion ban one step further by starting the clock on pregnancies at the woman’s last last menstrual period, which could be two weeks before fertilization.

    Specifically, the bill would “[p]rohibit abortions at or after twenty weeks of gestation, except in cases of a medical emergency, based on the documented risks to women’s health and the strong medical evidence that unborn children feel pain during an abortion at that gestational age,” where gestational age is defined as “age of the unborn child as calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman.”

    Take note of the underlined. The entire menstrual cycle lasts for about 28 days. The luteal phase, where the corpus luteum develops and subsequently atrophies sans fertilization of the egg, lasts up to 16 days.

    In effect, this means that if a woman has sex with someone, she could technically be pregnant weeks before the pregnancy test, morning sickness or tell-tale lack of a period gives her the official heads-up. Not exactly immaculate conception, but they're getting there. It's more like "pre-pregnancy," where the state knows you're pregnant long before you decide to become pregnant. Or something.

    More importantly, this means that if she decides, on the 19th or 20th week of gestation to abort, she'll technically be in violation of the abortion ban, because the window of opportunity slammed shut on the 18th week:
    Guttmacher Institute’s State Issues Manager Elizabeth Nash told Raw Story that obstetricians start the clock on pregnancies after the “last menstrual period” to “be on the safe side.”

    “Certainly, they are trying move the gestational cutoff from what had been over the last two years a 20-week gestational cutoff to an 18-week gestational cutoff,” Nash explained. “At the same time, they are trying to say, ‘Oh, this is a 20-week abortion ban.’ And they get away with that with the definition of gestational age that’s in the bill.”
    Determining the gestation date this way is a rather creative and supremely sneaky goalpost move. Which means it serves conservative pro-lifers and their GOP counterparts well. Selling a 20-week abortion ban that actually kicks in two weeks earlier than anyone expects constitutes fraud and deception on part of bill's supporters, not that it matters much.

    At some point, someone's gonna have the bright idea of suggesting that the pro-life anti-abortion contingent should just assume that all woman are presumed pregnant until actually pregnant, to eliminate all possibility of legal or illegal abortive acts. Of course, that'd also include hormonal contraceptives, since they prevent ovulation and fertilization. In short, basically anything that interferes with ovulation and fertilization. At that point, you'd have to wonder if that would include the entirely natural act of corpus luteum discharge.

    Is a tampon or a sanitary napkin admissible as evidence of an abortion? Would birth control pills signify intent? How about someone experiencing a miscarriage?

    Meanwhile, semen discharge from masturbation or wet dreams is largely overlooked. What? You seriously think the menfolk would willingly legislate their own reproductive faculties?**

    *If you believe otherwise, fine. Don't try to take a chunk out of my ass over it, thanks.


    **Nevermind the cases of surgical and chemical castration for sex offenders and black males with "virulent" perceived sexual appetites.
  • And the biggest fear of these rightwing broadcasters is that the “fairness doctrine,” which their hero Reagan killed, will be re-instituted. Radio managers weren’t too enamored of the government monitoring whether each minute of rightwing tit was met with an equal in length leftwing tat, so they often replaced talk radio with soft rock, or a gardening show, to spare themselves the headaches.

    There's a lot of talk about whether Rush Limbaugh's latest asshole outburst will earn him a permanent leave of absence from the EIB golden mic. It won't, most likely. The most preferable plan of action for his paymasters is to wait for the whole thing between him and Sandra Fluke to blow over and die within the ADHD-addled minds of American media consumers.

    The above comes courtesy of Lee Haven of Jack and Jill Politics. I doubt the Fairness Doctrine will be resurrected any time soon, even when President Obama finally achieves "lame duck" status and has to no longer gingerly step through the conservative minefield just to stay in office. "Lame duck" status gives him the keys to the minesweeper, but it's up to him if he wants to put the flails to the mines littered all over the landscape.

