Archive for the Sexism and Gender Issues Category

Using Women To Create an Enslaved Underclass

Posted in Sexism and Gender Issues on July 8, 2012 by admin

Many people debate the reasons why the Republican/Conservatives have been promoting an agenda that serves to circumscribe the rights, liberties and potentialities of women. Dahlia Lithwick makes an argument that there are those who that the issue regarding gender equity is about the lack of trust by the white male conservative base, which doesn’t trust women to do the right thing. To suggest a woman would fake a rape to gain access to abortion certainly supports that opinion. In fact, I think Ms. Lithwick has many good points. While there is obviously truth to that perspective, I see another component. The fact remains that the reason that these initiatives that help to level the playing field exist in the first place is because that conservative base cannot be trusted. They can’t be trusted to not create an old boys system that seeks to reinstate the feudal systems of the south where wives where little more than concubines who had to accept sharing the marriage bed with the plantation owners female slaves.  The 2011 introduction of a bill to redefine rape as occurring only when force is applied goes far beyond limiting abortion. It would set the stage for limiting what could be prosecuted as rape. Despite the fact that the initiative was beaten back do you really think they won’t try again? By merely reflecting on Ms. Lithwick’s discussion regarding the debate about the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), one possible result would be immigrant brides that their domestic husbands could over-bear and force in to compliance and submission with no recourse for the women to seek relief from their oppression.  Michelle Chen  presents a very informative discussion of how female oppression would increase without VAWA.  If women have no legal protection from force, might and beatings administered to elicit obedience, their lives would be better only in the sense that the slaves’ and concubines’ very lives could be taken without repercussion.

If we couple the above with the very well written analysis  of a Romney Presidency  performed by Nancy L. Cohen it becomes easy to see that in addition to reducing women to little more than birthing devices, the Republican/Conservative agenda would also increase the number of women and children in poverty and without health care. That is another of the glaring hypocrisies of these people; they want to force women to bear children but don’t want to provide means to assist taking care of them. Sally Kalson wrote an article that outlines the Republican/Conservatives efforts to force women to have children by limiting access to contraception. It’s as if they want a nation of desperate women and children they can easily manipulate and control. I guess that would make it easier for them to have the affairs, mistresses, and concubines that they criticize guys like Bill Clinton, whom women generally like, for having. Women are the primary caregivers for children, and if they are repressed and suppressed in terms of their rights and freedoms, it is the children who inherit these limited opportunities. Moreover, when their children grow up, because they have had limited access to prenatal care and under funded and under supported public schools, they become less capable to succeed in society. They then become the perfect candidates for the prison industrial complex, the only form of legalized slavery in America.

 

Censoring Vagina Dialogues

Posted in Sexism and Gender Issues on June 21, 2012 by admin

It is utterly incredible that people like Jim Stamas  can even be elected at all. How can you seek to ban the use of a word that is the actual, clinical, scientific term for a part of human anatomy?  In one fell swoop, Stamas wants to tell a woman what to do with her vagina, but not let her in on the conversation, unless it’s on his terms. With the zeal of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini or any of the totalitarian dictators past and present, Stamas used the power of his leadership role  to exile Representative Lisa Brown from the Michigan House of Representatives under pain of physical, forcible restraint in a local stalag. To put his outrageous behavior in perspective, we have movies and TV shows that routinely articulate all kinds of slang words for women and genitalia. Nevertheless, when the clinically and scientifically correct term is used in official discussion about laws that will forever change the lives of hundreds of thousands of women in the state of Michigan, that’s inappropriate?

Stamas has consistently picked sides of issues that deny safe abortion access to women, against legislation regarding hate crimes , in favor of insurance companies , against bans on substances deemed dangerous and used in children’s products , against banning inaccurate descriptions on prescription and herbal drugs  and appears to support tobacco.

The hypocrisy is nothing short of puke-worthy. Republicans (Stamas’ political party) is always promoting itself as the party of less government,  yet they consistently promote laws that intrude further and further into peoples’ private lives, specifically impacting women. Now the Republicans are crafting laws to control the use of the word vagina. As if the economy and geo-political upheaval in far flung places like the Middle East are not enough to keep lawmakers busy. Listening to the Republicans is like being in some horrific Orwellian 1984 nightmare that you find you can’t wake from. For example, take the rationale of Arizona Republican Debbie Lesko, who authored a bill that allows employers to ask a woman if she is using birth control pills for either medical or contraceptive reasons . “I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.” Under the guise of making society less intrusive, they have made society more intrusive. Specifically, this woman Lesko has crafted a law that makes the lives of women less private and allows employers to make women subject to the employer’s value system.

What can be done? Women must take an active role in first of all, limiting the ability of women like Lesko to work against the best interests of women. The main problem at this point is that women generally don’t believe their interests are at stake. The Huffington Post  reported on a poll which indicates only a third of women believe there rights are in danger . Women must spend more time researching and studying what is occurring on the political landscape. Women must talk to one another about these issues and inform one another that the slow steady march to the end of life as they know it is at hand.