    But what if Rushbo's stupidity finally made reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on the nation's airwaves a once-more viable and appealing solution? It's far-fetched, but enough people could finally be so disgusted that the idea could be put in motion without as much opposition from conservatives.

    I doubt that'll happen. For starters, most people simply turn the dial when they get sick of Rushbo's shit. That leaves his adoring legions of "dittoheads" and die-hard conservatives. His steadfast fan base will cry foul if any mention of the Fairness Doctrine is made, as such a thing would be seen as a way to "muzzle" their golden boy. The president himself currently opposes any move to revive the Fairness Doctrine and it's uncertain if this incident will change his mind. The FCC recently removed language referring to it from both its rulebook and from the Federal Register, making it even less likely for any sort of sudden revival.

    The best course of action for people who want Rushbo to feel some sort of consequence for his actions is to hammer his advertisers. He has to do what the money tells him to do and so far, the money's telling him to tone it down a notch. After all, he's just a mouthpiece.

    I'd love to see pill-popping sex fiend be shown the door, but like cockroaches and early 1970s home decor, he'll tenaciously cling to that golden mic. It took a rather sudden case of death to end Andrew Breitbart's hackery and with Limbaugh's shaky health, the same might happen to the grand champion of asshole/fuckwad behavior.

    By the way, I forgot to mention how Bill O'Reilly jumped into the fray with the following comment:

    "Let me get this straight, Ms. Fluke, and I'm asking this with all due respect," he said. "You want me to give you my hard-earned money so you can have sex?"

    I guess when you're constantly skirting the edges of irrelevancy, you have to do or say something to remind people you actually exist.
  • "...when the left wants to pretend they have no sense of humor, they are excellent at it. Yesterday in the riff about it, 'Okay, okay, fine. If we're gonna pay for this, at least let us have something for it. How about some sex videos?' If anybody doesn't realize that we are illustrating absurdity here by being absurd and that that is the trademark of this program ... But oh, no! 'Oh, of everything else you've said, that's the lowest of the low. Demanding sex video? Who do you think you are?' Lighten up. I remember using that phrase all the way back in 1989: Lighten up."
    "...now, at the end of this week, I am the person that the women of AMERICA are to fear the most. What can I do to the women of AMERICA? Do I have the power to raise their taxes? I do not. Do I have the power to regulate their behavior? I do not. Do I have the power to make health care decisions for them? I do not. Do I have the power to withhold birth control pills from them? I do not. Do I have the power to audit their tax returns? I do not. Do I have the power to take their little four-year-old kindergarten student's lunch and throw it away and make 'em eat something else? I do not. Do I have the power to look into their personal life and leak the information to the media? I do not. Is there one bit of freedom that I can deny them? Can I raise their taxes? They want to blame me as being the person they should fear, when in fact the people doing all these things I just said I have no power to do, the DEMOCRAT PARTY (sic) is doing."
    Rush Limbaugh remains the grand champion when it comes to unleashing one's inner asshole for both money and media fame. I forgot to add in the previous blog post that there's yet another way to neutralize an asshole: hit the asshole in his wallet. Or in Rush's case, his show's advertisers.

    Countless people took to Twitter and petitioned companies that bought airtime on Rushbo to pull their ads in protest. So far, several advertisers were convinced to pull their ads from the Rush Limbaugh radio program, including:
    Nevertheless, Rushbo remains resolute in both his willingness to remain an asshole and his unwillingness to offer an apology to Sandra Fluke. Even after finding out the president called to give his support to Fluke, Rushbo decided to take the piss on both with this lovely tidbit from Politico:
    And as he discovered while on the air that Obama had called Fluke, Limbaugh mocked their exchange. “Aw. That is so compassionate! What a great guy,” Limbaugh said. “The president called her to make sure she’s okay. What is she, 30 years old? Thirty years old, a student at Georgetown law who admits to having so much sex that she can’t afford it anymore.”

    Later on the show, the radio host laced into the president for telling Fluke that her parents should be proud of her.

    “Your daughter appears before a congressional committee and says she’s having so much sex, she can’t pay for it and wants a new welfare program to pay for it. Would you be proud? I don’t know about you, but I’d be embarrassed. I’d disconnect the phone. I’d go into hiding and hope the media didn’t find me,” Limbaugh said.
    I'd ask if it's too much for Rushbo to just shut the fuck up, but I find it more entertaining to see the ol' pillhead dig himself in the hole that much deeper.

    By the way, thanks to Redeye's diligence in locating contacts to Rushbo's biggest sponsors and paymasters, I was reminded that Clear Channel, the radio channel hosting the Rush Limbaugh show, is currently owned by Bain Capital. You know, the company founded and run in part by none other than Mitt Robot Romney.


    Speaking of assholes, not only has District Judge Richard Cebull apologized to the president for getting caught forwarding the infamous "Obama dog" email, but he's also calling for an investigation...on himself:
    U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull says he will apologize to President Obama and ask for a panel of judges to investigate his conduct after a Montana newspaper reported he had sent a racially inflammatory message using his courthouse email account last month.
  • "What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps."
    If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch," he said.
    Sigh. The War on Uteri™ continues unabated, from state legislatures churning out bill after bill to restrict, undermine and intimidate women from exercising control of their reproductive faculties to conservative front-liners like Rush Limbaugh and Foster Friess letting loose with ultimately misogynistic rhetoric such as the above.

    Here we have financially well-off men with their own personal demons and presumed difficulty in maintaining their sexual vigor declaring women who wish to NOT be punished with pregnancy or STDs whenever they have sex on their own terms and with partners they choose, "prostitutes," "sluts" and "whores." You have to wonder if these men and others like them are just angry they can't get any unless they hold out the carrots of power and wealth and then hope some unsuspecting intern takes a bite. Sexual deprivation and frustration tends to manifest in strange ways.

    “I get such a chuckle when these things come out. Here we have millions of our fellow Americans unemployed. We have jihadist camps being set up in central – in Latin America, which Rick has been warning about, and people seem to be so preoccupied with sex. I think it says something about our culture. We maybe need a massive therapy session so we can concentrate on what the real issues are. And this contraceptive thing, my gosh, it’s so — such inexpensive. Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

    But it's not just them. It's several segments of the national populace who enjoy hearing men like Limbaugh and Friess say the things they're too polite or afraid to openly proclaim themselves. These people have a low opinion of women who won't follow the narrow sexual path set down by a combination of religious doctrine and a pathological fear of sex itself. They can't enjoy sexual freedom for fear of being ostracized as a whore or a slut, hence appearances must be kept and "whores" must be shamed. Ta-Nehisi Coates calls it the "normalization of cruelty." I call it "unleashing your inner asshole."


  • In this blog post, we have a 45-year-old rapper whose career was built on heaping piles of misogyny, the "Pimp" allure, flagrant disrespect and objectification of women and overall coonery giving "fatherly" tips on how to "turn girls out." As Phlip over at the Intersection of Madness and Reality explained, fathers everywhere should be lined up for several blocks for an opportunity to beat this man senseless.

    “When you get to late middle school, early high school and you start feeling a certain way about the girls… I’m gonna tell you a couple tricks. A lot of the boys are going to be running around trying to get kisses from the girls… We’re going way past that. I’m taking you to the hole.”
    “You push her up against the wall, you take your finger and put a little spit on it and you stick your finger in her underwear and you rub it on there and watch what happens.”

    Sadly, beyond black-oriented news sites and blogs, I haven't heard much about Too Short's predatory pontificating. Perhaps if he made the same mistake as Jamie Foxx and directed his "advice" towards the ever-so-impressionable white teenagers, there would be a bit more exposure. In fact, the outrage generated by this would probably make Michael Vick's dogfighting conviction seem like a quaint shoplifting incident at Target.

    But when it comes to bullshit that happens within the black community, events like these don't even rate an eyebrow raise. Black men in general who predate on black women and girls don't rate a mention unless the target happens to be extremely famous or white. It's how Anthony Sowell managed to get away with his crimes for so long and why Rihanna's abuse at the hands of Chris Brown became as noteworthy as it did.

    I know there was a time where I had thicker skin for this kind of talk; usually ending it with “meh, it’s just music,” but something about the situation in which the person posting this from the position of a now-former rapper (pending earlier explanation, naturally) at age 45 and presumably a father, one would hope that one just wouldn’t take it this far, especially not providing specific rape instructions. I guess achievement of the ripe old age of 32 and the presence of a 7-month-old all too willing to show me her two teeth changed that.

    Just like the words spewed by Troi Torain (also known as "DJ Starr") against the daughter and wife of then-rival DJ Envy, most people who are up and up on rap and R&B are quick to dismiss those words as just that: words. Unfortunately, those words can often take a life of their own, reinforcing a negative lifestyle and negative trends that go a long way to hurt the most vulnerable within the black community. It's bad enough that the media and rap culture both go out of its way to devalue black women and reduce them to nothing more than mere sexual objects, but when the famous black men actively advocate said commodification and other black Americans see it as being no big deal...you have to wonder if there's a disconnect somewhere:

    Just as it's incredibly offensive and wrong for Star to bring a 4-year-old girl into an ugly radio debate, it seems wrong for Envy to be taking the fight to the same level by calling the police in on the case, when it's really quite clear that Star was just being an asshole in public.

    People tend to just shrug and not take these things seriously until 1)it personally affects them or 2)it happens to someone who "matters" and in turn generates publicity that's too big to ignore or shrug off. To get a better idea of what was said:

    “I will come for your kids” and I want to “do an R. Kelly (i.e. urinate during sexual intercourse)…on your seed (i.e. child)”. Torain also offered $500 to any listener who could provide information about the rival DJ’s daughter’s school and used racial slurs when talking about the DJ’s wife. Torain went on to say that he wanted to “put mayonnaise in the ass cheeks” of the rival DJ’s young daughter, immediately adding that he also desired to take a bite out of it.

    The shit is downright pedophilic. It's no wonder DJ Envy brought the police in on this. Despite his involvement in the beef between him and Torain, this stepped over the line.

    It took constant hammering against the walls of tone deaf mass media to momentarily knock Torain off his "hustle." His antics didn't reverberate throughout the media like those of Chris Brown or Jamie Foxx. When your bullshit is aimed at ordinary black women and girls - people whom, in the eyes of the media, don't matter all that much, it's easy to get away with it. Although Too Short and the people at XXL have been called out for it, I doubt it's knocking anyone from those camps off of their hustle. No wonder folks like Gina McCauley are greatly concerned:

    "The black community has a problem with how it treats its girls and boys as it relates to violence," McCauley concluded, and she called on black men to take Too Short to task for his comments and re-educate him about respecting black women.

    Too many black men are willing to just stand back and not call guys like Too Short out on hurting black women and girls. Too many people want to remain in such a person's good graces rather than risk being ostracized for standing up. The longer these black men sit in silence, the more black women and girls get hurt.

    He probably has daughters by multiple women. This is what happens...he tells his daughters to keep her legs closed; he tells his sons to "Be a pimp player"; he has a rotation of women for his children to see. Straight up mixed signals.

    That's true for just about every ethnic group and culture. Men and boys are encouraged to predate and fornicate to their hearts' content (except in very specific circumstances), while the onus of sexual protection from said predation falls squarely on women and girls. The menfolk get little blue pills while the womenfolk get little white pills...to hold between their knees.

    I hereby re-submit Todd Anthony Shaw's name to the Field Negro for consideration for House Negro of the Day.* I'm sure DMX will be glad to get some of that heat up off him. I'd submit Chris Brown's name, but he doesn't need the publicity or another award.**

    *I've just been informed he already made House Negro once.
    **He's probably been in the House himself.

  • I suppose this is how Republican Rep. Darrell Issa and his all-male panel on contraception and religious freedom feels. Oh, they won't openly admit it, but they're probably thinking it. From TPM:

    On Capitol Hill, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) held hearings on contraception and religious freedom that produced the now-famous picture of a table full of men called to weigh in on access to contraceptives. Democrats wanted a woman — a Georgetown law student with a friend who lost an ovary because the university doesn’t cover birth control — to say her piece at the hearing, but Issa wouldn’t let her on the panel. He said she wasn’t “appropriate or qualified” to discuss the topic at hand.

    *cue Scooby-Doo "huh?" noise*

    Issa bristled at the charge and said Democrats could not add their witness because she was not a member of the clergy, but a student at Georgetown. He also faulted Democrats for not submitting the name of the witness, Sandra Fluke, in time.

    Fluke would have talked about a classmate who lost an ovary because of a syndrome that causes ovarian cysts. Georgetown, which is affiliated with the Catholic Church, does not insure birth control, which is also used to treat the syndrome.

    Issa said the hearing is meant to be more broadly about religious freedom and not specifically about the contraception mandate in the Health Reform law.
    It's an issue that affects women's health, so you'd think there would be, well, women on the panel concerning a topic that affects them most. No dice. And plenty of people are calling foul, as they should.

    “This is an issue about women’s health and I believe that women’s health should be covered in all fo the insurance plans,” Pelosi insisted at her press briefing this morning, refuting the GOP’s claim that the debate should focus on “religious liberties.”

    “Where are the women? And that’s a good question for the whole debate. Where are the women?” she asked. “Imagine, having a panel on women’s health and then not having any women on the panel, duh!”

  • Last time, President Barack Obama sidestepped the GOP and Catholic Church's opposition to birth control as a part of health insurance coverage, by allowing health insurance providers to directly offer that coverage to employees without religious entities and employers paying a single dime, thereby eliminating the possibility of "material cooperation with evil." Bereft of the ability to claim a religious objection to birth control in health care plans, the GOP is going for broke:

    In response to the Obama administration’s requirement that all healthcare plans provide birth control, Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO), in another effort to pander the 1% of the female population who have never used birth control and the men who want them to be barefoot and pregnant, introduced an amendment to the transportation bill (that’s right, transportation bill) that would allow any employer to deny any coverage on any whim.

    Sen. Blunt knew this measure would die a hot death if it wasn't quietly buried in an unrelated bill when no one was looking. And this, ladies and gents, is why the Democrats should be constantly on guard for such legislative treachery from the GOP -- they'd do anything to achieve their goals, no matter how.

    Fortunately, Harry Reid was able to smell this bullshit and put a quick end to it:

    The move was intercepted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who blocked the contraception-repeal amendment being called for by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., calling it “senseless.”

    ”I appreciate the Republicans’ opportunity to never lose an opportunity to mess up a good piece of legislation,” Reid said sarcastically. “Let’s do the banking part of this bill. Let’s do the finance part of this bill. Let’s do the commerce part of this bill. But to show how the Republicans never lose an opportunity to mess up a good piece of legislation, listen to this: They’re talking about 1st amendment rights, the Constitution.”

    Now, now, Harry. We all know the First Amendment and the Constitution in general only applies when it works in the GOP's favor.

    And here is why this measure was so dangerous in the first place:
    Under the measure, an insurer or an employer would be able to claim a moral or religious objection to covering HIV/AIDS screenings, Type 2 Diabetes treatments, cancer tests or anything else they deem inappropriate or the result of an “unhealthy” or “immoral” lifestyle. Similarly, a health plan could refuse to cover mental health care on the grounds that the plan believes that psychiatric problems should be treated with prayer.

    Imagine going to your doctor to have a life-saving procedure performed, only to be denied health coverage for it because your employer deems it anathema to his/her/their religious beliefs. In order to eradicate the scourge of women having open and affordable access to birth control, they're ready and willing to place other lives in danger.
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